Shultz Angered by Anti-U.S. Ecuador Mural

Secretary of State George P. Shultz arrived Wednesday to celebrate the inauguration of Ecuador’s third consecutive democratically elected president but was greeted by an officially sanctioned wall mural that depicts the United States as a symbol of death.

The 300-square-yard mural, on a wall in the chamber where the inauguration of leftist President Rodrigo Borja Cevallos took place, added an unwelcome element of uncertainty to the U.S. delegation, already nervous over security and the presence of two of Washington’s most bitter enemies, Cuban President Fidel Castro and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

‘Insult to U.S.’ Seen

Shultz, his face flushed, called the mural, which has a strongly socialist theme, “an insult to the United States” but said he would not let it keep him from attending the inauguration. And at the ceremony, he sat directly facing the artwork, which is displayed behind the president’s rostrum.

But the mural incident added one more odd twist to what increasingly was a strange situation surrounding the inauguration.

State Department officials acknowledged that they were concerned over the visits of Castro and Ortega. Shultz, who repeatedly has criticized Ortega’s Sandinista regime during his current Latin American trip, had said specifically that he would refuse to talk to the Nicaraguan leader here. He was not scheduled to be in the same room with Castro, except during the inauguration itself, and never with Ortega.

The Ortega visit was particularly intriguing because outgoing Ecuadorean President Leon Febres Cordero, an erratic conservative politician, had cut diplomatic ties with Nicaragua in 1985 after Ortega called him an American puppet.

Febres Cordero, who once was kidnaped by some of his own troops to protest his policies, reportedly ordered the Ecuadorean air force Wednesday to prevent the Sandinista leader from landing as long as he was still president. Ortega agreed not to arrive until after the formal assumption of power by Borja.

Today, after Shultz has returned to Washington, Ortega is scheduled to meet with the five other Central American presidents who attended the inauguration.

Because of a bomb attack Monday on Shultz’s motorcade in La Paz, Bolivia, security was extraordinarily tight in Quito. No one was injured in the La Paz attack, but four vehicles were damaged.

Guards Heavily Armed

As Shultz entered the Ecuadorean Congress building to attend the inauguration, he was accompanied by American security agents carrying submachine guns.

Earlier, upon landing at the military side of Quito’s airport, all members of Shultz party, including reporters, were flown to a college soccer field via U.S. Army helicopter troop carriers, then were rushed into cars and vans and sent through back streets to their hotel.

But in general on Wednesday, it was the mural that preoccupied the U.S. delegation.

Generally, the artwork by Osvaldo Guayasamin, a well-known Ecuadorean leftist, depicts various agonized figures appearing to reach for freedom against the restraints of capitalism.

CIA on Helmet

One prominent panel specifically shows a highly stylized, skeletal head wearing a Nazi-like battle helmet with the capital letters CIA painted across the front.

The mural was painted earlier this year under the auspices of the Ecuadorean Congress, which was controlled by Borja’s Democratic Left Party. Although it was unclear exactly who ordered Guayasamin to create it, newspaper accounts attributed the idea to congressman Patricio Romero, a political associate of Borja.

U.S. Ambassador Richard N. Holwill, an appointee of President Reagan, complained unofficially to the Ecuadoreans about the painting after it was unveiled last week.

Shultz, after an hour’s meeting with Borja and with the new leader standing by his side, told reporters: “Later on today, I will be going to the inauguration, and I have been told that there is there a mural--and that the mural has two messages in it.

‘Message of Insult’

“One is a message of insult to the United States,” he said, “and the other is a message about the desirability--as far as the painter sees it--of the programs of the far left.”

Speaking in a monotone, he declared: “As to the insult to the United States, I don’t appreciate it.”

But he noted that the Bolivia bomb attack “didn’t deter my schedule at all” and vowed that “something . . . perhaps designed to cause me not to go to this inauguration and join in celebrating democracy . . . won’t work either.”

State Department aides said later that Shultz was trying to make clear that he would not be provoked by the mural into abandoning his trip to Ecuador, which specifically was arranged to support his theme for the 11-day tour as a celebration of democracy and free-market economics.

The Ecuador visit was seen as especially important in underlining the political theme because the country traditionally has been viewed as a stereotypical dictatorship, with military regime succeeding military regime.

Attack on Capitalism

However, it was the economic theme that Shultz addressed when he responded to what he said was the mural’s second message, an attack on capitalism.

“I think that one of the things that is just crystal-clear in the world these days,” he said, “is that the method of running an economy by central control, as advocated by the left, simply doesn’t work.”

On the economic front, Ecuador is the victim of a heavy foreign debt and the decline in oil prices, the nation’s principal export product. The country already receives at least $60 million in direct U.S. aid and is looking to Washington for additional support, including help in easing its debt repayment load.

The need for American support is evidently so strong that Borja told Shultz that he “wants to have cordial relations with the United States and strengthen financial ties.”

He also reportedly promised not to nationalize any businesses and agreed with Shultz’s conservative economic vision that national government involvement in the economy only leads to inefficiency.