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THE COLLAPSE OF ECUADOR
The Ecuadorian economy collapsed, spectacularly, earlier this year,
unnoticed by the European media. I asked my Ecuadorian brother-in-law,
Jose Zambrano, to write a short article for Enlace explaining what had
happened. I expected a political and economic chronology of the disaster.
What I got was rather different, and much closer to the point. Here is my
translation.
HOW TO FOOL THE PEOPLE
When I was a child, my grandmother told me a story about a troupe of actors
who came to the village where she lived. With great fanfare, they
announced the premiere of a sensational new show called 'How to Fool the
People'. Huge numbers turned up, paid to get in, and waited patiently for
the show to begin. For a full hour, nothing happened. At long last, one
of the actors -- the simplest of them all, who happened to be a native of
that very village -- came out from behind the curtain. With visible
emotion, as if acting in his greatest-ever role, he addressed the multitude
as follows: 'My companions, who fled an hour ago with the takings, have
asked me to tell you that this is How to Fool the People.
It occurs to me that there is a smilarity between this story and what is
happening in Ecuador. After eight months of the presidency of Dr. Jamil
Mahuad and after his only success, announced with great fanfare -- the
signing of a peace agreement with our neighbour, Peru -- everything else
about his leading role has been an accumulation of errors: the adoption of
partisan measures to try and meet international requirements, the clash of
interests and the resulting popularanger and protest have all led to an era
of unprecedented crisis, plunging the country into, not just a recession,
but a deep depression.
Now, as in my grandmother's story, the leading character comes out to
explain to us, not just verbally, but with a sheet of policies designed in
Harvard, that his comrades needed a thousand million dollars to save a
bank; that the bank accounts of all Ecuadorians had to be frozen in order
to go on saving banks; that it's necessary to privatise the strategic areas
of state economic activity so that his companions can make a major killing
on the sale of public enterprises; that when his companions get burned in
business deals the state should subsidise their mistakes and absorb the
losses of their ruined enterprises; that if their more competent partners
don't bow down to the dictates of the IMF, they will be declared
incompetent and will no longer be permitted to retain their political
posts; and that, to put the tin hat on everything, we are supposed to sit
down and wait while they show us the contents of their page projected onto
a giant computer screen that says: This is How to Govern a People.
My grandmother never told me how the public reacted, nor what happened to
the protagonist after he had given his explanation. I leave it to the
imagination of my readers to figure out the likely outcome.
Kieran Furey adds:
I recently lived in Ecuador for three and a half years. Jamil Mahuad, who
was mayor of Quito for several years, is one of the best and most honest
politicians ever produced by his countlry. There is little or nothing he
can do. The situation in Ecuador is largely outside the control of
Ecuadorians. When I lived there, the country was chaotic, overpopulated,
functioning any which way. That was before everything collapsed. I'm
pretty sure, however, that Ecuador is still, comfortably, among the top
half of countries, economically and socially speaking, on this planet.
Think about that.