Turn to the Left

One of the poorest and least stable of Latin America's underdeveloped nations is Ecuador, a small, banana-growing republic perched on South America's Pacific rump. Ecuador's 4,400,000 people earn a per-capita annual income of only $165, one of the lowest in the hemisphere; by no coincidence only 13 elected governments have finished their terms in 131 years of independence. Last week President Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, 68, earned the dubious distinction of becoming No. 35 to leave in midterm. Beset by strikes, riots and military revolts, he made a dash for asylum in the Mexican embassy in Quito, thus paving the way for a leftist takeover and plunging his country into a crisis similar to Janio Quadros' abrupt flight from Brazil.

"The Divine Mob." For Velasco Ibarra it was an old story. First elected in 1934, he has been President four times, has completed only one term. A spellbinding orator who swings from right to left to suit his audience, he was elected last year by the votes and demonstrations of what he calls "the divine mob." But in office, he did little to ease Ecuador's chronic problems. Promised campaigns for land reform, slum clearance, roads and industrial development were slow in coming; living costs rose 30% in six months, wages failed to keep pace. The final straw was a "tax reform" program that angered the public.

Early this year, Klein & Saks, a U.S. consultant firm, recommended an overhaul of Ecuador's antiquated tax structure, under which the rich minority get off easy. Three months ago, angling for Alliance for Progress aid, Velasco ordered new taxes. But instead of increasing the burden on the aristocracy, he slapped the little man with a series of excise taxes on 37 consumer items from soft drinks to lard. One levy even set tolls for the country's few paved roads, many of which were built with the $121 million in U.S. aid that Ecuador has received since World War II.

Rocks & Bullets. In the big port city of Guayaquil, in Andean towns, and finally in the capital of Quito itself, angry students and workers raced through cobbled streets stoning police and overturning cars. Egging on the mobs were the usual Communist agitators and one important political figure, Ecuador's Vice President Carlos Julio Arosemena, 42, an aristocrat turned leftist, who pointedly ignored Adlai Stevenson's visit last June, flew off instead to Moscow and returned calling Nikita Khrushchev "my friend." From his seat presiding over the Senate, Arosemena denounced the taxes and called Velasco Ibarra "a dictator." As the mobs grew more threatening, police fired on the rampaging demonstrators; in Guayaquil one day they killed eight students, a newspaper reporter and two day laborers.

Enraged that his Vice President had sided with the rioters, Velasco Ibarra sent tanks and troops to the Congress building. Arosemena was arrested and packed off to prison. But before dawn one morning in Quito, a battalion of army engineers revolted. Paratroopers and infantrymen counterattacked, and after a sporadic, seven-hour fire fight in which four soldiers died and ten were wounded, the rebels surrendered. It was only a temporary victory. By now the Ecuadorian air force, the navy, and an armored unit had defected to Arosemena, while in downtown Quito growing civilian mobs battled police. At 5 p.m., with 35 dead and 140 wounded in the mounting violence, Velasco Ibarra abandoned the palace.

Jets Y. Tanks. Although Ecuador's constitution provides for the Vice President to succeed to the presidency, a few army generals attempted to bypass Leftist Arosemena by naming the chief of the Supreme Court as President. But the bulk of the military stood with the Vice President. In a show of determination, the air force sent three U.S.-made T-33 jets howling low over Quito to scatter the army tanks besieging Congress. Twenty-four hours later, Arosemena was sworn in as Ecuador's chief of state. Emplaning for exile in Argentina, Velasco insisted that he was still constitutional President, declared: "I am being thrown out of my own country. This is an outrage."

As he took office, Arosemena. himself the son of a former President of Ecuador, made the expected bows to the constitution and said that he would uphold democracy. In domestic affairs he promised meaningful land, tax and other reforms that will hit the rich and help the masses. He vowed to support Castro's Cuba and issued an invitation to other Communist lands by saying pointedly. "I am willing to establish diplomatic relations with any country in the world."

In Washington, the U.S. State Department adopted a wait-and-see attitude on Ecuador, hopefully noted that Arosemena, for all his leftist talk, had appointed a solid, middle-road Cabinet. But in Havana, Fidel Castro obviously thought that he had won a friend. "This is a victory over Yankee imperialism." chortled Castro. "It must have hit Washington like a 65-megaton bomb."

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