QUITO, Ecuador – Rafael Correa vowed to put Ecuador’s poor ahead of foreign debt payments as he was sworn in on Monday, raising a sword given to him by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in a ceremony attended by members of the growing club of leftist Latin American leaders.

Correa, 43, a charismatic political outsider who won a November runoff election, said he would work for an “economic revolution” in Ecuador that would emphasize the renegotiating of foreign debt, “paying only what we can after attending to the needs of the poor.”

His remarks drew applause from several U.S. antagonists who attended the ceremony – Chavez, Bolivian president Evo Morales and Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – as well as from Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega and leaders from Brazil, Chile and Peru.

Correa, who has a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois, said the free-market policies promoted by Washington since the 1980s have failed to help Ecuador. He said some of the loans arranged by previous governments had been lost to corruption, and an international tribunal should be set up to decide what debt should be repaid.

During the campaign last fall, Correa threatened to cut ties with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and said he would not rule out a moratorium on foreign debt payments unless foreign bondholders lower Ecuador’s debt service by half.

He said in September that Ecuador cannot afford its current debt service, which represents 7 percent of the country’s GDP. “Ecuador cannot pay more than 3 percent,” he said at the time.

He did not mention debt moratorium in his speech Monday.

Keeping his campaign promise, Correa also issued a decree Monday calling for Ecuadorians to vote March 18 in a referendum on the need for a special assembly to rewrite the constitution.

His plans for a constitutional assembly could put him on a collision course with Congress, which is dominated by Ecuador’s traditional parties. Lawmakers have dismissed the last three elected presidents after huge street protests demanding their ousters.

Correa is the eighth president in the last decade in a nation marked by instability since its return to democracy in 1979.

He said a new constitution is vital to limiting the power of the traditional parties, which he accuses of defending their own interests rather than the interests of the people.

“We seek a profound transformation. Our leadership has failed. We want a democracy where our voice is heard, where our representatives understand that they are there to serve us,” Correa said.