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Weekly Report - 02 February 2012 (WR-12-05)
ECUADOR: Correa harnesses history to his cause
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez uses Simón Bolívar; Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, Augusto César Sandino. Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández has ‘Evita’; the Castro brothers, José Martí. All iconic figures whose legacy they claim to have inherited. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa is laying claim, in no uncertain terms, to the legacy of Eloy Alfaro, the country’s longest serving president and emblematic leader of the Liberal Revolution before his brutal killing on 28 January 1912. Correa’s government spent months preparing for a three-day extravaganza to commemorate the centenary of Alfaro’s death. It has also spent considerable energy in rewriting history in order to draw direct parallels between Alfaro and Correa. This carries huge contemporary political significance, allowing Correa to justify the more controversial aspects of his “citizens’ revolution” and discredit all dissenters as unpatriotic.
- Chávez falls back on the ultimate panacea
- ECUADOR: Correa harnesses history to his cause
- COLOMBIA: Santos caught up in spat with judiciary
- BRAZIL: Rousseff versus congress
- ARGENTINA: Water is worth more than gold
- TRACKING TRENDS
- MEXICO: PRI under attack at politically sensitive time
- MEXICO: Drought threatens central Mexico
- TRACKING TRENDS
- HONDURAS: Lobo makes move to purge police
- GUATEMALA: Pérez Molina faces a challenge
- NICARAGUA: Donors begin to flex their muscles
- TRACKING TRENDS
- ‘Baby Doc’ avoids the dock
- Quotes of the week