On August 20, 2023, Ecuador held two major referenda, one regional and one national. As Owen Schalk explains, the results of these votes indicate an overwhelming preference for environmental preservation over the expansion of mineral and oil extraction—as well as the nation’s desire to move away from the right-wing, pro-business policies of Guillermo Lasso.

Two Canadian mining companies have drawn the ire of activists and Indigenous groups in Ecuador, where the government is using Toronto-based Adventus Mining’s Curipamba copper-gold project in Las Naves and Atico Mining’s La Plata project in Sigchos as test sites to impose a new and controversial process for environmental consultation under Decree 754.

The history of Europe and the US in Latin America and the Caribbean is one of looting and carnage, colonization and slavery, invasions and coups. Is it any wonder that the nations of the region welcome positive relations with Russia and China, while viewing attempts to pressure them into abandoning these alliances as merely another stage in a long history of foreign intervention?

Ottawa has conscripted itself to Washington’s new Cold War, which aims to challenge the economic influence of its geopolitical competitors around the world. In Latin America and Asia, writes Owen Schalk, Canada is once more showing its foreign policy to be spineless, little more than a reflection of the demands of Canadian capital and the US empire.

Environmentalists like Mariano Abarca face tremendous oppression from foreign-owned mining companies. This means, inevitably, that they face the wrath of Canadian companies, given that Canada-based companies make up 41 percent of the largest firms in Latin America. Community activists who oppose Canadian mines are frequently harassed, intimidated, or killed.

As the political crisis in Venezuela intensified in early 2019, Freeland claimed that “Canada and its allies are well down the road to crafting a long-term, post-Maduro recovery plan for Venezuela’s disastrous economic decline,” ignoring the role played by US intervention. “We are discussing with our partners now ways that sanctions list can be expanded in order to have even more bite.”

Cuba desperately needs food and medical aid now. It also deserves an end to the longest-standing embargo in modern times. Canada can play a major role in promoting both outcomes. By doing so it will provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance, but will also enhance its own role in the region where Cuba plays an outsized role. The ball is now in the court of Ministers Joly and Sajjan.

When it comes to critical minerals, Canada and the US are dead set on replacing China’s supply with reserves elsewhere, namely Latin America and Africa. And given the exploitative way that mining firms function, “decoupling” means more exploitation, more undermining of state sovereignty, and more conflict with those who oppose selling out their mining industries to foreign capital.

In Latin America, the desire to expand relationships with Russia and China, and to remain neutral on the war in Ukraine, is partly rooted in the violent history of imperialism in the region. If Ottawa and Washington fail to realize this, they will continue to isolate themselves in the hemisphere while enabling the growing influence of the geopolitical rivals they are supposedly trying to obstruct.

AMLO’s mining reforms are an expansion of his efforts to reduce foreign domination of Mexico’s mineral reserves, and part of his wider “Fourth Transformation” program of securing national sovereignty over the country’s lucrative resources. Up until now, his actions toward the sector have taken the form of freezing new mining and water permits for foreign companies.