Interview With Ambassador Heather Hodges

What is Ecuador's importance in Latin America and on the global stage? 

It's hard to compare one country to another. It may have one of the larger economies, about the eighth largest economy in Latin America. Its location is very important for the United States and the point of view of trying to combat narcotics trafficking because it is north of Peru and South of Colombia in both Peru and Colombia produce cocaine and coca leaf. Ecuador is used for point of trafficking; they don't produce any coca, but it is often used as a point of trafficking, and so for the United States, it has some strategic importance. 

As the US ambassador to Ecuador, what were your main goals? 

Generally, any ambassador in any country hopes to have smooth relations with the country, and in our case, we had an interest in helping to combat narcotics trafficking. We were also interested in supporting Ecuador's democracy and democratic institutions. We are also interested in most of the countries or all of the countries in Latin America. We were interested in Ecuador being able to improve its economic prosperity and help the country to lower poverty.

In terms of those goals, narcotic trafficking, economic development, and democracy's growth, where do you think Ecuador is in terms of these goals today under the current president?

The current president has been in office for a little over two years. The problem is for him is that he inherited a very difficult economic situation. His predecessor was very populist and very popular but tended to spend a lot of money, and it was money that Ecuador didn't really have. The current president, Moreno, is working very hard to bring the economy and spending back under control. When it comes to narcotics trafficking, I haven't been there since 2011, and again I think that the current president is trying hard. The previous president, Correa, broke off and did a lot of things against the United States he was very anti market. He stopped a lot of things that we were doing with his government, so now the current president is trying to make up for the difficult relations with his predecessor. I believe that President Moreno is doing his best to resume cooperation with the United States on narcotic trafficking. I know that he also signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, which the previous president had totally disdained. 

Getting back to our goal as the Catalyst, our readers are mostly high school students and still are unsure of what they want to do, so could you give us a little insight on your career path and how that developed? 

When I graduated from college, I didn't expect to be joining the foreign service, and actually, that was a long time ago, and at that time, the state department didn't accept any women. I met somebody at the department of state, and they suggested maybe I might be interested in a foreign service career. I had been living in Madrid for many years after my studies, and I thought well I should at least try. There is a competitive exam in the nation to get into the foreign service. If any of your readers are interested in that they can go to the department of state website where there is a link to informations about the foreign service. I took the exam, and I passed. Because I was already fluent in Spanish, my first posting was Venezuela, where I was a consular officer. Then I went to Guatemala, where I was also a consular officer, and then I was a Peru desk officer in Washington. The desk officer is the person that handles almost everything related to US relations with a given country. Hence, its for two years. I sort of only thought about Peru, and whatever needed to be done in relation to Peru, and then I went to Spain, and I was console general in Bilbao and then came back and I did Cuban affairs. I was the deputy director of the office of Cuban affairs, which is similar to being a desk officer in the sense that I concentrated mostly on Cuba for those two years. And then I was deputy chief of admissions or number two at the embassy in Nicaragua, a very poor country in Latin America. Then I was deputy chief of admissions in Lima in Peru and deputy chief of admissions in Madrid. After that, I was named ambassador to Moldova, a former Soviet republic and the poorest country in Europe, and then eventually became an ambassador of Ecuador.

In terms of that, did you kind of know that you wanted to pursue this path or did you just see what opportunities you had then took one and then everything kind of just snowballed from there? 

I always liked to travel although nobody should think that being in a foreign service is a lot of travel. I always enjoyed reading about international affairs, because I cared very much about what the United States was doing around the world or what other countries were doing. I think that helped them, and that was what sort of led to it seeming like a very interesting career. It was interest in international affairs that led me to want to join the department of state and become a foreign service officer.

Getting back to your role as an ambassador to Ecuador what do you think the US role in Ecuador's economy and politics should be? Since your time as ambassador, how has the US-Ecuadorian relationship progressed in terms of that? 

Things have gotten better since 2017 when I was there President Rafel Correo was the president the entire time. We had a difficult relationship, and he was not good with the media. There were lots of difficulties, but President Moreno whom I knew when I was there, was Vice President. He is much more attuned to having good relationships with the United States and understands where our interests lie and is trying very hard to work with us on improving the relations.

If you are comfortable talking about this, could you describe the circumstances of your termination of your service in Ecuador under President Correa?

I was persona non grata. This is the WikiLeaks related to the department of state Julian asange and the people of WikiLeaks acquired over 200,00 cables from the department of state embassies or to the embassies of the department of state. They began being published in November of 2010, so this is around the world, right. They were just publishing things. For the most part, things where WikiLeaks gave away things that they haven't even read. Anyways we had done a lot of honest reporting to Washington, you know this situation of Rafael Correa. His relations and his criticism and shutting down many of the media, and other difficulties that we were having. So what happened was that in April of 2011 a cable was published that we had written. The government didn't like it. They decided to declare me persona non grata publicly. I had decent relations with the president, but I think they wanted to prove that they were anti, the US, and they thought that they would be popular with their people. I don't think there was, but anyway, then they decided to declare me persona non grata. So that, of course, made the relations even worse, and later on, they also shut down the office of the US agency for international development. Which is pretty stupid, because we were providing them with assistance of different things such as development assiatnace, humanitarian assistance, and helping them strengthen democratic institutions. They also suspended any military assistance that we gave them which was particularly training. You sort of wonder how a government could go out of its way to do things that are really hurtful to that government. It's not a secret, and I didn't do anything wrong. I mean you know it's sometimes ambassadors are declared persona non grata because they've done something egregious lots of strange things. Still, in my case, it was reporting back to Washington. Honestly, I probably didn't even write most of the cables that were published, ambassadors don't spend their time doing most of the writing; it's the political officers or the economic officers that write the reporting and the ambassador approves what goes out. 

We also wanted to get your perspective on Ecuador's more recent events. As you know, Ecuador has been struggling with a large influx of migrants from Venezuela. How do you think the government should handle this issue?

I don't know if there's a way for me to say how Ecuador should handle it. I believe that they are trying to handle the issue. It's not very well known that the United States is actually helping several of the countries that have refugees from Venezuela. We have provided some assistance to help at least temporarily settle refugees in Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, and Brazil. I am guessing that we have encouraged the government of Ecuador just as we encourage other countries nearby to take in these refugees and to give them some sort of humanitarian assistance so that they can get by as long as this lasts. 

Something else that we are interested in is that Ecuador has begun the process of joining the Pacific alliance which you know is a regional free trade block. Do you think this is a promising development for the economy?

Yes, well, because Ecuador has the West Coast, the Pacific, and other countries like Peru and Colombia are a part of that alliance. Ecuador, I am sure might have felt left out by not being part of it and not being able to benefit from trade with all the other countries, so I think they now see that as a step forward. 

Finally, on a lighter note, we know that you have been a bird enthusiast and conservationist, could you tell us a little bit more about your work with conversation and how you got into bird watching?

For many years and all of those countries that I mentioned, I was not really into bird watching. I liked birds, and I saw birds when I was in Washington or when I was in Cleveland, but I wasn't really into going out just to see birds. When I got into Ecuador within a month, somebody took me into a reserve which belongs to an organization called Hoco Toco Foundation. There is a bird conservation organization, and there were so many in Peru there were just so many tropical species of birds that are just gorgeous and fascinating. Although they also have some of the birds that we have passing through Cleveland right now, the warblers and things like that they get some of those. I just got hooked, and the other thing is I thought it would be good for Ecuadorians to know that I appreciated their nature. So once that happened, I became close to the Hoco Toco Foundation. Recently about a year ago, the government of Ecuador under President Moreno informed the embassy that I can return to Ecuador without impediment.