27 May 2019 — Internationalist 360°

This interview with former President Rafael Correa is the first step in a more ambitious project that we have proposed in Misión Verdad: to go to the vanguard of Latin American political leaders and invite them to reflect on the future rather than on the current situation. Correa accepted our invitation and summoned us to the campus of the Louvain-la-Neuve University on the outskirts of Brussels, the capital of Belgium, where he himself studied as a teenager. A thirty-minute conversation which months later is still continuing.

Rafael Correa left the presidency of his native Ecuador on May 24, 2017. The story is well known: he handed over the presidential sash he wore for ten years to Lenin Moreno, a traitor. From that day on, Ecuadorian politics took a course contrary to the ” era of change” which the former president described as the most memorable years in Latin America. Moreno not only promoted their isolation, he also fractured the party that brought them together, divided the National Assembly and captained the conspiracy process that ended with his running mate and vice-president of the Republic, Jorge Glas, a prisoner. It was a disaster.

But contrary to what might be expected, the meeting with Correa did not have this regrettable episode as the central axis of the interview. As you know, in Misión Verdad we always go to the unspoken, to the controversial issues, to the uncomfortable discussions. We asked the former president to put the situation aside for 30 minutes and talk about the underlying situation: What is happening with leftist thinking right now? Why did few or almost no Brazilians, Ecuadorians or Argentines come out to defend “their leaderships” at a time when they are being bombarded on all fronts? Why is the war against Venezuela being silenced? Was his concept of the “era change” a mirage? Is Rafael Correa returning to politics or not?

This and more in the interview which is a contribution to the urgent debate about the “failure of the left,” thoughts regarding Latin America and our future.