Eva Golinger

Eva Golinger (born Eve Winifred Golinger; February 19, 1973) is an American-born attorney and naturalized Venezuelan citizen who edits the Correo del Orinoco International, a web- and print-based newspaper which is financed by the Venezuelan government. Golinger is also a member of the Venezuelanalysis.com team. In a 2011 profile in The New York Times she was described as "one of the most prominent fixtures of Venezuela’s expanding state propaganda complex", and her newspaper as "Venezuela's equivalent of the Cuban newspaper Granma". "I'm a soldier for this revolution," she told The New York Times.

Golinger is the author of several books on Venezuela's relationship with the United States. She is an outspoken supporter of the former socialist president of Venezuela, the late Hugo Chávez. As of May 2011 she serves as a foreign policy advisor to the Venezuelan government. Chávez has called her La novia de Venezuela ("The Girlfriend of Venezuela"). According to the National Catholic Reporter in 2004 Golinger was "head of the pro-Chávez Venezuela Solidarity Committee in New York". Her website, venezuelafoia.info, aims to shed light on what she calls links between U.S. government agencies and Venezuelan organizations by publishing documents obtained using the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Rafael Correa

Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado (Spanish: [rafaˈel korˈea]; born 6 April 1963) is an Ecuadorian politician and economist who has served as President of the Republic of Ecuador since 2007.

The leader of the PAIS Alliance political movement, Correa is a democratic socialist and his administration has focused on the implementation of leftist policies, poverty reduction, and combating the influence of the United States and multinational corporations in Ecuador. Internationally, he served as president pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations.

Born to a lower middle-class mestizo family in Guayaquil, Correa studied economics at the Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil, the Université catholique de Louvain, and the University of Illinois, where he received his PhD. Returning to Ecuador, in 2005 he became the Minister for the Economy in President Alfredo Palacio's government, successfully lobbying Congress for increased spending on health and education projects. Correa won the presidency in the 2006 general election on a platform criticizing the established political elites. Taking office in January 2007, he sought to move away from Ecuador's neoliberal economic model by reducing the influence of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. He declared Ecuador's national debt illegitimate and announced that the country would default on over $3 billion worth of bonds; he pledged to fight creditors in international courts and succeeded in reducing the price of outstanding bonds by more than 60%.