Tony Wood - Retrocession in Ecuador Thea Riofrancos - Resourc | Марксизм и критическая теория (Marxism and critical theory)

Tony Wood - Retrocession in Ecuador

Thea Riofrancos - Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador
Duke University Press: 2020

The results of Ecuador’s presidential elections this year represented an unmistakable setback for the Latin American left. After years of reverses for the Pink Tide, a few recent developments notably the election of Alberto Fernández in Argentina in 2019, the Chilean upsurge of 2019–20 and the return of the mas to power in Bolivia in 2020 suggested that the region’s rightward momentum could be stalled. On 7 February 2021, Ecuador seemed poised to confirm this trend, as Andrés Arauz, a 36-year-old economist and former minister in Rafael Correa’s government, finished comfortably ahead in the first round of voting. Yet when the second round was held on 11 April, it was Arauz’s opponent, the centre-right banker Guillermo Lasso, who emerged victorious with 52 per cent of the vote to Arauz’s 48. After four years during which Correa’s successor, Lenín Moreno, steadily dismantled the social gains made under his predecessor, the chance to shift the country leftward once more was lost.

A full reckoning of the reasons for this defeat would have to take account of many factors. But central to any discussion must be the role played by years of increasingly bitter contention between two components of the Ecuadorean left: on the one hand, the correísta currents seeking to advance the redistributive priorities of the ‘Citizen’s Revolution’, set in motion after Correa came to power in 2006; on the other, a coalition of predominantly indigenous movements, grouped around the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (conaie) and the political party Pachakutik, calling for a shift away from an economic model that remained overly dependent on the extraction of natural resources.

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii129/articles/tony-wood-retrocession-in-ecuador