Well, maybe not new, but a new manifestation of it.

Pretty shocking to see what happened in Ecuador, where indigenous and leftist groups voted null for the presidential election, handing a victory to Lasso, an far right neoliberal ghoul who will continue the hand over of the country to the IMF.

The Correa government (leftist president whose term ended in 2017) had its faults, and wasn’t great on social issues, indigenous issues, or environmental ones, but this anti-extractivist left is such a clear fucking op. While the mainstream media in Ecuador was firmly right wing, the grassroots indigenous and social movements that led the vote-null campaign after their candidate Yaku Perez was defeated in the first round have handed the country over to a guy who is a member of Opus Dei ffs. So when the vote-null crowd wrote “abortion rights” and “women’s rights” on their ballots, they are in effect choosing the far worse of two evils?

You will see this same playbook in Peru, where Castillo, who is leftist economically but socially conservative, will be tarred and feathered as a bigot (which to be frank, he probably is) but the alternative is Keiko Fujimori.... the other leftist candidate, Veronika Mendoza, who is leftist socially as well, came in third in the 2016 election, but fared worse this time.

Castillo deserves very critical support, and led a massive teachers strike in 2017. His victory in the first round was a repudiation of the urban elites by the working class people of the provinces, as well as the indigenous. It will be interesting to see if a similar playbook is followed here. I don’t think Mendoza will be a US asset in the way Perez clearly was, but will the “let’s vote against the leftist because they are bad on some social issues” narrative that serves only to put the far right in power will be weaponized to help Fujimori.

This shit just sucks. The Arauz loss in Ecuador Is a major blow, given how much that country has suffered under the IMf austerity politics of Lenin Moreno...

Edit: looks like Peru’s second place finisher may be a guy named Hernando de Soto, who was dictator Alberto Fujimori’s economic advisor. Though Keiko Fujimori and Rafael Lopez Aliaga are right on his heels.

Aliaga is the Opus Dei volcel guy who has been compared to bolsonaro, but rejects that because bolsonaro hates gay people and Aliaga follows Pope Francis’ word on the matter, but is anti-abortion. Plus:

In a recent radio interview, López Aliaga said he represses his sexual desire by thinking of the Virgin Mary and flails himself with a cilice, a sackcloth garment with points that stick into the body, a practice from early Christianity.