Greg Palast In Ecuador  

It seems to be Latin America month here at PE - Greg Palast has an interesting report from Ecuador (which I covered a few days ago with a story from the rainforest) with an oil angle to it.

I was in Ecuador last year and I'm surprised that demonstrators have been successful at removing at least one president - during my visit all the streets around the parliament buidling and main square had teams of riot police waiting for the first signs of any trouble.

I should note that central Quito is supposedly pretty dangerous (and my hotel certainly had the most ferocious guard dog I've ever seen anywhere), but I didn't have any trouble walking all around the city during the day - although there were some areas I walked through pretty quickly. The old town is excellent if you're into old Spanish colonial architecture (no Inca ruins though - you'll need to go to the backcountry for them).

I'd taken time out from the state of siege in the capitol to take the twins on a quick holiday further up the Andes (or down, I don't know which).

It cost a dollar and a half US to stand on the planet's belly button -- that's a buck fifty in the local currency, too -- Ecuador's been "dollarized," which is why everyone is flat broke and in a bad mood and why Quechua women in bowler hats were screaming into the cameras, "TODO FUERA! TODO FUERA !" -- Everybody out! -- in front of the Presidential Palace.

They didn't like their president last week -- the ladies in the bowler hats (about a hundred thousand of them) chased him to Brazil -- and they don't like the new one either. Or ANYONE. They want EVERYONE out. No more US dollarized governments that promise them water pipes and electricity and vaccinations for the kids.

They had no water, except what they could carry in jugs up the hill, and thirty dollar electric bills, when the few with jobs make a hundred a month, and no shots for the kids -- and they were all in a bad mood about it.

I wanted to tell them they are rich -- this nation, once a member of OPEC -- sits on 2 billion barrels of oil and probably a lot more according to the World Bank documents in my briefcase marked FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY, Ecuador is required to pay 70% of its new oil money to foreign bondholders.

Who ARE these guys who hold the mortgage on this once-upon-a-time Inca Empire? Inside the presidential palace, where we could barely hear the ladies telling him to get the hell out, the President said quietly, after the cameras were off, "We don't KNOW who they are (these guys who own the country) and THAT'S TERRIBLE."

What's terrible is that everyone DOES know who they are -- it's understood, a UN guy told me, the bonds are held by the old oligarchs who stripped the nation's banks and re-planted themselves in Miami -- and now hold the nation ransom by manipulating its debt securities. And of course, the US power company represented by Henry Kissinger.

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