Montesinos selling weapons to FARC is not unique, several Ecuadorian officers and officials have been involved in the same thing. A lot of stuff flows through Ecuadorian ports to the FARC. They treat Ecuador as their safe zone, a lot of the lower level people keep their families there, a lot of them invest their money there (buying bars, farms, hotels in the border areas; they get good prices, too, if a FARC guy makes you an offer, are you going to haggle over the price?).
The present Ecuadorian president attempted a coup a few years ago, on Chavez' dime. Similar to Chavez, the coup was only a partial success but he later ran for president and won at the ballot box; he now refers to himself as a "dictocrat"; similar to Chavez he recently fired the Supreme Court (illegally, but they cleaned out their desks and went home anyway) and replaced them with people of his own choosing. He hasn't kicked us out of the country yet, though. He still lets us base our reconnaisance aircraft there.
But its interesting that when Montesinos fell, he went straight to Chavez for protection. I'm surprised that Chavez was embarrassed into giving him up. I think now, in the post-referendum era, when Chavez is feeling a little more confident, he would not be so easily embarrassed.
I'm not scared about Guti. I have pals in Guayaquil who know him well and they kick his butt when he goes off the deep end. The court rubbish doesn't scare me either, to me it looks like business as usual in El Loco Ecuador. That kind of crap happens all the time there, it's just the way they are. Guti ran on a anti-dollarization ticket but when my friends got to him, and forced him to his senses, he wised up. He's an ally. I don't lump him in with schmucks like Chavez and Kirchner and some of the other losers. He's more like Lula - leftwing on the outside but does the right thing when something serious comes up.