Latinnews Archive
Latin American Weekly Report - 6 June 1975
Ecuador: new minister
The return of a hardliner to the ministry of the interior indicates that President Rodriguez Lara is preparing to head off further challenges to his authority.
The appointment last week of General Guillermo Duran as minister of the interior puts control of the police back into the hands of the army, in the person of a man known for his strong views on order and discipline. As minister of education General Duran sent the police into the universities on more than one occasion (see Vol. VIII, Nos. 32 and 40), and he was heartily disliked by both students and teachers. At one point the Union Nacional de Educacion went on strike in an attempt to secure his dismissal. General Duran succeeds Rear-Admiral Alfredo Poveda Burbano at the interior ministry, and may be expected to maintain his hostile line towards opposition politicians and journalists.
The immediate cause of the cabinet reshuffle was the appointment of Poveda as naval commander, replacing Rear-Admiral Sergio Vasquez Pacheco. While this change may or may not suggest a revival within the government of the so-called 'Brazilian' tendency, associated with a predecessor of General Duran's at the ministry, General Galo Latorre (see Vol. VII, No. 24), it seems reasonable to suppose that his presence will strengthen the hand of President Guillermo Rodriguez Lara in the current confrontation between the Anglo oil company and its workers. The government gave way very hastily last month in the face of pressure from the unions concerning wage increases (see Vol. IX, No. 19), and must now decide whether or not to back the Anglo workers in their demand that the British-owned company, whose worked-out concession on the Santa Elena peninsula is to revert to the state, should resume payment of a formerly traditional bonificacion to workers going into voluntary retirement. Some observers see sinister forces behind such a conflict, which might spread and involve the government in a confrontation with the foreign- owned oil companies.
General Rodriguez Lara has carefully avoided such a situation, and excessive hostility to the oil companies helped to earn the former minister of natural resources, Rear-Admiral Gustavo Jarrin Ampudia, his ticket to London last year (see Vol. VIII, No. 46). The minister of labour, Rear-Admiral Ramiro Larrea Santos, has been skating on thin ice for some time, particularly with his vocal support for the 'Peruvian model', and his sympathy for the oil workers' cause in the conflict with Anglo is liable to embarrass the President, who can afford neither a strike nor a showdown with the companies. Pressures from the workers are likely to increase as inflation bites deeper into their living standards, so President Rodriguez may decide he needs a stronger man to deal with them; and while many aspects of domestic policy have been erratic and unpredictable, the President's determination to crush any challenge, real or imaginary, to his position has never wavered. For the moment the President is regarding the dispute as a matter to be settled between the union and the company officials sent from London. His determination to keep 'politics' out of the affair will, paradoxically, probably ensure Larrea's survival for the time being.
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