In order to preserve it as a point of reference for those who may also want to comment on the now withdrawn piece, we are shifting the latter to the COHA forum where it can temporarily still be found. In deciding to ultimately take down and rework the piece, we had in mind the importance of our achieving the necessary fidelity to the facts that we would hope characterizes COHA’s research.
The COHA staff and its body of intern researchers spend many hours of our time trying to meet the expectations and research standards that we have set for ourselves and in order to serve the equally high standards of our readers. Occasionally, erroneous conclusions get through the various filters and other quality controls that we have set up to safeguard the accuracy of our research. The multiple mistakes in scholarship that populated the piece that we ran and which we are now officially removing, were inexcusable and must be quickly corrected. By running Guillaume Long’s forceful rebuttal to the shortcomings of COHA’s research on Ecuador, we hope to begin the remedial process. The publication of COHA’s own heavily revised piece will follow in the next few days.
The following letter from Guillaume Long was received on December 9, 2009:
Dear COHA,
I am unfortunately compelled to write to you regarding the article “Ecuador’s Flirtations with Democracy: Correa Does it Somewhat Differently”. I wish to call your attention to the fact that this article is poorly researched, empirically flawed and deeply reactionary.
The researcher displays an extremely poor understanding of Ecuadorian history, making several unforgivable factual mistakes, which demonstrate anything but fluency in Ecuadorian historiography.
1. The “four successive democratically-elected presidents (Carlos Alberto Arroyo del Río, José María Velasco Ibarra, C.J. Arosemena Tola, and Galo Plaza)” the author describes, were nothing of the sort. Arroyo del Río was elected in what were largely regarded as fraudulent elections. He was toppled in 1944 by the Revolución Gloriosa (also known as the May Revolution). Velasco Ibarra, his successor, was therefore not elected. He was himself toppled by a general called Mancheno, in turn replaced by C.J. Arosemena Tola as interim president. C.J. Arosemena was therefore not elected either. The first president elected after this unrest was Galo Plaza in 1948. There was relative political stability until 1961. Plaza thus marked the start of democratic stability and not the end of it, as the above quote suggests. So wrong on all fronts.
2. There has never been a “President Aguilera” in Ecuador. The full name of the president the author refers to was Jaime Roldós Aguilera (1979-1981). If the author had even a basic understanding of Spanish and Hispanic culture, she would know that the surname of the President was Roldós, and not his second surname Aguilera (which nobody in Ecuador would understand actually referred to him). A party named after him, admittedly distorting his legacy, was named the Partido Roldosista Ecuatoriano. For any person familiar with Latin America, these kinds of mistakes seriously erode a text’s standards and credibility.
3. The military regime of 1972-1979, was in fact divided into two very distinct military regimes. The first (1972-1976) was more nationalist, developmentalist and unaligned. The second (1976-1979) was more conservative and elite-based. No knowledge of that was displayed in the text.
Wikipedia springs to mind, maybe some other dubious websites, but no serious research.
The title “Ecuador’s Flirtations with Democracy: Correa Does it Somewhat Differently” implies from the outset that the article deals with Correa’s government. But this is not the case. After two very vague introductory paragraphs, the article drops the topic of Correa entirely, and gets lost in an imprecise historical narrative full of factual errors, some of which I have highlighted above.
The little which is said about Correa is a mere reproduction of stereotypes of the kind easily found in third-rate conservative press and not of the analytical standards espoused in other COHA pieces.
The article nebulously associates the Correa government with corruption. Although the association is not clearly made, it is implicit. Any close scrutiny of the Correa administration will show that the fight against corruption is a high priority on the government’s agenda. Some thoughts regarding whether this is being achieved would have been interesting.
The rest is simply an amalgam of the sort of accusations usually associated to Colombia’s anti-Correa media campaign and to the Uribe government’s foreign policy strategy, which have no real grounding. These are the kind of rumours one would like to see a serious research institute contest, or, at the very least, investigate. The following sentence is revealing of the author’s reproduction of easy clichés:
“Ecuador has been accused of harboring terrorists operating against Colombia, threatening to shut down the independent TV station Teleamazonas, and seizing oil fields owned by the Anglo-French company Perenco Corp.”
Firstly, “terrorists” evidently here refers to the FARC, which COHA should know are not recognized as terrorists by any government in South America, a part from Colombia: not by Brazil, not by Chile, not by Peru, not by anybody. It would therefore be advisable that COHA, in its attempt to “explain Latin America”, understood that “terrorism” is a US-Colombian-imposed category, which down here, in UNASUR, nobody adheres to. Furthermore, while it is clear that the FARC do make use of international borders in jungle terrain in their military strategy, simply blaming Ecuador for this is unreasonable. It should be noted that while Ecuador has between 15 and 20 fully operational military border posts in its attempt to resist the infiltration of irregular armed groups, Colombia merely has 3 such posts (as part of a deliberate strategy of abandonment of its borders). No mention of this whatsoever.
Secondly, “the independent TV station Teleamazonas” is in fact a very radical right-wing media organization owned by the country’s biggest bank and managed by banker and business magnate Fidel Egas. Here too, more analysis is needed. But the simplistic manner in which it is relayed in this piece is certainly misleading and encourages the notion of an “innocent” TV stations attempting to resist the totalitarian impulses of the Correa government. Yet the lies, deceit and constant political propaganda carried out by Teleamazonas would be sanctioned in most self-respecting democracy. Moreover, the “threats” have not been to “shut down” the TV station, but to take it off the air for 3 months, a sanction contemplated in pre-Correa Ecuadorian law. In any event, none of this has materialized, and so far the channel has merely been fined a few dozen dollars (!) for intentionally divulging false factual information (not of the interpretative kind) and not for its anti-governmental editorial line.
Thirdly, the mention of the Correa government “seizing oil fields owned by the Anglo-French company Perenco Corp” is also misleading. After a long process of contract renegotiation with major oil companies, such as Petrobras, Repsol YPF, Andes Petroleum, amongst others, most foreign oil companies operating in Ecuador have accepted the new – fairer – rules of the game. Perenco refused and as a result conflict has emerged. But to extrapolate the Perenco case from the wider context of Correa’s progressive oil policies illustrates the author’s scarce knowledge of Ecuador and the article’s bias towards a conservative mode of thinking.
Of course, the phrase employed is “Ecuador has been accused of …” If this officially frees the author of any responsibility, it does not make the author any less guilty of denigrating, without resorting to coherent analytical arguments, one of South America’s most interesting political projects.
COHA has once again, in its coverage of Ecuador, fostered the reproduction of stereotypes, prejudice and false information.
Yours sincerely,
Guillaume Long
FLACSO-ECUADOR
Guillaume Long has done COHA a great service with his analysis of the piece on Ecuador that you published yesterday. I was most uncomfortable with the piece, but not being deeply familiar with Ecuadorian history I did not feel I could comment. I was put off by the reference to "corruption", as the agency that published the list of corrupt countries has all of the leftist countries in Latin America as being very corrupt, with no factual information. International Transparency if the agency in question. It was founded by right-wing, disgruntled people. I don't know of its funding, but their work sounds a lot like what regularly comes out of the US Embassies in Latin America. I would guess at major funding by USAID, but do not have proof of that allegation–which I am very happy to make.
Mr. Morris, I quite agree that references to corruption are thrown around without adequate evidence presented. In part this is because corrupt acts are illicit so people try to hide them, making it difficult to get good data, but even so it is incumbent on a researcher to offer what little evidence we do have. I must however respectfully disagree with much of what you imply about the measurement of corruption and the agency measuring it. Since this is a discussion generated by a letter calling on COHA to research more deeply and get its facts straight, I couldn't let some of your insinuations pass without comment.
The organization Transparency International (not International Transparency) may sound to your ears like the US Embassy, but actually it is not a US-based organization. Nor was it founded by right-wingers. It is based in Berlin, and has local affiliated NGOs in most Latin American countries and in the US. Those local organizations vary in the quality of their work, but they were not founded by the Berlin staff — rather, they developed on their own and then asked to become the TI chapter in the country, and were admitted to that status after showing themselves to be self-supporting and organized. Most of the local Latin American chapters are staffed by progressive people (all nationals of the country) who are trying to make democracy meaningful on an everyday basis, and they are often critics of their governments but not always so. The founder of TI is a German national and visionary leader; I believe he retired but may still be on the board. The small staff that works on Latin America in Berlin is multinational, and when last I looked included at least one Latin American and no US citizens.
It is certainly possible, even probable, that the local chapters have received funding from USAID — many Latin American NGOs have — but my experience with them is that they draw funding from a variety of sources and are not particularly pro-US. They are in charge of raising their own funds and are not beholden to the Berlin office for funding either. The Berlin office has received funding from USAID in the past, but in amounts that are simply dwarfed by what the European nations give.
The Ecuador chapter of TI received important seed monies from USAID back in the 1990s, and probably continues to accept US funds, but certainly gets money from other sources as well. It's founder left the leadership of the organization to work at an OAS-based foundation so I am not sure whether she has any control over the chapter anymore, so the reference to the founders may in any case be irrelevant. I cannot attest to whether the staff are right wing or not, since they have been critical of every Ecuadoran president in recent history, including the technocrats. Are they disgruntled? In my experience they remain amazingly optimistic and try to work toward the future and build something positive. You and I may disagree with their programs or practices, but I don't think we can fairly lump them all into the category of "disgruntled".
I any case, The Corruption Perception Index is generated by the Berlin office. It is now widely used, and unfortunately not often explained: it is a composite index, and it only measures perceptions of corruption (what people say they think is the situation) not actual experience with corruption. TI is perfectly open about this and other limits of the CPI, and its other indices on transparency of campaign finance and in business. Without entering into a statistical treatise, one can note for example that the countries are ranked but there are many countries not measured, so it is wrong to suggest that the countries ranked at the bottom are the most corrupt in the world — we cannot know that. Just the same, people frequently do say that. Anyone who has concerns about the CPI should by all means read the TI website and get in touch with them for more information about how they compile the index. Naturally there is some disagreement about it — there always is about statistical measures — but as I understand it, the Index has improved over time. The Index has sometimes been used to lambast governments, some of whom may not have deserved it, but if the option is to never try to measure corruption or never make measurements public lest the result be used inappropriately for partisan purposes, well… I for one am glad they try. If COHA is among the organizations using the TI index unthinkingly, it should stop and think, and add a footnote about the nature of the measurement tool.
And in case you are wondering, no I do not work for TI or any of its affiliates and never have, nor do I work for the disinformation department of the US government, nor am I on any government payroll. I am a private citizen who teaches Latin American politics at a private liberal arts college. I am just less happy to make allegations than you claim to be.
Shelley McConnell
The biggest problem with the article was that no context was provided in evaluating what is happening in Ecuador. We cannot continue to use a U.S.-focus analysis to evaluate what our friends in the south are doing, particularly those of a leftist bent.
North Americans who wish to comment here should at the least be aware of their country's less than stellar performance in relationship to supporting democracy and justice in our common America. And if they wish to discuss corruption in high places they might start with Washington. After all, here in the USA we are today witnessing the triumph of big insurance in our healthcare debate: All due to their wholesale purchase of elected officials.
Thanks for pulling the article and I appreciate COHA's taking Mr. Long's comments seriously. This is not the first time that COHA has had to pull an article or re-issue an article with a lengthy preface because of serious critique. Whether because of youth or lack of exposure or both, some COHA interns have not exhibited much breadth or depth on the topics they write about.
We look forward to COHA articles, but when an article parrots the Miami Herald and we get a string of "wants to be President for life, censoring media, Chavez-like" we know an inexperienced person has written it. The point is, Mr. Birns, we hope that you will closely monitor your interns — please don't leave it up to us.
I want to thank Guillaume Long for his excellent, informative and insightful commentary on COHA's article on Ecuador.
I also want to congratulate COHA for circulating Long's critical letter and for posting it on its website.
All this is very good for maintaining COHA's standards and credibility, and for keeping its readership properly informed about historical and current events in Latin America. Thank you very much again.
Long's letter is welcomed and COHA shall take it not just as a criticism about the article on Ecuador, but in general to its irregular performance in evaluating the situation in LA countries, or in LA in general. My feeling is that many of the researchers or interns have been brainwashed by the national and international press. The exagerated berating of any measure by the LA governments that shows efforts to make the State a mechanism for increased equality of opportunities, or to legally oposse the concentration of power by corporations, media holdings, or financial firms, is viewed as negative. Any campaign to involve more and more of the citizenry in political participation, is viewed as demagoguery. Any sign of independent (from the US) international policies, is viewed as a symptom of the country joining the darker "circle of evil".
That is not and shall not be COHA 's standard of professional research and deep and as neutral as possible analysis.
In this note, Guillaume Long's observations exude an air of support to the Ecuador government, when qualifying its deals with oil companies as "fairer", or stating its commitment against corruption. It's not very easy to renegotiate a contract with the threat of being expropriated, specially after a deal was closed before with a legitimate government. Does it make Perenco a "rogue" company? or just one who is claiming its contract to be respected – something that would be expected in any civilized country.
And also, his comments about FARC omit that it has been considered terrorists by Canada and the European Union. And omits their long story of kidnapping, extortion, and association with drug trafficking.
In summary, Mr. Long makes a bad service to his position by taking part, when – for the rest – the note is very well defended.
All of COHA's readers that are informed on Latin America and the Caribbean and have the interests of the majority of the region's population at heart are thankful that some type of standards of honesty and serious analysis are being held to, at least in the case of the obviously right-wing slanted and historically ignorant piece on Ecuador that has apparently been pulled off the COHA website.
Those of us who research and follow events in Venezuela would like to see the same level of seriousness applied to postings on Venezuela in the future: too many hack pieces have been published in the past.
Guillaume Long is unfair to Wikipedia, because Wikipedia has a process of collaborative contribution and peer review that would eliminate the glaring errors in the original piece, raise the level of thinking, and through its adherence to a "neutral point of view" present a much more fair perspective on what is happening in Ecuador. These increasingly problematic and deeply reactionary pieces makes me wonder what kind of environment COHA fosters in its office that would lead to this type of thinking and allow essays like this to be published on their website.
@Chris Herz –
My guess is that the all North Americans (hey Mexico!) commenting here have made serious efforts, whether as students, professionals or both, to understand "their country's less than stellar performance in relationship to supporting democracy and justice in our common America."
It is a measure of COHA's moral cowardice and leftist bias that it grants Long's huffilly indignant letter its special distribution status. His enthusiasm for Latin America's self-impoverishing left wing revolution makes him a shill for vastly increasing centralized governmental power. How many experiments of that sort must be observed before the failure of the model is finally acknowledged? It has been pointed out countlesss times, but here it is, again: the movement of millions of immigrants across the globe is from more heavily regulated economies to less heavily regulated ones. When the people vote with their feet, they vote for a smaller central government.
Long's incidental defense of FARC seals the case against his standing as an honest critic. He hides behind an incomplete factoid, to wit, that a number of Latin American countries have not classified FARC as a terrorist organization. But one need not await the leadership of the Venezuelan government or its bought and paid-for lapdogs, the Argentine ruling family, to note that FARC has kidnapped and currently holds over seven hundred civilian hostages, that it is a drug dealer of considerable scale, and that the government against which it wars is the most honestly elected, broadly supported in South America. FARC is a terrorist organization; everyone knows it even if not everyone has the courage to say it.
My criticism is not aimed at Long; everyone knows what he is. I write to chastise COHA, which so slavishly kowtows to its ideological masters.
Although in general Mr Long`s facts are accurate, it is an exaggeration to say that Teleamazonas is a "very radical right-wing organization". It is not fascist, not even conservative. It would be more accurate to call it centre-right, because it defends liberal democracy and more or less free markets. But of course, for Flacso , that means "very radical right-wing". If the station is owned by a banker or a magnate, it is irrelevant, unless it can be proved that the magnate is a nazi (which he is not). It is a poor ad-hominen argument.
I want to join Fred Morris and his first comment above. – I am very grateful to Guillaume Long for his letter and grateful to COHA , as well, for posting it and withdrawing the misleading article.
I would like to quote again Herman and Chomsky, 1979, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media: In 1948, State Department planner George Kennan wrote Policy Planning Study 23, stating that if the U.S. wanted to maintain (and expand) its position of world dominance, it could not truly respect human rights and democracy abroad. …
Kennan elaborated on this concept in a 1950 briefing of U.S. ambassadors to Latin American countries. Of prime importance was to prevent the spreading of the idea “that governments are responsible for the well being of their people.” To combat the proliferation of this idea, Kennan argued that “we should not hesitate before police repression by the local government…It is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal one if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by Communist.”
That concept seems to dominate the US foreign and the coverage by mass medias until now. I appreciate that COHA tries not to be infiltrated by that.
Excuse me, I meant: That concept seems to dominate the US foreign policy …
Here is a short story I wrote that sumarizes a great deal of Ecuadorian history
http://liblit.org/2009/04/02/segundos-revenge-by-…