The CIA and creole anticommunism in Cold War Ecuador

ABSTRACT

‘Creole’, or domestically birthed, anticommunisms came in many different flavours and are in need of deeper investigation to understand how they responded to local conditions. This study examines one case from Ecuador where political leaders eagerly manipulated an anticommunist agenda to advance their own partisan prospects in ways that were distinct from the United States government’s global geopolitical concerns. Conservatives had their own motivations, which sometimes paralleled with and at other times came into conflict with those of larger political powers. These ‘creole anticommunisms’ could be more aggressive than those of United States officials, even as they served other purposes. [q]TQ3[/q]

KEYWORDS:

• CIA
• anticommunism
• Cold War
• Latin America
• Ecuador

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Michelle Chase for her feedback on an earlier version of this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York: Stonehill, 1975), 157.

² Agee, Inside the Company, 160, 163.

³ Acción Anticomunista Ecuatoriano, ‘Zarpazos del oso moscovita’ (Quito: Prensa Católica, 19 March 1961), reprinted in Acción Anticomunista Ecuatoriana, ¿Cubanizar al Ecuador? (Quito: Editorial Don Bosco, 1961), 68–71.

⁴ Paulo Drinot, ‘Creole Anti-Communism: Labor, the Peruvian Communist Party, and APRA, 1930–1934’, Hispanic American Historical Review 92, no. 4 (November 2012): 703–36.

⁵ Patrick Iber, Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 7.

⁶ Ronn F. Pineo, Ecuador and the United States: Useful Strangers (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 169.

⁷ Greg Grandin, ‘Living in Revolutionary Time: Coming to Terms with the Violence of Latin America’s Long Cold War’, in A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War, ed. Greg Grandin and Gilbert M. Joseph (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 25.

⁸ Leading scholarship includes John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2005); Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007); Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (New York: Basic Books, 2017). For Latin America, see Hal Brands, Latin America’s Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Michelle Chase, Revolution Within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952–1962 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Thomas C. Field, Krepp Stella, and Vanni Pettinà, eds., Latin America and the Global Cold War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020); Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence, and Julio Moreno, eds., Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow: New Histories of Latin America’s Cold War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013); Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Making of an Imperial Republic (New York: Picador, 2021); Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Iber, Neither Peace nor Freedom; Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds., In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); Renata Keller, Mexico’s Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Aldo Marchesi, Latin America’s Radical Left: Rebellion and Cold War in the Global 1960s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Jody Pavilack, Mining for the Nation: The Politics of Chile’s Coal Communities from the Popular Front to the Cold War (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011); and Stephen G. Rabe, The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

⁹ See, for example, Lars Schoultz, In Their Own Best Interest: A History of the U.S. Effort to Improve Latin Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).

¹⁰ Gilbert M. Joseph, ‘What We Now Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin America More Meaningfully into Cold War Studies’, in In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War, ed. Gilbert. M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 7; Tanya Harmer, ‘Fractious Allies: Chile, the United States, and the Cold War, 1973–76’, Diplomatic History 37, no. 1 (January 2013): 109–43.

¹¹ Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War, 1–2.

¹² Aaron Coy Moulton, ‘Building Their Own Cold War in Their Own Backyard: The Transnational, International Conflicts in the Greater Caribbean Basin, 1944–1954’, Cold War History 15, no. 2 (May 2015): 135–54.

¹³ Aaron Coy Moulton, ‘Counterrevolutionary Friends: Caribbean Basin Dictators and Guatemalan Exiles against the Guatemalan Revolution, 1945–50’, The Americas 76, no. 1 (January 2019): 109.

¹⁴ Marcelo Casals, ‘Against a Continental Threat: Transnational Anti-Communist Networks of the Chilean Right Wing in the 1950s’, Journal of Latin American Studies 51, no. 3 (August 2019): 524–5; Marcelo Casals, La creación de la amenaza roja: del surgimiento del anticomunismo en Chile a la ‘campaña del terror’ de 1964 (Santiago: LOM, 2016), 19.

¹⁵ Jason C. Parker, Hearts, Minds, Voices: US Cold War Public Diplomacy and the Formation of the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 1.

¹⁶ Alan McPherson, ‘Afterword: The Paradox of Latin American Cold War Studies’, in Beyond the Eagle’s Shadow: New Histories of Latin America’s Cold War, ed. Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Mark Atwood Lawrence, and Julio Moreno (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013), 308.

¹⁷ The groundbreaking work on the Right in Latin America is Sandra McGee Deutsch, Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890–1939 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). The field continues to grow with important contributions such as those by João Fábio Bertonha and Ernesto Lázaro Bohoslavsky, eds., Circule por la derecha: percepciones, redes y contactos entre las derechas sudamericanas, 1917–1973 (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 2016).

¹⁸ Kirsten Weld, ‘The Spanish Civil War and the Construction of a Reactionary Historical Consciousness in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile’, Hispanic American Historical Review 98, no. 1 (February 2018): 77–115; Kirsten Weld, ‘The Other Door: Spain and the Guatemalan Counter-Revolution, 1944–54’, Journal of Latin American Studies 51, no. 2 (May 2019): 307–31.

¹⁹ Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta, On Guard Against the Red Menace: Anti-Communism in Brazil, 1917–1964 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2020); Casals, La creación de la amenaza roja, 31.

²⁰ Juventud Universitario Católica (JUC), Así educan los comunistas: una voz de alerta a los ecuatorianos (Quito: Juventud Universitario Católica de Ecuador, 1956), 7.

²¹ Barry Carr, ‘Escribiendo la historia de los comunismos en las américas: retos y nuevas oportunidades’, in El comunismo en América Latina. Experiencias militantes, intelectuales y transnacionales (1917–1955), ed. Patricio Herrera (Chile: Universidad de Valparaíso, 2017), 26.

²² Gilbert M. Joseph, ‘Border Crossings and the Remaking of Latin American Cold War Studies’, Cold War History 19, no. 1 (February 2019): 144.

²³ Joseph, ‘Border Crossings and the Remaking of Latin American Cold War Studies’, 148.

²⁴ Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); John Prados, The Family Jewels: The CIA, Secrecy, and Presidential Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014); David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch (New York: Athenaeum, 1977); Joseph Burkholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (New York: Putnam, 1976); and John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978).

²⁵ Kaeten Mistry, ‘A Transnational Protest against the National Security State: Whistle-Blowing, Philip Agee, and Networks of Dissent’, Journal of American History 106, no. 2 (September 2019): 362–89; Jonathan Stevenson, A Drop of Treason: Philip Agee and His Exposure of the CIA (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2021).

²⁶ Marc Becker, The FBI in Latin America: The Ecuador Files (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017); Marc Becker, The CIA in Ecuador (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021).

²⁷ An important early work in bridging cultural and political approaches to Latin American history is Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds., Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988).

²⁸ Agee, Inside the Company, 109–10.

²⁹ Agee, Inside the Company, 130, 137.

³⁰ Little to State, 15 August 1960, Record Group 59 (hereafter cited as RG59), 722.00(W)/8-1560, National Archives Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter cited as NARA).

³¹ Ravndal to State, 29 October 1959, RG59, 722.00/10-2959, NARA.

³² Allen to State, 8 July 1960, RG59, 722.13/7-860, NARA.

³³ Pedro Jorge Vera, ‘El caso Araujo Hidalgo’, Mañana, 15 September 1960, 3.

³⁴ Summ to State, 23 November 1959, RG59, 722.00/11-2359, NARA; Rogers to State, 9 February 1960, RG59, 722.00/2-960, NARA; Ravndal to State, 28 May 1960, RG59, 722.00/5-2860, NARA.

³⁵ Hemenway to State, 29 July 1960, RG59, 722.00/7-2960, NARA.

³⁶ Rogers to State, 15 August 1960, RG59, 722.00/8-1560, NARA.

³⁷ Little to State, 6 September 1960, RG59, 722.00(W)/9-660, NARA.

³⁸ Mary Jeanne Reid Martz, ‘Ecuador and the Eleventh Inter-American Conference’, Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 10, no. 2 (April 1968): 306–27. On the police training programmes, see Martha Knisely Huggins, Political Policing: The United States and Latin America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998) and Stuart Schrader, Badges without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019).

³⁹ Agee, Inside the Company, 109, 132; Hemmenway to State, 23 November 1960, RG59, 722.13/11-2360, NARA; Little to State, 28 November 1960, RG59, 722.00(W)/11-2860, NARA.

⁴⁰ ‘Ecuador’, Hispanic American Report, November 1960, 811.

⁴¹ Vanni Pettiná, ‘Del anticomunismo al antinacionalismo: la presidencia Eisenhower y el giro autoritario en la América Latina de los años 50’, Revista de Indias 67, no. 240 (2007): 573–606; Vanni Pettiná, ‘The Shadows of Cold War over Latin America: The US reaction to Fidel Castro’s Nationalism, 1956–59’, Cold War History 11, no. 3 (2011): 317–39.

⁴² Weld, ‘The Other Door’, 310.

⁴³ Acción Anticomunista Ecuatoriana, ¿Cubanizar al Ecuador?, 9.

⁴⁴ Agee, Inside the Company, 123–4.

⁴⁵ Agee, Inside the Company, 136–7.

⁴⁶ Michelle Chase, ‘Confronting the Youngest Revolution: Cuban Anti-Communists and the Global Politics of Youth in the Early 1960s’, Journal of Latin American Studies 53, no. 4 (November 2021): 643–66; Jaime M. Pensado, Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Authoritarian Political Culture during the Long Sixties (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013).

⁴⁷ ‘Alerta Ecuatorianos!!!’ Hojas Volantes, Biblioteca Ecuatoriana Aurelio Espinosa Pólit, Cotocollao, Ecuador (hereafter cited as BEAEP), also printed in Acción Anticomunista Ecuatoriana, ¿Cubanizar al Ecuador?, 10.

⁴⁸ Carleton Beals, Latin America: World in Revolution (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1963), 295.

⁴⁹ Rodríguez Solveira to Chiriboga Villagómez, 29 October 1960, B.11.6, Archivo Histórico del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (AHMRE), Quito. Chiriboga Villagómez responded that he would have the ministry of government investigate the violation. See Chiriboga to Ambassador, 31 October 1960, N.10.1, AHMRE.

⁵⁰ The four students were Aurelio Román, Marcelo Subía, Marco Antonio Pazmiño Guerrón, and Washington Villacrés. Initial press reports indicated that the police had arrested a fifth person, Jorge Salvador, though later accounts said that was an error. ‘El Ministro de Gobierno apresó personalmente a 5 estudiantes’, El Comercio, 6 November 1960, 1, 3.

⁵¹ Agee, Inside the Company, 124.

⁵² Agee, Inside the Company, 132.

⁵³ ‘Quinta y sexta columnas, grandes fuerzas en la estratégica comunista’, BEAEP, also printed in Acción Anticomunista Ecuatoriana, ¿Cubanizar al Ecuador?, 11–13.

⁵⁴ ‘Universitarios apresados el sábado salieron libres ayer tarde, a las 4 y 30’, El Comercio, 7 November 1960, 24. A CIA document claims that Araujo Hidalgo made the arrests at the suggestion of the Cuban ambassador to Ecuador Mariano Rodríguez Solveira. See ‘Cuban Aggression and Subversive Activities in Latin America’, 17 January 1961, Digital National Security Archive, https://www.proquest.com/government-official-publications/cuban-aggression-subversive-activities-latin/docview/1679065928/se-2?accountid=41096 (accessed 29 August 2021).

⁵⁵ Moulton, ‘Counterrevolutionary Friends’, 111.

⁵⁶ ‘Las elecciones municipales’, El Pueblo, 5 November 1960, 1.

⁵⁷ ‘Fobia Curuchupa y Social-Cristiana’, El Pueblo, 26 November 1960, 1.

⁵⁸ ‘Tribunal Supremo Electoral ordenó la libertad de los 4 universitarios apresados’, El Comercio, 7 November 1960, 13.

⁵⁹ ‘Estudiantes fueron puestos en libertad por orden de Dr. Araujo’, El Comercio, 8 November 1960, 14.

⁶⁰ Agee, Inside the Company, 132.

⁶¹ Agee, Inside the Company, 124.

⁶² Gonzalo García García and Franklin Flores, ‘El Frente Estudiantil Anticomunista’, El Comercio, 7 November 1960, 3.

⁶³ Agee, Inside the Company, 159, 166.

⁶⁴ Chase, ‘Confronting the Youngest Revolution’.

⁶⁵ Juventud Universitario Católica (JUC), Hungría: ¿Qué dirán ahora los comunistas? (Quito: Juventud Universitario Católica de Ecuador, 1956); JUC, Así educan los comunistas.

⁶⁶ ‘El Frente de Defensa Ncnal. rechaza la presencia del embajador ruso en el país’, El Comercio, 8 March 1961, 13.

⁶⁷ ‘Juventud Universitaria Cátolica del Ecuador’, El Comercio, 4 April 1961, 3.

⁶⁸ ‘El Ministro de Gobierno apresó personalmente a 5 estudiantes’, El Comercio, 6 November 1960, 1, 3.

⁶⁹ Ricardo Unda, ‘La Juventud Universitaria Católica de la Universidad Central’, El Comercio, 7 November 1960, 13.

⁷⁰ Iván Guerrón Salazar and Ricardo Unda, ‘Intereses universitarios’, El Comercio, 10 November 1960, 13.

⁷¹ Chase, ‘Confronting the Youngest Revolution’.

⁷² ‘Ministro de Gobierno acusa a político social cristiano de actuar desde la sombra’, El Comercio, 11 November 1960, 1, 16.

⁷³ ‘Ministro de Gobierno acusa a político social cristiano de actuar desde la sombra’, El Comercio, 11 November 1960, 1, 16.

⁷⁴ ‘Hoja suelta denuncia tácticas de penetración comunista en el País’, El Comercio, 11 November 1960, 3.

⁷⁵ Acción Anticomunista Ecuatoriana, ¿Cubanizar al Ecuador?, 13.

⁷⁶ ‘La Policía del Ministro Araujo’, El Pueblo, 10 December 1960, 8.

⁷⁷ Frente Anticomunista Ecuatoriano, ‘Continuamos nuestra lucha anticomunista’ (Quito: Prensa Católica, 11 November 1960). Curiously, neither Agee in Inside the Company nor the CIA in ¿Cubanizar al Ecuador? mentions this handbill.

⁷⁸ Hernán Ibarra, ‘La Calle y Mañana: Las trayectorias divergentes de dos revistas políticas ecuatorianas’, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 92 (April 2012): 59–76 and Diego Rubén Arcos Bastidas, Revista La Calle. Historia de un proyecto editorial en Quito (1957–1960) (Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 2021).

⁷⁹ ‘Como me lo contaron’, La Calle, 17 December 1960, 29.

⁸⁰ Juan sin Cielo [Alejandro Carrión], ‘El otro peligro’, La Calle, 24 December 1960, 3.

⁸¹ ‘Ecuador’, Hispanic American Report, May 1955, 175; ‘Ecuador’, Hispanic American Report, April 1957, 140; ‘Ex-Officials Held in Ecuador’, New York Times, 28 February 1957, 7; Dustmann to State, 8 March 1957, RG59, 722.00/3-857, NARA; Dustmann to State, 21 May 1957, RG59, 722.00/5-2157, NARA; Dustmann to State, July 1, 1957, RG59, 722.00/7-157, NARA.

⁸² ‘Doce políticos del año’, La Calle, 3 January 1959, 30.

⁸³ See, for example, Juan sin Cielo, ‘Servicio a la patria y servicio al gobierno’, La Calle, 5 November 1960, 3.

⁸⁴ ‘La plaza grande’, Mañana, 17 November 1960, 23, 26.

⁸⁵ Hugo Larrea Benalcázar, ‘La reacción conspira’, Mañana, 17 November 1960, 3.

⁸⁶ Agee, Inside the Company, 109–10.

⁸⁷ ‘Ministro de Gobierno niega acusación de ser comunista’, El Comercio, 12 November 1960, 1, 3; ‘Ministro de Gobierno afirma que no perseguirá a los comunistas y ciudadanos por ideas políticas’, El Comercio, 13 November 1960, 1, 13.

⁸⁸ ‘Ministro de Gobierno niega acusación de ser comunista’, El Comercio, 12 November 1960, 1, 3.

⁸⁹ ‘La JUC no está manejada por ningún socialcristiano’, El Comercio, 14 November 1960, 3. On the 1954 OAS statement, see Max Paul Friedman, ‘Fracas in Caracas: Latin American Diplomatic Resistance to United States Intervention in Guatemala in 1954’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 21, no. 4 (December 2010): 669–89.

⁹⁰ ‘La Juventud Revolucionaria Católica a la ciudadanía’, El Comercio, 19 November 1960, 1.

⁹¹ Raúl Velasco, Diego Paredes, Luis Ponce Palacios, Gustavo Jácome, Narciso Zambrano, Aníbal Jaramillo, Jorge Rodríguez, and Francisco Esteban Aguirre, ‘A la juventud burocrática velasquista que se autotitula “Juventud Revolucionaria Católica”’, El Comercio, 21 November 1960, 11.

⁹² Gil Flores Serrano and Tito Cabezas Castillo, ‘Exposición de la Juventud Universitaria Católica’, El Comercio, 22 November 1960, 17.

⁹³ Agee, Inside the Company, 142.

⁹⁴ Bernbaum to State, 7 November 1960, RG59, 722.00(W)/11-760, NARA.

⁹⁵ Hemmenway to State, 23 November 1960, RG59, 722.13/11-2360, NARA.

⁹⁶ CIA, ‘Central Intelligence Bulletin’, 12 December 1960, CIA Electronic Reading Room, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/02993698 (accessed 29 August 2021).

⁹⁷ ‘Si necesitamos ayuda del diablo, la recibiremos; establezcamos relaciones con Unión Soviética’, El Comercio, 13 December 1960, 13, 15.

⁹⁸ Bernbaum to State, 13 December 1960, RG59, 722.00/12-1360, NARA.

⁹⁹ Bernbaum to State, 14 December 1960, RG59, 722.00/12-1460, NARA.

¹⁰⁰ Rogers to State, 21 December 1960, RG59, 722.13/12-2160, NARA.

¹⁰¹ ‘Presidente Velasco acepta renuncia del Mtro. de Gobierno’, El Comercio, 17 December 1960, 1, 16.

¹⁰² ‘Ecuadoreans Oust Pro-Castro Aide’, New York Times, 18 December 1960, 28; Ximena Sosa, Hombres y mujeres velasquistas 1934–1972 (Quito: FLACSO/Editorial Abya Yala, 2020), 68.

¹⁰³ ‘El alejamiento del ex-Ministro de Gobierno no cambiará orientación política del Régimen’, El Comercio, 18 December 1960, 17.

¹⁰⁴ Germán Rodas Chaves, La izquierda ecuatoriana en el siglo XX (Aproximación histórica) (Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2000), 71–2.

¹⁰⁵ ‘No hay peligro comunista ni imperialista que perturbe nuestra solidaridad actual’, El Comercio, 20 December 1960, 1, 13.

¹⁰⁶ Agee, Inside the Company, 143.

¹⁰⁷ Bernbaum to State, 17 December 1960, RG59, 722.00/12-1760, NARA.

¹⁰⁸ Consejo Ejecutivo Nacional Movimiento URJE, ‘URJE denuncia a Chiriboga Villagómez’, Mañana, 23 December 1960, 18.

¹⁰⁹ Rogers to State, 21 December 1960, RG59, 722.13/12-2160, NARA.

¹¹⁰ ‘Apoyan declaraciones del Ministro Araujo’, El Comercio, 13 December 1960, 15.

¹¹¹ Germán Carrión, ‘El gran desertor’, Mañana, 16 December 1960, 16–17, 26; Hugo Larrea Benalcázar, ‘La linea correcta’, Mañana, 23 December 1960; Caminante, ‘La “renuncia” del Dr. Araujo Hidalgo’, Mañana, 23 December 1960, 19.

¹¹² Jones to State, 15 February 1960, RG59, 922.61/2-1560, NARA.

¹¹³ Juan sin Cielo, ‘El otro peligro’, La Calle, 24 December 1960, 3.

¹¹⁴ Tabano, ‘Todo el mundo comenta’, La Calle, 24 December 1960, 6.

¹¹⁵ Casals, ‘Against a Continental Threat’, 546.

¹¹⁶ Chase, ‘Confronting the Youngest Revolution’.

¹¹⁷ Moulton, ‘Building Their Own Cold War in Their Own Backyard’, 152; Moulton, ‘Counterrevolutionary Friends’, 110.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society, and a Faculty Scholarship Grant from Truman State University.