During an interview with teleSUR on Tuesday night, Leonidas Iza, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), asserted that President Daniel Noboa is ceding the country's sovereignty to the United States under the pretext of the "Internal Armed Conflict" against groups linked to international drug trafficking.
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SOUTHCOM Commander Richardson Meets Ecuadorian President Noboa
Preciously, on Monday, Noboa held a meeting with SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Laura Richardson, Special Presidential Advisor for the Americas Christopher Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador Mike Fitzpatrick, and Deputy Undersecretary of the Office of Anti-Narcotics Affairs Christopher Landberg.
Through a public statement, CONAIE urged Noboa to disclose any agreements he might reach with the U.S. to avoid replicating the failure of the Plan Colombia, which Washington has been implementing in Colombian territory since 1999, also justifying it as a war on drugs.
"The Plan Colombia is an experience that we cannot replicate," CONAIE warned, recalling that the U.S. strategy has been accompanied by human rights violations, extrajudicial killings, massacres of farmers, illegal exploitation of natural resources, and paramilitary groups.
CONAIE also pointed out that Gen. Richardson has expressed on multiple occasions the U.S. interest in treating South American natural resources as matters of "national security."
Specifically, she acknowledged that Washington wants to "intensify" its influence in a region with immense lithium reserves between Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia; oil in Venezuela and Guyana; and water in the Amazon region.
"Ecuador needs truth, justice, and unrestricted respect for its national sovereignty," CONAIE said, demanding the protection of Ecuadorian interests against potential U.S. pressures.
Transparency in international military cooperation is particularly crucial at a time when the Ecuadorian state has been weakened by the neoliberal policies implemented by the administrations of Lenin Moreno (2017-2021) and Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023).
"We have seen that governments invented anything to violate the Constitution and laws. President Noboa is doing the same. We are not only ceding military sovereignty but also subjecting ourselves to those who want to control our resources," Iza said.
In September 2023, Lasso traveled to Washington, where he signed agreements related to the presence of U.S. military personnel and ships in Ecuadorian territory. The specific contents of these agreements have not been officially disclosed by the Department of State.
"We fight for the Ecuadorian State and people to have sovereignty. We cannot be tutored by a global power's forces. We reject any military presence. All they are doing is exerting control," the CONAIE president stated.