La-CIA-contra-America-Latina-Capitulo-especial-Ecuador

THE CIA AGAINST LATIN AMERICALet’s remember the story in your way through Ecuador. Historically,how would you label your mission at Ecuador?Well, I didn’t have a personal mission; I went there to build a team ofofficers and to be part of it. Each of whom were managing their own operations,that is to say, operations at the “Station”. All that is well definedand detailed in my first book: when I arrived, the main mission was theisolation of Cuban Revolution, which was the highest priority in wholeLatin America.Did you envisage Ecuador, for example in the 60’s, as a countryclose to falling into the hands of international communism?No. The Communist Party was not very strong, it was very weak indeed,but those were the Kennedy years and there was an emphasis on whatwas called at the time “counterinsurgency”. This was intended to preventa takeover by another movement, similarly as it happened in Cuba. Therewere, as everyone knew at that time, armed revolutionary movements inseveral Latin American countries. The role of the CIA at that time was topenetrate and suppress them, that is, to repress, using security services,military services, local police; and this program had some success, becausein Argentina, in Uruguay with the Tupamaros, in Brazil, in Peru and indifferent countries, were some important movements that were repressedin those years, especially in the 60’s and 70’s.In the Ecuadorian case this didn’t occur, but in the interim whenyou were there two governments were dropped: Velasco’s andArosemena’s.Exactly.In your opinion, was Velasco dangerous and was Arosemena acommunist?75