En Marcha on inflation and wages in Latin America and the anti-crime Phoenix Plan in Ecuador

Originally posted at:  www.pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article12900 and www.pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article12907

En Marcha #2078, January 10-16, 2024

Central Organ of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador 

Latin America: Wages Lose Purchasing Power  

In 2023, the Latin American economy faced high interest rates and rising inflation, leading to a loss of purchasing power for workers in the region. In the first half of 2023, the average real wage for the region's 11 economies increased by 0.4% while inflation ended at 3.8%.  

In 2023, the [monthly] salary in Mexico was the equivalent of $440; Dominican Republic, $245; Colombia, $335; Uruguay, $570; Brazil, $291; Ecuador, $450; Costa Rica $687; Chile $521. For 2024, salary increases in those countries were announced in the following percentages: Mexico would be 15%, Dominican Republic with an increase of 19%, Colombia 12%, Uruguay 5.5%, Brazil 6.97%; Costa Rica, 1.83%; Chile aims to reach $567 by September 2024 and Ecuador a little more than 2%.  

Wage increases for the population with formal employment in the region were less than 1%, since there are countries such as Peru, Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua where wage variations were very low; To this we must add that only 50% of the population has this type of employment; we can conclude that the majority of the Latin American population does not have salaries that can cover their minimum conditions of production and reproduction of their labor power.  

In Latin America, informal employment is a feature of the dependent and backward development of our capitalist societies. The productive apparatuses of our countries increase informal work, which creates a counterweight to access a substantial minimum wage and become justifications for labor flexibility and precariousness. It shows that the rights to vacations, earnings, social security, unionization, overtime and supplementary hours, collective bargaining, are perks of a group that has stable work.  The most exemplary case is in Ecuador, a country in which its government justifies precarious forms of hiring under the argument of youth work or the violet economy [jobs for women].  

 

 

The Phoenix Plan: Only a Demagogic Offer 

President Daniel Noboa gave the name "Phoenix" to his electoral proposal on security, more out of demagoguery than because it was a real response to crime, since, in practice, it has been nothing short of useless.  

Right now, the escape of Adolfo Macías, alias "Fito" and 20 people deprived of liberty, from the Litoral penitentiary is well-known. In response to this, the police chiefs state that "they cannot affirm or deny" whether they are inside; the riots in prisons such as Turi, El Inca and Cotopaxi, demolish the supposed control of the Executive, and reveal the complicity of police and military elements in the escape.  

The existence of such a plan has been questioned, because, now that Noboa has been sworn in as president of the Republic [November 23, 2023:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Noboa ], extortion and murders have continued: on January 1 and 2 there were 50 murders, 25 each day, exceeding the average of 21 murders per day in 2023.  

The Phoenix Plan, and any other, in order to be successfully executed, requires economic resources that allow for the training of new police officers and providing them with equipment; the so-called security bloc (made up of elite police and army corps), for example, is activated with its own resources, without additional budgetary allocations.  

Ecuador ranks as the fourth most unsafe country in the region, with 46 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants during the year 2023. Faced with such a reality, the neoliberal government, representative of the big bourgeoisie, says that it will build two mega prisons like those of El Salvador, one in Santa Elena and the other in Puyo, that is, it will continue with the policy of the "iron fist", which, during the two years of Guillermo Lasso's government, did not work, despite countless states of exception.  

The country needs to combat insecurity with the creation of jobs; strengthening of the areas of: education, health, social housing; admission to universities, job stability, payment to municipalities and prefectures for public works, so the national government must deliver the corresponding budget.