TAPPING THE VEINS OF ECUADOR
Luis Macas has long been a proponent of the simultaneous struggle against colonial racism endured by indigenous peoples and the exploitation of popular classes under capitalism. When, in mid-July 2010, we sat in Quito with this ex-president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and former presidential candidate for the Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement – New Country, we began our exchange with his reflections on the government of Rafael Correa. “From my point of view,” Macas began,
this is neither a socialist nor even a left-wing government. This is a populist government, whose objective is to challenge the model on a few points, through a series of modest reforms, so that the model as a whole can continue advancing. Fundamental changes, radical changes in this country, are not going to come about with this government.870
Correa first scraped his way into the presidency in the second round of elections in 2006. This was a political contest scheduled in a time when the prestige of the indigenous movement—by far the most important popular force in Ecuador for several decades871—had still to recover from the acute setback it suffered as a consequence of the movement’s participation in the ill-fated government of Lucio Gutiérrez.872
The wildly popular process of a Constituent Assembly in 2007 and 2008 offered up an extended honeymoon for Correa and large cross-sections of society. A new, progressive Constitution received the approval of 64 percent of voters in a referendum in September 2008, and Correa was re-elected—this time in the first round—with 52 percent of the popular vote in April 2009. Things began to sour soon after, however, when Correa’s failure to break with many of the quotidian banalities of the neoliberal economics he had inherited was difficult to reconcile with the President’s romantic and ostentatious slogans of “twenty-first century socialism” and a “Citizen’s Revolution.” Indeed, the President would strain to align his practical commitment to aggressively reorienting the Ecuadorian economy toward the extraction of minerals by multinational corporations with his preferred rhetorical schemas for the next several years.
“But one of the recurrent paradoxes of the bourgeoisie’s political history,” Catherine Conaghan rightly points out in reference to twentieth-century Latin America, “lies in its capacity to oppose even the most tepid reformism. Polices that do not directly damage dominant-class material interests are sometimes opposed with an intensity seemingly out of proportion to the issues at stake.”873 This incongruity between the actual threat of reform and the hostility of bourgeois response can be partially explained by the “unpredictability of policy outcomes,” Conaghan suggests:
Policy shift may replace the devil you know for one you don’t know. With this principle in mind, the business community can be expected to oppose any sort of policy change that would upset the environment that they have already mastered.874
With very little need for alteration, Conaghan’s formula can be generalized in many respects from the dynamics of the domestic bourgeoisie to the reaction of imperialist powers operating in Latin America when faced with reformist challenges to their immediate and longer term interests in the region. Unsurprisingly, then, just as the relatively minor contestation of the neoliberal status quo offered by the government of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras was sufficient to provoke a right-wing coup in June 2009, Correa’s embrace of radical slogans and his early connection to social movements was seen as a threat, both by sections of the Ecuadorian capitalist class and imperialist powers alike.
Consequently, as part of Canada’s broader geopolitical intervention in the Andean region, Ecuador became a strategic focus following Correa’s election. While in mainstream media commentary Correa’s Ecuador is often lumped together with Venezuela and Bolivia as part of the Andean red tide challenging imperialist hegemony in the region, this is, in many ways, a misleading diagnosis: Ecuador is not as large or politically influential as Venezuela, the Correa government has not opted to nationalize its natural resources (even partially, as in Bolivia), and its redistributive and social policies are modest when compared to those in Venezuela. But the context of relatively strong social movements in Ecuador, many of which have focused a considerable part of their energies on directly challenging Canadian mining and oil companies, has nonetheless been viewed as an obstacle to the broad economic and geopolitical interests of Canada in a region with a resurgent Left. Especially important to the Canadian state is the potential threat posed to Canadian multinational companies with substantial investments in the country.875 The Correa government, elected initially with the support of many social movements, is seen by Canadian officials as having a disturbingly ambivalent orientation toward the neoliberal imperial project, especially when compared to its considerably more pliant neighbours, Peru and Colombia. Ecuador’s new strategic alliances with Venezuela and Bolivia are also viewed with concern.
Canadian capital has a lot to lose in Ecuador. Canadian economic interests are relatively extensive in the country, and Canada’s political engagement certainly reflects this fact. The Canadian government has sought systematically to rein in any perceived serious movement leftward—beyond the occasional rhetorical flourish—by the Correa government. Canada’s mining industry is the largest in Ecuador, which is dependent on natural resource exports, and Canadian companies are more generally one of the principal foreign investors in Ecuador. Canadian interests in the country grew through the late 1990s and into the 2000s, with over thirty mining companies with properties by 2008, but the extent of investments ebbed in the face of growing resistance in the 2000s and the uncertainty of the early stages of the Correa presidency.876 A Canadian oil company was among several in the industry to sign exploitation contracts with Ecuador in February 2012.877 Most of the Canadian mining corporations active in Ecuador are juniors, playing the role of exploration and determining whether or not the contextual environment—geological, political, and economic—is conducive to making profit. Ultimately, most juniors fail to find sufficiently profitable deposits to attract a major that could then buy them and bring forward the necessary finances to begin extraction and production; but for those few juniors that are successful the profits can be enormous.878 In 2010, FAIT estimated a cumulative C$1.5 billion invested in the Ecuadorian mining sector with C$4 billion more possible over the next decade should Canada successfully put its stamp on the small Andean nation’s developmental path.879 In the words of one FAIT appraisal of the political-economic context of Ecuador from 2010:
Ecuador has mineral resource potential similar to neighouring countries Peru, Chile and Colombia, however it does not have a well developed mining industry.…there remains significant opposition to mining in Ecuador from certain Indigenous groups (particularly the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador).880
Thus in its Country Strategy reports the Quito embassy consistently highlights the pursuit of “trade and investment” and increased “business and investment opportunities” as one of its “primary interests in Ecuador.”881
Canada’s view of Correa has been coloured by his initial association with anti-mining activists (an association that unravelled rather quickly after the first years of his presidency), his government’s suspension of the activities of Canadian companies EcuaCorriente and Ascendant Copper due to violence and strong local opposition surrounding their projects, and the generally reformist mood towards natural resource development surrounding his election. However, as we discuss below, Correa has been far from unresponsive to Canadian demands. Despite a hard-line position adopted initially by many social movements and some members of his government vis-à-vis Canadian capital, this orientation has largely been defeated inside the government thanks in part to Canada’s mostly behind -the-scenes intervention. Indeed, Correa has shown a willingness to sit down on multiple occasions with Canadian executives, embassy officials, and cabinet ministers to hear their concerns. Yet for Canadian executives, the embassy, and Ottawa, Correa is still not their guy. His occasionally close relations with sections of the Ecuadorian Left, and his modest but popular redistributive social policies are reasons to worry. Correa’s association with Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro, his participation in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), his defaulting on US$3.9 billion in foreign debt obligations, his renegotiation of contracts with oil multinationals that leave a larger share of revenues in the hands of the state, and his periodic antagonism against U.S. wishes in international politics—such as offering WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and (briefly) National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden asylum—are not signals of consistent submission to the dominant playmakers in the international system.882 Most importantly, Correa’s unwillingness to completely prostrate Ecuador to Canadian mining interests has meant that, despite Correa’s conflicts with indigenous and environmental activists, Canada clearly does not trust him, and this distrust has framed Canadian policy in Ecuador. 883
Canada has aggressively pushed back against all attempts by Ecuador’s government and social movements to adopt robust environmental measures, limits on foreign investors in the natural resources sector, and stronger corporate taxation and royalty regimes. From the time of Correa’s first election until the passage of a new mining law just over two years later, Canadian embassy staff, cabinet ministers, and representatives from FAIT and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) met regularly with key Ecuadorian officials, including President Correa and members of his cabinet. What amounted to the embassy’s full frontal diplomatic assault won praise from the mining industry. EcuaCorriente executive, Ian Harris, remarked in 2008 that “the Canadian embassy has worked tirelessly to affect change in the mining policy.”884 “IAMGOLD benefits from” the “greater diplomatic leverage” offered by the Canadian government and embassy in Ecuador and the Andean region, an IAMGOLD executive gushed to the international business press. “We can access, as needed, prompt diplomatic Canadian support for management issues in countries like Ecuador, Peru and Colombia,” which is extremely important in the Andean region, he stresses, because “anti-mining groups, indigenous rights groups and environmental groups are better organized, better funded and often more confrontational.”885
The Canadian campaign, coordinated by the embassy in Quito, supported by Ottawa, and involving Canadian companies themselves, effectively reframed a national debate on the future of Ecuadorian development and environmental justice to portray the interests of Canadian investors as those of Ecuadorians and isolate the call for alternative development strategies. All along, this Canadian strategy has deployed constant reference to that liberal imperialistic concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as cover for its attempt to shape Ecuador’s natural resources policy to its liking. But this did not constitute the only form of Canadian intervention in Ecuador. As we discuss in more detail in Chapter 9, the Canadian government began pouring money into the country following Correa’s election and the writing of a new constitution by the democratically-elected Constituent Assembly. In the words of FAIT, this flow of resources was directed towards the “promotion of democracy, pluralism and human rights.”886 Canada’s intervention has been premised on the ideological argument that Correa’s election and the establishment of a new constitution have posed a threat to Ecuadorian democracy, much like in the Venezuelan case. In the logic of Canadian imperialism, any government which does not fully conform to the norms of neoliberal policy, and which stretches, however modestly, the narrow strictures of liberal democracy is by definition a threat to democracy as such.
THE SHIFTING POLITICAL WINDS OF THE CORREA GOVERNMENT
In order to navigate the conflicts surrounding mining developments in Ecuador, the way in which Canadian capital and diplomacy are wrapped up in these conflicts, and to understand how the Correa government situates itself vis-à-vis the popular struggles on one side and the interests of multinational capital on the other, it is important to begin with the complex backdrop of social movement-state relations over the last number of years. In April 2005, a mass explosion of resentment and agitation in the streets of the capital against the corruption and betrayal embodied in the administration of then-President Gutiérrez successfully forced that disgraced figure from power. The protests were characterized politically by a largely urban middle-class sentiment—anti-party, anti-neoliberal, and anti-corruption—but lacked a coherent political project of their own.887 Rather than signifying a deep rearticulation of popular sector power or organizational capacity—indeed, the indigenous movement was almost completely absent from the scene—the April 2005 revolt instead encapsulated a relatively spontaneous expression of disdain for the political elite and inchoate rage against the ongoing imposition of neoliberal economic restructuring in the country.
This was the vacuum into which Correa’s newly constructed political coalition, Alianza País (Country Alliance, AP), positioned itself during the 2006 presidential campaign. His main right-wing contender, the multimillionaire banana magnate Álvaro Noboa, received more votes than Correa in the first round, but was sufficiently hated by the popular sectors that a second-round rally for the AP circumvented his rise to the presidency. The marketing team of AP pitched Correa as a heterodox outsider, an anti-neoliberal economist who—as a consequence of missionary work as a youngster—spoke Kichwa and was familiar with the needs and aspirations of the country’s indigenous, peasant, and urban popular sectors. The 2007–2008 Constituent Assembly process solidified the President’s early popularity, as the country polarized around a hard-right camp represented by Noboa, and a progressive poll led by Correa. Within the Constituent Assembly, as a result of this wider societal divarication, a “mega-bloc” of the Left emerged around Correa, which included Pachakutik, the Maoist Movimiento Popular Democrático (Democratic Popular Movement, MPD), and the Izquierda Democrática (Democratic Left), although always under the hegemonic guidance of Correa and the AP.888
As noted, the new constitution that materialized from the assembly was popularly approved through a referendum, and the depth with which its commitments to social, political, and economic change resonated with Ecuadorians was expressed in Correa’s majority victory in the first round of presidential elections in 2009. “The new constitution opened the door for a series of profound changes,” argues Alberto Acosta, a former Minister of Energy and Mines in Correa’s first administration and the President of the Constituent Assembly in 2007 and 2008:889
Its statutes guarantee the construction of a plurinational state. This means the incorporation for the first time of marginalized groups, like indigenous peoples and nationalities and Afro-Ecuadorians. The constitution mandates respect for their unique ways of life and community organizing, and a new way of structuring the state in general.890
Likewise, the new constitution includes probably the most progressive environmental commitments of any constitution in the world. The text ensures, for example, an allegiance “to ‘living well,’ or Sumak Kawsay, in Quichua,” Acosta explains, “which is an entirely distinct way of understanding development.” A part of this new understanding is reflected in the fact that the “Constitution guarantees the rights of nature. Nature is a subject with rights in the Constitution. Ecuador’s Constitution is the only one in the world with this characteristic.”891 The constitution also solidified an important declaration of sovereignty made by Correa during his 2006 election campaign—that he would not renew a ten-year lease on the Manta U.S. air base on the Pacific coast of the country. Indeed, the new constitution officially prohibited foreign military bases on Ecuadorian soil, and the last of the U.S. troops stationed at Manta had departed the country by September 2009.892
In keeping with the spirit of the Constitution, the 2009 electoral campaign featured Correa’s promise of the “radicalization of the Citizen’s Revolution.”893 It quickly became apparent, however, that there would be a chasm between the contents of the paper Constitution and the lived reality of the country under Correa’s rule.894 Shortly after the 2009 elections, Correa shifted decisively to the Right, presenting “infantile Leftism, environmentalism and indigenism” as the preeminent threats to economic modernization and progress, particularly as regards the President’s plans to shift the extractive focus of the economy from oil to mining.895 Correa allowed the disintegration of the “mega-bloc” of parliamentary Left forces that had held together loosely during the Constituent Assembly, as the MPD and Pachakutik abandoned the coalition in the face of the rightward drift of the AP. Key business federations that had been hostile to the first Correa administration notably altered their discourse and practical orientation toward the government in the post-2009 conjuncture, presumably as a reward for the government’s newly invigorated commitment to strong elements of neoliberal continuity.896 Correa, now openly “allied with traditional, right-wing businessmen,” the Uruguayan sociologist Raúl Zibechi points out, “reserves his most poisonous darts for the Left.”897
By the end of 2009, the government was in open conflict with the indigenous movement. Mobilizations were launched against proposed water legislation that would have effectively privatized lakes and rivers in the interests of hydroelectrical development and the water needs of multinational mining corporations, at the expense of peasant and indigenous communities. Teachers unions and university professors, meanwhile, were locked in a confrontation with the government over a new law ostensibly about regulating higher education, but actually designed to weaken union power. Throughout 2010, a series of conflicts continued to convulse the country. Indigenous movements agitated against mining projects, while public sector workers engaged in defensive battles to defend their most basic of labour rights. Indeed, according to sociologist Mario Unda, the essence of 2010 can be captured in the phrase, “a project of capitalist modernization confronting social movements.”898
A high point in recent indigenous struggle took place on June 5 of that year. Ecuador was hosting a presidential summit of The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in the majority-Quichua, Andean city of Otavalo. Despite the fact that the gathering was ostensibly called to discuss themes of indigenous and Afro-Latin American peoples within the ALBA countries, the principal indigenous organization of Ecuador, CONAIE, was not on the guest list. The indigenous movement consequently organized a march of three thousand people through the city, and symbolically installed a parallel Plurinational Parliament in the streets and plazas.899 Police repressed the march and serious charges of terrorism and sabotage were laid against key indigenous leaders, including Marlon Santi of CONAIE. “When the presidents of the countries involved in the ALBA were meeting here in Ecuador, in Otavalo, they talked about indigenous rights,” Santi explained to us:
But the main representatives of the indigenous movement in the country, that is to say CONAIE, were never invited to the meeting. And we wanted to have a voice in ALBA. We wanted to say to the governments of ALBA that without the indigenous peoples of Latin America ALBA can’t exist. We will not be excluded any longer. And for saying this in protests outside the ALBA meeting we have been given this new name of terrorists and saboteurs. We’re supposedly against the nation. But we believe the truth will rise to the surface about these claims.900
At the time of writing, approximately two hundred activists are facing charges of terrorism and sabotage with the possibility of lengthy prison terms.901 For Luis Macas, in the same interview, the motivation for targeting the indigenous movement with such repression is clear enough. “It’s not that the government wants simply to get rid of the Indians, or that it is racism for racism’s sake. The objective is to liquidate the indigenous movement in this country, to dismantle and destroy this movement.” The rationale grows out of the fact that “the indigenous movement is the principal social and political actor in the country that has struggled against the economic model, against neoliberalism.” From Macas’ perspective, “Correa wants to have a green light to do as he pleases. And his project of development is rooted in the exploitation of natural resources. We in the indigenous movement have an emphatically different conceptualization of Mother Nature and are saying no.” The conflicts over mining are likely to intensify further in coming months and years. Closed-door negotiations with multinational corporations seeking to secure large-scale mining projects were due to be completed in July of 2012, but have not yet come to fruition. While the details remain secret, it is estimated that US$3.5 billion in foreign direct investment will flood the mining sector from 2012 forward.902 If past patterns are repeated, Canadian imperial mining capital is likely to play a defining role.
Delfín Tenesaca, president of ECUARUNARI, the Andean highland indigenous organization, painted a clear picture of struggle in the mining sector when we met with him in August 2011. “For us, it’s very clear,” Tenesaca said,
all of a sudden, a bureaucrat or technocrat appears from the government and tells indigenous communities, “let us enter these territories because we have to exploit this mine.” When you resist, you are sanctioned, receive death threats and all the rest. This has happened throughout the country. Anyone who opposes this, anyone who resists, is considered a terrorist.903
President Correa is “clashing with indigenous communities,” the Financial Times reports. “Once he claimed to champion their rights. Now his government accuses them of terrorism and sabotage.”904
The growing socio-political cleavages between organized social movements and the Correa government led to the formation of a new political coalition, the Unidad Plurinacional de las Izquierdas (Plurinational Unity of the Lefts, UPI) in the run up to the February 2013 presidential elections. The UPI selected Acosta as their presidential candidate. However, buoyed by high and steady commodity prices on the international market, growing state revenues, declining rates of poverty, and popular social policies, Correa won the elections handily—Correa landed 57 percent of the vote, up from 52 percent in 2009, while the main right-wing contender, a conservative banker Guillermo Lasso, came second with 23 percent, and Acosta was crushed with only 3 percent.905 The still visible and undeniable social weight of popular environmental and indigenous movements in the country—even if weaker than at their height in the 1990s and early 2000s—has not found a clear, independent expression in the electoral arena during the Correa period.
BIRTH PAINS OF THE NEOLIBERAL MINING ORDER IN ECUADOR
Since the second half of the nineteenth century Ecuadorian capitalism has been alternately fueled or exhausted by the booms and busts of its central export commodities—in succession, cacao, bananas, oil, and, now, mining minerals.906 The principal metallic mineral resources under its soil are gold, silver, copper, and antimony. There are also indications of a substantial presence of other minerals, such as lead, zinc, and platinum. According to the figures offered by President Correa in 2007, based on the optimistic projections of private mining companies, the mining reserves in Ecuador are worth roughly US$200 billion, compared to the remaining oil reserves, which reach an estimated value of US$70 billion.907 In accordance with the Washington Consensus in neoliberal restructuring that began to open up Latin America to a free market transformation in the 1980s and 1990s, Ecuador began its specific process of attracting foreign private investment in the mining sector with a vision of building zones of industrial mining on a grand scale.
The process was facilitated through a series of new laws, issuing in a mining regime which stressed the reduction of state oversight in the sector, advantages for foreign mining companies in terms of financial support, guaranteed access to potential mining territories, the flexibilization of labour conditions, the weakening of related environmental legislation, the sharing of geological information with multinationals, and the coerced phasing-out of informal markets of artisanal mining to make room for the advance of large-scale industrial companies.908 The principal laws through which this new orientation in mining was advanced were the 1991 Ley 126 de Minería (Mining Law 126), the 2000 Ley para la Promoción de la Inversión y de la Participación Ciudadana (Law for the Promotion of Investment and Citizen Participation), and, in 2001, the Reglamento General Sustitutivo del Reglamento General de la Ley de Minería (Replacement General Regulation of the Mining Law). These domestic laws were implemented in part through the World Bank-funded program, Proyecto de Asistencia Técnica para la Gestión Ambiental (Project for Technical Assistance in Environmental Management) and, later, the Proyecto para el Desarrollo Minero y Control Ambiental (Project for Mining Development and Environmental Control). In the language of the World Bank, these initiatives were designed to modernize mining activity and environmental management in the country while generating an improved overall knowledge of available natural resources in the country.909
This new juridical framework allowed for a veritable flood of foreign investment in mining, and the granting of a huge number of new concessions concentrated in relatively few hands. By 2008, prior to a mining mandate that put these concessions in a legal limbo (more on that later), the geographic area conceded to mining exploration amounted to roughly 20 percent of Ecuadorian territory, including ostensibly protected environmental and forested areas, indigenous territories, archeological sites, and agricultural zones.910 This was the opening to which Canadian mining capital responded with gusto. According to Alberto Acosta:
Canadian companies were the primary beneficiaries of the new disposition of the mining laws throughout the early 2000s. These laws were meant to strengthen the presence of mining companies in Ecuador. This was a project pushed forward by the World Bank, and which received support from the governments of that period. We’re talking about the neoliberal epoch. Canadian companies were the ones who took advantage of the new laws with the greatest enthusiasm, to invest in Ecuador. Canadian companies have expanded their presence in various regions of the country, in the Condor mountain range, in the Intag valley, and elsewhere. They’ve managed to win a huge number of concessions. Ecuador gave out over 5,000 concessions in an irresponsible manner, without any controls or criteria. The great majority of these concessions were concentrated in the hands of just a few companies, Canadian companies.911
With the acceleration in concessions, it is unsurprising that well before Correa assumed the presidency conflicts between indigenous and peasant communities and Canadian mining companies were proliferating throughout the country. The principal mineral deposits of interest to mining companies are located on the eastern and western slopes of the Andean mountain range in the North, and the Condor mountain range in the South—as noted, these are regions characterized by high levels of biodiversity, fragile ecosystems, indigenous and peasant territories, and are the points of origin for many of the country’s rivers. When the scope of exploration by multinational mining companies in Ecuador experienced a concerted uptick in the early 2000s—in the wake of the liberalization policies and in response to the beginning of an extended commodities boom driven largely by the dynamic growth of China—a diverse range of socio-ecological and political conflicts began to develop, very often involving Canadian corporations.
One early conflict that would resonate politically throughout the country in subsequent years developed in the town of El Pangui, in the canton of the same name, situated in the Condor mountain range, in the provinces of Moronoa Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe, along the border with Peru. One of the most biodiverse areas in the world, the area’s landscape is characterized mainly by animal husbandry, square-pond fisheries, and wild forests. EcuaCorrientes S.A. (ECSA), the subsidiary of the Canadian mining giant Corriente Resources, began exploring the region for minerals as early as 2000. As part of the company’s preemptive campaign of corporate social responsibility (CSR), specific leaders of the predominant Shuar indigenous community in the area were hired to work directly for the company in public relations, and small development projects were funded by the corporation.912 However, the Shuar people’s extended history of militant confrontation with oil multinationals made it unlikely that their organizational capacities would be easily undone, even by a sophisticated and well-financed CSR campaign.913
And, indeed, what had been largely invisible, subterranean stirrings of discontent in the early 2000s had by mid-2006 escalated sufficient momentum to mobilize significant above-ground resistance to the presence of Corriente Resources and other multinational mining enterprises. In October 2006, a week-long march of 260 kilometers brought protesters north from El Pangui to Jimbotono where a demonstration was staged demanding the end of all mining activities and associated hydroelectric dams. This action was followed in November by a march of the Shuar community of Warintz to the mining camp of Corriente Resources from which they evicted the workers. The collective resistance of the Warintz community was then joined by others, and actions extended to a series of other camps where workers were also evicted—a Shuar leader referred to the process as, “cleansing our territories of mining.”914 Momentum continued to draw hundreds of protesters in the coming days to the main mining camp in El Pangui, where they fought—with rocks, sticks, and dynamite—workers, police, military, and the pro-mining factions of the Shuar community.
The actions culminated in the early days of December 2006, when, after an assembly of one thousand in the coliseum of El Pangui, anti-mining activists marched on the Mirador mining camp, where they were assaulted with bullets and smoke grenades in a three-day standoff with the coercive forces of the state and the company. At the close of events, the government was forced to suspend the activities of Corriente Resources in both of the relevant provinces.915 In the heated context of that period, Canadian embassy officials “encouraged the Ecuadorian government to facilitate discussion between EcuaCorriente and local residents so that…conflicts could be resolved peacefully,” as if the fundamental conflict of interests at stake was reducible merely to a misunderstanding on the part of the indigenous and peasant opposition.916
Next to the conflict in El Pangui, probably the most well-known Ecuadorian instance of anti-mining resistance in the 2000s took place in Intag, a humid and tropical valley situated in the canton of Cotacachi, north of Quito. A copper deposit known as Junín is located within the valley. The first geological exploration for mining minerals in the area was carried out by the Ecuadorian and Belgian governments in the 1980s, but it was the Metal Mining Agency of Japan, financed by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, that confirmed a large copper deposit in 1990. By 1993, exploration of the area was taken over by Bishi Metals, a subsidiary of the Japanese giant Mitsubishi. Social protest in the 1990s drove Bitshi Metals out of the site in 1997. After an idle period in which the concession was abandoned, Ascendant Copper Corporation, a junior company from Vancouver, acquired the deposit.917 The ecological NGO Acción Ecológica (Ecological Action) played a crucial role in making contact over the course of the 1990s with communities inside the mestizo (mixed race) peasant settlements that populate the Intag region. Acción Ecológica conducted environmental workshops for the communities, generating collective consciousness around the socio-ecological risks involved in large-scale mining projects driven by multinational corporations. Out of this initial phase of organizing, a local group was formed called DECOIN. It drew on youth organizations, a priest inspired by liberation theology, and a variety of community environmental activists.918 Once Bitshi Metals had been driven out in 1997, these organizations took advantage of the idle period (until 2002) to solidify their organizational bases and organic links with local peasants, as well as to develop a national profile and international linkages through the work of Acción Ecológica.
Once Ascendant Copper set up shop in 2002, the movement was in a position to regularly mobilize opposition to the company’s presence in Intag, and, on several occasions, to burn down the centre of operations of mining exploration in the area. The conflict is ongoing, but the resistance has been able at least to slow to a crawl any significant exploration in the region.919 In response to the activist initiatives, Ascendant has deployed combined tactics of cooptation and coercion. For example, the company provides petty but important handouts to those communities who work with it, building roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, and other infrastructure that the state has never properly provided in the area. These efforts are accompanied by ideological campaigns in which informants are paid to ride local transit, where they praise the gains that mining development would bring to the area, and denounce the way that DECOIN and other social movement organizations are standing in the way of this potential prosperity.920 The company always also wields a club, however, in the event that promotional campaigns and clientelist ties to cooperative communities prove insufficient to quell anti-mining opposition. Coercion has assumed the form of death threats against organizers of the resistance, disruption of regular mail and emails of activists, and a massive law suit against the principal newspaper of the anti-mining mobilizers, Periódico Intag.921 In the company’s theatre of intimidation, a useful prop has been César Villacís, who was placed on the company’s board of directors. Villacís is a former Ecuadorian general and former head of the secret police, and in his frequent visits to Junín he lets the communities know that he has the backing of the Ecuadorian military. Such underlying forms of intimidation sometimes explode into open violence, as in a series of cases in 2004 in which pro-mining groups, visibly armed, were mobilized to physically assault the opposition and destroy their video equipment.922 Alberto Acosta spoke to us about his personal experience with such tactics during this period:
We can also see how some Canadian companies, such as Ascendant Copper, have tried to impose their objectives in an authoritarian manner in the country. They have established schemes of paramilitarism, in order to divide the communities of Intag, to intimidate these communities, and to impose mining activities. I was personally a witness to how this company mobilized people to protest against my presence as [former] Minister of Energy and Mines at the time because my politics ran against this type of corruption. I remember receiving threats and having rocks thrown at me during a meeting in the city of Ibarra, in the province of Imbabura. We saw how they acted, and how they threatened the communities. Thanks to the struggles of these very communities…we managed to disarm these paramilitaries, and achieved some justice. But there are still many problems in the region. I believe it’s important to highlight these events and what they signify.923
In July 2010, we met with Gloria Chicaiza, Coordinator of the Mining Campaign at Acción Ecológica. A clinical psychologist by training, Chicaiza has been involved in a series of urban popular movements since the 1980s, and has been a member of Acción Ecológica since 1996. Through her work she has been accompanying communities involved in anti-mining struggles continuously since 1997. “Just as in much of the rest of Latin America,” she told us, “Ecuador is a place of expansion for the activities of mining companies. In our case, above all, the presence of junior Canadian companies is most obvious, companies that have imposed themselves on this scenario.”924 Chicaiza turned immediately to the case of alleged assassinations related to the Canadian junior Ascendant Copper, and pointed out that there was a law suit against the company in Canada for abuses carried out in Ecuador. Beginning in 2009, three villagers from Intag, represented by a progressive Canadian lawyer, attempted to sue Copper Mesa Mining Corporation (TSX:CUX; formerly Ascendant Copper) and the Toronto Stock Exchange for failing to take sufficient action to reduce the risk facing community leaders who have encountered violence and threats as a result of their opposition to copper mining. An Ontario court threw out the lawsuit in May 2010, stating that “silence from the Directors cannot establish the requisite personal nexus between the acts and omissions of the Directors and what allegedly occurred in Ecuador to the plaintiffs.”925 But Chicaiza stressed that Ascendant’s activities were not anomalous:
[There are] other companies that are active in the Condor mountain range in the South, engaging in a range of nefarious activities, which have almost no visibility. In the South you have Ecuacorriente, or Corriente Resources, that has shifted some of its concessions to a Chinese mining company. Kinross is there, and a number of other companies with lower profiles. In the case of the Intag valley, it was possible to trace responsibility to Ascendant Copper, but in much of the rest of the country it has been more difficult. Other companies’ activities are similar, but they haven’t been connected with dates and facts in the same way. But we have testimonies of the people that have been driven from their land, others who have been physically attacked. Their testimonies say that those responsible were working for these mining companies. There have been violent confrontations.
Chicaiza described a public relations strategy of divide and rule, of cooptation and the promotion of false dreams, whereby:
Canadian mining companies have the strategy of coming in, causing enormous conflicts, dividing communities, and creating illusions about the standards of their practices back in Canada that are not true. We’ve had indigenous Canadians visit us who have told us that indigenous people in Canada are worse off than indigenous people in this country. The Canadian state doesn’t even respect basic international conventions on indigenous rights; indigenous peoples have lost their own territories. But Canadian mining companies talk about the high standards that they live by back home, that they’re from the Global North, and that everything that happens in the North is better. The idea is to convince people that they obey rigid standards back home and that they will do so when they mine here. So they have come and have tried to invent this image so as to conceal the real face of these companies.
What is more, these companies receive “overwhelming diplomatic support” inside of Ecuador, through which the Canadian embassy has created for the mining companies what Chicaiza calls a “diplomatic shelter” consisting of constant resources and official ambassadorial backing for attempts to build support for mining companies within the affected communities. The companies “distribute money in these localities in order to neutralize and to overcome local resistance,” creating tremendous acrimony and social damage in the communities as a result. However, what is more important to note, according to Chicaiza, is that despite this resource-rich infrastructure of diplomatic support and monies to bribe communities, resistance has persisted:
In almost no community where there is a Canadian mining company have they been able to wipe out resistance altogether, in spite of their attempts to distribute money, in spite of their attempts to divide communities. There are attempts to criminalize communities, to bring activists to trial, targeting leaders of these movements, in an effort to decapitate the anti-mining movements. Charges are brought against indigenous and peasant activists who don’t have resources to defend themselves, and whose time is therefore tied up in these proceedings. This is all a sign from the companies that they won’t respect the demands that the communities have. These activities have generated grave levels of convulsion in the country. When a mining project is installed, the conflict starts. But we still have hope, as the communities in resistance do, that we can stop this activity, that the resistance will triumph, that these local models of development will triumph. There are highs and lows in the struggle.
Between 2000 and 2006, difficult and often invisible groundwork was being done by organizers such as Father Juan de la Cruz, and Gloria Chicaiza and Luis Suárez of Acción Ecológica, and grassroots organizations such as the Coordinadora Campesina Popular (Popular Peasant Coordinator), to link the localized, and sometimes isolated, conflicts in the North and South of Ecuador and build a cohesive anti-mining organization on a national scale that could have a political impact on the orientation of the state in this economic sector. In 2007, the Coordinadora Nacional por la Defensa de la Vida y la Soberanía (National Coordinator for the Defence of Life and Sovereignty) was formed as part of this effort, but because of its association with the traditionally top-down organizing of Maoism in Ecuador, it was viewed negatively by some other movements, such as the Movimiento Indígena Ecuatoriano (Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement) and quickly split and fragmented into various distinct anti-mining groupings. Other regional anti-mining organizations that emerged in this period included the Frente de Resistencia Sur a la Minería a Gran Escala (Resistance Front of the South against Large-Scale Mining), formed in 2007, and the Asamblea de los Pueblos (Assembly of Peoples, AP), formed in 2008.926 In spite of the failure of the various movements to cohere around a single national front of resistance, it was plainly evident that the anti-mining resistance was one of the most important movements developing in the country over this period, and was in a position to impact, at least initially, the character of the early years of the Correa government.
Crucially, the strength of these local struggles and regional organizations was evident in the Constituent Assembly process and the mining mandate that eventually passed within it, representing a significant thorn in the side of multinational mining capital generally, and Canadian mining capital specifically. We will return to the specificities of that mandate in a moment, after a brief aside on the activities of the Canadian embassy in the immediate aftermath of Correa’s election, and the lead up to the Constituent Assembly. The Canadian officials were aware that the anti-mining movement was growing in strength, in spite of its relative dispersion across different areas of the country.
Despite the violence surrounding the Canadian investment and the fierce opposition it has faced, the Canadian government nonetheless offered the industry its full support when the old mining law was thrown out by the Correa government and the industry’s future became the subject of a very heated national debate. As soon as Correa was elected on October 15, 2006—and before he assumed office—the embassy set to work meeting with mining executives and discussing “advocacy and interest protection.” The embassy initiated The Canadian Club of Investors after Correa’s election to demonstrate to the new government “that Canadian investors are united in Ecuador.”927 Canadian companies also established a new chapter of the Canada-Ecuador Chamber of Commerce in Cuenca which, according to the ambassador, will “better protect Canadian interests in mining.” In just three months following the election, thirty meetings were held between mining company executives and the ambassador and embassy staff as they prepared their strategy to confront the incoming government. Shortly thereafter, regular meetings between Canadians in Ecuador, from both the embassy and industry, and the new government representatives were initiated. Ambassador Christian Lapointe reported to Ottawa about a meeting with Correa in December “during which almost half of the discussion were [sic] dedicated to Canadian mining interests.” There was also a “long discussion” from this same period that the “HOM [Head of Mission] had with new Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade about this [mining].”928 On the CSR front—now a universal component of Canada’s attempt to present mining predation with a softer face—the Conscorcio Ecuatoriano para la Responsabilidad Social (Ecuadorian Consortium for Social Responsibility, CERES) was organized as a front composed of companies, industry organizations, and pro-mining NGOs.
With assistance from the embassy, it began promoting the fiction of the socially responsible and environmentally friendly character of the Canadian mining industry through public relations campaigns, including CSR seminars organized for mining staff and Ecuadorian officials.929 While the embassy played a central role in devising the Canadian response to the emerging developments on the ground in the country following Correa’s election, the Ecuador file clearly became a FAIT priority in Ottawa as well, which was in constant contact with embassy staff both to receive situational reports and to advise on working with mining executives—suggesting what kind of support that could be expected from the Canadian government, offering expertise in trade and investment law, making suggestions on public relations campaigns around CSR, and coordinating work between the embassy and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).930
The embassy’s initial fears were only reinforced by what it perceived as a possible threat to private property in a draft of the constitution prepared by the Assembly. The embassy reported with alarm that “private property is only guaranteed if it has a social objective”—apparently forgetting about the social character of Canadian mining investment it pronounces to anyone willing to listen.931 Canadian companies were also watching the Assembly closely and, as reported in Ecuador, trying to influence its decisions as mining policy was being discussed, leading the Assembly president to complain specifically about the pressure from the mining industry.932
With customary cynicism, this was also the first period in which the embassy, with support from Ottawa, brought an indigenous “representative” from Canada to promote Canadian mining interests by extolling the virtues of the practices of Canadian companies at home. An April 2007 wine and cheese presentation on mining for embassy staff, Ecuadorian officials, and mining executives, for example, featured indigenous representatives from Ecuador and Canada “who include responsible mining in their vision of economic development.”933 This was a tactic that would be repeated after the Constituent Assembly released its mining mandate in early 2008, upping the stakes in the fight around a new mining regime. Don Clarke from the Black River First Nation in Manitoba, travelled to Ecuador in 2007 soon after Correa’s election as part of the effort to demonstrate the social and environmental responsibility of Canadian mining, and the benefits that potentially await Ecuador’s indigenous communities should large-scale industrial Canadian mining be allowed to proceed. Clarke brought his upbeat message that mining can be good for indigenous peoples—a position contradicted by many indigenous peoples in Canada, whose participation in Ecuador was obviously not encouraged by the embassy or industry. As for concerns that Canadian companies represent a serious environmental threat, Clarke stressed that “the Canadian mining industry is committed to responsible mining,” and quoted Jerry Asp, a mining advocate from the Tahltan Nation in British Columbia who was brought to Guatemala in 2004 by the Canadian embassy to defend Canadian investors (and whose British Columbian office was subsequently occupied by elders from his community seeking his removal from power for selling out to corporate interests): “One of the biggest things,” Clarke quotes Asp as saying, “is our people hopefully will recognize they are being used by the environmental groups” who are “the modern missionary.”934
Perhaps the most striking signal that Canadian officials were correct to worry about the early dynamics of the Correa regime vis-à-vis the interests of Canadian mining capital in Ecuador, was the mining mandate issued by the Constituent Assembly on April 18, 2008. The mandate was passed in a period in which the anti-mining movement, albeit dispersed regionally and lacking a coherent national body, had clear political weight in the country, and was able to push the central features of the national dispute over multinational mining development to the centre stage of mainstream political debate, not least in the Constituent Assembly. Moreover, this was still a time in which the “mega-bloc” of the Left within the Constituent Assembly remained intact, and social movement allies such as Alberto Acosta, still Minister of Mines and Energy and President of the Constituent Assembly, and Mónica Chuji, Assembly member and President of the Working Group on Natural Resources and Biodiversity continued to exercise some power in terms of pulling the Correa administration leftward from the inside.935
In this setting, the mandate was passed, putting a moratorium on any new mining concessions and signaling that the government would re-establish control over many of the thousands of concessions that had been granted to multinational companies over the neoliberal period. According to the mandate, concessions that were located in ecologically fragile zones or protected areas or which had been acquired by companies that had not carried out requisite consultations with affected communities would be reclaimed by the state without compensation. The mandate also established that further legal reform was to be carried out with the intention of reversing any concessions that had been acquired through insider information by ex-functionaries of the Ministry of Energy and Mines and other politicians from the governments of the neoliberal period. It also suggested a cap whereby title holders would be restricted to a maximum of three concessions, and through this the prohibition of monopolies in the mining sector would be assured.
These far-reaching reforms led immediately to a fall in share value among the Canadian corporations that dominate the industry in the country.936 When the mandate was passed, scarcely 7 percent of the concessions that had been granted were in a phase of exploitation, with the remaining 93 percent still in various phases of speculation and exploration.937 The mandate was thus an attempt to normalize the activity of industrial mining that was to go ahead in the country, and to open up space for a wide-ranging national debate on its character. It called for the establishment of a state mining company with the capacity to intervene, regulate, and manage the sector, while investing in technologies that would limit future dependency on foreign multinationals.938
Thus the mandate seemed to indicate a fairly decisive victory for the anti-mining movements in terms of their ability to wrestle major structural reforms from the Correa government in potentially the most important component of the economy in coming years and decades. At this phase in the Correa government, moreover, the mandate was suggestive of the limitations of Canadian diplomatic intervention thus far, given that Canada was diametrically opposed to the contents of the mandate. The movements and the internal Left within the governing coalition, then, seemed to be on the rise, whereas the internal Right of the coalition, including Correa, as well as the various manifestations of Canadian imperial power, seemed to be on the wane. Unfortunately, this was but a fleeting expression of the balance of forces in the mining industry, particularly, but also in the political and economic sphere more generally, which was to be reversed fairly decisively over the year following the mandate.
Soon after the mandate was issued, Correa began to publicly reassure foreign private mining capital that their fundamental interests would be protected despite any appearances to the contrary.939 Correa began to distance himself rhetorically and politically from social movements, and escalated levels of state repression against sectors of the anti-mining movement. A simultaneous battle commenced against the internal Left of the ruling coalition, leading to the resignations of Acosta and Chují, as well as the collapse of the “mega-bloc.” Many of the central components of the mandate were not implemented, and a process of rushed legislation was set in motion to establish a new mining law. No truly national debate on the potential contents of the law and its relationship to the mandate and the constitution was facilitated by the Correa government and, indeed, vocal and visible opponents received the blunt end of the state’s club.940
Directed and supported in Ottawa by FAIT, CIDA, and NRCan, and working in concert with Canadian companies, the embassy set out immediately to defeat the Mining mandate and protect Canadian investors through a strategy of aggressive diplomatic intervention. “Canadian interests,” an embassy report notes following the issuance of the decree, “will be heavily affected by this decision.”941 The embassy, as the ambassador, Christian Lapointe, assuaged an IAMGOLD executive, was immediately “undertaking diplomatic actions at the highest level possible here in Ecuador.”942 A new law was to be written 180 days following the issuance of the mandate—an opening taken by the Canadians to reframe the debate around mining and challenge the push for stronger environmental protections and checks on the power of foreign capital that was occuring most stridently outside of the President’s office. As ambassador Lapointe wrote to Ottawa, the mandate appeared in his view to contradict Correa’s openness to “responsible” large-scale mining, suggesting that the President, while perhaps less compliant than preferred, could nonetheless be pressured to protect Canadian interests and contain those forces inside and outside his government advocating for more far-reaching reforms.
Likewise, Patrick Anderson, Chief Executive of Aurelian Resources, distinguished between Correa and a section of his party connected to the social movements, remarking that “it’s an extremely left-wing faction of the president’s party who have an anti-mining agenda.”943 Thus while the embassy defended Canadian mining publicly to Ecuadorians, it also spent considerable energy behind the scenes pressuring Correa and his ministers directly. Indeed, Correa became a strong—if never fully subservient—advocate of Canadian interests and, as Jennifer Moore and Teresa Velásquez argue, played a central role in advancing Canada’s agenda of presenting Canadian companies
as key investors who would help Ecuador realize its national objectives,…[while] any debate about asserting the country’s ability to choose a different economic model and move toward reducing dependency on extractive industries was squelched and its proponents characterized as turncoats: self-interested and infantile, subversive and manipulated by foreign interests.944
In fact, on the day of the mandate’s release Correa spoke with executives of Canadian companies and issued a press release that sought to placate supporters of mining while addressing those concerned about (but not outright opposed to) the consequences of large-scale projects. Correa’s public position in the face of the mandate echoed the PR line promoted by the embassy and industry: reaffirm a commitment to large-scale industrial mining while making reference to a commitment to social responsibility, and cite Canadian companies as exemplars of socially responsible mining, the record to the contrary notwithstanding.945 The embassy and industry meetings with Correa and his cabinet clearly influenced how the President responded to the mandate.
While the embassy and industry seemed alarmed by the issuance of the mandate, and were concerned for the future of Canadian interests, they clearly had prior knowledge of the strong possibility of a mandate; it was not a complete surprise, in other words. They had actually been discussing the potential reforms to the mining regime with the Ministry of Mines and Energy months before the mandate was even passed, and had been given reassurances that the concessions of several companies would be unaffected.946 The ambassador and the embassy trade representatives began monthly meetings in March—a few weeks before the mandate was passed—with Ecuador’s Vice-Minister of International Commerce to discuss trade and investment relations, and Lapointe met with Canadian company representatives to discuss strategy for these meetings.947 These pre-mandate meetings were a proactive response, part of the diplomatic strategy going back to before Correa’s inauguration, toward establishing a pattern of firm engagement with Correa and other officials.
The meetings continued after the mandate was decreed. During the weeks immediately following the mandate’s release, Correa, his advisors, and representatives from the Ministry of Mines and Energy met a number times with mining company representatives and Canadian ambassador Christian Lapointe. Formal diplomatic letters were also sent by Canada’s Ministers for International Trade, Foreign Affairs, Natural Resources, and Finance, and the ambassador explicitly called for the Correa government to defend Canadian investment.948 In this series of meetings, the Canadians made demands for clarity on the future of their investments, reminded their interlocutors of the general importance of Canadian investment to Ecuador’s fragile economy, and stressed the rights of Canadian investors under the bilateral FIPA.949 The mandate, they put forward bluntly, created a “total loss of credibility by our investors in Ecuador.”950 During one of the meetings Correa, according to an Ecuadorian official, counselled the Canadians to “stay calm” as the government develops its new mining law, and invited mining leaders to participate in the National Mining Dialogue (established for Ecuadorians to discuss a new mining law) in late April—a goal the embassy was discussing with Ottawa prior to the issuing of the mining mandate.951
The embassy and industry also accompanied their aggressive defense of Canadian interests during meetings with Ecuadorian government officials with the reminder of Canada’s commitment to social responsibility, which Correa could use as a selling point with his supporters who were more ambivalent than he towards mining. This is a theme that came up repeatedly following the mandate, with every opportunity taken to influence national debate and government thinking. The National Mining Dialogue, for instance, bringing together Ecuadorian government officials, environmental NGOs, and industry representatives provided an opportunity in a national-level formal process, with Correa’s invitation, to position Canada as a socially and environmentally friendly ally of Ecuadorian development sensitivies. The Canadians, as made clear in communications between the embassy and Ottawa, were hoping to leverage their experience with the concept of CSR and the National Roundtable process in Canada—called by the Harper government in the face of a growing push for binding legislation to hold Canadian companies responsible for their practices abroad—to be able to insert themselves into the debate in Ecuador in general and the National Mining Dialogue in particular as people that care about the environment and have a track record in dialoguing with local indigenous communities and environmentalists.
The fact that the National Roundtable was largely condemned by environmentalists in Canada as a cover for inaction was, of course, ignored by Canadians in Ecuador—nor was it broached by Correa.952 At the same time, the Responsible Mining Council, another creation of the industry with the support of the embassy, was “in constant dialogue with the Government of Ecuador,”953 “in an effort,” the embassy reported to Ottawa, “to brand Canadian companies working in Ecuador as responsible and respectful of human rights and the environment.”954 The embassy also organized CSR seminars bringing together Canadian companies and Ecuadorian officials, and, according to a FAIT report on mining in Ecuador, NRCan “sent video material which highlights Canadian mining companies operating in sensitive environments and success stories on CSR practices in Canada.”955
Despite the undeniably terrible track record of Canadian mining corporations in Ecuador, Correa, who was open to Canadian influence from the time of his first election, took up the mantra pushed by the embassy and industry and began to frame Canadian investors as the leading edge of social and environmental responsibility. This was an important strategy given that there was clearly widespread concern amongst Ecuadorians of the potential environmental harms associated with the practices of these companies, including among, importantly from Correa’s perspective, those not already outrightly opposed to large-scale mining.
As noted above, the mandate period initiated the first wave of a pattern of frequent trips to Ecuador by high-level Canadian cabinet ministers as well as representatives from state ministeries. Minister of Trade, Michael Fortier, travelled to Ecuador in mid-August 2008, according to embassy reports, to “meet with key decision makers” from Ecuador and demonstrate “support for…Canadian mining investment in the region.”956 Fortier also held a roundtable with company leaders to learn what “the Canadian government [can] do to further support trade with Ecuador.”957 The company executives responded that continued visits by Canadian political leaders would be an important tool. Fortier’s meetings with various Ecuadorian political leaders and constant reiteration of the need for clarity for investors, of the rights of Canadian capital under international law and bilateral treaties, and of the socially and environmentally responsible nature of mining companies “sent a strong message to Ecuadorian officials that Canadian companies are not alone in their commercial interests in Ecuador, as the GoC [Government of Canada] stands in solidarity with them.”958
The Director General for Latin America and the Caribbean and former ambassador to Guatemala, James Lambert (whose mining advocacy we discuss in the chapter on Guatemala), followed Fortier to Ecuador in December 2008 to meet with officials from Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Minister of Mines and Energy, the Presidential advisor on mining, and mining executives.959 As their counterparts did in Central America, the embassy in Quito used the annual meetings in Toronto of the Prospectors and Developers Association to strengthen relations with key decision makers in the local country, inviting the Ministers for Mining and the Environment to accompany them to Toronto in the spring of 2008 in the midst of a heated national debate.
It was not just representatives from FAIT that visited Ecuador after the mandate to push for its defeat. Included among those travelling from Canada were Health Canada officials, who, along with some indigenous peoples from Canada they sponsored, participated in a conference organized by Health Canada addressing indigenous health determinants in Ecuador in the fall of 2008. The trip was financially supported by the embassy.960 Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) also played an important role in what amounted to a “whole-of-government” approach to protecting Canadian capital against the wishes of local communities in Ecuador.961 One Canadian company, EcuaCorriente—or, in the words of the embassy, “one of our largest mining clients”—sent an Ecuadorian-based executive to Ottawa in the fall of 2008, which included a meeting with NRCan officials, in order to help the latter “get a better sense of the situation” in the Andean country and “how GoC can support [the industry] from Ottawa.”962
Meanwhile, tensions mounted between supporters of the mining mandate, on the one hand, and the industry and the Correa presidency, on the other, as the National Mining Dialogue proceeded. In this context, the embassy and industry gave close watch to their Ecuadorian opponents. Activities of the anti-mining organizations, including demonstrations and even public forums (such as one featuring a documentary by Canadian filmmaker Malcolm Rogge) were noted and discussed by embassy staff. The embassy discussed with mining companies different possibilities of how to respond to a CONAIE mobilization in October 2008 that demanded Canadian companies leave the country.963 Canadian companies, with the support of the embassy and the Correa government, helped to organize pro-mining demonstrations in several cities “to create sympathy and support from the people.”964 Correa spoke at a pro-mining demonstration on May 6, 2008 in front of the Presidential Palace shortly after the mandate was decreed, defending Canadian mining projects as “responsible.” Thousands of people were allegedly bused in from around the country in a rally touting the jobs and economic development offered by the industry. The pro-mining demonstrations were part of what the embassy called a “pro-image campaign,” which also included “an aggressive advertisement campaign, in favour of the development of mining in Ecuador.”965
The aggressive, all-out drive against the mandate by the embassy, Canadian cabinet leaders, and the various institutions of the Canadian state, provided mining companies with considerable access to Ecuadorian decision-makers, as noted above. But this was not simply a medium for lobbying; the industry gained the opportunity, during both the Mining Dialogue and, more importantly, its private meetings with Ecuadorian cabinet ministers and mining ministry officials, to provide direct input on the drafting of the new mining law. As one embassy report notes, “Company’s [sic] reiterated their strong participation in the drafting of the new mining legislation and will work closely with the Ministry of Mines and Energy of Ecuador on this front.”966 As we discuss below, the new law that emerged from the heated national debate following the mandate was not considered a full success by the industry or embassy. During the writing process, mining executives expressed concerns to Correa and officials with the Ministry of Mines and Energy (who did not appear to be consistently on the same page as Correa in terms of how stringent the new law should be towards foreign investors) over perceived “ambiguity,” particularly as it related to the potential arbitrariness of the tax regime, requirements to restart projects on previously-owned concessions and its possible unconstitutionality vis-à-vis the new constitution (the exact nature of this latter concern is redacted in the embassy report; anti-mining activists have themselves pointed to the conflict between the mining law and the rights of nature in the constitution and the water law, which they argue trump the rights of foreign investors).967 Nevertheless, the law clearly represented a major advance for the Canadians over the mandate and, by extension, a significant setback for the anti-mining and environmental movements. The mandate was ultimately defeated, and a new law was submitted to Correa by the Ministry of Mines and Energy eighty dates following the issuance of the mandate—one hundred days before the deadline.968
On January 12, 2009, a new mining law was hurriedly signed by Correa with the support of the Alianza País majority in an interim Legislative and Oversight Commission.969
Without doubt, the new mining law represented a break with the orthodox neoliberal juridical framework that it replaced. The state returned to the industry with a more elaborate regulatory role, and a National Mining Company was established. The new law required environmental impact studies to be reviewed by the Ministry of Environment before any concessions would be granted. It also required companies to receive an environmental license from the Ministry before proceeding with exploration and exploitation. Companies must provide annual environmental reports to the state, and mining concessions can be revoked if they are shown to cause negative social, cultural, or environmental harm. In terms of the royalty and taxation regime governing the industry, the law restored royalties as a legal concept in the industry, with the state to receive no less than 5 percent of the value of sales of minerals in royalties, with 60 percent of those royalties earmarked for local development projects run by municipal governments. In effect, royalty rates will need to be negotiated with the government on a case-by-case basis.
In addition, a range of separate tax increases were introduced that are to provide the state with a greater share of the revenue generated from mineral extraction, particularly in the case of extraordinary profits.970 Included in the new taxation system is a 15 percent net profit sharing mechanism for workers and social projects, on top of income tax (25 percent) and value added tax (12 percent) on export activities. Concessions are also limited to five thousand hectares and contracts are capped at twenty-five years in duration.
However, the new law does not correspond with several environmental, pluricultural, and social aspects of the new constitution, and falls far short of the guiding principles of the mining mandate that preceded it. The law is weak on limiting monopolization of concessions in few hands, on the socio-environmental regulation of the mining industry, and allows for little participation of affected communities in mining processes, while simultaneously granting considerable discretionary power to the President. It is vital, too, that the law does not oblige companies or the government to obtain previous free and informed consent from affected communities before industrial mining projects are put in place.971 In a sign of the limits of the reforms embedded in the new law, it is important to point out that it was optimistically received by various Canadian mining companies with investments in the country, and has spurred ongoing opposition from social movements.
The Canadian attitude to the law is summed up by an embassy statement, which suggested the following: “Although not an ideal mining law in its current form, it does open the sector to commercial mining;” with the President of the Chamber of mines adding that the “story must begin somewhere.”972 Soon after the final text of the mining law was published, Correa had lunch with Lapointe, after which he declared that “it’s impressive all the things we could achieve with Canada…a country that has a history of peace and development.”973 By March 13, 2009, suspensions on company activities that had been halted by the mandate were lifted, although companies were told that they needed updated environmental approval before moving ahead—a process that has been prone to long delays in some cases.974 Considering the basic satisfaction of multinational mining capital, taken together with the wider political turn to the Right by the Correa regime following the President’s re-election in 2009, and again in 2013—including public admonishments of the anti-mining, indigenous, and environmental movements and repression when necessary—it is safe to say that the principal progressive components of the mandate, driven by anti-mining activists and their allies in the early period of the Correa administration, have been defeated. Canadian diplomacy on the part of Canadian mining capital in the country played no small part in this defeat.
In short, the defeat of the mining mandate was a victory for the Canadian state and capital, though the new law was far from ideal from the Canadians’ point of view. While clearly wanting Canadian investment, Correa could not simply ignore critics of the industry both inside and outside of his government, some of whom supported his candidacy; nor was Correa willing to totally prostrate himself to Ottawa and Canadian investors. Thus the law, while a setback for supporters of the mandate, does not fully conform to neoliberal standards. And a number of companies were still concerned about the lack of clarity regarding taxes and environmental permits, which would have an impact on the individual negotiations they embarked on with the government in order to get permission to restart their projects. As a consequence, the aggressive diplomatic push that commenced with Correa’s election continued as Canada intervened to ensure that Canadian “companies…have a stable and transparent investment environment in which to carry out their operations.”975 Given the recent history of the relationship between the embassy and industry and Correa, the Canadians felt confident that, however unsatisfactory the new law was, they could nevertheless use Correa to continue to steer the mining regime in a responsible direction. Following Correa’s re-election in April 2009 the embassy observes in a report to Ottawa that “Correa has shown support for Canadian mining investment” and that, given the problems it has faced in the region more broadly, with Correa “Canada has a unique strategic regional opportunity in Ecuador.”976 This should put to rest any belief that the Correa government poses a radical alternative or anti-imperialist development model.
The day after the mining law was passed, in fact, ambassador Lapointe, keeping up his due diligence in support of Canadian investment, had a lunch meeting with Correa.977 The lunch meeting led to a meeting two weeks later in February between Correa, several of his cabinet ministers, and Canadian investors to discuss their future investments in the country, and the yet-to-be written regulations needed to implement the new mining law. (The major mining companies were represented, plus SNC Lavalin, AECON Construction, and Canadian Commercial Corporation.) This seems to have led to direct Canadian participation in the development of the regulations. According to a subsequent report by an official with NRCan, IAMGOLD, “through the Ecuador Mining Council, is working in cooperation with the relevant Ministries towards the preparation of the necessary regulations.”978 Two of the biggest issues with the law that the industry was trying to address in the regulations was the need for a clearer and, in their view, fairer tax structure that does not impede their profit making beyond the acceptable neoliberal bounds, and the protection of the concessions of the many Canadian exploration companies that the Correa government felt had been granted without accountability to the Ministry of Mines and Energy by previous administrations. These points would continue to be a focus of the embassy and industry in meetings with Ecuadorian cabinet ministers into the summer of 2009.979
The efforts of the embassy and industry to weaken the new mining regime immediately following the enactment of the new law were buttressed by Harper’s cabinet and representatives of FAIT and NRCan, who continued their active intervention into Ecuadorian domestic politics. Stockwell Day, Minister of International Trade, travelled to Ecuador in August 2009 and met mining executives, who told him firsthand of their concerns around getting permits and operations approved since the new law came into effect, complaining about the lack of rule of law. He also met with the Ecuadorian Vice President, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister for Mines and Petroleum, and the Mayor of Quito to “reinforce the importance of a clear, stable, and transparent investment climate for Canadian mining investors and their urgent need to receive authorization to resume exploration activities.”980 Day’s trip was followed that October with a visit to Ottawa and Toronto by a dozen officials of Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who met with FAIT and NRCan representatives in Ottawa and representatives of the mining industry in Toronto, and by several high-level meetings in Ecuador involving Canadian and Ecuadorian cabinet ministers, senior Ecuadorian civil servants, and Canadian executives.981
Minister of State and key Cabinet pointman on Honduras following the 2009 coup against Zelaya, Peter Kent, also paid a visit to Ecuador in August 2010, which, according to the ambassador, “served as a valuable catalyst for Embassy access to key players.”982 Kent met mining and Quiport executives; representatives of Citizen Participation Organization, which is a watchdog of the Ecuadorian government’s media policy (one of the criticisms often leveled at Correa’s government at home and abroad is its ostensible attack on media independence); and the Latin American Centre for Political Studies, a democracy promotion organization operating in Ecuador. He held a roundtable with Canadian companies to discuss the political situation in Ecuador.983 Kent also met bilaterally with Correa in May 2010 during a visit to Buenos Aires to discuss “the benefits of Canadian investment” in Ecuador, as well as with Ecuador’s Minister of International Relations in June during the OAS General Assembly in Lima, again to discuss Canadian investment interests.984 Finally, in September, Canadian Foreign Affairs minister, Lawrence Cannon, met with Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Commerce and Integration at the U.N. to again discuss the status of mining in the Andean nation.985
PDAC conferences also continued to offer an important opportunity to influence key Ecuadorian policymakers. The embassy stepped up its support for the Ecuadorian delegation for the 2009 edition of the annual celebration of Canadian mining, bringing twenty-six delegates to “strengthen relationships” between the industry and Ecuadorian officials. The Ecuadorian delegates discussed the new mining law with mining executives and officials from NRCan and FAIT, including the Director General for Latin America and the Caribbean and former ambassador to Guatemala, James Lambert.986 In 2010, the Quito embassy brought along the Vice-Minister of Mines, a lawyer from the Vice-Ministry, and a pro-mining indigenous Shuar representative who met with FAIT and NRCan delegates to discuss building support in indigenous communities. A Kinross representative, writing to the Quito embassy, noted that PDAC 2010 is “a really key opportunity for us.”987 According to an embassy report from the conference, the Ecuadorian government representatives said that the government will authorize new mining exploration—which, as noted, was a main Canadian concern—“at a slow pace, in order to avoid…social and political confrontations from many fronts including the Ecuadorian Indigenous Conferederation CONAIE.”988
The Ecuadorian delegation and Canadian and industry representatives also used the PDAC gathering to discuss direct Canadian assistance for the development of the new industrial mining regime through NRCan. This includes training Ecuador’s Ministry of Natural and Non-Renewable Resources staff, and the creation of technical training programs for a new mining workforce, including for mechanical and civil engineers, geologists, industrial mainentance and mechanics, and production workers.989 This discussion around direct support for the development of the mining industry continued in Ecuador as the embassy and industry continued to push for a clearer permitting process for Canadian companies.
In July 2010, representatives of the Canadian industry’s environmental front, the Responsible Mining Council of Ecuador, met with embassy staff. According to an embassy report, the meeting involved “high level officials from Ecuadorian Ministries,” and discussion included, “the needs of the Ecuadorian mining industry for labour and training,” and the “national training plan,” as well as the “capacity building needs within the Ministries of Environment and Water,” which are central to the process of licensing companies and permitting them to proceed with exploration and exploitation. These needs were then passed on to Correa.990 The embassy, mining company executives, and FAIT officials in Ottawa also discussed bringing in people from NRCan and the Canadian Environmental Agency to train Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment and Mining staff.991 The University of British Columbia had already entered into a partnership with the Universidades del Azuay and Cuenca for a mining geology diploma, which, as the embassy’s trade commissioner commented to a mining executive, is important for companies’ “future needs for skilled human resources.”992
As was the case during the mandate period, Canadian First Nation “representatives” were once again used to stump for Canadian mining capital. At this point in the mining debate, Correa publicly heralded Canadian mining’s relations with indigenous peoples in Canada as part of his Canadian-CSR propaganda pitch to those Ecuadorians still wavering on large-scale mining. In early 2009, Correa reflected in a radio interview, clearly echoing sentiments undoubtedly expressed by the embassy and industry, that
due to the experience Canada has with responsible mining, the first to have benefitted are the ancestral peoples which is why I ask their ambassador to bring representatives of those ancient peoples to give their testimony and show the fallacy of those who lead certain radical groups that (try to) speak for all but do not represent anybody.993
The implication of course is that the “radical groups” in Ecuador are both mistaken and irrational in their opposition, as their indigenous counterparts in Canada support and benefit from Canadian mining. The trip to which Correa was referring involved Glen Nolan, Chief of the Missanabie Cree, who has a long history of involvement in mining and would become PDAC’s first indigenous president. On the occasion, Nolan stressed Canada’s and the industry’s commitment to CSR.994 The embassy also organized a trip to Canada for Ecuadorian Mining Ministry officials to meet with Canadian counterparts and pro-mining indigenous groups. They asked Kinross if they had a mine in Canada near an indigenous group that would be “a good example” of relations with indigenous communities: Kinross replied that, unfortunately, they did not have operating mines in Canada.995
Furthermore, the embassy dangled the carrot of badly-needed infrastructural support in exchange for greater security for mining companies. Short on investment capital options in the wake of its refusal to payback a relatively small amount of international foreign debt, the Correa government was unable to attain the necessary financing for its growing infrastructural needs on its own. One request for infrastructural investment and credit made to the ambassador during a meeting to which he was invited by Ecuador’s Deputy Minister of International Trade came, Lapointe comments, “now that President Correa is delivering on his promise of a new mining law and opening of the sector.” But not fully satisfied with the new law and the Deputy Minister’s plea that, in the words of Lapointe, “the President delivered on his part of the deal,” the ambassador “repeatedly stated that resolution of our mining company concerns must be seen before any discussions can begin” and demanded that “the Ministry of Mines re-establish a dialogue with all [i.e., exploration companies too] Canadian companies as a soon as possible.” The ambassador concluded in his report to Ottawa “that Ecuador would be increasingly dependent on the mining sector, and had limited options concerning partners and financing.”996 Canada also used the opportunity of a discussion on a possible loan to Ecuador at the Inter-American Development Bank to publicly chastize the country. Although ultimately supporting the IADB loan, it raised concerns about Ecuador’s respect for foreign investment and whether it is economically responsible enough to be granted loans. (Moreover, this is not the only case in which Canada has used multilateral aid loans as an opportunity to punish, or threaten to punish, a poor country that has not acted responsibly [in the eyes of Canadian government and industry] vis-à-vis Canadian mining companies. Another of many possible examples is Canada’s attempt to stop the Paris Club from writing down a portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s debt in 2009 and 2010.)997
The concern Canadian companies harboured about the mining law and its unpredictable tax regime proved well-placed when the Ecuadorian government declared in 2011 that it intended to push for higher royalty rates on projects than the minimum of 5 percent required in the new law.998 The Ecuadorian government’s position was behind Andrew Shisko’s (who replaced Christian Lapointe as ambassador) rebuke of the mining tax regime in an interview on national radio as one of the most expensive in the world.999 The government’s position prompted Kinross, which had received both environmental and water permits in 2009 but still had to negotiate its tax commitments, to denounce the tax regime and to refuse to sign an agreement with the government to start its Fruta del Norte project. The company complained that under the new tax regime it would have to pay just over half of its post-production income in taxes and royalties, and if the price of gold were to rise above US$1,700/ounce, 70 percent of the extra (or windfall) earnings would be collected by the government. Deciding that such taxation was excessive—in a context in which it faced financial problems involving a significant writedown on a major African investment—its CEO, Tye Burt, threatened the company “won’t proceed there [in Ecuador] unless we have a better economic deal.” Ecuador’s Minister of Mines and Energy, Wilson Pastor, responded by publicly declaring that Kinross was unreasonable and no deal could be concluded.1000 However, Correa himself suggested that Kinross’s demands were “reasonable,” and supported a legal reform in August 2012 that delays taxes until after a company has earned back its initial investment and establishes a maximum threshold on royalties, the lack of which had been a major concern of Kinross and other companies.1001
Several years after the mining mandate, and with a new law in place, the Canadians, as we argued above, have had important victories. The more radical stance toward Canadian investors in the indigenous and environmental movements, which received expression in the mandate, has been, for the time being at least, contained. And Correa, who was never in the radical camp (despite statements critical of mining during his first campaign and halting a couple Canadian projects early in his first mandate) but whose nationalist inclinations represented a real uncertainty for Canada, was pushed decisively in favour of Canadian capital in the context of Canada’s full-spectrum diplomatic assault on Ecuador. Questions lingered regarding the restarting of concessions, the establishment of new contracts and the windfall tax, and these uncertainties have engendered moments of tension between the Ecuadorian government and Canadian capital and the embassy, which, to be sure, would have preferred a more unambiguously neoliberal mining law with lower and standardized taxes. Continuing investor angst regarding the new political context in Ecuador has been expressed in the decisions of several mining companies. EcuaCorriente sold its assets to the Chinese Tongling Non-Ferrous Metals in 2009. In June 2013, after two years of negotiations and still no deal, Kinross finally decided to walk away from the country, exasperated and unwilling to accept the terms of the windfall tax. In June 2012, IAMGOLD announced that it sold its Quimsacocha project to Canadian junior company, INV Metals. Delays with the Ecuadorian government and political risks were cited as the reason for the sale by IAMGOLD.
However, in its deal with INV, IAMGOLD will actually get 40 to 45 percent ownership of the junior company, suggesting that it “is downloading all its Ecuador risk to a junior while maintaining a hefty stake in what could be a profitable mining project if it gets developed.”1002 A large number of Canadian exploration companies also remain. If this signals anything, it is that however uncertain it may have been in recent years for Canadians, and however much the Correa government makes recourse to nationalist rhetoric, these things were not perceived as perilous threats to a significant segment of Canadian capital, thanks in large part to the aggressive intervention by the embassy, Ottawa, and the industry itself.1003 With the mandate defeated and a new law in place, a Kinross executive observed in 2009 that the government had “clarified the mining law very significantly…[and] sets the framework quite clearly for future development.”1004 The Correa government has also publicly displayed its ongoing support for large-scale private mining initiatives with the deployment of security forces against anti-mining opponents after complaints by the industry. In the fall of 2010, a Kinross executive used his connections to “inform authorities about the extent of informal mining taking place…for authorities to take the appropriate decision.”1005 Correa ultimately dispatched two thousand soldiers to El Dorado in the province of Zamora after a group of indigenous artisanal miners—“illegal” miners in the words of the embassy—erected a blockade against Kinross concessions. The embassy, in a report to Ottawa, suggests happily that Correa’s aggressive response “has demonstrated clearly that the Ecuadorian government is increasingly serious about developing and protecting the mining industry.”1006 In 2011, Correa dispatched the military to Esmeraldas province in the northwestern part of the country to forcefully stop artisanal gold mine operations, and the military blew up equipment belonging to these small-scale miners in the process.1007 In the end, Correa’s Ecuador is open to large-scale transnational mining; it is only the cut of the profit that the Ecuadorian government is seeking which Canadians find objectionable. Ultimately, while the Correa government is trying to squeeze Canadian companies for a bigger slice of the profit pie, Correa is not a threat to their overall interests. Instead, the biggest danger facing Canadian investors is grassroots community resistance.
THE SANCTITY OF FOREIGN INVESTMENTS
Another problem for Canadian capital regarding investment predictability and stability—and a reminder that Correa can only be trusted so far—came when the Correa government informed Canada that it was withdrawing from their Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA) on October 30, 2010. The Canada-Ecuador FIPA came into force in 1997, almost a decade before Correa’s election. Ecuador had previously announced the termination of thirteen of its Bilateral Investment Treaties (the more common name for what Canada calls FIPAs) in 2009, arguing that since their dispute arbitrations take place at the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington, they violate the new constitution which stipulates that Ecuadorian laws cannot be adjudicated outside of South America. Under terms of the FIPA, Ecuador can withdraw one year after formally announcing its intention to do so.
Canada treated the announcement not as a formal declaration but as an informal expression of the intention to eventually do so. Ecuador’s musing about withdrawing from the Treaty, at a time when uncertainty of a new mining law was swirling around Canadian investors, predictably sparked more frustration and pressure from Canada. During his visit in August 2010 to discuss Canadian investment more generally, Kent reminded his Ecuadorian interlocutors that Canada expects the Correa government to respect the FIPA. In a letter to the Ecuadorian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Guayaquil, Ambassador Shisko stressed that the possible end of the bilateral investment treaty “is causing profound concern in Canada. A stable and transparent investment environment is fundamental for the success of Canadian investment in Ecuador”’— a point which he has repeated in the Ecuadorian media.1008 In March 2012, the Vice Minister for the Americas, Jon Allen, travelled to Ecuador to meet with Ecuadorian officials and stress the importance of the FIPA to Canada, and came away from his meetings, after declaring the potential commitment of more Canadian investment in natural resources and hydroelectricity, confident that the treaty would not be cancelled.1009
In 2005, before Correa was elected, CIDA decided to close the bilateral program (the last funded program wrapped up in 2010) when the Liberal government began to concentrate aid on a smaller group of countries. The Harper government continued with the concentrated aid focus and shifted its attention towards the Andes, though they did not include Ecuador in the revamped structure. Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru were targeted instead because they were identified as having governments amenable to free trade, and aid policy was seen as a way of helping to advance that agenda.1010 The original Liberal decision to end bilateral aid to Ecuador was initially left untouched by the Conservatives and was apparently viewed as unproblematic by CIDA itself. As one of many examples of the politicization of Canadian aid policy, however, the termination of CIDA’s bilateral aid program became a point of concern and discussion amongst officials in CIDA, FAIT, and the mining industry after Correa’s election, and particularly after Correa actually requested greater developmental aid from Canada. The discussion centred on whether the bilateral program could be revived, and if not, given that a decision to terminate had already been set in motion, what if anything could take its place.
While some form of aid was identified as important to supporting the expansion of Canadian capital in the country, there was significant dicussion on whether CIDA could be used as a way of responding to threats to the mining industry and supporting Canadian companies by promoting Canadian-CSR “capacity building” or “indigenous exchanges” between the two countries.1011 The pressure to rethink CIDA’s Ecuador orientation came from FAIT, which has been in more direct and regular contact with Canadian investors in Ecuador, to push for reinstatement of the bilateral program in some fashion, whereas CIDA officials were more hestitant given they had already begun the process of winding the program down. Bilateral aid of some kind, according to FAIT officials, “could be a positive result to support our trade interests.”1012 Ultimately, however, bilateral programming was not restored, as the concentrated aid monies had already been budgeted and CIDA’s bilateral aid envelope was already terminated. The discussion proceeded to how to make up for this gap.
CIDA officials noted that multilateral funding to Ecuador should be highlighted in discussion with the Ecuadorian government, but FAIT representatives clearly were unsatisfied with this reponse. There was also discussion of increasing the funding for the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (budgeted through CIDA but disbursed through the embassy). One suggestion discussed was to double it to C$200,000 (still a very small amount relative to what a Country of Focus program would entail) to “allow for more strategic engagement.”1013
When the Vice Minister for the Americas, Jon Allen, travelled to Ecuador in March 2012 to discuss the FIPA, he also suggested Canadian aid could continue outside the bilateral CIDA framework to help develop the country’s mining and environmental regulatory system.1014 In fact, this project was being discussed by FAIT and CIDA officials as early as 2009, when they saw an opening after Correa made some overtures to fostering stronger bilateral relations with Canada—the Canadians identified it as an opportunity to influence mining policy under the framework of CSR development.1015 In the meantime, CIDA did finance an FDI-promotion course for CORPEI led by an ex-Canadian diplomat.1016 CORPEI is a Guayaquil-based organization that builds relations between the government and private capital with the aim of promoting foreign investment and Ecuador’s further insertion into the international market.
This chapter has sought to provide a mapping of the systematic role of Canadian imperialism in seeking to undermine any and all extension of meaningful democracy in Ecuador in an effort to protect the considerable investments of Canadian corporations in mining and other sectors, as well as to protect the longer term strategic interests of Canadian geopolitics in Ecuador and South America more generally. Moreover, we have tried to convey the complexity of the present political conjuncture in the country, as Correa distances himself from the demands of popular social movements while, simultaneously, entering into conflict with imperialism on a number of fronts. The Canadian embassy in Quito and the decision-makers in Ottawa, alongside and in conjunction with representatives of Canadian corporations with operations in Ecuador, have attempted to navigate this complexity in such a way as to ensure the best of possible outcomes for Canadian capital.
Correa is clearly not their preferred interlocutor, but the Canadians have recognized that his administration is amenable to meeting most of their key, underlying needs in the area of mining, as well as in other sectors of the economy. While Canada has been unable to secure the entirety of its desires in the Ecuadorian economy and political outcomes, this chapter has revealed the extent to which Ottawa was capable of helping turn around many of the anti-neoliberal components of the mining mandate and establishing a new legal terrain in which its companies can continue to profit. However, Canadian power is hardly omnipotent or immutable in the country. The biggest threat to Canadian imperialism in Ecuador, and therefore also the most important reservoir of hope, remains the ebb and flow of anti-mining resistance which, despite concerted efforts of repression and cooptation from on high, has not been successfully tamed.