Ecuador’s Path

My formation is rooted in liberation theology and the social doctrine of the Catholic church. I was born in Guayaquil in 1963. I studied at the Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil, where I was a militant in a left group in the economics department. We were the first left movement to win the presidency of the student federation at that university, which was one of the most conservative in the country. This was in a harsh period, under the Febres Cordero administration, a very repressive government of the right.footnote¹ Then I did a year’s voluntary social work in Zumbahua, an indigenous region at an altitude of 3,600 metres, before gaining a bursary to study in Europe. At Louvain, I also took part in student politics, but then I got married and went to the us to study for a doctorate. Although I maintained my left convictions, I was not politically active. Some people who call themselves the radical left say I’m not from the left because I wasn’t active alongside them, but this is arrogance. There are many spaces on the left in which one can be formed and take part, and liberation theology and the social doctrine of the church are one of them.

Every once in a while, on a voluntary basis, I gave advice to Alfredo Palacio, when he was Vice President of the Republic.footnote² I’d never met Palacio, but had made contact with him through a mutual friend, Rubén Barberán, whom I knew from our time as left student activists.footnote³ I wrote some papers for the Vice-President on dollarization and on oil funds, which were well received. When Gutiérrez fell and Palacio assumed the presidency, he nominated me Economics and Finance Minister.

In my short time at the Finance Ministry—around a hundred days—we showed that one didn’t have to do the same as always: submission to the imf and World Bank, paying off the external debt irrespective of the social debts still pending. This created a high level of expectations on the part of the public. When I resigned, there were demonstrations—probably the first in the country in support of a finance minister! I initially planned to return to teaching at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, but was dismissed just before term started because, the hierarchy said, I was a politician. At this point Ricardo Patiño and a group of collaborators told me that we couldn’t let the expectations that had been raised, the feeling that things could be done differently, end in disappointment.footnote⁴ We travelled across the country and formed a political movement to secure the presidency. For we saw very clearly that in order to change Ecuador, we had to win political power.