JAN 2022- #Ecuador- 'Center for Strategic and International Studies' -
'Preparing for Deterioration of the Latin America and Caribbean Strategic Environment- "... The Reinforcing Effects of Leftist Authoritarian Populism, China, and Covid-19. The region’s worrisome trajectory is the consequence of three mutually reinforcing phenomena: the Covid-19 pandemic, engagement with China, and the spread of a particular model of leftist authoritarian populism. The dynamic is enabled by long-standing citizen discontent with poverty, inequality, corruption, insecurity, and poor governance that fails to address those ills.

During 2007 to 2017 To varying degrees, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner all followed that playbook with variations that reflected their personal styles and the characteristics of the states in which they maneuvered for power. In each case, China played a key enabling role in the consolidation of power by those leftist populist leaders,
although largely as an artifact of China’s pursuit of its own commercial and strategic interests in those countries...."

The Covid-19 pandemic added a powerfully destabilizing element to the dangerously reinforcing cycle between China and populism. Significant protests in Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia in the fall of 2019 signaled that citizen discontent with even relatively effective governments in the region was at critical levels.
In addition to the enormous and prolonged direct public health effects of Covid-19 in the region, the pandemic contributed to the populism-China dynamic through its indirect effects on the economies of the region, crime and insecurity, and the fiscal balances of governments.

Evan Ellis is a senior associate (non-resident) with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. - © 2022 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved." -

https://www.csis.org/analysis/preparing-deterioration-latin-america-and-caribbean-strategic-environment?fbclid=IwAR16Kn9ZrEo73ZU0iLoMp7aJEkiC48qimuvGrz3mWFA69m6wA2vS33q4JUI