Any ex-Pats living in Ecuador?

[Ishoutandscream2]

Been reading some material on Americans retiring down there. It sounds fantastic, but I want to hear from someone who is actually there. Thanks, and any type of info you could give me would be great.

[rabs]

1. You might want to get in touch with these folks

ex-pats who have retired in Cuenca. The blog has an email address

<[e-mail]>

blog URL (with lots of fotos)

http://www.watsontravels.blogspot.com/

I studied my university senior year in Quito (a long time ago) and still have very fond memories of Ecuador and Ecuadorans.

There is another city farther south of Cuenca named Loja and I understand Americans are retiring there too. Both cities are beautiful.

Hope this helps.

[Ishoutandscream2]

2. Thank you for that site

I have seen many others, and I'm going to order a book. Problem will be trying to get my wife to buy into it.

[Bacchus39]

7. Cuenca is lovely and the coast isn´t too hot either.

they use the US dollar which makes things easier. talk of war with Colombia and the US is just plain silly.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Ecuador currently has an excellent leftist government and one of the most progressive

Constitutions in Latin America, which includes equal rights for women and gays and the unprecedented right of Mother Nature ("Pachamama," in the indigenous) to survive and prosper apart from human needs and desires. It is also a spectacularly beautiful country. But I would not advise friends to move there for the following reason: There is significant evidence that the Pentagon has a war plan to invade northern Ecuador and northern Venezuela, location of these countries' main oil reserves, both adjacent to Colombia, and possibly topple their leftist governments by means of civil war. I don't think the US/Colombia would win such a war, but they would likely create a great deal of suffering and mayhem (not to mention dislike of Americans). My guess: The US/Colombia will instigate a war with Venezuela/Ecuador within two years. How it will go after that, I cannot tell--but I think the US will ultimately lose, big time, and maybe super big time (i.e, the final "Waterloo" of the US empire).

The evidence? Early in 2008, the US/Colombia dropped ten 500 lb US "smart bombs" on a FARC guerrilla hostage-release camp just inside Ecuador's border with Colombia, nearly starting a war, then and there. In that bombing and border raid, they killed 25 sleeping people including the FARC's chief hostage negotiator, who was trying to broker a peace settlement in Colombia's 40+ year civil war. There was no need for the bombing. It was not a "hot pursuit" situation. The camp was asleep--as reported by the Ecuadoran military which also said that Colombia could not have delivered the "smart bombs" (--they believe it was a US plane and pilot). Further, as reported by Ecuador's president, by Ingrid Betancourt's family, and by Swiss, Spanish and French envoys who were in Ecuador that day for the purpose of receiving hostages, the FARC were about to release their highest profile hostage, Ingrid Betancourt, in a bid for peace. (This was in March 2008.) Subsequent to blowing everybody in the FARC camp to smithereens, on Ecuadoran territory, the Colombian government and military claimed to have seized a FARC laptop computer that they claimed contained evidence that the president of Ecuador is a "terrorist lover." I do not believe this of the president of Ecuador. Whatever contacts he had with the FARC were for the purpose getting hostages released and promoting a peace settlement. He clearly hates having the Colombian civil war on Ecuador's border. (Tens of thousands of peasant refugees from that war have poured into Ecuador--mostly fleeing the Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads.)

The upshot of this event, in my view, is that the US and Colombia do not want peace in the region, and are rehearsing methods of instigating war. Later in 2008, the US supported and funded a white separatist insurrection in Bolivia, which wanted to split off Bolivia's gas and oil rich eastern provinces into a fascist mini-state in control of the resources. Bolivia's president threw the US ambassador out of Bolivia for colluding with these secessionists. And Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, said publicly, around that time, that there was a coordinated rightwing plot for the instigation of civil wars in three countries--Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador. Rightwing politicians in Ecuador's and Venezuela's northern (oil) provinces openly talk of secession, and are very likely being funded by the US government and in collusion with the narco-thugs running Colombia.

Fast-forward to today: Is the Obama administration any different? Quite unfortunately, evidence is growing that the Obama administration is either on board for this war, or cannot stop it. The Bushwhack-appointed ambassador in Bogota just signed an agreement with Colombia, on Obama's behalf, for SEVEN new US military bases in Colombia, NO LIMIT on the number of US soldiers and US 'contractors' who can be deployed there, total diplomatic immunity for US soldiers and 'contractors,' and US military use of all civilian airports and other facilities. This agreement was negotiated in SECRET from the Colombian people, the Colombian legislature, all the other leaders of South America (who are furious about it) and the people of the U.S. It will be coming to the US Congress for approval, where it will probably be rubber-stamped, pretty much as is.

For these and other reasons (the reconstitution of the US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, last year; the US-supported coup in Honduras, this year, mainly to secure (and probably expand) the US military base and port facilities in Honduras; the two new US military bases in Panama; and the intense psyops/disinformation campaigns against both Chavez and Correa), I believe that we are looking at Oil War II, and the targets are Venezuela's and Ecuador's northern oil regions.

The troubles along the Colombia/Ecuador border (masses of refugees pouring across the border, Colombian military and paramilitary aggression, and shooting incidents of various kinds) are duplicated along the Colombia/Venezuela border--with increased incidents, lately, on Venezuela's border. (Venezuela has started sealing its border since the seven-bases agreement was announced.) Add more US soldiers and 'contractors' to Colombia's civil war, and any of these kinds of incidents could be turned into the next 'Gulf of Tonkin'--a manufactured incident to 'justify' starting a war. This won't be a duplicate of the Iraq War. It will be more like the Vietnam War. The US has used a client state, Colombia--on whom it has larded $6 BILLION in military aid--to invite the US military into the country, and will be using a proxy army, the Colombian military, as a front for a US war. And they will be fighting people who are passionately devoted to their own independence, who will be supported, directly or indirectly, by most of the region. This is going to be very bad news for US soldiers--jungle fighting in unfamiliar terrain, against people who utterly detest them and who have memories that go back to the Conquistadores.

The Obama administration has been working on "dividing and conquering" the leftist leadership of the region--with their dirty dealings on the Honduran coup, and the open provocation of the seven-bases agreement with Colombia. But I believe their unity will hold. Most of Latin America has conceived the notion of independence from the US; its leaders are working closely together to achieve it, and they won't give up--and President Obama doesn't seem to realize any of this, or if he does, he is, indeed, just "the prisoner of the Pentagon," as Chavez has said of him. And when did the Pentagon EVER use common sense in its perpetration of war?

Well, maybe it did on nuking Iran. But that left the Pentagon with the need for more oil--to fuel its great war machine and global corporate predator "free trade for the rich"--and nowhere to get it from but South America.

For these reasons, I would advise going nowhere near the Colombia/Ecuador border for the foreseeable future, and I would not advise migrating to Ecuador at all, until things become clearer on the US war planning front. I think they are pretty clear now, but there are many unknowns--including the impact of Bushwhack/bankster massive looting of the US federal coffers and economy on potential US adventurism, potential action by Latin America's predominantly leftist leadership to fend off a war, potential rebellion here by our people, instability in Colombia and other factors. Even if the US were to entirely back off on its war plans, Colombia will remain an extremely troubled country with an extremely fascist military, funded by you and me, and capable of causing a lot of trouble for its neighbor countries.

[Ishoutandscream2]

4. Sounds like you're describing a possible Obama "Bay of Pigs"

No matter what, he may not be able to stop it. You bring up some points that some might say are alarmist, but in our dealings with Latin America, anything is possible. Thanks for your insight.

[Peace Patriot]

5. I think the similarities to South Vietnam, 1963, are haunting. And I am very alarmed

both at what look like war preparations and at the crazy silence here in the U.S. $6 BILLION in military aid to Colombia. NO LIMIT on US troop and 'contractor' deployments to Colombia. Full diplomatic immunity for the US military (and 'contractors'). And this history of hostility to Venezuela's government and, more recently, to Ecuador's.

These are not good signs. What are all these new US military bases in Colombia FOR? (The "war on drugs"? Yeah, right.)

I'm more concerned about a "Gulf of Tonkin" than a "Bay of Pigs." The latter was a largely rogue operation that JFK okayed only on the condition of no US troops being involved, and no official association with the US government. They of course wanted to drag the US into a full scale war on Cuba, but they didn't have any support in Cuba, and when JFK called them on this, the CIA lied to him. (That's why he fired Allen Dulles, the CIA Director, and why he vowed to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces.") The "Gulf of Tonkin," a year after JFK was assassinated, was the intentional starting of a war, based on a phony incident, with the US government (LBJ) and the US military fully intending quick escalation to a major war. The US military buildup in Colombia and in the region (basically surrounding Venezuela's northern oil region), and its preliminaries in Colombia--the slaughter of thousands of union leaders, political leftists, peasant farmers and others, and the long civil war--are much more like Vietnam, where the CIA had created a puppet government and the US had funded and created South Vietnam's military, to invite the US military into the country, and, from there, escalate to a full-on war against North Vietnam.

It is appalling that the US has such an ally. Colombia is a cauldron of corruption, just like South Vietnam was. But the US prefers, and actually creates, these kinds of allies. That hasn't changed. Why? We should have ostracized Colombia long ago. It has one of the worst human rights records on earth. Bushwhacks colluding with such a government is no surprise. But Obama? Well, whatever Obama thinks, the fact is that the US is "grooming" Colombia as an extremely corrupt, militaristic TOOL for something. Maybe seven new US military bases are needed there to enforce "free trade for the rich," and it's not a war plan but a maintenance plan. (We don't have many "free trade for the rich" allies any more in South America.) But combined with other evidence, I don't think it's that innocent (if one could call such a thing innocent). I think it's a war plan that Rumsfeld left on the desk, that seems to be going forward of its own volition, and I don't know if Obama has the inclination or the power to stop it.

Another thing it could be is a contingency plan--say, if Iraq collapses and the oil spigot gets turned off. Oil is the driver of US foreign policy, as we have learned to our grief. Maybe they are just getting the war assets in place, as a precaution. Another possibility: They're just trying to threaten and bully Venezuela in particular, because of the ALBA trade group that it formed with Cuba and Central American/Caribbean countries (which Ecuador just joined as well). ALBA was formed specifically to counter US trade deals that have been greatly harming the economies and peoples of the smaller, weaker countries in that region. Venezuela has been providing cheap oil to these countries, and Cuba has been helping them with medical care and literacy programs. Member countries have greatly benefited. (One of the heartbreaks of the Honduran coup is that the junta has been looting the ALBA funds, to which Honduran unions and workers had contributed. The coup means the end of Honduras' membership in ALBA, which President Zelaya had negotiated.)

So, there are a lot of possible reasons for a US military buildup in the region--including just plain war profiteering. But my guess--adding it all up--is an actual war plan, for busting up the huge leftist democracy movement in Central and South America, and "circling the wagons" in the Central American-Caribbean-northern South America region, using Colombia as a major war staging area, and netting in Venezuela's northern oil region and maybe Ecuador's (on the south border of Colombia).

Things are currently beautiful in Ecuador--with a social justice-minded government, the best government they've ever had--intent on using their oil revenues to benefit the poor. It could be a wonderful time to be in Ecuador, and there might be opportunities to help out in some way, as Ecuador tries to bootstrap its poor majority, protect its environment and develop the country in cooperation with the many other leftist leaders in the region. But rather like Europe in the late 1920s, a "cloud is gathering" over the region, with a very militaristic government next door to Ecuador, and Ecuador itself a target of both Colombian and US hostility. It's just something to be aware of, in considering a permanent move.

[mackerel]

6. They also have issues with Peru. Still though it's worth

checking out. I lived there as a kid and the Ecuadorians are lovely people. Our life there was so much more relaxed than when we lived in Colombia.