LONDON: Images of Ecuador's president snatched by police and held hostage in hospital have made news across the world. Ostensibly this was a protest by officers following an announcement of measures to equalise pay and bonuses. But behind the flaming tyres and tear gas attacks is a more sinister story.

Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, is seen as one of the group of radical, reforming leaders linked to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. He has challenged landed interests in Ecuador and the business sector in Guayaquil, whose hostility to his government has been palpable. His proposed reforms included modernisation of agriculture and a recognition of the country's multi-ethnic character - enshrined in a new constitution.

Ecuador's export earnings, including oil revenues, rarely reached its poor communities. It was Correa's promise to direct national resources to the majority, strengthen the public sector and diversify the economy that won him the support of the electorate. And his reputation was enhanced by his refusal to renew the lease on the US military base at Manta and the decision to suspend the repayment of its foreign debt.

Yet recent decisions have suggested there are limits to this reform. Correa has negotiated new contracts with foreign oil and mining companies that have met determined resistance from indigenous communities whose land and water rights were directly threatened.

More significantly, they were signs that Ecuador would continue to depend on its extractive industries and on the global market from which it had tried to escape. Thus organisations which had opposed Ecuador's integration into the global market, and dismissed three presidents in the process, are again fighting government in defence of communal rights and an economic future based on production for the domestic market, and economic as well as political democracy.

And there are broader forces at work. Ecuador's two neighbours, Colombia and Peru, are close allies of the US and defenders of neo-liberal policies which have brought them into bitter conflict with their own majority populations. Their declarations of support for Correa ring less than true bearing in mind that the previous Colombian government, under Alvaro Uribe, entered Ecuador in pursuit of guerrilla leaders and in defiance of international law. A declaration to build further US military bases in Colombia was both a direct reaction to Correa's decision to close down Manta and a confirmation of Colombia's key role in US plans for the region.

The brief insurrection in Ecuador echoes last year's military coup in Honduras, when a president sympathetic to Bolivia and Venezuela was dragged from his bed and expelled from the country. Then, as now, there was a lengthy silence from Washington until the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, offered to “mediate” between the leaders of an illegal coup and a democratically elected president. Today the leaders of the coup remain in power with US support despite a mass movement that has persisted through repression and violence.

It may well be that Ecuador's previous president, Lucio Gutierrez, hopes to gain from a similar “mediation”.

Rafael Correa's defiant speech from the balcony of his hospital room will have won him admiration from his supporters. As the Confederation of Indian Nations of Ecuador declared, the right is only interested in pulling back the gains that have been made by the people of Ecuador. But, they continue, any attempt to reconcile the coup-plotters will have the same effect.

It is now more important than ever to continue and deepen the battle for the transformation of Ecuador, whoever leads that struggle.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service