Ecuador under attack with a hybrid war by 21st century socialism

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The violence that is victimizing the nation of Ecuador is another attack against freedom and peace that is now using common criminals to destabilize the government and its institutions, to provoke turmoil and the peoples’ insecurity, to undermine democracy. It is an operation of a “hybrid war” trigged by organized crime that reproduces the mechanisms of 21st Century Socialism -or Castrochavism- in the aftermath of Ecuador’s return to democracy by President Lenin Moreno, socialism’s repeated electoral defeats, and the assassination of Presidential Candidate Fernando Villavicencio.

Hybrid Warfare is “the strategy that uses all types of measures and procedures, conventional forces or irregular means (insurgence, terrorism, migration, common crime, narcotics’ trafficking, cybernetics, …” it is a “new type of warfare that has superseded Asymmetric Warfare (regular army against an insurgent force)” and has the “advantage to enable the aggressor to avoid being held responsible for the attack.” An accurate account of Ecuador’s situation now, even with a “plausible denial” performed by Rafael Correa.

Groups of thugs, narcotics’ traffickers, hit men, thieves, kidnappers, and others who have taken up arms against the Ecuadorean nation are the operative mechanism that now substitutes the urban and rural guerrillas, in the armed uprisings against the constitutional government, in the worsening of social, economic, indigenous, racial, or regional problems until they become processes of violent sedition. This is another mechanism available to the group of Transnational Organized Crime’s dictatorships, who label themselves as 21st Century Socialism, in their bid to regain control of power in Ecuador showing that democracy is synonym to insecurity and that is better to enter into a covenant with crime or be governed by it.

Up to the beginning of this century, the fight against narcotics trafficking and organized crime, was one of the most successful efforts of law enforcement in defense of the peoples and democracy. Acreage of illegal coca-leaf harvesting and cocaine production was reduced in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, narcotics’ traffickers and terrorist were subjected to the law and were neutralized, drug and terrorist monies were removed from influencing politics by the clear identification of political leaders and parties who were being funded by them as happened in Colombia with their “Process 8000,” cartels were bounded and their guerrillas were defeated or reduced in size as happened in Peru with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) and the Shining Path, and with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the 19th of April Movement (M19), and the National Liberation Army (ELN), with the Plan Colombia.

In its “Special Period” in 1999, Cuba’s dictatorship was agonizing and soon to disappear but was rescued by Hugo Chavez who, along with Fidel Castro and Lula da Silva, activated the Forum of Sao Paolo and built 21st Century Socialism by toppling, wrecking, and supplanting democracies until the Cuban dictatorial model was expanded into Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. Then they continued to destabilize, eliminate leaders, and fund elections to create “Para Dictatorial” governments in democratic countries as the governments of Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Boric in Chile, Petro in Colombia, and Lula in Brazil are today.

Ecuador, with the dictatorship of Rafael Correa, was under the control of 21st Century Socialism for over 10 years, a period in which the system of republic and democracy was altered and was supplanted by a Plurinational State that was permissive to local and transnational crime, following the Castrochavist model of Venezuela and Bolivia. The historical surprise was President Lenin Moreno who changed the history of Ecuador and the Americas by making his country return to democracy, restoring the rule of law, the separation of the branches of government, free elections, free political organization, releasing political prisoners, allowing the return of exiles, restarting the fight against narcotics’ trafficking, and more.

Lenin Moreno paid -and still does- a high price for his decision in favor of Ecuadoreans’ freedom and democracy because he was the subject of a bloody but failed coup d’etat in 2019, and is a victim of permanent persecutions along with the “assassination of his reputation” programmed and executed by 21st Century Socialism. The return to democracy undertaken by President Moreno allowed for free elections that took Guillermo Lasso to the presidency. Lasso, far from continuing the process of recovery of democracy, ended his bad government using the mechanism of “death by cross-fire” that Correa had instituted in his Constitution as a warranty to the dictator.

This brief summary illustrates that the basis of Ecuador’s current situation on the issues of crime, insecurity, and confrontation, are part of a transnational project created and operated by 21st Century Socialism under the Command of Cuba’s dictatorship. The expulsion of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, the shutting down of the antinarcotics base at Manta, the proclamation of the supposed “failure of the war on drugs”, the international campaign to “legalize drugs”, to attribute the responsibility for crime to the consumers personified in the “North American Imperialism” to present narcotics’ trafficking as an antiimperialist weapon, to deal with criminal groups as the FARC and to give them impunity and turn crime into politics, are only notorious facts of a process to “legitimize crime” the foundation of the Castrochavist strategy that works in Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, but fails in Ecuador.

The strategy to discredit the fight against crime was coupled to the destruction of the principles and values of the “rule of law” with false accusations and misguided efforts against leaders, government officials, military and police who defended the rule of law and fought for “law enforcement.” This is how they assassinated the reputation of thousands of civilians and military in the Americas, identifying them as violators of human rights, unjustly prosecuting and imprisoning them, or forcing them into exile. Cases seen in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and elsewhere, are the “vaccine” of 21st Century Socialism for law enforcement forces to stop enforcing the law and be defeated by crime who took political power in the dictatorships from Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua and that operates common crime as one of its resources.

The international system, very sturdily armed with; the Viena Convention Against Narcotics’ Trafficking, the Palermo Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, multilateral conventions for the exchange of intelligence and information against crime and others, has been paralyzed by the organized crime’s dictatorships and its Para-Dictatorial governments. The system is very sturdy, has worked successfully, but now has been captured by organized crime who makes political decisions with the narrative of being “politically correct.”

At this moment in Ecuador, 21st Century Socialism cannot produce neither a political movement, nor a guerrilla, nor a political conspiracy, nor any other type of direct aggression against democracy, but needs to destabilize the country, make President Daniel Noboa fail and divide democratic forces. This is where the use of common crime as an operational instrument -previously used in the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio- appears. This is an expression of the “hybrid warfare” -previously used in Colombia against President Duque- that explains what is happening in Ecuador today and that could be repeated to happen in Argentina against President Milei.

The problem in Ecuador is not of a problem of armed confrontation between Ecuadoreans, is not a police or military problem although their involvement is urgent and necessary in the short term. This is a political problem, is a transnational attack, and is an expression of the line of confrontation in our time of dictatorships against democracy, of organized crime who wields political power against freedom and human rights. This is why is urgent for Ecuador to correctly identify the enemy and act accordingly reestablishing the eminence of the law, the population’s security and ending the impunity for those beyond the hit-men and materiel perpetrators of the crimes.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas