February 2023
Intermediate to advanced
384 pages
9h 54m
English
President Rafael Correa stood alone on the balcony of Ecuador’s Government Palace and smiled down at the cluster of people beginning to gather below him in Quito’s Independence Plaza. They were waving and pointing their cell phone cameras at him. In less than a year he would complete his second term as president and, as required under Ecuadorian law, retire from office in 2017. He would leave knowing that he had scored a major victory. He had met with China’s President Xi Jinping and signed the deal of the century. He had beaten the American economic hit men at their own game.
US policies had impacted Correa all his life. It began when he was five years old and his father disappeared behind the walls of a US prison, convicted ...