Terrorizing the press: a Chavez mini me in Ecuador

CRUDO ECUADOR, see: https://www.facebook.com/CrudoEcuador, was a successful satirical page in facebook dedicated to comment on Ecuadorian politics. However, his author, Gabriel Gonzalez, folded under the pressure of intimidation from Rafael Correa’s regime and closed it down. The story of this  short-lived humorous page is told in the New York Times, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/what-happened-when-i-joked-about-the-president-of-ecuador.html. In imitation of the deceased Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chávez, his Ecuadorian mini me, Rafael Correa, also uses TV  at his pleasure to terrorize his critics, especially in his Saturday program, which is a carbon copy of Chavez’s Sunday tirades, “Alo Presidente”. In his long monologues, celebrated by groups of sycophants Correa threatens and insults his adversaries, see:   http://radioambulante.org/audio/correa-vs-crudo.

Imitating Chavez, who redefined Venezuelan history to fit his grotesque ideological beliefs, Rafael Correa is trying to recreate Ecuadorian history to suit his purposes. Chavez described Bolivar as a “socialist” mulatto, ordering a new official picture that showed him as such. Among the myths and lies that have found a place in Correa’s new interpretation of history is the story of Chevron [Texaco], company that left Ecuador 25 years ago, as main or exclusive culprit of the oil contamination of parts of the Amazonia. This lie is repeated by Correa’s followers incessantly, in the face of evidence that points to Petro Ecuador, the state-owned oil company of Ecuador as the main polluting agent in the region for the last 25 years.  Correa’s regime has made a great effort of shifting the blame to Chevron, interfering politically in the legal action that was followed against Chevron in the Lago Agrio court of Ecuador. His intervention included threatening the judges with charges of treason if they decided in favor of Chevron and, even, going to the region to dip his hand into the “oil spills of Chevron”. Unfortunately for him these spills had been generated by Petro Ecuador, as The Economist pointed out to him in his October 12^th, 2013 issue. A photograph of Correa getting his hand into Petro Ecuador’s oil spill was accompanied of the following caption: the tar pit into which Mr. Correa dipped his hand earlier this month is the responsibility of Petro Ecuador, a state company.

 Evidence presented by Chevron in court showed how the judges had been bought, how the report of the Court Expert had been written by the legal team of the plaintiffs and how Steven Donziger, the head of the legal team of the plaintiffs, had put together the fraudulent case, deceiving even his financial supporters in the United States.

But ideology does not care about facts.  A “soldier of the revolution” called Amauri Chamorro, wrote in his blog, see: http://amaurichamorro.com/  an “Open Letter to the New York Times”, in which he chastises the newspaper for publishing the story about CRUDO ECUADOR. He calls the newspaper “a cog in the machine that maintains the power of the elites”. To try to prove his assertion about the newspaper he says:

  “Ecuador is one example. Chevron is responsible for the environmental disaster in the Amazonian jungle, much bigger than that of Exxon Valdez in Alaska, and the American press does not dare question Chevron about it. And of course it will not likely do so anytime soon since Chevron is one of the most important clients of the communication market in the U.S.”. In spite of all evidence to the contrary he does not doubt that Chevron is the guilty party. President Correa has told him so.

Chamorro is a hired gun of Correa and, possibly, of other members of the disastrous Latin American left. He says so himself: “It is important to declare that I voted for President Rafael Correa; I am relatively active on social media platforms, affiliated with Alianza PAIS (the President’s Party), I have a media company, and the Ecuadorian state is one of my clients I am partial. I support progressive movements in Latin America that have practically eradicated extreme poverty, reaching levels of human development that some areas of the United States would not dare dream”. With a mixture of candor and impudence, Chamorro declares his unconditional support for the social disaster generated by the different shades of chavismo in the region. When talking about the eradication of extreme poverty by “progressive movements” he seems to be talking about Venezuela, where poverty today is the same as it was 16 years ago, after a national income of one and a half trillion dollars has been wasted.