Mac Margolis, Columnist

Ecuador Strikes a Blow for Common Sense

A referendum rejects rulers for life, corrupt officials and oil rigs in nature preserves.

February 5, 2018 at 5:08 PM UTC

Mac Margolis is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Latin and South America. He is the author of “The Last New World: The Conquest of the Amazon Frontier.”

Start the revolution without me.
Photographer: Juan Ruiz/AFP/Getty Images

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When Lenin Moreno won the presidential election in Ecuador last April, no one expected a political miracle. The former vice president to Rafael Correa, he won by a narrow margin and seemed to harbor no ambitions beyond warming the throne for his jefe’s presumptive return to the palace in 2021.

What Ecuador got instead was an insurrection. Just ask Correa: Having done pretty much as he pleased with the impoverished Andean nation for the last decade, the cashiered caudillo has since watched his protege pick apart his “Citizens Revolution,” reform by reform.