Word: ecuador
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...President Barack Obama and his counterparts in the western hemisphere are serious about improving the dysfunctional dance known as U.S.-Latin American relations, they need only look at what transpired in Ecuador this weekend. President Rafael Correa rather petulantly expelled a U.S. diplomat on Saturday. He did so because the diplomat rather high-handedly sent Correa's national police commander a letter saying the U.S. was pulling $340,000 in aid to Ecuador's anti-drug cops, because Correa decided last year not to let Washington have a veto over who runs that force and even who works...
...20th. On the one hand, it was indicative of Washington's inability or refusal to realize that Latin Americans aren't as obsessed with the drug war as los yanquis are - and that they tend to feel humiliated by imperious U.S. conditions like those set on aid for Ecuador's drug police. Correa's chief complaint against the U.S. diplomat, Homeland Security attache Armando Astorga, was "the insolence to pretend that Ecuador is a colony of the U.S." (Neither the U.S. embassy in Quito nor the State Department would comment...
...other hand, it demonstrates how impulsively many Latin American governments, especially those like Ecuador that are part of the region's resurgent left, confuse national sovereignty with their own idea that foreign aid should be provided gratis and without political strings. Because Latin military and security forces have an unfortunate history of sliding into drug lords' pockets - a former Ecuadorean deputy interior minister under Correa was recently charged with drug trafficking - it's not all that outrageous that the U.S. ask to have some input in exchange for aid (or "logistical support," per Astorga...
...Quito could have worked this out more maturely than the outcome shows. The U.S. could have, and should have, been better tuned in to the fact that Correa, love him or hate him, is not one of the obliging military strongmen or feckless oligarchs that used to run Ecuador, and that his anti-American agenda has been pretty clear since he won the presidency in 2006. He recently decided not to renew the U.S. lease at Ecuador's Manta air base (although, ironically, he said Saturday he would grant U.S. planes limited use of the base at Quito's discretion...
...force would have to return all furniture, cars and equipment donated by the U.S. in the past. To which Correa on Saturday replied, "Seņor Astorga, keep your dirty money, we don't need it." He's also ordered Hurtado to return the equipment: "Let them keep their things. Ecuador doesn't need charity...