In the framework of the 2025 General Elections of Ecuador, we interview political scientist Eduardo Meneses, to discuss the political and social climate of the country leading up to this country. teleSUR
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00:00Also in the context of Ecuador's general elections, let's welcome political
00:04scientist Eduardo Menezes. Hi Eduardo and thank you very much for joining us today.
00:10Thank you for the invitation. Ecuador's elections have been overshadowed by a
00:16non-precedented social insecurity, economic fall, energy crisis. But to
00:21understand today's reality, let's go backwards. In what way the return to
00:25neoliberalism in 2017 has impacted and transformed Ecuador's social and
00:30economic landscape?
00:34Well, we need to understand that what is happening right now in Ecuador is the result of a very coherent policy from the
00:45elite of the country. The richest people of Ecuador, which is a very few
00:51people who have this economic power and have been opposing the progressive
00:57policies for many years, when they arrived to the government, what they
01:03did were, I would say, two main things. The first one was definitely changing
01:10totally the direction of the economic policy, which was translated by first
01:19making a liberalization of all the bank system. The problem is that Ecuador is a
01:25dollarized country. We do not have our own currency, we do have the dollar, the
01:29United States dollar. And opening and making this liberalization of the
01:35banking system, what resulted was, in fact, in the possibility for all these
01:42economic elite and all these rich families from the country to bring their
01:47dollars, who were being invested or forced to be invested in the country, and
01:52bring them to external banking out of Ecuador. And that was a huge blow to the
02:00country, because we cannot produce our own currency. We are dependent on these US
02:05dollars. And while the richest people of the country, the biggest economic elite,
02:10was bringing those dollars outside, our internal economy was being deeply
02:18impacted and being reduced each time more. The answer to this economic
02:23recession that was created by these policies was, in fact, to start a very
02:28accelerated and deep program of loans with the EMF. We have already known all
02:36these loans with the EMF for decades before, in the 80s and the 90s. And it's
02:41what has generated a big dependency in this multilateral organism, because it's
02:47not a debt that we can pay. In fact, we are taking each time debt just to pay
02:51the interest of the precedent debt, and we are just going down and down into a
02:57spiral of debt that cannot be solved. And that's what has caused the big
03:03crisis, the economic crisis in Ecuador, which resulted in having the biggest
03:10poverty rate since the pandemic, resulted in having more than 60% of the
03:16people of Ecuador being in the informal sector of the economy, meaning that they
03:20do not have social rights, they do not have contracts for working, they are
03:26working in very precarious conditions, and also has resulted in a huge increase
03:32of the public debt directed to these organs like the EMF.
03:37Precisely, you mentioned in the US, Ecuador's multidimensional crisis has
03:41skyrocketed the migration of its nationals abroad, especially towards the
03:45US. How this reality could reshape Ecuador's diplomatic relations with the
03:50US amid the xenophobia and massive deportations that are being unleashed by
03:55President Donald Trump?
03:57Well, there are two things here. First is that the fact that we have this big
04:05migrant population, Ecuadorians living in the US, is not something new. In fact,
04:11it's new the fact that we do have a big wave that started during the last years,
04:16I would say, just after the pandemic, there was a huge wave. But in fact, there
04:23was also a previous wave in the 90s, we were all exactly the same EMF recipes
04:29that pushed out millions of people out of Ecuador. And in fact, I would say that
04:34it is possible to have a sovereign diplomacy with the United States, even if
04:40having, even if we have all these families and this, this big amount of
04:46migrants living in the US working, even if it's not always in a legal way, but
04:52being there, what has changed is not essentially that fact, what has changed
04:58is the fact that the external, the foreign policy of the government of
05:04Ecuador since the 9th, 2019, has totally shifted into a non sovereign policy,
05:12where we, we have seen our presidents been defending the US interests, rather
05:18than the Ecuadorians people interests. We have seen all of our presidents start
05:25even violating our constitution for allowing, for example, the presence of
05:30military bases from the US in our country, the entrance of military forces
05:37from the United States to our country. So I would say that what has changed from
05:41the Ecuadorian side, is more an internal perspective on how do we drive our
05:47foreign policy. But now that we have this turn of events with Trump, the US,
05:54who is taking out all, all these migrants that have been arriving from
06:00this late wave, that will be a big problem, an economic problem to the
06:05country, because a lot of the US dollars that were coming to our economy, and
06:11again, I will reinforce that we have a dollarized economy in a context where
06:15our banking system has been liberal, liberalized. So all of our dollars from
06:21the economic light is being brought out of the country. The dollars that were
06:29coming in from those migrants who were working in the US, who were sending
06:34money to their families, was a huge contribution to the Ecuadorian economy.
06:39Now, this will definitely have a big blow in our economy, not only in terms
06:45of how these migrants are being treated, and we haven't seen any reaction from
06:51the Ecuadorian president towards that, but also in the economic perspective,
06:56which will bring an even more difficult situation to the country.
07:03Let's stay on topic regarding foreign policy. How might the election result
07:07affect its foreign policy, particularly regarding Latin American integration?
07:12Well, we have seen in the last seven years, the same, since Lenin Moreno
07:18arrived to the government, we have seen little by little Ecuador passing from
07:27one of the countries who was pushing the most for the regional integration,
07:31integration of all South American and Latin American countries into a same
07:36region that could implement policies towards our people, toward the
07:43development of the region, sovereign policy. We have seen a radical shift
07:50towards Ecuador becoming one of the main factors of disrupting the integration
07:59process. I could definitely say that Ecuador, Argentina, are two in the South
08:06American side, are two of the main countries for being defending the US
08:12position who has historically been against the integration of our continent,
08:16against the integration of South America, against the integration of Latin
08:21America, because obviously, if we are divided, it's much more easy for the US
08:27interests to be penetrating our economy, penetrating our political
08:32class, defending the US interest instead of our people's interest. And sadly,
08:39Ecuador has become, I would say, with Argentina, the two main countries who
08:44are breaking all the possibilities of the regional integration, who are not at
08:52all participating in the dynamics that could interest, that could be in the
08:57interest of our people in creating regional policies, industrial policies,
09:02policies to develop our internal commerce between our countries. And we
09:07have seen Ecuadorian policies going exactly the opposite way.
09:11Thank you. Thank you, Ramon, very much. Eduardo, my pardon for your remarks on
09:16this paramount event.
09:18Sorry, I couldn't hear your question.
09:24I was saying that thank you very much for your time hearing from the South.
09:28Thank you. Thank you very much.