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REVOLUTION IN ECUADOR?
(This editorial is from the Feb. 1-14/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
FEW WORDS are so frequently abused as "revolution." Everything these days is called "revolutionary," from the latest shampoo to the wretched ravings of right wing politicians. So when truly radical social change happens - as it may be in Ecuador today - this powerful word has to be reclaimed by the working class movement. For us, revolution means the change from private ownership of productive wealth, to collective ownership and control by the working people, along with the sweeping range of democratic changes which place real political power in the hands of the working class and its allies.
In Ecuador, a rising tide of people's struggle has dumped the hated Mahuad government, at least temporarily blocking his plans to further enslave the country to the demands of the transnational corporations. The indigenous people's movements played a critical role in defeating Mahuad, a stunning change in a country where brutal anti-Indian racism has been the reality for centuries. This is not yet revolution in the full sense of the word, of course. Even if moves to privatize the petroleum industry and to make the US dollar the national currency are stopped, the economy remains in the hands of foreign corporations and the Ecuadorian elite, and the working class and peasants are not in power.
But this process does have a profoundly revolutionary potential. The initial successes gained by Ecuador's indigenous and non-indigenous working people against Mahuad's neoliberal agenda will encourage them to struggle for more radical changes, which can only be fully achieved in the course of socialist revolution. Along with the growing strength of the FARC-EP in Colombia, the election of the radical Chavez government in neighbouring Venezuela, and increasing support for left and democratic forces in many other countries, the events of January 21 in Quito are a warning to Washington: the people of Latin America are preparing to throw off the chains of Yankee imperialism and sellout "leaders" who willingly submit to every demand of the International Monetary Fund. The same process is starting in North America, as the huge anti-WTO protests in Seattle showed. Nobody can predict all the twists and turns of this vast popular movement, but we can safely say that the tide is beginning to turn against big capital across the entire hemisphere.
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