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In his first year as Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa scored two electoral victories that went far toward turning his promise of constitutional revolution into a reality. On 15 April 2007, Correa's proposal to call elections for a constituent assembly charged with writing an entirely new constitution won a massive 82 percent "yes" vote. At the end of September, the electorate handed Correa the second of the two prizes for which he had vigorously campaigned, awarding 80 seats in the 130-member constituent assembly to his Movement for a Proud and Sovereign Country (MPAIS).1 In a land long plagued by fragmented parties and divided governments, the astounding majority that voters delivered to the 44-year-old U.S.-trained economist and former economy minister was unprecedented. Ecuador's new constitution will be written on terms set by the charismatic and hugely popular young president.
In the months preceding the September elections, Correa depicted the assembly race as the "mother of all battles," an "all-or-nothing" contest on which rested the future of his proposed "citizens' revolution." The language, while dramatic, did not exaggerate the administration's ambitions. Elected in a 26 November 2006 runoff, Correa debuted as a president fully identified with the most radical current in Latin America's widely discussed political "left turn."2 At his inauguration, he embraced presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, and hoisted a replica of Simon Bolivar's sword (a gift from Chavez) while delivering his first address to the nation. Promising to end what he often referred to as the "long and sad night of neoliberalism," Correa pledged to put Ecuador on the road to achieving a "socialism of the twenty-first century."
Like Chavez and Morales, Correa came to office with the view that winning the presidency was, at best, a prelude to a more profound struggle for political power, one that would involve confronting rivals both within the state and in society at large. Each of the three presidents sees a new constitution in his country as the essential starting point for a leftist transformation there. Correa, like Chavez in his first presidential run in 1998, campaigned as the quintessential outsider, a maverick backed by his own antiestablishment organization. Blocking the road to Correa's proposed "deep and radical" constitutional revolution was an array of...