California California California. It makes me want to belt out all of those songs about sunshine and beaches and highways and “will you take me as I am?” Here in Berkeley, the cars really do stop at street-corners waiting for pedestrians to cross, the ex-hippies really do congregate on Telegraph Avenue to spout out 9-11 conspiracy theories, and the farmer’s market is the place to be on Saturday mornings. The organic, locally grown fruit is fresh, but the air off the Bay is even fresher – in fact, I’d say it’s close to chilly, which for all of you suffering through that East Coast heat wave might sound like relief, but really just makes me not want to go out at night. Aliza and I are still getting our bearings out here, so I don’t have too much to say yet.

For this, I would like to post on Quito, just one more time.

I had forgotten to share with Off Broadway readership (hey Lydia, haha) that one of my last days out there I took a little trip to the Palacio de Carondelet, the equivalent of the Whitehouse in Ecuador. President Correa, whom I’ve written about a little bit on this blog, was the first president to allow tours of the Palacio, in an effort to institute his widely-known and very catchy campaign slogan, which has become the message of his communications staff: la patria ya es de todos. Painted on walls in small towns and cities throughout Ecuador and broadcasted in catchy radio jingles, this phrase more or less communicates the idea “of the people, by the people, for the people.” The focus group-tested line helped Correa spread the word about his platform – increased government transparency and a bureaucracy based more on merit than on who your brother-in-law is (see the post I wrote a few months ago about why the last president was sacked for some more context).

Like Obama, Correa was the “change candidate,” the guy who hoped to shatter the system of the past developed to benefit the right-wing partidocracia for something more democratic. My final project this semester was in part, about assessing his and his party’s progress on this goal within the Asamblea Constituyente he commissioned to rewrite the country’s constitution. I looked more specifically at the way the indigenous movement’s proposal, plurinacionalidad, was being treated by this new government body, and I came to fairly ambivalent conclusions. I think most people have about a similar “wait and see” attitude about Correa, and they don’t have to wait much longer – his assembly has only another month to deliver the goods.

But back to my tour of Carondelet. For one of the most tangible symbols of Correa’s goal to make government more transparent, the free palace tour was pretty hokey. They took our photo at the start (and printed it out to make a nice little recuerdo so we’d remember that the Carondelet ya es de todos), and then took us briskly into a few of the rooms upstairs, pointing out architectural features.

I didn’t get too much insight into how the Correa government works from this tour, as doors to functioning offices were closed. The guide did, however, demur at each glass case of gifts Correa has received from foreign dignitaries in his travels around the world. He boasted that Correa is the only president in the country’s history to proclaim these gifts the property of the Ecuadorian people – most presidents tend to hoard them away.

Recuerdo in hand as I walked back into the Plaza Grande, I felt the tour was really without much substance. But then I reconsidered. Such gestures – opening up the presidential palace and allowing Ecuadorians to ooh and ah over the shiny things inside – are necessary steps in the larger goal of making government more responsive to citizens, steps that I may take for granted.

But these steps are only meaningful if they are accompanied by legitimate shifts in policy. I guess we’ll have an answer to that question in July.

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