BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES: FOREIGN MINISTER MARIA

C O N F I D E N T I A L QUITO 000648 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: TEN YEARS TAGS: PGOV EC PGOV PINR PREL SUBJECT: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES: FOREIGN MINISTER MARIA FERNANDA ESPINOSA Classified By: PolOff Erik Martini for reasons 1.4 (b&d). ¶1. (C) Summary: On December 13, 2006, President Correa named Maria Fernanda Espinosa Minister of the new Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Commerce and Promotion of Investment and Integration, a fusion of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Commerce. Although inexperienced, Espinosa has found her voice advocating for Ecuador in its dispute with Colombia over aerial fumigations near the border. She enjoys President Correa's confidence, but two of Correa's Ministers of Coordination are emerging as rivals within the Cabinet. End Summary. Espinosa Inexperienced in Foreign Affairs -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Surprise greeted Correa's announcement that Maria Fernanda Espinosa would replace Francisco Carrion as Foreign Minister, as she was not well known in the press or in political circles. Espinosa's professional career is generally academic, focused in the environmental and indigenous rights fields. Before Correa named her Minister, she served as Regional Director for South America of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) for a decade. While at IUCN, Espinosa was also Senior Adviser on Indigenous Peoples and Biodiversity. She also taught ethnic politics, political ecology, international policy and indigenous rights at the Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences ("FLACSO") in Quito, and is a published poet. ¶3. (U) Espinosa's foreign policy experience is limited; however, in her capacity with the World Conservation Union she participated in negotiations on the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, and numerous other fora and conferences with ecology and sustainable development themes. She also participated as a panel member in the development of Ecuador's foreign policy whitepaper (PLANEX 2020) in 2006. Espinosa's Competence Tested -------------- ¶4. (C) Espinosa has shown herself to be an able and diplomatic Foreign Minister. Moving quickly to assert authority and smooth over ill considered comments by the VP, she publicly "disavowed" the anti-U.S. and anti-Colombia comments made by Vice President Lenin Moreno when he visited Caracas, Venezuela. Pointing out that only President Correa and she were authorized to comment on international relations, she clarified that Moreno's comments were merely "personal." Like her predecessor, Espinosa has championed the sensitive issue of Colombia's glyphosate fumigations in the border region, accepting Colombia's proposed tripartite commission while simultaneously moving forward with a planned GOE lawsuit against Colombia in the International Court of Justice. ¶5. (C) Espinosa's leadership in the foreign affairs field will continue to be tested. President Correa has named security and international affairs expert Fernando Bustamante as "Minister for Coordination of Internal and External Security Policy" and trade expert Mauricio Davalos as "Minister for Coordination of Economic and Production Policy." With their own substantial expertise and access to Correa, Bustamante and Davalos threaten to rival the influence of Espinosa on some matters of foreign affairs and trade. Other policies remain vaguely defined and executed under Espinosa. President Correa announced the "regularization" of 500,000 undocumented Colombians; to date officials at the MFA have not been able to give details on how the plan will be executed. President Correa has recently announced a "Plan Ecuador," to counter the supposed negative consequences of Plan Colombia. Again, the MFA has been slow with detail, but will reportedly unveil them March 20. Accomplished Poet -------------- ¶6. (C) Espinosa won Ecuador's National Poetry Prize in 1990 and has published many of her poems in anthologies and journals. She has recited poetry in New York, Geneva and many other cities around the world. In 2004, as she lectured to a group of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill students on Ecuador's indigenous political movement, she apologized for her emotions when she explained Lucio Gutierrez' betrayal. She is personable and well prepared in her meetings with visiting officials. ¶7. (U) Maria Fernanda Espinosa was born in Salamanca, Spain on September 7, 1964; she is 42 years old and an Ecuadorian citizen. Espinosa is divorced and remarried to Galo Mora Witt, an Ecuadorian musician. She has an undergraduate degree in linguistics from Catholic University in Quito, a master's degree in interdisciplinary social sciences and Amazonian studies from FLACSO, a post-graduate degree in anthropology and political sciences from FLACSO and is a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Geography at Rutgers University, New Jersey. She speaks fluent English. JEWELL