Interview with Dr. Alfredo Palacio; Ex-President of Ecuador

Dr. Alfredo Palacio is a physician, specifically a cardiologist, who first became the Minister of Health in Ecuador and then assumed office as President of Ecuador between 2005-2007. He pushed for the political, social and economic transformation of Ecuador and made it one of his goals to fulfil the objectives of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. He has a strong interest in social healthcare and politics and his main objective for this millennium is to grant universal health care insurance to 100% of his population by 2015. His strong interest was reflected in his speech during the congress, in which he reiterated the importance of biology, education and improving health in Latin America. One of our CD – News members was fortunate enough to get an interview with him.

In your presentation you stressed the importance of the celebration of life and that global politics should concentrate on health issues. During your time in office you implemented a lot of reforms in the health care system in Ecuador. I wanted to ask you how you rate the results, and what you consider remains to be achieved in Ecuador and also in Latin America as an entire continent.

During my time, we started, but did not complete universal insurance for health. I think that is a very important priority in this ‘biology approach’ that I’m proposing, but the second important part is to get money for those projects. What I did when I was in office was to take some money that was used for the oil problem and put it into the social and also the academic research areas. I think the only way we can go beyond the simple and small solution to have a great and definite solution is to be prepared. Being prepared consists of educating people and getting more scientific people. We have to do research. The investment into research in South America is very poor. That’s what I did, and I was coherent in my proposal. 

My second question relates to when Ecuador became a member of ALBA on 24th June 2009. This is an alliance for social, political and economic integration between Latin American nations. I wanted to ask you if you think that increased integration reduces conflict, and do you think it could compromise cultural autonomy and sovereignty and also diversity.

Someone from Germany used to say this, I think it was Immanuel Kant; we need a multi-lateral, international organisation of countries, in which everyone will learn how to yield some of our sovereignty. The problem is when you yield sovereignty in benefit of someone else, not integration. I believe in integration and I think South America needs to be integrated, not isolated. I think the world will understand us much better if we speak as South Americans, as I did today for example, rather than Ecuadorian. So I think it is very good if we integrate regions and then, from those regions, we integrate into the world.   

Do you see in the future there being potential for a kind of union of Latin America nations that resembles the EU?

I would say that at least that is a hope. My hope is that we integrate South America beyond ideologies. I think the only ideology that we should have is that we have freedom, liberty and also stimulate people to think differently. However, Integration shouldn’t be around an ideology.

Recently in Ecuador there have been protests against the Correa administration from indigenous groups, who disagreed over the privatisation of water. Is there a way that foreign investment and privatisation can at the same time protect the rights and needs of people?

I’m against any type of privatisation, as you heard me say. I don’t think that is the intention of President Correa, however. If there is any possibility, any law or rule that gives the possibility of privatisation, it should be denied and people should contest it. Water cannot be privatised. It has to be universal. I don’t mean nationalisation either, that the water be managed by the government, it has to be managed by the community. I believe in the community. As Elinor Ostrom says, the governance of the common goods should be by the people. As others have said in the past, when people govern the common goods, they do not think about being sustainable and they extinguish that good. Elinor has demonstrated the opposite however, and argues that when cooperation and governance of those goods among communities takes place, they take care not to extinguish these goods.

Ecuador is incredibly culturally diverse, however, indigenous and afro-Ecuadorian populations are often economically far worse off than other Ecuadorian peoples. What do you think can be done in ensuring that all Ecuadorians, regardless of ethnicity, can enjoy the same standard of living?

Well, I think that in many aspects, one of Ecuador’s strengths is its diversity. When you talk about ethnicity and bio – diversity, which will enrich us, we have not been taking advantage of that and we should. Ethnicity goes together with economic and social segregation and that needs to be surpassed. Now, how to do that is by ending poverty and using money to improve life expectancy in some areas. Being an ‘Indian’ in Ecuador means that you live, for example, in Chimborazo, where life expectancy is 52 years old. 52 years old! The average life expectancy in Ecuador is already 75 and in the first world it’s 80 something, so we have that difference. In Esmeraldas, a province of the afro-Ecuadorian population, 40% of adults in that population has hypertension and only 13% of them are on medication. Only 0.3% of those have their blood pressure under control. So we have all of these problems and they have to be faced. We are very happy to have this biodiversity, but we take every one as a whole population in facing those problems. The problems in Esmeraldas are different to the problems in the south of the country, in the mountains, where they have problems related with minerals and rheumatic fever. So there are many problems but you have to go to the root of it. What is the root of it? Biology. So we have to say first of all is life. It’s not peace, it’s not freedom, it’s not dignity. It’s life, it’s not poverty. The MDGs state that we have to eradicate poverty by 2015. However, a country cannot do it by itself. It has to be a region and then be universal.

My final question relates to the overarching theme of the conference. We’re talking about a world without walls, but unfortunately in today’s world, walls continue to exist and are still being built, for example, those in the ‘favelas’ in Rio de Janeiro. In your opinion, what role can cultural diplomacy play in breaking down these walls, be they physical or symbolic.

I think time is important to do that. We have to make all of this visible and make the invisible walls fall. When you take those walls down, you will have an abyss and then you will have a gap, which you have to fill. You need a lot of resources, decisions, political vocation and also a lot of emotional intelligence to fill all those things. But I think that the main problem with humanity now, following the example of Berlin, is to make all of these walls fall, to fill in the voids, to fill the gaps and heal the wounds and try not to make those wounds leave scars.

President Palacio, thank you so much for sparing some time to talk to us.