"Rafael Correa: Within the system, no. By changing the system, yes, and that is what we are doing. But we cannot be naive. Changes and revolutions in a society depend on the correlation of forces. With this support that we have now received, we can deepen our revolution even further. But remember all the psychological trauma that was done to us. If someone who does not know Ecuador had read the newspapers, we were the most unpopular, most corrupt and most incapable government, despite having more than 70% of the popular support – government action – and popular support – management is not the same as voting intention, of course. We have always had around 56% of voting intentions. And a very interesting phenomenon occurred in the elections. The opposition did not take a single vote from me, they ate each other up. The right, seeing that Alvarito Noboa had no chance, left him alone, let him fall and bet everything on Lúcio Gutiérrez. This also demonstrates the immorality of our sectors of power, of the Ecuadorian right, because they preferred their interests to their principles. You know that no one with any sense can vote for a person with such serious moral and intellectual limitations as Lucio Gutiérrez. But it was on him that the bank, the interest groups of this country, bet, just to boycott the Citizens' Revolution. But they hit the nail on the head, thank God. In any case, changes depend on the balance of power. On April 26, the Ecuadorian people clearly showed their support for the government, giving us more democratic legitimacy, so we can move forward with much more strength, with much more legitimacy in these changes that, little by little, are changing the balance of power in favor of people's power. That means many things. Six girls drowned [edit: during the week of the elections], an absurd tragedy. They were poor girls. Just look how many times it was in the newspapers. If they had been girls from a powerful family, I assure you that it would have been in the newspapers for two months, a commission would have been created, etc. Ecuador needs to change this correlation of forces and we will continue to do so. Little by little, popular strength is gaining ground and this will translate into real changes in the distribution of resources and public policies for the weakest in our country. This must be done outside the capitalist system. Within the socialist system of the 21st century. The global crisis of capitalism that we are currently experiencing is not a cyclical crisis, outside the system, it is a crisis within the system. Of the recurring crises of capitalism, this is one of the most serious, but it is within the system. They will not find solutions within the same system, which is collapsing, but something new and different must be built. I believe that most Latin American governments and leaders are aware of this, and they are taking advantage of the opportunity to build something new and different. For example, our own regional financial architecture, so as not to depend on it. They no longer need bombs, ships or planes to subdue our countries: they need dollars. These were the “weapons” used to subdue us through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It doesn’t have to be this way. With the resources that Latin America has, we could finance ourselves, but we are in the absurd situation of sending these resources, in the form of reserves, to the first world, through autonomous central banks. With a financial architecture, all of this could stay in the region, which would put an end to one of the main forms of dependence in the region that served to subdue us, which is financial dependence. For us, this is clear. We are moving forward. We have just created, at ALBA level, the single regional compensation system, which will minimize the need for dollars, but there is still a long way to go: making the Bank of the South a reality and, hopefully, in the short term, at most in the medium term, making this Southern reserve fund a reality, in order to keep here, in the region, the money that we currently send to the first world to finance developed countries."