Some troubling news out of Ecuador. CNN captures some footage of what may be a coup in progress.
Apparently, the police are protesting against austerity measures imposed on public employees by President Rafael Correa. According to the latest reports from Reuters, Caldera was somehow injured in the protests and is now holed up in a hospital with masses of angry police gathered outside.
Here in Washington, DC the Organization for American States has called an emergency meeting on the matter. Presumably, the OAS will uniformly condemn the attack on Correa–they tend to be understandably sensitive to coup attempts. But it will be interesting to see how this develops politically in the United States.
Correa is a left winger and politically aligned with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. You may recall that last year around this time another Central American left winger, Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, was deposed in a military coup that also drew widespread international condemnation. One powerful group that supported the coup, however, was a cadre of Republican members of Congress, neocon political magazines, and a former counsel to Bill Clinton.
Might a pro-coup caucus emerge once again?