============================================================================ Delivered-To: •••@••.••• From: "John H. St. John" <•••@••.•••> To: "Richard K. Moore" <•••@••.•••> Subject: Fw: Ecuador Police State: IMF/WB & Wall Street Connections Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 10:37:25 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith Vick" <•••@••.•••> To: <•••@••.•••> Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 12:32 AM Subject: Ecuador Police State: IMF/WB & Wall Street Connections [The following post was culled from an NNTP newsgroup and the original poster did not provide his real email (for source followup), but the story is one of the best on Ecuador because it points to the Wall Street firm of Gramercy Advisors as the instigators of the the chaos that has now engulfed the nation. Apparently they weren't willing to extend the payments on the IMF/WB loans they held, the people took to the streets, then the army was called in to squelch the protests. -slave] Subject: HEYYYY!! Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2001 11:40:10 -0500 From: •••@••.••• (justanoldman) Organization: Chocoholics Anonymousse Newsgroups: alt.native Listen up... There are, at this very moment, over 13,000 Indians on the verge of being erased from the face of this planet, sitting in the campus of the University of Ecuador in Quito. That's 13,000+ Indian men, women, children & elders. The police & army surrounding them have been sporadically firing thousands of rounds of bullets & tear gas at them for the past 8 days. To date (as I was told before telephone went dead last night) over 30 have been killed & over 600 wounded. They have little food left & only what water remains in the fountains to drink since the water supply was shut off on Thursday. On Friday the govt of Ecuador, under orders from Washington DC, declared an official State of Emergency. It is now illegal for more than 3 people to meet & converse together for any reason, & the army is fanning out across the country & arresting every single Indian leader, elder & voice & "disappearing them" for "security reasons" without any need for due process. Antonio Vargas, elected leader & spokesman for CONAIE, was arrested last week, secured his release via a writ of habeas corpus, but was "disappeared" again when the state of emergency was declared. The situation is desperate & the govt of Ecuador & their masters in Washington, capital of the greatest Whore State in the world today, does not want the world to know what is going on. The CONAIE website [http://www.conaie.org] was hacked last night to remove all of the eleven (11) boletins posted by CONAIE since 01 January 2001, describing the current crisis & pleading with good hearts (especially those of their North American relations) for attention & support. As you may recall, the Indians of Ecuador marched in January, 2000. They marched on Quito in columns that swelled to well over one-&-a-half-MILLION Indians, to protest the privatization of the fresh water supply of their country, & the turning over of control of Ecuador's economy to the Federal Reserve Bank of the USofA, conditions demanded by the IMF & the World Bank for a loan to Ecuador. The need for that loan was created when one single New York City-based investment dealer named Marc Helie, a partner in the Wall Street firm of Gramercy Advisors, who refused to agree to a one month extension of the pay-out on the Ecuadorean bonds that his firm held. He still openly brags that he is, "the man who brought Ecuador to its knees, single-handed". In the single news report describing his "triumph" (The Globe&Mail - Report on Business 19 Jan 2000 pp b1-b8), Helie's firm is described as, ".. specializing in making money from economies on the brink of disaster.." But did Gramercy Advisors or this carpetbagger Helie get a single voice of disapproval or condemnation from a single American citizen, let alone from any Indian in the USA for their destabilization of an entire country? The Quecheu Indian Nations in Ecuador, who are a 'minority' of 45%-65% of the country's population, marched. They were then as they are now, UNARMED. The students & labour unions joined them, & when several army units joined their ranks (90% of the Ecuadorean army are Indians) the government of President Jamil Mahuad was toppled. After a few days, the Vice-President, Gustavo Noboa, was named President & made promises (signed accords 17 July, 2000) to the Indians that the fresh water of Ecuador would never be sold to the US & Italian-based multi-national corporations that had "bought" it, small farners would be forgiven their debts to the govt & fuel prices would be frozen for 2 years... So the Indians went back to their villages & farms. The army was given a huge pay-raise (US "aid"). With the Indians in uniform bought off, all promises & signed accords were immediately forgotten. Now water for the sheep & small plots of maize in that DESERT climate costs 35-cents (USD) per gallon, when the average Indian farmer/shepherd makes LESS than $500 (USD) per year. And the sucre, the currency of Ecuador that constituted all of whatever meagre funds & savings the Indians held, is now worthless paper, replaced by the US dollar which none but the ruling families of Ladinos can afford, as dictated by the US Federal Reserve Bank & the IMF. Last week's directions from the US govt also resulted in the declaration that the labour unions in mines & oil fields (all 100% USA-owned) were now illegal, & the price of gasoline was raised by 200% (while exports of Ecuador's huge oil reserves to the USA shot up from 65% of national production to 100%). As an added blow, bus fares were boosted by 75%. (That's devastating because 99% of the Indian farmers bring their produce to regional markets by bus.. Their soil is so poor that they can carry their yields in a basket). "Coincidentally", the USA has also completed construction of their new naval base at Manta & is building ten (10) more military bases in Ecuador (3 along the border with Colombia & 7 'elsewhere') under the usual PR cover of "fighting the war on drugs" (ie, to crush the "subversive" Indians) - Can't let the po' folk (esp with skin-tones other than white) mess up the spread of "US democra$$y" by insisting they exist & have rights now, can we? So CONAIE, with the 100% support & direction of the thousands of Indian families they represent, organized another march on Quito beginning the first week in January, 2001. The Ecuadorean army, with US military "advisors" openly in full uniform whispering in the ears of the local army commanders, is now going on a rampage of arrests with no warrants, thousands have been "detained" with no indiaction of whether they are dead or alive, & CONAIE & labour union offices are being trashed & padlocked. And all the self-styled "activists" on alt.native are too busy with whale-shit & the usual crap about "blood-quantum" to notice what is happening to their relations in Ecuador, to denounce what is being done to the right of self-determination of indigenous Nations in Ecuador, or the blood that is being poured into the soil of Ecuador from the bodies of dead Indian men, women, children & elders.. Rights & blood as precious as, & part of, your own. Given a small windfall that permits me the means to travel, I leave for the region tonight. If my contacts are still alive & can get me into Ecuador I'll try to send back first-hand reports somehow. Hasta luego.. y hasta la victoria siempre! jaom/énéthekwé "..Otra vez siento bajo mis talones el costillar de Rocinante; vuelvo al camino con mi adarga al brazoS"! PS - Those 11 bulletins from CONAIE to the world & erased from their website last night, pleading for support, are en route to my friend Frosty, along with 2-3 newpaper articles about the situation inadvertently published contrary to the USA-imposed press-blackout.. I hope Frosty will post them on his e-list or whatever the heck it's called, for you to read & distribute.. if you give a damn about relations being butchered in the "U$A's national intere$t", that is.. List info at: http://nativenewsonline.org/ ============================================================================
