TAKING NOTE: A Bill Only Bush Could Love
Hellman, Judith Adler
A Bill Only Bush Could Love
by Judith Adler Hellman O nce again, a proposed immigration reform bill has been killed in Congress. Rejected by a range of political actors even more...
...He came out of nowhere, an economics professor who served as minister of economy for two months under the previous government until he was removed for trying to overturn neoliberal policies...
...Our subscribers in government, academia, NGOs, and the corporate sector all need to know what LAN is saying on the issues of today and tomorrow...
...Correa has already expelled Ecuador’s World Bank representative and has virtually terminated the country’s relations with the International Monetary Fund...
...Significant deposits of petroleum were first discovered in eastern Ecuador in the 1960s, leading to a bonanza as transnational petroleum corporations rushed in to tap the fields during the 1970s...
...Will it be simply reformist or will it establish a framework for a new socialism of the 21st century...
...Those who to have accomplished something of val the bill...
...As Pedro de la Cruz, the head of the National Federation of Peasants, Indians and Blacks, notes, “We need to reclaim the country’s lands for the people who work them and achieve food sovereignty, breaking the hold of the large landed and foreign interests who have kept us in misery for centuries...
...In Ecuador, as well as in much of Latin America, we are witnessing a revolution from below, a popular awakening that is challenging the traditional political parties and demanding a new system of governance that responds to the interests and needs of the popular classes...
...Given that the constituent assemblies draft new constitutions to refound the nation while the bourgeois-oligarchic state still exists, and that the traditional political parties continue to function, the question is, how far are the constituent assemblies circumscribed in what they can achieve...
...This year they were to be hosted in Ecuador, but the United States opted to conduct them in Colombia, its closest regional ally...
...military personnel are continually rotated between Manta and the U.S...
...And in six months his government has taken stronger measures to rein in local and international finance capital than the Brazilian government of Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva has in more than four years...
...5 Correa is also standing up to Occidental Petroleum, a U.S.-based corporation whose Ecuadoran holdings were taken over by PetroEcuador last year for selling some of its holdings to a Canadian company, violating its contract with the Ecuadoran state...
...Having assumed the presidency in January, Correa, like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, is committed to “refounding the state...
...Congress refused to accept the president’s initiative, passing its own law saying that such an assembly would not be empowered to refound the country’s institutions, and that it would not have the right to limit the tenure of congressional deputies or any other elected officials until their terms expired...
...intelligence gathering and for helping coordinate counter-insurgency efforts against the leftist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia...
...The bill’s most progressive advocates, including Senator Ted Kennedy and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, argued that having a law in place is preferable to the legal limbo of the current situation...
...The spraying of herbicides by planes originating in Colombia wipes out food crops and poisons Ecuadoran children and adults...
...Correa responded by eliminating the onerous clauses from the congressional legislation, tailoring it Many reject the centrality of parties, arguing that they are inherently hierarchical (and often patriarchal) and thus antithetical to authentic popular participation...
...Hopes were not high, since the Tribunal is historically viewed as part of the partidocracia...
...Due to Correa’s popularity and the broad support he enjoys among the forajidos and most of the social movements that are generally disgusted with all the established political parties, the Movement candidates will likely predominate in the Assembly...
...This is a demand of Ecuador’s popular movements, which have a long history of mobilizing against the country’s entrenched interests.1 They insisted on electing a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution that would break up the dysfunctional state, establish a plurinational, participatory democracy, reclaim Ecuadoran sovereignty, and use the state to create social and economic institutions that benefit the people, not the oligarchy...
...The very role of political parties in this process is the subject of intense debate...
...it will convene in late October after 130 delegates are elected September 30...
...We do not need any foreign troops in our country...
...A Bill Only Bush Could Love by Judith Adler Hellman O nce again, a proposed immigration reform bill has been killed in Congress...
...Popular sentiment in Ecuador overwhelmingly supports closing the base...
...Even so, many immigrants allowed themselves to believe that the illogic of their situation would become clear to members of the dominant society...
...Many think the Constituent Assembly will assert greater control over Ecuador’s petroleum and natural resources for the benefit of the country’s 13 million people, almost half of whom live below the poverty line...
...The back hoped to provoke an insti be simply of the partidiocracia is bro tutional crisis...
...Today we are at the beginning of an era of popular power, of the Constituent Assembly’s power...
...The bill’s opponents included labor unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO, which decried its proposed guest-worker proXenophobes tion Reform Act of 2007 represented gram as likely to drive down wages, perhaps the best last opportunity for and racists benefits, and health and safety stanBush to fulfill even one campaign prom dards for all workers...
...policy and is currently working on a book titled The New Fire in the Americas...
...Twenty substitutes almost immediately broke ranks with their parties, and Congress had the quorum necessary to function...
...This is no surprise...
...Every year since 1959, the U.S...
...All the sectors of the left claim they want unity with us,” says César Rodríguez, an organizer of the Country Movement...
...Judith Adler Hellman teaches at York University, Toronto...
...supported it were enthusiastic about ue in the course of two terms in office...
...Correa has also signed several petroleum accords with Venezuela, of which the most important is a $4 billion project for a refinery backed by PetroEcuador, a state-owned company, and the Venezuelan state firm, PDVSA...
...Minister of Foreign Relations María Fernanda Espinosa, in a meeting with the Foreign Press Association in Quito, declared that Ecuador intends to close the U.S...
...Ecuador is a sovereign nation,” she said...
...With the takeover of Occidental’s holdings, PetroEcuador now controls more than half of the country’s petroleum exports, which themselves account for about 40% of Ecuador’s total exports and one third of government revenues...
...He has written widely on Latin America and U.S...
...naval operations in the Pacific Ocean.3 Upward of 475 U.S...
...In the years since it was established, the civil war in Colombia has spilled over into Ecuador, bringing refugees, violence, and social conflict, particularly in the Amazon basin...
...to his original decree for a constituent assembly, and sending it to the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal...
...R efounding the ecuadoran nation involves an interna tional realignment that runs deeper than a mere rejection of neoliberal economics...
...The expert analysis of our editorial team is available in a wide range of influential publications and services...
...It also lies in the measurable movement of others who qualify for citizenship, but had not thought to apply for it until the anti-immigrant barrage pushed them to seek a stronger voice in politics by gaining voting rights in their adopted land...
...Some of the deposed deputies went to Bogotá, Colombia, asking for political asylum...
...The next day Acosta and the Tribunal responded by expelling them from Congress for their unconstitutional actions...
...But how far will the Constituent Assembly go in “refounding the nation...
...It is this rich mixture of forces at the grass roots that is opening up new vistas as the 21st century advances...
...Correa has indicated that the Assembly may enshrine a ”socialism of the 21st century” in the new constitution, but it remains unclear exactly how this will be defined...
...The deputies dispersed to various hotels around the city...
...It is potent and tumultuous...
...Will the left.2 Since a quorum of “One thing is clear,” says 51 members is required in Constituent Alejandro Moreano, a sociCongress to conduct busi ologist who is active in the Assembly ness, the deposed members social movements...
...Correa later addressed the throng, proclaiming that this May Day represented “an epochal change,” both for Ecuador and all of Latin America...
...At the Hotel Quito, they attempted to convene a rump session, but it went nowhere, with demonstrators ridi NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update culing them outside, showering them is required, but even more imporwith chicharones (pieces of dried pork tantly, the right wing is now a less fat) as they entered and potent force...
...Ecuador responded by announcing it would not participate in this year’s exercises, with Correa proclaiming, “It appears the Southern Command believes we are a colony of the United States, that our navy is just one more unit controlled by their country...
...However, after it adopted the U.S...
...Among the marchers was President Rafael Correa and members of his cabinet...
...The base’s runway, built at a cost of $80 million, can accommodate the largest, most sophisticated U.S...
...In his inaugural address, Correa called for an end “to this perverse system that has destroyed our democracy, our economy, and our society...
...society...
...Former minister of energy and mining Alberto Acosta, one of Correa’s closest and most progressive advisers, who resigned his post to lead the Country Movement ticket for the Assembly, met with the protesters and told them the mining concessions couldn’t be annulled outright...
...Backed by demonstrators, Correa ordered 1,500 policemen to surround the Congress to enforce the Tribunal’s decree, preventing any of the 57 deposed representatives from entering...
...But these appeals and protests achieved nothing...
...They managed to tie up the assembly for months, mainly because a two-thirds majority is required for enacting a new constitution, and the MAS and its allies control only 60% of the vote...
...A fter the euphoria of correa’s May Day speech, Ecuador’s popular forces encountered difficulties as they drew up lists of its press NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update Because of this discord, distinctive lists of progressive candidates were put forth in the balloting for the 30 national candidates for the assembly.8 At the provincial level, however, where 100 assembly members will be elected, local coalitions did come together in some cases to present more unified tickets...
...No signatures or petitions were required, meaning hundreds or more could simply sign up to run for any given seat, making “to the surprise of virtually everyone,” says rene baez, a political analyst at the Catholic University of ecuador, “the popular repudiation shook the consciousness of the Supreme electoral tribunal...
...This is the socialism of the 21st century,” he said, “the recognition of the supremacy of those who work over capital...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update by roger burbach Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (global alternatives.net...
...E cuador was in a festive mood may 1 as tens of thousands rallied in Quito to cel ebrate International Workers’ Day...
...others went to Washington to lodge a protest with the Organization of the American States, claiming that the country’s constitution had been violated...
...But the transformation will definitely go beyond the reformist policies of the past, largely because a consensus exists among the candidates of the Country Movement and others on the left that neoliberal capitalism, particularly the ascendant role played by the banks and finance capital, must be taken on...
...dollar as its official currency in 2000, international drug traffickers, particularly from Colombia, began to use Ecuadoran-based banks, some of which are controlled by the likes of Citibank, to launder their ill-gotten gains...
...Belying his professorial background, he has tremendous charisma, which enabled him to galvanize the electorate...
...But they pull back when their leaders are not put at the head of the list of candidates for the Constituent Assembly...
...Other key resources include Latinnews Daily Briefing, Latin American Economy & Business, a Latin American Regional Reports series, and our unique Latin America – Asia Review...
...But it has become a major operations center for U.S...
...Meanwhile, Correa has denounced Occidental’s “lobbying” the Bush administration to regain its holdings...
...An “Open Letter to Ecuadoran Society,” signed by many of the individuals and organizations that are partisans of the Constituent Assembly, declares: “Never before has the theory that it is the people who make history been so certain...
...Under Communism, power came to be concentrated in the party apparatus that controlled the state...
...Progressive support also came from unions representing farm workers, service employees, and hotel, restaurant, and apparel workers—sectors where immigrants cluster...
...More than 70% of the country’s voting-age population went to the polls April 15, with four out of five voters casting their ballots in favor of the Constituent Assembly...
...The oligarchy and the partidocracia moved almost immediately to gut the call for the assembly...
...It can establish a legal framework that will enable us to revise all the concessions...
...But in a manner that has long made the immigration debate so surreal, progressives concerned with immigrant rights found themselves linked its promise of higher, longer fences, a “beefed up” Border Patrol, more apprehensions, more severe penalties for those caught, and reduced opportunity for legal residents to sponsor the migration of family members...
...Ecuador has also joined the Bank of the South, an alternative international lending institution proposed by Chávez, with Argentina, Bolivia, and other South American nations participating...
...The people took to the streets in a jubilant mood...
...Perhaps the new legislation, many thought, would open a way for them out of a shadowy world where they live in fear of apprehension and deportation and remain vulnerable to every conceivable form of exploitation...
...The Colombian and U.S...
...Correa vehemently disagrees...
...Trade unions, barrio committees, professional associations, and an array of social movements and leftist political parties marched to the city’s historic San Francisco Plaza...
...We are not going to allow an arrogant, portentous transnational that doesn’t respect Ecuadoran laws to harm our country,” he said...
...A new constellation of reformist or a quirk of Ecuadoran law, political and social forces will it establish each congressional deputy will come to the fore with is elected along with a subthe Assembly, and they will a framework stitute legislator from the predominate in the new gov for a new same party...
...Southern Command, based in Florida...
...the balloting practically impossible to administer...
...The Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity, and Immigra to employer associations that seek a larger, more reliable pool of cheap labor, organizations like the Essential Worker Immigrant Coalition, which lobbies Congress and the White House on behalf of fast-food chains, the hotel industry, slaughterhouses and meatpacking firms, nursing homes, and agribusiness...
...The Manta base has little relevance for narco-trafficking in Ecuador...
...He spoke of an “epochal change” for ecuador and all of latin America...
...Led by its president, Jorge Acosta, a member of a traditional right-wing party, the Tribunal declared that Correa’s original statute proposing to refound the country’s institutions would be the one voted up or down in April...
...A historic vote in April set the stage for establishing just such an assembly...
...Correa has already it would seat any of the announced that if the forces 21st century...
...Correa ecuadoran president rafael Correa marched with labor unions on may Day...
...In Ecuador just a majority vote aligned with him take control of the Assembly, one of its first acts will be to abolish Congress and establish a constitutional framework for a new legislative chamber that will be more responsive to popular interests...
...10 Latinnews.com Latin American Newsletters Apply now for a free trial subscription Since 1967, Latin American Newsletters (LAN) has been at the forefront of providing objective and reliable intelligence on Latin American political, economic, security and social issues...
...In spite of this factionalism, the Country Movement and the other left forces are expected to win a clear majority in the Assembly, given that the right-wing parties are also divided...
...Find out for yourself the true value of this information...
...This is a task of the Constituent Assembly,” he said...
...The Correa government has moved assertively in its relations with the United States and international financial institutions during its early months in office...
...Manta is also used as a port for U.S...
...While there has been no direct confrontation with the United States over Ecuador’s assertion of its sovereignty, the Pentagon has manifested its displeasure...
...But through ken...
...Rejected by a range of political actors even more disparate, if that were possible, than the bizarre coalition of interests that was prepared to give it critical support, the bill effectively died unloved by all but its chief advocate, George W. Bush...
...Manta was ostensibly established in 1999 to help monitor narcotrafficking over the ocean and in the nearby Amazon basin...
...citizenship...
...Outraged, 57 of the 100 congressional deputies voted to depose Acosta...
...The impulse flows out of the depths of the Ecuadoran people...
...The bill itself was a nasty affair, even more mean-spirited and punitive than the proposals debated in Congress in the spring of 2006, proposals that provoked reactions ranging from disappointment to outrage and brought more than 1 million protesters, mostly Latino, into the streets of cities across the United States...
...has ordered the Ecuadoran air force to intercept any planes that violate the country’s air space.4 At the same time, Ecuador is negotiating special bilateral trade and economic agreements with presidents Chávez and Morales...
...The Assembly will no doubt empower the new government to exert tight state control over the country’s financial system and the role of foreign banks...
...Correa has also repeatedly denounced the private banks in Ecuador for their exorbitant profit-taking and high interest rates...
...Venezuela has agreed to refine Ecuadoran oil and help fund social programs in Ecuador, while the Bolivian government has concluded an agreement to import foodstuffs from small-and medium-size producers in Ecuador...
...Correa and his close political allies sought to unify all the progressive forces under the banner of “Movimiento Pais,” the Country Movement, but it quickly met with opposition, mainly from left political parties and their allies in the social organizations, some of which questioned the government’s commitment to fundamental change...
...Southern Command, together with the Pacific coast nations of South America, have undertaken joint naval exercises called Unitas...
...Others assert that “parties of a new type” are needed, like Bolivia’s Movement Toward Socialism, which defines itself as a “party of social movements...
...Upon his inauguration, Correa issued a decree calling for a plebiscite on the constituent assembly...
...To the surprise of virtually everyone,” says Rene Baez, a political analyst at the Catholic University of Ecuador, “the popular repudiation shook the consciousness of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal...
...The Correa erning institutions that are government made it clear socialism of the founded...
...Correa’s government marks the emergence of a radical anti-neoliberal axis in South America, comprising Venezuela, Bolivia, and now Ecuador...
...spy aircraft...
...But the coalition that ultimately killed the bill was strongly supported by other xenophobes and racists for whom even the grudging opportunity it offered for immigrants to gain temporary work visas or permanent legal status seemed too generous...
...Even though the coca plant grows well there, the country has never produced cocaine or other illicit drugs in significant quantities for the international market...
...The corporations crudely exploited the tropical rain forest where indigenous peoples have lived for millennia, strewing it with contamination from thousands of seismic grids, oil wells, and open waste pits.6 Like the 16th-century conquistadors, the corporations tore the indigenous communities apart through displacement, disease, and efforts to buy off and divide villagers...
...With the collapse of Marxism-Leninism and its central tenet that the bourgeois state can be transformed only through revolution and seizing state power, the constituent assemblies in South America raise important theoretical and strategic questions...
...Central to this process is a clash with the partidocracia, Ecuador’s system of government run el fisgón by factious political parties dominated by oligarchs who pull the strings on a corrupt state that includes Congress, the Supreme Court, and a number of “autonomous” agencies, like the Federal Electoral Tribunal...
...Of course, there was little in this legislation to inspire hope in those at the center of the discussion: the undocumented immigrants who live without rights, even as they perform a range of essential work that underpins the comfortable functioning of U.S...
...In a sense, the current version was destined to please no one except those who have no direct interest in the matter and who simply want to see “something done” by a federal government they believe has allowed an unacceptable situation to develop and persist...
...In Bolivia, the oligarchy and the right-wing political forces have mounted a virulent offensive both inside and outside of the halls of the assembly...
...The treaty for the base expires in 2009 and will not be renewed...
...Then, with the intent of turning the election of assembly members into a virtual circus, the Congress declared that anyone could put their name on the ballot...
...They enter our country and then fly back to Colombia...
...The workers, many of whom were brought in from the highlands because most rainforest Indians refused to work, were harshly exploited...
...In early June, the local populace in the gold-mining southern highland province of Azuay, backed by environmental and human rights organizations, blockaded major highways, demanding the expropriation of the mining companies, many of which are controlled by transnational corporations that have polluted local rivers and aquifers...
...The complex, book-length draft presented to Congress in May and June proposed measures that were even more unworkable with respect to employers’ responsibilities and liability, more unrealistic in their efforts to wall off the United States from intruders, and much harder on the immigrants themselves...
...Correa held no elective office and represented no political party before defeating Ecuador’s richest man, Álvaro Noboa, to become president...
...For all enquiries, please email info@latinnews.com or call Yolanda Drinot on +44 (0)20 7251 0012 www.latinnews.com...
...governments claim that the defoliants are used only on the Colombian side of the border and that there are no flights over Ecuador...
...The popular movements began to demonstrate in front of the Tribunal and Congress, calling for Correa to simply issue a decree for the Constituent Assembly...
...She is the author of The World of Mexican Migrants: The Rock and the Hard Place (The New Press, forthcoming 2008...
...Work-ing-class and popular organizations, to the extent they existed, served largely as conveyor belts for providing information to the party and the state, and for transmitting “commands” back to the base...
...The move to candidates for the Constituent Assembly...
...In contrast, the new model of state transformation emerging in South America is rooted in building a broad political coalition based on a complex mixture of progressive social actors and movements...
...substitutes if they accepted the Electoral Tribunal’s ruling...
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...Now the best hope for those without documents lies in the vastly increased organizational activity of immigrants who hold U.S...
...On the other hand, Luis Macas, the head of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, declared that he “feels distant from the government” and demanded that it immediately nationalize all petroleum companies while fearing that it will renege on its promises of agrarian reform.7 socialism in Ecuador will be an unfolding process, impossible to predict this early...
...both supported ise or to leave behind a single piece of Xenophobes and racists both supand opposed legislation that might support his claim ported and opposed the bill...
...We will not permit the continual violation of Ecuadoran air space by planes, that are not even Colombian, but from the United States,” he has said...
...9 Mobilizations continued in Azuay and in other provinces over natural resources as the popular organizations make it clear they are not content to rely simply on promises by the Correa government...
...His election in the second round was backed by the indigenous and social movements, several small political parties on the left, and an unorganized, largely middle-class movement of people known as the forajidos, an Ecuadoran term meaning outlaws or bandits who rebel against the established system...
...military base located at Manta, the largest of its kind on South America’s Pacific coast...
...With some of the richest agriculVicente costales / gDa / its press tural lands and maritime resources in all of South America, the country’s resource base has mainly benefited the corporate agribusiness interests that control the country’s diversified exports of bananas, shrimp, coffee, cocoa, cut flowers, and fish...
Vol. 40 • September 2007 • No. 5
