[Shef2venez] Government falls in Ecuador; 30 years since Vietnam

[John Smith]

from The Militant,     Vol. 69/No. 18           May 9, 2005 
 
 
Ecuador gov’t collapses amid popular protests 
Capitalist crisis, austerity measures fuel upsurge
 

 HYPERLINK "http://themilitant.com/2005/6918/Ecuador.jpg"	
High school students join April 20 demonstration in Quito, Ecuador, to
demand the resignation of President Lucio Gutiérrez. Banner reads “Ever
onward to victory.” 
	

BY SAM MANUEL  
In face of repeated demonstrations by tens of thousands against his
government, President Lucio Gutiérrez of Ecuador fled into exile to Brazil
April 24. He was the third president in that country since 1997 to be
brought down by mass protests fueled by anger at brutal austerity measures
against the living standards of working people. 

Three days earlier, as antigovernment protests spread from the capital city
of Quito and popular anger grew—especially after a short-lived state of
emergency and the killing of two demonstrators by security forces—Congress
voted to remove Gutiérrez. He was replaced with Vice President Alfredo
Palacio. 

The collapse of Gutiérrez’s government is the latest expression of the
roiling discontent among working people and layers of the middle classes who
have been squeezed by the capitalist economic crisis throughout Latin
America. In Ecuador the wealthy have enjoyed the fruits of economic growth,
while workers and farmers face a continuing plunge in living standards,
fueled by austerity measures designed to boost the profit margins of foreign
and domestic capitalists. 

Newly appointed president Palacio, seeking to get the demonstrators off the
streets, denounced his former colleague Gutiérrez as a “dictator.” He said
it was “immoral that Ecuador spends about 40 percent of its national budget
to service its $16.6 billion debt to international banks.” 

Although Palacio quickly clarified that the government would continue making
its debt payments, Standard and Poor’s said it might lower Ecuador’s credit
rating because the recent unrest puts at risk the government’s ability to
make a $75 million interest payment in May. Investors in the country’s debt
bonds have been reducing holdings, Bloomberg news reported. 

Antigovernment protests began to grow in mid-April. On April 15 Gutiérrez
declared a state of emergency. Demonstrators defied the ban, which the
government then hastily withdrew. The protests spread after police used tear
gas to prevent a march of 30,000 on the National Palace on April 19. 

The mobilizations that led up to Gutiérrez’s ouster were substantially
smaller than the two-day strike and protests of 2 million that forced out
President Abdalá Bucaram in 1997 and the storming of the National Palace by
indigenous protesters in 2000 that brought down President Jamil Mahuad’s
administration. 

Gutiérrez had expressed confidence that his government would weather the
protests, which had largely been confined to the capital and had been more
heavily middle-class in composition than the popular mobilizations of 1997
and 2000. 

But the Ecuadoran rulers decided they did not want a repeat of the previous
upsurges. On April 20 the heads of the army and the national police withdrew
support for the president. The attorney general’s office filed charges
against Gutiérrez for “flagrant crimes” related to the deaths of two
demonstrators. Congress voted to oust the president because he had
“abandoned” his duties, and swore in Palacio. 

That day Gutiérrez attempted to flee the country by military helicopter but
protesters shut down Quito’s international airport. For three days he took
refuge in the Brazilian embassy, and then flew to Brazil.  
 
Austerity measures spark protests 
Gutiérrez, a former army officer, was elected in 2002 largely on the
strength of his association with the popular revolt two years earlier that
had toppled Mahuad, hated for his imposition of sharp austerity measures.
While giving lip service to the poor, Gutiérrez carried out similar policies
to those of his predecessors, earning him a reputation among Wall Street
bankers as “fiscally responsible.” 

Under “market reforms” prescribed by Washington, Ecuador’s economy grew 6.6
percent last year. LatinSource, a New York-based analyst of Latin American
economies, praised Ecuador for “outperforming even the most optimistic
scenarios,” according to the New York Times. The “fiscal growth” was paid
for in sharply reduced spending on social services such as health care and
education. 

For example, at the Baca Ortiz public hospital in Quito, considered the
country’s best children’s hospital, patients have to bring their own
medicine and doctors say they lack clean facilities, decent wages, and even
the most rudimentary equipment, the Times reported. Parents at the May 23
Elementary School in the working-class southern district of Quito pool their
money to pay for blackboards, classroom benches, paint jobs, and teachers
salaries. And conditions are much worse for the largely indigenous rural
population. 

Growing anger at government economic policies was compounded by the
president’s political maneuvers. In December his congressional allies
removed 27 of the 31 Supreme Court justices and packed the court with their
own candidates. “The new court then suspiciously cleared several politicians
in exile of corruption charges, including ex-president Abdalá Bucaram,” the
Miami Herald reported April 25. Bucaram returned from exile just days after
the court cleared him. 

It was these kinds of conditions that sparked a popular revolt in 1997 that
culminated in a two-day strike and protests of as many as 2 million people
against the economic austerity measures imposed by Bucaram, in face of which
Ecuador’s legislature decided to remove him. The strike was led by Ecuador’s
largest organization of indigenous peoples, CONAIE (Confederation of
Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador). 

In 2000 the government of Jamil Mahuad was brought down by another revolt.
Ecuador’s parliament was occupied by thousands, again led by CONAIE and
other Indian organizations. Among the measures that earned Mahuad popular
hatred was the replacement of Ecuador’s sucre with the U.S. dollar as the
country’s currency. With an exchange rate of 25,000 to one, already meager
wages and savings were slashed overnight. 

That revolt led to a short-lived provisional governing triumvirate
consisting of the president of CONAIE; Gutiérrez, then an army colonel; and
a former supreme court president. However, this provisional government
voluntarily ceded power to the military, which then handed the government to
Mahuad’s vice president, Gustavo Noboa. The Noboa regime prosecuted lower
echelon officers associated with the revolt, among them Gutiérrez. 

The new president, Palacio, has sought to distance himself from Gutiérrez.
He has pledged to overhaul the country’s social security system and settle
wage demands by state doctors, according to Bloomberg News. He said he would
favor renegotiating terms of how monies from an oil stabilization fund are
spent, 70 percent of which is currently set aside to make debt payments.
Ecuador is South America’s fifth-largest oil producer. 

Wall Street bankers have expressed concern over the instability in Ecuador
and what it means for their profits. “The uncertainty over who will be the
next president and what type of policies he will implement are enormous,”
said Boris Segura of Standish Mellon Asset Management in Boston. “Today it’s
the vice president, but nobody knows who will be in power the day after.” 

 

30 years since victory of Vietnamese people 
SWP National Committee hailed
‘Victory for all oppressed’ in May 1, 1975 statement
(feature article)
 
Printed below is a statement adopted May 1, 1975, by the National Committee
of the Socialist Workers Party, at a meeting in New York City. We are
reprinting it as part of celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the
day—April 30, 1975—the Vietnamese people drove the final detachments of
imperialist troops from their soil. Copyright © 1975 the Militant. 

On this May Day the world working class is celebrating the history-making
victory of the Vietnamese rebels, who have succeeded in expelling the last
contingent of imperialist armed forces from their country. 

The Socialist Workers Party hails this victory, which has come after decades
of heroic struggle against a succession of imperialist powers. The triumph
is a powerful reaffirmation of what May Day itself represents to the workers
movement: worldwide solidarity of all the oppressed. This solidarity found
powerful expression in the international antiwar movement, the strongest
component being right here in the United States, where the American
revolutionists played a major role. 

The victory in Vietnam will inspire the peoples of the colonial and
semicolonial world who are fighting for national liberation from economic
and political domination by imperialism. It is a victory for all those
throughout the world who are fighting oppression and exploitation. 

For nearly ten years the war in Southeast Asia was the central focus of the
struggle between imperialism and the advancing world revolution. The U.S.
rulers decided to contain the revolution in Vietnam by American military
means and entrenchment of a counterrevolutionary government in South
Vietnam. They wanted to show the peoples in the colonial and semicolonial
areas that any who tried to stand up against U.S. imperialism would be
crushed. But although Washington’s mighty military machine pounded this tiny
country year after year, it could not defeat the popular resistance. 

The victory of the Vietnamese people over imperialism was long delayed by
the policies of Moscow and Peking. In 1945, after the defeat of Japanese
imperialism, the Vietminh swept into power. Under Stalin’s agreements at
Yalta and Potsdam, however, Indochina was to remain in the imperialist
“sphere of influence.” The Vietminh, whose leaders were trained in the
Stalinist school, accepted the reentry of imperialist forces, which ushered
in the next phase of the war. 

After the French were defeated by the Vietminh in 1954, both Moscow and
Peking pressured the Vietnamese to accept the division of their country and
the creation of the artificial “country” of South Vietnam, this time under
Washington’s aegis. 

Moscow and Peking refused from the beginning of Washington’s escalation to
provide adequate material aid for the Vietnamese rebels or to take the
initiative in organizing international mass actions in their behalf. This
betrayal was condemned in 1967 by Che Guevara, who warned that the
Vietnamese were “tragically alone” in their struggle and that in addition to
the guilt of U.S. imperialism, “they are likewise guilty who at the decisive
moment vacillated in making Vietnam an inviolable part of socialist
territory
.” 

This treachery took its most blatant form in the spring of 1972, when Nixon
was toasted in Moscow while he was carrying out the brutal bombing, mining,
and blockade of North Vietnam. It was under this pressure that the
Vietnamese were forced to accept the continued presence of the Thieu puppet
regime in the 1973 accords. 

But despite these obstacles, which greatly increased the cost in blood and
suffering for the Vietnamese people, their revolutionary aspirations pressed
the struggle forward.  
 
International movement 
The heroic resistance of the Vietnamese helped promote the radicalization of
a new generation of youth throughout the world. An international antiwar
movement developed, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators taking to
the streets throughout the United States and in cities such as Tokyo,
Melbourne, London, Berlin, Mexico City, and Paris. 

The brutality of the Pentagon’s military onslaught revealed for the whole
world the terrible lengths to which Wall Street will go in order to maintain
and advance the capitalist system. Millions of Vietnamese were killed. One
million Cambodians, one-seventh of the population, were killed or wounded.
The countryside of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos was devastated. 

The military cost alone for bringing about this death and destruction
amounts to an estimated $400 billion. More than 56,000 American soldiers
lost their lives. 

As the U.S. military commitment deepened, and the economic and social costs
of the war at home rose, the rulers found it harder and harder to use the
old anticommunist arguments to justify their brutality. At each turn, they
were exposed as brazen liars. 

Washington put all its political and military authority on the line in
Vietnam, but the White House strategists miscalculated badly. They
underestimated the determination of the Indochinese people to be rid of
foreign domination and their capacity for struggle to achieve that goal. And
they underestimated the deep antiwar sentiments of the American people and
their ability to see through the government’s lies about its aims. 

The defeat of the imperialists in Vietnam thus represents something new. It
is the first war of such size that the United States, the world’s strongest
imperialist power, has lost. It is also the first war that has led to the
development of a mass antiwar movement inside the United States. It is this
overt antiwar sentiment that left the White House with no choice but to
accept defeat and to withdraw to a new line of encirclement of the colonial
revolution in Southeast Asia. 

President Ford and others in ruling-class circles are bemoaning the rise of
what they call “isolationism.” They are trying to persuade the American
people to support the “internationalism” of a world police force, of B 52s,
of secret wars, and of organizations like NATO and the CIA.  
 
A common enemy 
But the American people’s opposition to imperialist military adventures is
not “isolationism.” Just the opposite. It is part of the internationalism of
the oppressed and exploited all over the globe who have a common interest in
struggling against a common enemy. 

As a result of the political education the American people have gained from
the war and the antiwar movement, the options open to the top cops of
international capitalism have become more restricted. They now must bring
into their calculations the likely opposition of masses of
Americans—including GIs—to new U.S. military operations to prop up
dictatorships threatened by popular rebellions. 

They can no longer rely on the American people bowing passively to the
defense of imperialism under the banner of anticommunism. As all the opinion
polls now show, the American people are opposed not only to intervention in
Vietnam but also to U.S. military intervention in other areas of the world. 

The antiwar movement played a crucial role in helping to bring about this
change in American political consciousness. This movement began ten years
ago as a small minority of the population. But it won over the majority of
the American people.  
 
Role of the SWP 
The Socialist Workers Party is proud of the role it played in leading and
organizing the antiwar movement in the United States. From the very
beginning, the SWP recognized the importance of this movement and threw its
energies into it. 

In the November 22, 1965, issue of the Militant, Fred Halstead, a leader of
the Socialist Workers Party and a prominent antiwar organizer, predicted the
course the antiwar movement would follow: 

“It is well within possibility that not just a few hundred thousand, but
millions of Americans can be actively involved in the struggle against the
Vietnam war. A movement of that scope, even though centered around the
single issue of the war, would have the most profound effects on every
social structure in the country, including the trade unions and soldiers in
the army. 

“It would very probably also result in a general rise in radical
consciousness on many other questions, just as it has already had an impact
against red-baiting. But above all, it could be the key factor in forcing an
end to the Pentagon’s genocidal war in Vietnam. The lives of untold
thousands of Vietnamese men, women, and children, and U.S. G.I.’s may depend
on it. That alone is reason enough to put aside sectarian differences to
unite and help build a national organization which can encompass anyone
willing to oppose U.S. involvement in Vietnam, regardless of their
commitment, or lack of it, on other questions.” 

This understanding of the significance and impact of the antiwar movement
guided the activities of the Socialist Workers Party throughout the course
of the war. Building this movement was seen as our foremost task.  
 
Perspective for Vietnam 
What is the perspective now opening before the Vietnamese masses with the
defeat of U.S. intervention? 

The Vietnamese people have been fighting for more than thirty years for
national and social liberation. This irrepressible struggle—generated by the
intolerable conditions of life of the masses of peasants and workers—took
its first leap forward with the Vietnamese defeat of Japanese imperialism at
the end of World War II. It continued after the war, first against the
French, and then against the United States. 

This fight for national liberation against imperialist domination was
closely intertwined with popular struggles for an end to repression, an end
to onerous taxation, for land reform, and for other social gains. 

The leaders of the Vietnamese liberation forces have often compared their
struggle to that of the revolutionary fight of the American colonies against
Britain two centuries ago. 

The parallel is valid, but unlike the American Revolution, which occurred
when capitalism was on the rise as a world system, the Vietnamese revolution
is occurring when world capitalism is in its death agony. The fight for
national liberation in Vietnam has been a fight against the most powerful
capitalist countries and their puppet regimes, and it has an anticapitalist
logic and potential. 

The indigenous capitalist and landlord class within Vietnam was so stunted
by the imperialist domination of the country that it has always been
completely dependent on the imperialists for support. This has meant that
the struggle against foreign capitalism has also been a struggle against its
domestic agents and counterparts. 

With the defeat of the Saigon army, and with Washington’s options severely
limited by antiwar sentiment at home, the objective possibility now exits
for achieving the long strived for goal of national unification and
self-determination of Vietnam. The objective conditions also exist for a
social revolution to abolish the entire system of exploitation for private
profit. 

The needs of the masses of workers and peasants of Vietnam run directly
counter to the interests of the landlords and capitalists and their military
machine, which supported the U.S.-created puppet government. A workers and
peasants government independent of these elements in needed to carry out
such tasks as land reform, lowering of taxes, and reunification of the North
and South. 

The upsurge in South Vietnam and the crumbling of the puppet Saigon
government have already carried the Provisional Revolutionary Government
well beyond its stated program of “reconciliation” with the now collapsed
Saigon regime. “Reconciliation” with the remaining capitalist-landlord
forces is impossible without going against the desires and interests of the
masses of peasants and workers. 

After years of suffering and war, the Vietnamese masses deserve the full
fruits of their victory. The task ahead is unification with the workers
state of North Vietnam and the establishment of proletarian democracy. A
government based on soviets as exemplified in the October 1917 revolution in
Russia would inspire the masses throughout Asia and throughout the world and
would bring appreciably closer the victory of socialism on a global scale. 

This is the perspective we as revolutionary socialists support as we
celebrate the victories now being won in Vietnam.  
 

 

Vote Communist League in UK! 
 
The Militant is publishing the following statement issued by the Communist
League election campaigns for Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland, and London.
The general election in the United Kingdom takes place May 5. 

British and all imperialist troops out of Iraq, Ireland, Africa and the
Balkans! Defend the right of the power-starved colonial world to
electrification! 

Organize and strengthen the unions to resist the bosses’ attacks! 

In two constituencies in the UK general election, working people have the
opportunity to vote for a working-class alternative to the parties of
capitalism. Communist League candidates Celia Pugh in Bethnal Green and Bow,
London, and Peter Clifford in Edinburgh East are presenting a revolutionary
working-class program to reach out to our sisters and brothers around the
world in order to strengthen the struggle against our common enemies—the
imperialist aggressors and capitalist exploiters the world over. 

The line presented by the capitalist parties—“vote for us and we’ll do it
for you”—is a fake and a fraud. Real social change will not come about by
getting someone into Parliament. The emancipation of the working class must
be the act of the working class itself. 

Moreover, what the capitalist parties—whether Labour, Tory,
Liberal-Democrat, Scottish Nationalist, or whichever—really mean is “vote
for us and we’ll do it to you.” No matter who wins the election, the
prospect for working people remains the same: at home, a grinding offensive
by the employers against our living standards and conditions of work;
government attacks on the social wage and on workers’ rights; scapegoating
of immigrants as the billionaire rulers prepare for an open assault on
working-class conquests. And their foreign policy will continue to extend
these attacks on working people abroad, through imperialist wars. 

Driven by the weakness of the British economy in a weakening imperialist
system; by the failure of neo-colonial models from Iran to Argentina; and by
a world financial crisis, the UK rulers are hitching their wagon to
Washington in an attempt to safeguard their place in the pecking order in
the imperialist redivision of the world. In this world of sharpening crisis
and interimperialist competition, Prime Minister Anthony Blair has stated,
with support across Parliament, that London’s military forces are “a huge
part of British foreign policy in the 21st century.” 

In election hustings, using loudhailers from campaign tables on the streets,
in their election literature, in the media, at social protests, the
Communist League candidates have been explaining that these questions can’t
be resolved by a vote once every 4-5 years. They’ve been using the election
to advance the international campaign to sell thousands of copies of the
Marxist magazine New International, which explains the line of march of the
working class to wrest political power from the billionaire rulers through a
revolutionary struggle and establish a workers and farmers government. This
campaign will extend way past the May 5 election date. 

Both Communist League candidates are workers who participate in the daily
resistance to the government and employer offensive. They are using their
campaigns to tell the truth about the strike action by workers at Ambala
Foods in Stratford, London, who have recently organized a union and are
today using that union to defend their interests. This action by workers
overwhelmingly from the Indian sub-continent is strengthening all workers—it
needs and warrants solidarity. The employers’ offensive will lead to more
Ambala Foods. Resistance will deepen and broaden. And it’s such resistance
that’s generating the seeds of the coming rebellions against the rule of the
exploiters and provides hope for humanity’s future. 

The Communist League candidates have used the campaign to talk up the need
to defend a woman’s right to choose abortion. The leaders of the main
capitalist parties have stated that, following the election, parliamentary
time may be made available for enacting legislation restricting abortion
time limits. But this, like all major questions faced by working people, has
not been debated in the election. 

In different ways, not just the openly capitalist parties, but also their
left hangers-on, have centered their campaigns on the need to vote against
Blair and Brown, or Tory leader Michael Howard, or a local MP of one or
another party. But it’s not who you’re against, it’s what you’re for. Vote
not for the individual, vote for the program. Vote Communist League. 


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