So, as you will remember, Ecuador elected a left-leaning president last year. Rafael Correa is in the Chavez-Morales camp and though hís popularity has dropped from 80% last year to 55% or so this year, most people take a guarded, uncritical stance with regard to his accomplishments so far. The middle class folks say that he has done some good things to help the poorest of people in Ecuador such as broadening access to education and literacy training, for example. Cab drivers tend to support him. One told me that this past year has been the first in decades that there haven´t been massive demonstrations at Plaza Independencia. This is where the national government offices are as well as the city offices. It´s a pretty lively place with all manner of people and events and I have seen two demonstrations there. One a group belonging to a university sports team were demanding more money for sports in front of the national offices. There was a lot of singing and drumming in the crown of about 40. Yesterday there was a demonstration of about 200 uniion members at the other side of the plaza demanding their pensions or something from the mayor.
Hortencia told me that Correa came to La Chimba shorty after his election for a town meeting where everyone complained about the low price they were getting for their milk (18 cents a liter). She said since then the price of milk has been steadily rising and now they get 34 cents a liter. Almost double. I´m not sure how, or if, he had a hand in that, but good news nonetheless. Still, she said, there are mixed reviews of Correa in La Chimba. People are so impatient for change I think that often they are unrealistic as to what can be done in a year. Generally, Correa has had good policies with regard to nationalizing oil and sending the IMF and World Bank folks packing, choosing to pay them off and get loans elsewhere ...like from Chavez for example.
The country has convened a constitutional assembly to write a new constitution and that process makes headlines every day. Yesterday there was talk in the press and by the people in the form of street grafiti on the issue of abortion. Unfortunately it looks like right to life will be written into the constitution, Correa having passed on this fight in the interest of moving forward. Women´s groups here have protested, but the Catholic Church is big here, really big, so there´s probably not much hope for women and girls on this issue right now. Somehow they are going to finish this process by September and then take the constitution to a national referendum. I´m not sure how they will be able to educate people as to the contents of the constitution...the litercy rate here is only about 60%, but they did it in Venezuela, so I´m sure they´ll do it here as well.
There are a lot of displaced Colombians here as well. The official rate is 20% in refugee camps near the Colombian boarder, but unofficially there are about 200,000 Colombians in the country. In addition to displaced persons, a lot of Colombians own businesses here as well according to my informants. Everything from rose factories, to clothing and beauty shops. Sometimes I can spot them by their accents, but that´s rare. Generally, there is antagonism against them here, and the FARC hasn´t helped the situation at all, pushing people across the boarders and setting up shop in Ecuadorian boarder towns.
That´s all I can think of to report at the moment. Over and out from Latitude 0-0-0!
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