On John Perkins’ Confessions of
an Economic Hit Man, and Its Relevance to
© 2006 Joseph George Caldwell. All rights reserved. Posted at Internet web
sites http://www.foundation.bw and http://www.foundationwebsite.org
. May be copied or reposted for
non-commercial use, with attribution. (
Contents
The
Global Economic World Order: A Few Very Rich, and Many Very Poor
The
Indonesia Project: Why the Third World Hates the United States
From
America the Republic to America the Global Empire
The
Iraq Project, Phase II: Economic Hit Men, then Jackals, then Soldiers
The
Role of U.S. Unbacked Paper Money
Achieving
the Goal of Contracts for U.S. Firms
The
Goal of the West: Global Domination by the Wealthy Elite
The
Current Situation in East Timor
International
Pressure to Develop East Timor
An
Alternative Development Model for East Timor
An
Example of a Sustainable Development Project: Lightweight, Low-Speed, Low-Cost
Vehicles
In a recent visit to the local Barnes and Noble bookstore, I noticed, in the “New Age” section, a book by John Perkins, entitled, Shapeshifting: Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation (Destiny Books, 1997). I glanced through the book, and it seemed interesting. As I walked to the cashier, I noticed the note on the front cover stating that Perkins is also the author of the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Plume, 2004, 2006). I had heard reference to the Confessions book, but had not read it or a review of it. It piqued my curiosity that someone would be writing books on both “New Age” and economics topics, and so I asked the information desk whether the Confessions book was in stock. It was, and so I purchased both books.
I read the Shapeshifting book first. It presents an interesting description of “one man’s journey” on the path to enlightenment, but is not otherwise unusual. As is the case with most “New Age” books, it describes a lot of subjective experiences that may have been profound to the author, but are simply of casual interest to others who do not share these experiences.
The Confessions book, however, was quite another matter. For years, I have been writing that the activities of international development organizations have, overall, done nothing but greatly expand the amount of human poverty and misery on the planet. My view on this was based largely on the results of these programs, rather than on their expressed intent, which is to reduce human poverty and misery. In virtually every Third-World country that has accepted World Bank loans, there are vastly more people living in poverty and misery than there were sixty years ago, when the Word Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) started operation. It is patently obvious that the international loans are not working. They have not resulted in a good quality of life for the citizens of the recipient countries, and in many cases, they have caused severe environmental destruction (e.g., the building of large hydroelectric dams and the causing of massive environmental destruction, such as annihilation of wildlife, rivers, lakes, and forests).
Perkins’ book was very interesting to me because his entire book is focused on the fact that it is the intended and primary goal of international development loans to burden the recipient nations with massive debt, so that they become totally in thrall to the developed countries. This is accomplished by offering great riches to the recipient country’s leaders, and it is invariably accompanied by a tremendous increase in the amount of poverty and human misery for the great majority of the population. The tremendous human misery and environmental destruction caused by international development agencies is a direct consequence of the development aid, but it is of no consequence to the aid agencies, since their sole motivation is to increase wealth for the elite who control Western industrialized society.
Perkins’ book is well written and interesting, and I
recommend it to anyone who is interested in how the global economic system that
controls the planet works. Here follow a
number of excerpts from the book. I shall
present somewhat more excerpted material here than I usually do, for several
reasons. First, I hope that after
reading the selections presented below you will purchase the book (the
paperback edition that I bought cost USD15.00).
More importantly, Perkins’ material is germane to the present situation
in
[Start of excerpts from Perkins’ book.]
Claudine told me that there were two primary objectives of
my work [at Chas. T. Main, Inc., an economic consulting firm]. First, I was to justify huge international
loans that would funnel money back to
My job, she said, was to forecast the effects of investing of dollars in a country. Specifically, I would produce studies that projected economic growth twenty to twenty-five years into the future and that evaluated the impacts of a variety of projects. For example, if a decision was made to lend a country $1 billion to persuade its leaders not to align with the Soviet Union, I would compare the benefits of investing that money in power plants with the benefits of investing in a new national railroad network or a telecommunications system. Or I might be told that the country was being offered the opportunity to receive a modern electric utility system, and it would be up to me to demonstrate that such a system would result in sufficient economic growth to justify the loan. The critical factor, in every case, was gross national product. The project that resulted in the highest average annual growth of GNP won. If only one project was under consideration, I would need to demonstrate that developing it would bring superior benefits to the GNP.
The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were intended to create large profits for the contractors, and to make a handful of wealthy and influential families in the receiving countries very happy, while assuring the long-term financial dependence and therefore the political loyalty of governments around the world. The larger the loan, the better. The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest citizens of health, education, and other social services for decades to come was not taken into consideration.
Claudine and I openly discussed the deceptive nature of GNP. For instance, the growth of GNP may result even when it profits only one person, such as an individual who owns a utility company, and even if the majority of the population is burdened with debt. The rich get richer and the poor grow poorer. Yet, from a statistical standpoint, this is recorded as economic progress.
Like
People who say such things often hold diplomas certifying that they are well educated. However, these people have no clue that the main reason we establish embassies around the world is to serve our own interests, which during the last half of the twentieth century meant turning the American republic into a global empire. Despite credentials, such people are as uneducated as those eighteenth-century colonists who believed that the Indians fighting to defend their lands were servants of the devil.
Within several months, I would leave for the
"It's the next domino after
Tossing and turning in my bed, I found it impossible to deny
that Charlie and everyone else on our team were here for selfish reasons. We
were promoting
This was a close-knit fraternity of a few men with shared goals, and the fraternity's members moved easily and often between corporate boards and government positions. It struck me that the current president of the World Bank, Robert McNamara, was a perfect example. He had moved from a position as president of Ford Motor Company, to secretary of defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and now occupied the top post at the world's most powerful financial institution.
I also realized that my college professors had not understood the true nature of macroeconomics: that in many cases helping an economy grow only makes those few people who sit atop the pyramid even richer, while it does nothing for those at the bottom except to push them even lower. Indeed, promoting capitalism often results in a system that resembles medieval feudal societies. If any of my professors knew this, they had not admitted it – probably because big corporations, and the men who run them, fund colleges. Exposing the truth would undoubtedly cost those professors their jobs – just as such revelations could cost me mine.
Later we all retired to the coffeehouse. Rasy and the others assured me that they had not been informed ahead of time about the Nixon-World Bank skit. "You never know what to expect from that puppeteer," one of the young men observed.
I wondered aloud whether this had been staged in my honor. Someone laughed and said I had a very big ego. "Typical of Americans," he added, patting my back congenially.
"Indonesians are very conscious of politics," the man in the chair beside me said. "Don't Americans go to shows like this?"
A beautiful woman, an English major at the university, sat across the table from me. "But you do work for the World Bank, don't you?" she asked.
I told her that my current assignment was for the Asian Development Bank and the United States Agency for International Development.
"Aren't they really all the same?" She didn't wait
for an answer. "Isn't it like the play tonight showed? Doesn't your
government look at
"Grapes," one of her friends coached.
"Exactly. A
bunch of grapes. You can pick and choose. Keep
"After you've taken all our oil," another woman added.
I tried to defend myself but was not at all up to the task.
I wanted to take pride in the fact that I had come to this part of town and had
stayed to watch the entire anti-U.S. performance, which I might have construed
as a personal assault. I wanted them to see the courage of what I had done, to
know that I was the only member of my team who bothered to learn Bahasa or had any desire to take in their culture, and to
point out that I was the sole foreigner attending this production. But I
decided it would be more prudent not to mention any of this. Instead, I tried
to refocus the conversation. I asked them why they thought the dalang had
singled out Muslim countries, except for
The beautiful English major laughed at this. "Because that's the plan.”
"
"The real target,” the woman continued, "is the Muslim world.”
I could not let this go unanswered. "Surely," I
protested, "you can't believe that the
"Oh no?" she asked. "Since when? You need to read one of your own historians – a Brit named Toynbee. Back in the fifties he predicted that the real war in the next century would not be between Communists and capitalists, but between Christians and Muslims."
"Arnold Toynbee said that?" I was stunned.
"Yes. Read Civilization on Trial and The World and the West."
"But why should there be such animosity between Muslims and Christians?" I asked.
Looks were exchanged around the table. They appeared to find it hard to believe that I could ask such a foolish question.
"Because,” she said slowly, as though addressing
someone slow-witted or hard of hearing, "the West – especially its leader,
the
"We will take our time," one of the men chimed in, "and then like a snake we will strike."
"What a horrible thought!" I could barely contain myself. "What can we do to change this?"
The English major looked me directly in the eyes. "Stop being so greedy," she said, "and so selfish. Realize that there is more to the world than your big houses and fancy stores. People are starving and you worry about oil for your cars. Babies are dying of thirst and you search the fashion magazines for the latest styles. Nations like ours are drowning in poverty, but your people don't even hear our cries for help. You shut your ears to the voices of those who try to tell you these things. You label them radicals or Communists. You must open your hearts to the poor and downtrodden, instead of driving them further into poverty and servitude. There's not much time left. If you don't change, you're doomed.”
My discussion with those young Indonesians, however, forced me to see another aspect of the issue. Through their eyes, I realized that a selfish approach to foreign policy does not serve or protect future generations anywhere. It is myopic, like the annual reports of the corporations and the election strategies of the politicians who formulate that foreign policy.
The concept of a worldwide holy war was a disturbing one, but the longer I contemplated it, the more convinced I became of its possibility. It seemed to me, however, that if this jihad were to occur it would be less about Muslims versus Christians than it would be about LDCs versus DCs, perhaps with Muslims at the forefront. We in the DCs were the users of resources; those in the LDCs were the suppliers. It was the colonial mercantile system all over again, set up to make it easy for those with power and limited natural resources to exploit those with resources but no power.
I did not have a copy of Toynbee with me, but I knew enough
history to understand that suppliers who are exploited long enough will rebel.
I only had to return to the American Revolution and Tom Paine for a model. I
recalled that
What Paine offered to his countrymen in the brilliant Common Sense was the soul that my young Indonesian friends had referred to – an idea, a faith in the justice of a higher power, and a religion of freedom and equality that was diametrically opposed to the British monarchy and its elitist class systems. What Muslims offered was similar: faith in a higher power and a belief that developed countries have no right to subjugate and exploit the rest of the world. Like colonial minutemen, Muslims were threatening to fight for their rights, and like the British in the 1770s, we classified such actions as terrorism. History appeared to be repeating itself.
I wondered what sort of a world we might have if the United States and its allies diverted all the monies expended in colonial wars – like the one in Vietnam – to eradicating world hunger or to making education and basic health care available to all people, including our own. I wondered how future generations would be affected if we committed to alleviating the sources of misery and to protecting watersheds, forests, and other natural areas that ensure clean water, air, and the things that feed our spirits as well as our bodies. I could not believe that our Founding Fathers had envisioned the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to exist only for Americans, so why were we now implementing strategies that promoted the imperialist values they had fought against?
Eventually, however, this perspective also changed. I came to understand that most of those men believed they were doing the right thing. Like Charlie, they were convinced that communism and terrorism were evil forces – rather than the predictable reactions to decisions they and their predecessors had made – and that they had a duty to their country, to their offspring, and to God to convert the world to capitalism. They also clung to the principle of survival of the fittest; if they happened to enjoy the good fortune to have been born into a privileged class instead of inside a cardboard shack, then they saw it as an obligation to pass this heritage on to their progeny.
I vacillated between viewing such people as an actual conspiracy and simply seeing them as a tight-knit fraternity bent on dominating the world. Nonetheless, over time I began to liken them to the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South. They were men drawn together in a loose association by common beliefs and shared self-interest, rather than an exclusive group meeting in clandestine hideaways with focused and sinister intent. The plantation autocrats had grown up with servants and slaves, had been educated to believe that it was their right and even their duty to take, care of the "heathens" and to convert them to the owners' religion and way of life. Even if slavery repulsed them philosophically, they could, like Thomas Jefferson, justify it as a necessity, the collapse of which would result in social and economic chaos. The leaders of the modern oligarchies, what I now thought of as the corporatocracy, seemed to fit the same mold.
I also began to wonder who benefits from war and the mass production of weapons, from the damming of rivers and the destruction of indigenous environments and cultures. I began to look at who benefits when hundreds of thousands of people die from insufficient food, polluted water, or curable diseases. Slowly, I came to realize that in the long run no one benefits, but in the short term those at the top of the pyramid – my bosses and me – appear to benefit, at least materially.
This raised several other questions: Why does this situation persist? Why has it endured for so long? Does the answer lie simply in the old adage that "might is right," that those with the power perpetuate the system?
It seemed insufficient to say that power alone allows this
situation to persist. While the proposition that might makes right explained a
great deal, I felt there must be a more compelling force at work here. I
recalled an economics professor from my business school days, a man from
northern
Of course, we are not the first to do this. The list of
practitioners stretches back to the ancient empires of
I thought extensively on these questions, but I avoided
considering the nature of my own role in all of this. I tried to think of
myself not as an EHM [economic hit man] but as a chief economist. It sounded so
very legitimate, and if I needed any confirmation, I could look at my pay
stubs: all were from
I had stumbled across an article in some obscure journal in
the BPL [Boston Public Library] racks that praised Torrijos
as a man who would alter the history of the
This conversation [with General Omar Torrijos
Herrera, President of Panama, who died in a plane crash on July 31, 1981,
reportedly because he refused to renegotiate with President Ronald Reagan the
Panama Canal treaty that he had previously negotiated with President Jimmy
Carter] left me feeling very uncomfortable.
I was one of the people who perpetuated the system he so despised, and I was certain he knew it. My job of convincing
him to accept international loans in exchange for hiring
"General," I asked, "why did you invite me here?"
He glanced at his watch and smiled. "Yes, time now to
get down to our own business.
I was stunned. "My help? What can I do for you?"
“We will take back the Canal. But that's not enough.” He
relaxed into his chair. "We must also serve as a model. We must show that
we care about our poor and we must demonstrate beyond any doubt that our
determination to win our independence is not dictated by
He crossed one leg over the other. "In order to do that we need to build up an economic base that is like none in this hemisphere. Electricity, yes – but electricity that reaches the poorest of our poor and is subsidized. The same for transportation and communications. And especially for agriculture. Doing that will take money – your money, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.”
Once again, he leaned forward. His eyes held mine. "I understand that your company wants more work and usually gets it by inflating the size of projects – wider highways, bigger power plants, deeper harbors. This time is different, though. Give me what's best for my people, and I'll give you all the work you want."
What he proposed was totally unexpected, and it both shocked
and excited me. It certainly defied all I had learned at
[The objective of an economic hit man is different in
developing countries that have much oil, and, it follows massive amounts of
“petrodollars.” The objective of the
West for these countries is not to burden the country with debt from loans from
international agencies, but to coerce the country to spend most of its wealth
on development using US (or other first-world) companies. A primary tool in achieving this goal is to
agree to defend the country in exchange for its spending its oil wealth on
development projects conducted by US (or other Western) firms. Another tool is massive bribes to the
country’s leaders. The following
paragraphs relate to Perkins’ experience in
[The material that follows is particularly relevant to
In 1974, a diplomat from
"No self-respecting Saudi would ever collect trash," he said. "We leave it to the beasts.”
Goats! In the capital of the world's greatest oil kingdom. It seemed unbelievable.
At the time, I was one of a group of consultants just beginning to try to piece together a solution to the oil crisis. Those goats led me to an understanding of how that solution might evolve, especially given the country's pattern of development over the previous three centuries.
My job was to develop forecasts of what might happen in
I understood, of course, that the primary objective here was
not the usual – to burden this country with debts it could never repay – but rather
to find ways that would assure that a large portion of petrodollars found their
way back to the
Once I got started, I realized that the goats wandering the
streets of
This twin realization opened the door to a strategy I felt
certain would be a win-win situation for everyone. The goats, of course, were
merely an entry point. Oil revenues could be employed to hire
I came to think of the goats as one side of an equation that
could be applied to most of the kingdom's economic sectors, a formula for
success in the eyes of the royal family, the U.S. Department of the Treasury,
and my bosses at
We all had high expectations that this plan would evolve into a model of how things should be done in the rest of the world. Globe-trotting Saudis would sing our praises; they would invite leaders from many countries to come to Saudi Arabia and witness the miracles we had accomplished; those leaders would then call on us to help them devise similar plans for their countries and – in most cases, for countries outside the ring of OPEC – would arrange World Bank or other debt-ridden methods for financing them. The global empire would be well served.
As I worked through these ideas, I thought of the goats, and
the words of my driver often echoed in my ears: "No self-respecting Saudi
would ever collect trash:" I had heard that refrain repeatedly, in many
different contexts. It was obvious that the Saudis had no intention of putting
their own people to work at menial tasks, whether as laborers in industrial
facilities or in the actual construction of any of the projects. In the first
place, there were too few of them. In addition, the royal House of Saud had indicated a commitment to providing its citizens
with a level of education and a lifestyle that were inconsistent with those of
manual laborers. The Saudis might manage others, but they had no desire or
motivation to become factory and construction workers. Therefore, it would be
necessary to import a labor force from other countries – countries where labor
was cheap and where people needed work. If possible, the labor should come from
other Middle Eastern or Islamic countries, such as
This prospect created an even greater new stratagem for development opportunities. Mammoth housing complexes would have to be constructed for these laborers, as would shopping malls, hospitals, fire and police department facilities, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical, communications, and transportation networks – in fact, the end result would be to create modern cities where once only deserts had existed. Here, too, was the opportunity to explore emerging technologies in, for example, desalinization plants, microwave systems, health care complexes, and computer technologies.
I must admit that I enjoyed this job immensely. There was no
solid data available in
Nor was anyone expecting this type of quantitative analysis, at least not at this stage of the game. I simply put my imagination to work and wrote reports that envisioned a glorious future for the kingdom. I had rule-of-thumb numbers I could use to estimate such things as the approximate cost to produce a megawatt of electricity, a mile of road, or adequate water, sewage, housing, food, and public services for one laborer. I was not supposed to refine these estimates or to draw final conclusions. My job was simply to describe a series of plans (more accurately, perhaps, "visions") of what might be possible, and to arrive at rough estimates of the costs associated with them.
I always kept in mind the true objectives: maximizing
payouts to
Beyond the purely economic, there was another twist that
would render
Under this evolving plan,
It was a deal the House of Saud
could hardly refuse, given its geographic location, lack of military might, and
general vulnerability to neighbors like Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Israel.
Naturally, therefore,
The condition was that
Although the Saudis reserved the right to provide input
regarding the general nature of these projects, the reality was that an elite
corps of foreigners (mostly infidels, in the eyes of Muslims) would determine
the future appearance and economic makeup of the
From our perspective, the prospects for immense profits
seemed limitless. It was a sweetheart deal with potential to set an amazing
precedent. And to make the deal even sweeter, no one had to obtain
congressional approval – a process loathed by corporations, particularly
privately owned ones like Bechtel and
The Saudis, rolling in cash, would deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to Treasury, which held on to the funds until they were needed to pay vendors or employees. This system assured that the Saudi money would be recycled back into the American economy ... It also ensured that the commission's managers could undertake whatever projects they and the Saudis agreed were useful without having to justify them to Congress.
Establishing the parameters for this historic undertaking took
less time than anyone could have imagined. After that, however, we had to
figure out a way to implement it. To set the process in motion, someone at the
highest level of government was dispatched to
Whoever the envoy was, his first job was to remind the royal
family about what had happened in neighboring
There was just one slight obstacle. We would have to
convince key players in the Saudi government. This, we were informed, was a
family matter.
In 1975, I was assigned to one of those key players. I always thought of him as Prince W, although I never determined that he was actually a crown prince. My job was to persuade him that the Saudi Arabia Money-laundering Affair would benefit his country as well as him personally.
This was not as easy as it appeared at first. Prince W
professed himself a good Wahhabi and insisted that he
did not want to see his country follow in the footsteps of Western
commercialism. He also claimed that he understood the insidious nature of what
we were proposing. We had, he said, the same objectives as the crusaders a
millennium earlier: the Christianization of the Arab world. In fact, he was
partially right about this. In my opinion, the difference between the crusaders
and us was a matter of degree.
Religious beliefs aside, Prince W had one weakness – for beautiful blondes. It seems almost ludicrous to mention what has now become an unfair stereotype, and I should mention that Prince W was the only man among many Saudis I have known who had this proclivity, or at least the only one who was willing to let me see it. Yet, it played a role in structuring this historic deal, and it demonstrates how far I would go to complete my mission.
Beyond my own personal dilemmas, my times in
The global empire, on the other hand, is the republic's nemesis. It is self-centered, self-serving, greedy, and materialistic, a system based on mercantilism. Like empires before, its arms open only to accumulate resources, to grab everything in sight and stuff its insatiable maw. It will use whatever means it deems necessary to help its rulers gain more power and riches.
Of course, in learning to understand this distinction I also
developed a clearer sense of my own role. Claudine had warned me; she had
honestly outlined what would be expected of me if I accepted the job
I was loyal to the American republic, but what we were
perpetrating through this new, highly subtle form of imperialism was the
financial equivalent of what we had attempted to accomplish militarily in
In countries on every continent, I saw how men and women
working for
The fact was that I had never thought of myself as a bona fide economist. I had graduated
with a bachelor of science in business administration from
I kept these two documents and several other similar ones in the top drawer of my desk, and I returned to them frequently. Afterward, I sometimes found myself outside my office, wandering among the desks of my staff, looking at those men and women who worked for me and feeling guilty about what I had done to them, and about the role we all played in widening the gap between rich and poor. I thought about the people who starved each day while my staff and I slept in first-class hotels, ate at the finest restaurants, and built up our financial portfolios.
I, of course, had done everything I could imagine to lighten
their burden. I had written papers, given lectures, and taken every possible
opportunity to convince them of the importance of optimistic forecasts, of huge
loans, of infusions of capital that would spur GNP growth and make the world a
better place. It had required less than a decade to arrive at this point where
the seduction, the coercion, had taken a much more subtle form, a sort of
gentle style of brainwashing. Now these men and women who sat at desks outside
my office overlooking
I realized that my gloss as chief economist, head of Economics and Regional Planning, was not the simple deception of a rug dealer, not something of which a buyer can beware. It was part of a sinister system aimed not at outfoxing an unsuspecting customer, but rather at promoting the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever known. Every one of the people on my staff also held a title – financial analyst, sociologist, economist, lead economist, econometrician, shadow pricing expert, and so forth – and yet none of those titles indicated that every one of them was, in his or her own way, an EHM, that every one of them was serving the interests of global empire.
Nor did the fact of those titles among my staff suggest that
we were just the tip of the iceberg. Every major international company – from ones
that marketed shoes and sporting goods to those that manufactured heavy
equipment – had its own EHM equivalents. The march had begun and it was rapidly
encircling the planet. The hoods had discarded their leather jackets, dressed
up in business suits, and taken on an air of respectability. Men and women were
descending from corporate headquarters in
It was disturbing to understand that the unspoken details behind the written words of my résumé and of that article defined a world of smoke and mirrors intended to keep us all shackled to a system that is morally repugnant and ultimately self-destructive. By getting me to read between the lines, Paula had nudged me to take one more step along a path that would ultimately transform my life.
My work in
The serious exploitation of oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon
basin began in the late 1960s, and it resulted in a buying spree in which the
small club of families who ran
One man whose star was rising over this Andean country was
the exception to the rule of political corruption and complicity with the cprporatocracy. Jaime Roldós was a university professor
and attorney in his late thirties, whom I had met on several occasions. He was
charismatic and charming. Once, I impetuously offered to fly to
He had established a reputation as a populist and a nationalist, a person who believed strongly in the rights of the poor and in the responsibility of politicians to use a country's natural resources prudently. When he began campaigning for the presidency in 1978, he captured the attention of his countrymen and of citizens in every nation where foreign interests exploited oil – or where people desired independence from the influences of powerful outside forces. Roldós was the rare modern politician who was not afraid to oppose the status quo. He went after the oil companies and the not-so-subtle system that supported them.
A major part of the Roldós platform was what came to
be known as the Hydrocarbons Policy. This policy was based on the premise that
I was personally relieved that Carter was in the White House
during this crucial time. Despite pressures from Texaco and other oil
interests,
More than any other issue, I believe it was the Hydrocarbons
Policy that convinced Ecuadorians to send Jaime Roldós to the Presidential Palace
in
We must take effective measures to defend the energy resources of the nation. The State (must) maintain the diversification of its exports and not lose its economic independence ... Our decisions will be inspired solely by national interests and in the unrestricted defense of our sovereign rights.
Once in office, Roldós had to focus on Texaco, since by that time it had become the main player in the oil game. It was an extremely rocky relationship. The oil giant did not trust the new president and did not want to be part of any policy that would set new precedents. It was very aware that such policies might serve as models in other countries.
A speech delivered by a key adviser to Roldós, José Carvajal, summed up the new administration's attitude:
If a partner [Texaco] does not want to take risks, to make investments for exploration, or to exploit the areas of an oil concession, the other partner has the right to make those investments and then to take over as the owner…
We believe our relations with foreign companies have to be just; we have to be tough in the struggle; we have to be prepared for all kinds of pressures, but we should not display fear or an inferiority complex in negotiating with those foreigners.
In November 1980, Carter lost the
Carter may have been an ineffective politician, but he had a
vision for
Reagan, on the other hand, was most definitely a global
empire builder, a servant of the corporatocracy. At
the time of his election, I found it fitting that he was a
Early in 1981, the Roldós administration formally
presented his new hydrocarbons law to the Ecuadorian Congress. If implemented,
it would reform the country's relationship to oil companies. By many standards,
it was considered revolutionary and even radical. It certainly aimed to change
the way business was conducted. Its influence would stretch far beyond
The oil companies reacted predictably – they pulled out all
the stops. Their public relations people went to work to vilify Jaime Roldós, and
their lobbyists swept into
Only weeks after sending his legislative package to Congress
and a couple of days after expelling the SIL missionaries, Roldós warned all foreign
interests, including but not limited to oil companies, that unless they
implemented plans that would help Ecuador's people, they would be forced to
leave his country. He delivered a major speech at the Atahualpa
Olympic Stadium in
He died there in a fiery airplane crash, on
The world was shocked. Latin Americans were outraged. Newspapers throughout the hemisphere blazed, "CIA Assassination!" In addition to the fact that Washington and the oil companies hated him, many circumstances appeared to support these allegations, and such suspicions were heightened as more facts became known. Nothing was ever proven, but eyewitnesses claimed that Roldós, forewarned about an attempt on his life, had taken precautions, including traveling in two airplanes. At the last moment, it was said, one of his security officers had convinced him to board the decoy airplane. It had blown up.
Despite world reaction, the news hardly made the
Osvaldo Hurtado
took over as
Omar Torrijos, in eulogizing Rold