After dinner a few days ago, I perched on my stool at the kitchen table ready to take some notes about my host family’s opinion on los forajidos, a term a professor wanted my class to research for homework. I’ve often had such assignments, and up until recently they’ve been pretty perfunctory — ask your family about Atagualpa (last emperor of the Incas, in case you were curious). But this time, I sensed the Zaldumbides were ready and willing to talk.
I don’t know if you follow the news in Ecuador (if so, you may have heard about this; I can talk about that in another blog post as it develops) but the Ecuadorian people like deposing their presidents. In the last 10 years, they haven’t had a single one finish his four-year term in office. Jamil Mahuad (1998-2000), who had his hands full with El Niño devastation and the eruption of the volcano Pichincha, also negotiated an unpopular but in my opinion (and the opinions of some others I’ve talked to) necessary peace agreement to end an on-and-off again conflict with Peru. He presided over an economic crisis the likes of which the country hadn’t seen for years. But as it turns out the crisis was partly his fault. He received millions in campaign contributions from bankers in exchange for passing a law that, instead of insuring money that individuals placed in the bank, made it easier for bankers to steal people’s money. Inflation went through the roof, banks closed, and accounts were frozen for a whole year. Some people lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he was forced to put the country on the USD. Later, Mahuad was run out of town (actually, to a fellowship at Harvard University) by la gente, many of whom were part of a growing movement of indigenous people, and the military.
Which almost brings me to los forajidos. Lucio Guiterrez, a general who helped figuratively tar and feather Mahuad, was elected the next year; and after unconstitutionally stacking the supreme court with supporters and pardoning a different unpopular president of yore (I won’t bore you with all of the details that my host family regaled me with), hundreds of thousands of middle class people took to the streets of Quito in peaceful night-time demonstration of their dissatisfaction. The group of protesters claimed their name after Guiterrez’ snide dismissal of the hundreds of thousands of protesters as just a few forajidos [outcasts]. They didn’t intend to force Guiterrez into a helicopter to Brazil, and yet…
Some choice quotes from my conversation about these protests:
“Todo el mundo fue era mi amigo”
“El pueblo aniñado [rich, spoiled kids] también”
“Casi un estado de anarquía”
I couldn’t take down their thoughts fast enough. And it took me awhile to process exactly what I had been hearing. A few forajidos, ejecting the president from office. Can you even imagine? An estimated one million people (I think?) were at the pro-choice March for Women’s Lives on Washington in 2004. I remember feeling empowered and excited chanting alongside some of the strongest women I know. But did we even make the front page of the NY Times?
This weekend, I traveled with the other students in the program to the Intag region’s Cloud Forest for a few days, to be a captive (but interested) audience for the speeches of several representatives of local organizations. Many of them have been fighting the mining companies that have threatened to chop into the rolling hills of the lush rainforest to extract the copper deep below the surface, leaving contaminated water and infertile soil in its wake. Despite the fact that this area of the country only received electricity about three to five years ago, its residents were able to wage an organized, well-documented campaign that, after many years of protest, death threats, tear gas, and paramilitaries, resulted in the expulsion of the company from the area. Local people still wait on pins and needles for the next company to stake its claim, especially since the current government is supportive of mining industry, but have this victory to show for themselves. Are people in Ecuador just more politically active? Maybe.
As my host brother just suggested, the whole weekend was propaganda. I agree to some extent. The directors had a clear objective in sending us to this place, where people have been coming up with “sustainable” forms of development like shade grown coffee export and weaving collectives to rival what mining companies offer. But at the same time, being in such a beautiful place with such inspiring people painted too much of a rosy picture of activism in Ecuador. People here may win battles like these and depose of presidents, something rare, unusual, and disconcerting to North Americans, but at the same time, I can’t make a broad generalization about how effective such efforts are in actually improving standards of living. From what I’ve noticed, it seems like Ecuadorians protest and fight because they feel they don’t have a choice. Is that a good or bad thing? Who are the people in the US who fight and protest? Why? Is it because they don’t have a choice?
Right now, I’m filled with more questions than answers. As I look over the nine (9) pages of notes I took from a three (3) hour history lecture, maybe I’ll have more insights and context. ¡Nos vemos!
