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.
Well, it didn't exactly help that the Moreno regime has been persecuting the Correaist left over the past several years (many face trumped-up charges like Correa and Jorge Glas Espinel with proceedings that were about as dirty as Lula faced) and the mainstream media in Ecuador intensified its right-wing propaganda against the leftist Arauz by insisting that Ecuador would become the "next Venezuela" if Arauz won. I've also encountered some voters who still believed that Moreno was a leftist (he was elected as a Correaist leftist and then quickly did a complete 180 and became a right-wing neoliberal in office) and blamed the economic collapse in Ecuador on socialism despite Moreno crippling the economy by going mask-off neoliberal with extreme austerity and selling out the country to the IMF. There's zero chance that Ecuador will rejoin ALBA under Lasso. Expect the political persecution against the left to continue in Ecuador. The left has always had an amazing propensity for disunity and we should never underestimate how the bourgeoisie will find ways to exploit anything they can to infiltrate, co-opt progressive rhetoric, gaslight, divide, and conquer the working class.
Eva Golinger revealed years ago that Carlos/Yaku Perez's Pachakutik (a political arm of CONAIE) received training and financial support from the American government's National Democratic Institute (NDI), which is funded by the National Endowment of Democracy (NED) and the US state department. It appears that the US got one hell of a return on their investment with corrupting enough of the party leadership to appoint and support Perez who led the vote-null campaign to inevitably help the far-right banker Lasso win the runoff (he even endorsed Lasso back in 2017). Criticism of Perez from within his own party by figures from its more left-wing faction like Leonidas Iza, who pointed out major red flags concerning Perez like how he had right-wing Lasso-affiliated elements in his inner circle directing policy, was ignored. Indigenous leader Sacha Rosero Lema described an undemocratic nomination process of Perez by the Pachakutik leadership. Yaku Perez opposed Andrés Arauz’s plan to give $1,000 to 1 million mothers who are the heads of their households because Perez claimed that these women would “probably spend it all on beer that same day”. Perez celebrated the far-right coup against Evo Morales, called for the "fall" of Maduro, advocated for a closer relationship with the US, and even called for a military takeover of the country.
This is a great Jacobin article that addresses some of the misconceptions about leftist politics in Ecuador and the Correa era.
He’s a fucking vile creep and so is his partner, who likes and shares Bolivian fascist tweets calling indigenous cockroaches and shit. Good reply. Bad outcome for Ecuador. Shit sucks