I returned from Ecuador to Colombia in 2017, after holding the position of Secretary General of UNASUR. I lived in Quito three wonderful years of peace and tranquility, and during this time I saw Ecuador grow economically and socially. When I left, President Rafael Correa was handing over a different country to the one he received. I returned to Colombia convinced that with the model of democratic socialism led by Correa in Ecuador and Evo Morales in Bolivia it was possible to advance in social inclusion, without falling into economic populism and to do so through democratic means without sacrificing the role of the State or demonizing the market.
Correa’s citizen revolution was the revolution of self-esteem because he made all Ecuadorians feel proud before the world for the Millennium schools, the renovated hospitals, the highways, the airports, the aqueducts and the universities. Thanks to dollarization (although paying a cost of monetary sovereignty), which had been going on since before Correa, and the good oil prices that stabilized the economy, resources were obtained and managed to finance an alternative development model and overcome the deceitful dilemma of progress or well-being. It was shown that it is possible to grow and distribute at the same time: the figures from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) say it, it is not an invention.
What happened then? At what point did Ecuador begin to become hell today? The bad governments after Correa, coinciding with the internationalization of the Mexican drug cartels that also arrived in Colombia, cleared the way for the disembarkation of these criminal organizations that brought corruption and violence derived from drug trafficking to our countries. Thus began in Ecuador a process of “Colombianization” by the reproduction of the same problems that we experienced in the 80s, as well as Mexico a few years later.
That is why it is unfair and reckless to try to accuse former President Correa —who has not been able to return to his country accused, in a Kafkaesque way, of having “psychically influenced” his officials— of the disaster that is taking place in the neighboring and beloved country. Rafael Correa, I know, is a competent, transparent, austere person in his personal life and with a volcanic passion, as befits the geography of his country, for everything that has to do with Ecuador. It helps little or nothing in the current and painful circumstances to try to confuse the trial of responsibilities for the vile murder of Fernando Villavicencio — whom I knew personally — with the electoral alternatives that Ecuadorians have to decide freely, in a few days, who should govern them.
When, several years ago, Luis Carlos Galán was murdered in Colombia by criminal forces similar to those that took Villavicencio’s life this week, all the presidential candidates summoned by then-President Virgilio Barco met at the Palacio de Nariño, and we agreed move forward with our campaigns as a tribute to Galán and a forceful response to the challenge posed by drug violence. Since then, the fight against organized crime has become and continues to be a State policy in Colombia. What Ecuador needs right now, as we did in Colombia in the 1990s and Andrés Manuel López Obrador is doing in Mexico, is to close ranks against the dark forces of organized crime, which have declared war on the rule of law and democratic institutions. It would be a good tribute to the sacrificed leader and an opportunity to restart the path of future and dignity that began to open with the Citizen Revolution. Ecuadorians deserve it.
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