Word: aid
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...American relations, they need only look at what transpired in Ecuador this weekend. President Rafael Correa rather petulantly expelled a U.S. diplomat on Saturday. He did so because the diplomat rather high-handedly sent Correa's national police commander a letter saying the U.S. was pulling $340,000 in aid to Ecuador's anti-drug cops, because Correa decided last year not to let Washington have a veto over who runs that force and even who works...
...were in the 20th. On the one hand, it was indicative of Washington's inability or refusal to realize that Latin Americans aren't as obsessed with the drug war as los yanquis are - and that they tend to feel humiliated by imperious U.S. conditions like those set on aid for Ecuador's drug police. Correa's chief complaint against the U.S. diplomat, Homeland Security attache Armando Astorga, was "the insolence to pretend that Ecuador is a colony of the U.S." (Neither the U.S. embassy in Quito nor the State Department would comment...
...other hand, it demonstrates how impulsively many Latin American governments, especially those like Ecuador that are part of the region's resurgent left, confuse national sovereignty with their own idea that foreign aid should be provided gratis and without political strings. Because Latin military and security forces have an unfortunate history of sliding into drug lords' pockets - a former Ecuadorean deputy interior minister under Correa was recently charged with drug trafficking - it's not all that outrageous that the U.S. ask to have some input in exchange for aid (or "logistical support," per Astorga...
...last year told the Americans he would no longer accept their veto privilege regarding the top brass of the Anti-Contraband Operations Unit. Nevertheless, early last month, Astorga sent his letter to National Police Commander Jaime Hurtado - informing the top cop not only that the U.S. was terminating the aid but that the force would have to return all furniture, cars and equipment donated by the U.S. in the past. To which Correa on Saturday replied, "Seņor Astorga, keep your dirty money, we don't need it." He's also ordered Hurtado to return the equipment: "Let them keep...
Maybe not. But it does need foreign aid, and booting a mid-level U.S. embassy messenger out of your country isn't the best way to cultivate it. Either way, this is the kind of atmosphere Obama will fly into in April when he attends his first regional summit, the Summit of the Americas, in Trinidad. It's instructive to note that Astorga's offending letter was dated Jan. 8 - while former President Bush, whose hemispheric policy was as ham-handed as any in memory, was still in office. Obama's first job in Trinidad is to convince the Latin...