Chaos erupted in Ecuador yesterday as members of the police and military protested budget cuts proposed by the government. 150 troops occupied Quito (Ecuador’s capital) airport to contest the move made by Congress, but it was when President Correa became involved that things truly got ugly. At an address to the disgruntled police and troops outside the Presidential Palace, a volley of tear gas canisters were fired at the President’s entourage, and members of the police were caught on video attempting to assault him. Clearly struggling to breathe from behind his gas mask, the President was bundled from the scene to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for tear gas inhalation. He immediately responded to what many have commented on as the early tremors of a coup attempt:
PRES. RAFAEL CORREA (VOICEOVER TRANSLATION): If you want to kill the president, here I am. Kill me. Kill me if you’re not happy. Kill me if you’re brave. But we will continue with one policy, one of justice, dignity, and we will not take one step backwards.
Thankfully, Ecuador didn’t follow Honduras’s lead (for more on the 2010 military coup that ousted President Zelaya, visit the Honduras page) as one of the top military chiefs has come out in defense of Correa. Let’s hope he doesn’t go the same way as Chilean Army Chief of Staff Rene Schneider, who was murdered in a bungled kidnapping attempt co-sponsored by the CIA for standing behind Chilean President Salvador Allende. His death led the way for Augusto Pinochet to take the reins and lead the now infamous coup that plunged Chile into a military dictatorship. To read that story in comics form, click here. For an interesting debate on the US’s level of involvement, read this post from Foreign Affairs.
Courtesy of SOAW (School of the Americas Watch):
In his radio address the President did talk about this being a Coup attempt lead by the Police, Military close to an ex-President, but also by the Opposition and the ex-President Lucio Gutierrez. He stated that there is an attempt to destabilize the democratic citizen revolution that has happened in Ecuador. At this moment, the pro-democracy movement is gathering in the thousands in the capital but in all the plazas across the country. There are also people marching to the hospital to protect the President.
For more on the story, check out Narco News’s coverage here.
Panel 7: For a graphic history of the School of the Americas, and the link between its graduates and human rights violations, click here.
Panel 8: For more info on the Honduran Military’s presence at PANAMAX, go here.
Panel 9: Direct quote from President Obama on June 29th, the day after the coup that ousted Zelaya.
A request to new visitors to the site: (welcome!) on the right hand toolbar is a chipin widget that I’m using to get pre-orders for a hard copy, full-colour 32p comic about US intervention in central america – featuring both parts of the Honduran Coup: A Graphic History as published in Alternet and the Huffington Post. Read more about it on the chipin page I’ve created here.
For $5 (plus $2 shipping in the US and $4 overseas) you’ll get a copy of the comic as well as your name printed in the back, along with all the other donors to the project. We’re already well on the way (see the total) and payment is via paypal so totally safe. Be part of a group project to help raise awareness and produce an educational tool that will have a lasting impact.
Here’s the last of the Honduran coup pages: the follow-up is on the drawing board, and the spanish version is now being revamped thanks to some helpful translation tips from Nicolas Ariztia. We may have a bead on a Mexican paper interested in posting it, so keep coming back for updates. Also I’ll be posting my latest piece (and first forray into watercolour) either tomorrow or over the weekend, which involves the British Indian Ocean Territory and the new guantanamo. Plus checkout my flickr page and add me as a contact in the links to the right for more sketches, studies and doodles. The more activist art we can get onto Flickr the better.
Shouts out to the brazilian visitors to the site: Jefferson, Alexandre Lucas from the Faz Caber design/arts blog and Douglas Duarte from the O livreiro blog.
Here’s the first page of a graphic history of the Honduran Coup that’s been published online at Alternet – click here to read the whole story or on the thumbnails below.
[GALLERY=10]
Apologies for the delay in getting this next page up – as you can see, there’s a lot more going on, panel-wise. This scene shows Hecksher and Atlee Phillips, both CIA operatives based in Santiago, as they report back to Langley/Washington the current plan of action and situation on the ground. Dissatisfaction clearly arose from the diplomatic ‘Track 1’ route that Atlee Phillips mentions here, which refers to the non-confrontational means of preventing Allende’s inauguration as President. DCI Helms, AP’s boss back at the CIA, had proposed this two-track path under the ominous sounding project FUBELT, but as you will see in the next page, a far more harebrained scheme of direct action was already on the cards…
You’ll notice the title has changed too. This is to reflect the change of focus onto what happened before Allende’s inauguration as opposed to the now infamous coup that culminated in his murder.
Start at the beginning of this comic by clicking on the right hand nav bar link.The action has now moved to Chile and the CIA station where Field Agents Henry Hecksher and David Atlee Phillips are directing the CIA’s misinformation campaign against Allende.
Start at the beginning of this comic by clicking on the right hand nav bar link. This scene depicts the meeting between Richard Helms, Director of the CIA, President Nixon, Secretary of State Kissinger and Attorney General John Helms as they discuss the use of counter-intelligence to stop Salvador Allende’s inauguration as President of Chile in September 1970. The portrait of the Indian is taken from an actual painting hanging in the White House of an indigenous Indian Chieftain, which I thought would serve as a subtle hubristic reminder to the assembled gang of plotters.