It’s depressingly predictable that this article doesn’t talk at all about the push to restore the Brazilian military presence in Ecuador. That was a huge aspect of the national discourse around this topic that is strangely ignored in pretty much all the english-language reporting on this issue. It feels very much like this was written not to celebrate the victory for Ecuadorian independence, but to claim a loss for the US on a topic I do not know if a single major american news outlet has even mentioned. Most people in the US can’t find Ecuador on a map, the trump officials doubtlessly included. It’s a damn miracle Kristi Noem managed to land in the right country.
There was little real push from the US to even allow bases again, which is part of why this failed so spectacularly - nobody, noem seemingly included, is entirely clear on why Noboa was so heavily invested in getting the US back except because it was the only way he could see to signal his allegiance to trump. It was just extremely odd all around, and a spectacular demonstration that Noboa and his far right cronies have no idea what the hell they’re doing.
nobody, noem seemingly included, is entirely clear on why Noboa was so heavily invested in getting the US back except because it was the only way he could see to signal his allegiance to trump. It was just extremely odd all around, and a spectacular demonstration that Noboa and his far right cronies have no idea what the hell they’re doing.
aggressively (and sometimes pointlessly) cozing up to the united states is currently a trend in most of latin america rn and it’s getting spurred on by both the right leaning oligarchies in each country and by material support from washinggton (more of the former than the latter). they’re knee-jerk reactionary responses to china’s growing influence in examples like mexico, brazil, and argentina as well as an emerging voting trends fostered by class consciousness imparted to gen-z via social media.
argentina is probably the role model for how these reactionary forces will play out in the near future due to it going furthest when it joined brics and this step forced the global north to flex it’s economic & legal leverage to successfully pressure argentina to move rightwards w austerity implemented by milei.
the washington backed color revolution that took place in mexico this past weekend was the first step in intentionally reversing these political & economic trends and proved to be very cost effective in the last 15-ish years as exemplified by most of arab-spring, ukraine, nepal, and argentina protests against their respective & washington-non-centered governments.
