Ecuador Names Another Woman to Defense

[Say_What]

Of Correa's 17 member cabinet, seven are women. In Chile, Bachelet's cabinet is an even 50/50. Chavez's cabinet--more women that any other Venezuelan president.
:bounce:

<clips>

Quito, Jan 26 (Prensa Latina) Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced Friday that another woman would head the Defense Ministry after the tragic death of its representative Guadalupe Larriva.

Arriving in the southern city of Cuenca to attend the burial of Larriva and her daughter Claudia, Correa ratified the decision to appoint another woman as Minister of Defense, and expressed appreciation at the solidarity provided by neighboring nations for this "national tragedy." In the next Cabinet meeting we will feel the absence of the official who died Wednesday evening in the crash of two helicopters near Manta Military Base, in Manabi Province, he stated.

Guadalupe was a happy woman and she radiated that happiness, Correa asserted, adding that she soon won the admiration of the Armed Forces.

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={A0412CDC-9C5D-4252-BCF6-1BA3252CED32}&language=EN

[ShortnFiery]

1. I bet they don't choose to invade and/or bomb sovereign nations either.

Horrible people who allow women's equality - that's not what real manly LEADERS do, i.e., maintain perpetual war hard-ons to prove their nation's virility. :P

Sorry, I couldn't resist the colorful language. :blush:

[acmejack]

2. Don't worry, we'll move them into this Century soon enough!

I am a great admirer of Dr. Bachelet.

edit for link

[ShortnFiery]

3. Thanks for the link. I agree. n/t

[Say_What]

4. Michelle is indeed a remarkable woman. Excellent quote in that interview

and it's still accurate after all these years, which is the sad part.

...MICHELLE BACHELET: First of all I'd say my first contact with United States when I was 12 and my father was in the Air Force Mission there in Washington, DC, and it was very surprising for me to see that in the United States nobody knew anything about Chile. And I was --They thought we lived in - like - Indian houses, things like that.

So it was very strange for me that such a huge and powerful country knew so little about so many, many countries. But I had a wonderful life there; I had good friends. I enjoyed a lot going to public libraries. I read every book of M. Louise Alcott - you know, "Little Women" and so on. I was really happy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Isabel Allende recently spoke of her in an interview with DemocracyNow:

<clips>

...ISABEL ALLENDE: Michele Bachelet is an extraordinary person, no matter that she’s a woman. It’s wonderful that we have a woman president in Chile for the first time. And what is even more wonderful is that she has come to the government and appointed 50% of women in every level of government. So when you see a photograph of the secretaries of state or any official photograph, the caption says, “Count the women,” because 50% are women. It’s the first time in history that female energy and male energy, in equal terms, are running a country. It’s the management of the country with this female energy. And I think that it’s an extraordinary experiment. And if it works, it will be imitated, and it will open up new spaces for peace and understanding in the world.

Now, Michele's story is very interesting. She was the daughter of a general, General Bachelet, who did not comply with the coup, the day of the military coup. He was arrested by his peers, and he died in torture, tortured by his friends. And then his wife and his daughter, who was then practically a child, were also arrested, and they were tortured. Eventually they were set free, and they ended up first in Australia, then in Germany, where Michele became a doctor, a pediatrician. And as soon as she could, she returned to Chile, even in times of Pinochet, and started working to defeat Pinochet. Then she became Minister of Health, Minister of Defense, the first woman Minister of Defense, who had to deal with the same people who had killed her father and tortured her and her mother. And this woman lived in a building, where she would meet her torturer in the elevator. So this is what Chile has had to put up with.

So when General Pinochet, after 30-something years, says that he’s willing to meet the victims, it’s not enough. It’s not enough. Now, Michele has never talked about revenge. She has never talked about these things. She doesn't want to be used as an example. And she doesn't talk about reconciliation, because that is a word that she thinks is very personal. You reconcile and you forgive in the deepest of your heart, and you cannot ask that from anyone. She talks about reuniting the Chilean family, getting together and building the future together. But reconciliation, forgiveness is something that is very personal. So I have great admiration for this woman.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/17/1454233


Lula, Bachelet, and Chavez at Mercosur in Rio a couple of weeks ago.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Ouch! The truth does hurt, but Michelle Bachelet should know, after spending time here

as a child, and being old enough to be able to intelligently compare what she observed here to what she already had learned in Chile.

It's a real pity, isn't it?

I think it has made it easier to control those countries, rather than allowing them to progress on their own, by keeping Americans disinterested in them, and convinced they were so sub-standard they were light-years behind us, anyway, that those people were 2nd rate, anyway.

One day I saw a photo of a large city in Chile, or Argentina, or somewhere, and I was astonished. I stared and stared at it, absolutely incredulous. Modern streets, inlaid designs in the sidewalks in a park, cars, buses, etc. I learned how large some of the cities were, and suddenly it hit me that I had NO IDEA at all about ANYTHING south of the United States. NONE. It was as if they had never existed.

If you look back to your childhood, and what you saw in the media, no doubt it was the same. Damned odd, wasn't it?

And now, as the documents are occassionally declassified, we see our own government has had a brutal, brutal hand in horrendous suffering in Latin America, etc. Henry Kissinger started trying to explain how our policy turned in that direction, several years ago. It has almost sounded as if he was trying to apologize. Too goddamned late now.

The smart thing to do would be to clean up our act, and stop the plotting against them. This makes us all look like idiots. Our best excuse for all this has to be, "We didn't know what was happening." Now, THAT sounds familiar.

[Judi Lynn]

6. It would be good to know how her accident happened, wouldn't it?

Ecuador’s President Mourns Death of Defense Minister

QUITO.— Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa regretted the death Wednesday of his Minister of Defense, Guadalupe Larriva, 50, in a tragic air accident that occurred in Manta, on the Pacific coast province of Manabi.

“This is a grave tragedy… the Defense Minister has died,” said Correa from the city of Guayaquil, when preparing to leave for Manta to see what had happened first hand, reported Prensa Latina.

Presidential advisor Juan Carlos Toledo informed that the helicopter carrying Larriva, the country’s first female minister of Defense and a former president of the Ecuadorian Socialist Party, crashed with another helicopter near the Manta military base.

The Defense minister was traveling with her daughter Claudia Avila, 17, and pilots Captain Celso Acosta and Lt. Herrera. In the second aircraft were Captain Byron Zurita and a Lt. Colonel by the name of Gortaire.

Victor Granda, a top leader of the Socialist Party, which Larriva had led, has called “for a thorough investigation” of the “strange” accident.

“It is odd that such an accident would take place near such a well established, well monitored and modern military base, used not only by the Ecuadorian Air Force but also by the United States Air Force,” said Granda, referring to the US presence at this installation under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking.
(snip/)

http://www.periodico26.cu/english/news_world/ecuador012507.htm



Guadalupe Larriva

[acmejack]

7. It certainly would

They are terrified by the Leftists, who are sweeping the halls of power in Latin America.