Newley Purnell

Interesting little piece in the New York Times yesterday from Juan Forero. Seems that Ecuadorians on the coast are harvesting shark fins and selling them to Asia for big bucks — but that shark numbers might soon be thinning. (At $100 for a dorsal and pectoral set, I might’ve been right there with these guys when I was living in Cuenca and making 250 smackers a month.)

According to the NYT’s Juan Forero, coca-legalization proponent and indigenous coalition leader Evo Morales just might become the next president of Bolivia.

The election of Morales in Bolivia would represent the triumph of indigenous groups over the minority white elite ruling class — as well as the rejection of what’s viewed as American imperialism and the encroachment of globalization on poor people’s lives throughout the southern Andes.

This monumental shift, should it reach fruition, would mirror the central thesis of Amy Chua’s prescient tome “World On Fire”: that the world’s so-called “market-dominant minorities” — the wealthy whites, in the case of Bolivia — become enriched by globalization while the poor majority indigenous population becomes increasingly destitute and disenfranchised. Class tensions, in this scenario, are exacerbated; violence erupts.

The ascent of Morales in Bolivia, if it happens, may signal a sea change in Andean politics. Only time will tell; could Peru and Ecuador, which also have sizeable Indian populations, be next?

With my students in Ecuador

Kate Santich, writing in The Orlando Sentinel, surveys current research on what makes people happy — and discusses the so-called “Latino Bonus”:

One of the most intriguing finds to come out of the research so far is that Latin Americans consistently rank happier in life-satisfaction surveys than would otherwise be expected, given that many in the region live in poverty. In an in-depth study of 120,000 people in 82 nations, the World Values Survey found what one researcher dubbed “the Latino bonus.”

“I didn’t expect it,” says Ronald Inglehart, the survey’s director, based at the University of Michigan. “But the evidence is very consistent. And it is not true of all Hispanic countries, because Spain and Portugal are not high on the (life-satisfaction) scale.”

There are probably several factors at work, Inglehart proposes, the first being strong friendship and family ties, a universal source of satisfaction. Another is religious faith, which, interestingly, seems to boost happiness only in Latin America and the United States. In Europe, which is also predominantly Christian, it does not have the same impact.

Inglehart expects further studies of the Latino bonus, but those who have experienced it find it a powerful force.

Sister Ann Kendrick sees it daily in her community. A Roman Catholic nun, she has spent about 35 years helping the poor - mostly immigrants from Latin America - through the Office for Farmworker Ministry in Apopka.

“I’ll put five Hispanic women in my van to go to Orlando, and they can make a party along the way,” she said. “They get to laughing and telling jokes and carrying on. And there might even be some heavy discussion about something tough - like trouble in their marriage or one of their kids being in jail - but there’s a level of energy to their conversation. They generate a sense of connection that just feels good.”

(Emphasis mine.)

(Via Happiness and Public Policy.)

Transitions Abroad has just published an article I wrote about how to readjust to life at home after living abroad.

In order to conquer what I’ve termed the “at-home blues” — feelings of restlessness encountered during extended time at home between trips — I suggest five tactics:

1. Start planning your next trip.
2. Surround yourself with international influences.
3. Seek out adventures close to home.
4. Draw on the skills that helped you adjust when you were abroad.
5. Be positive and don’t romanticize.

I was happy that long-term world travel guru Rolf Potts supplied a quote for the article.

The piece, which is posted in the Independent Travel section of the Transitions Abroad site, is my third contribution to the magazine. Earlier in the year I wrote about Teaching English in Ecuador and Taiwan. If you’re unfamiliar with Transitions Abroad, poke around their Web site or, better yet, consider subscribing to the print edition.

This weekend I went to see my friends Mike and Angelica — two pals from my Ecuador days. Mike and I taught English together (and traveled all over the country) while I was there between 2003 and 2004. He and Angelica got married after I left; they’ve got a delightful six-month-old daughter named Sabine and are living in Salisbury, Maryland now.

I had a great time catching up with them — I hadn’t seen Angelica in over two years; I also got to meet her nephew Diego, who’s staying with them for a while. (Both Angelica and Diego are from Cuenca, where we lived.) Angelica treated us to some excellent Ecuadorian food (including an exceptional seco de pollo), and we even broke out the dreaded sugar cane-based Ecuadorian firewater, Zhumir. And I got a chance to play my first-ever game of Frisbee disc golf.

It was fantastic to see them and relive the aspects of what I loved most about Ecuador and Ecuadorians: food, friends, and laughter. (And Zhumir, of course.)

AP:

SANTIAGO, Chile — Peru’s disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori, wanted there on human rights abuse and corruption charges, was arrested during a surprise visit to Chile, Peru’s foreign minister said late Sunday.

Fujimori, who led Peru from 1990 to 2000, has been a fugitive in his ancestral homeland Japan since he fled there in November 2000, when a corruption scandal toppled his government.

He flew from Japan to Chile on Sunday to try to relaunch his political career and run for president next year.

Maybe “El Chinito,” as Fujimori’s affectionately known, should seek the counsel of Ecuador’s currently-encarcerated ex-prez, Lucio Gutierrez.

Fujimori, Peru, Chile

Tourists are flocking to Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, where a volcano’s been erupting for a week.

AP:

Ousted Ecuadorean President Lucio Gutierrez said Thursday he was renouncing his asylum in Colombia and would return to his own country where he faces arrest and attempt to regain power.

“I will use all legal and constitutional means to retake power,” Gutierrez told a news conference in a Bogota hotel.

Ecuadorean Interior Minister Galo Chiriboga warned that if Gutierrez returns, he “must submit to the law.” In a radio interview in Ecuador’s capital of Quito, Chiriboga noted that a judge has ordered Gutierrez’s arrest.
…
“What the de facto government does is not my call,” Gutierrez told journalists. “I cannot be held accountable for what happens when I step on Ecuadorean soil.”

Who’s writing Gutierrez’s speeches these days, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf?

They’re partying in Quito, Cuenca, Guayaquil, Esmeraldas, and all points in between at latitude zero: Ecuador drew 0-0 at home with Uruguay yesterday to book their passage to World Cup ‘06 in Germany this summer.

Elsewhere, four teams from the African region — newcomers all — have clinched their spots: Angola, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Togo. Here’s a complete run-down of the nations that have qualified so far.

World+Cup

Here’s a fabulous collection of unusual words from foreign languages.

Two to add: In Spanish (at least in Ecuador), the word for hangover is the Quechua-inspired chuchaqui. I always thought it sounded more like what a hangover feels like — it’s more guttural.

I don’t know how to say it, but in Mandarin Chinese, my Taiwanese students used to say that someone with ugly or smelly feet had Hong Kong feet. As in, “teacher, you have Hong Kong feet!”

(Via Kottke.)

BBC:

Ecuador’s ousted President, Lucio Gutierrez, who faces charges of damaging his country’s security, has requested asylum in Colombia.

The Colombian authorities have granted him a 90-day safe conduct, to give him time to make a formal request.

Mr Gutierrez, who arrived from Peru, was reportedly told at Bogota airport that there was an international warrant for his arrest.

Mr Gutierrez was ousted by congress in April following mass protests.

He previously stayed in Brazil and the United States, before travelling to Peru.

Here’s an interesting — if alarmist* — assessment of a potential US military buildup in Paraguay.

(*I mean, c’mon, it’s not like our government has a history of meddling in Latin American affairs or anything.)

(Via Sploid.)

Paraguay, Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, Venezuela, Chavez

In the rare instances when news from Ecuador trickles into the American media, it usually involves strife: another democratically-elected president outsted, indigenous protesters railing against oil companies, etc.

So you can imagine my surprise when my grandmother* recently handed me this week’s New Yorker magazine and said “hey, there’s an article about Ecuador in here.” What’s more, if you have even limited experience with Ecuadorian cuisine, you’ll understand the improbability of this particular article appearing in their annual food issue. And, in one last counter-intutitive twist, the piece actually speaks favorably about the vittles at latitude zero.

The article’s by Calvin Trillin and it’s called “Speaking of Soup.” It’s funny and poignant: Trillin traveled to Cuenca, Ecuador (the city in which I lived for a year) to brush up on his Spanish and undertake a quest to consume numerous bowls of the traditional Ecuadorian soup called fanesca (a dish which, it pains me to say, I’m sure I’ve eaten but simply cannot remember).

Again, the article’s great, but here’re some passages that rang hollow for me:

…All the vegetables and spices required—corn, for instance, and fava beans and a couple of kinds of squash—grow in the area, and some of them apparently don’t make it as far as Guayaquil, which is only thirty minutes away by air. That may be because the distribution system seems to consist largely of indigenous women who come to the market from the countryside, many of them in the bright-colored flared skirts and high-crowned panama hats that can make even a small woman of some years look rather, well, zippy.

(Emphasis mine.) I have to take issue with this last sentence. I’m afraid what we’re seeing from Trillin is a bit of travel writing romanticization. Indigenous women in Ecuador are largely destitute and over-worked and often in ill-health. I have never seen an older indigenous woman look anything close to “zippy,” no matter how colorful her dress.

Also, there’s this:

…We also had long conversations about humitas, which have some resemblance to tamales. Instead of being dough around some central element like pork or chicken, though, humitas are the same all the way through—an astonishingly light concoction of fresh young corn that is ground and mixed with eggs and cheese and butter and anise and a bit of sugar.

Trillin must have tasted humitas that were an order of magnitude better than any of the sort that I ever ingested.

I have particularly vivid memories of a student of mine who once made me a bundle of humitas; she gave them to me after class and I ate them before getting on a five-hour bus ride. They did not settle well. I cut my journey short, checked into a hotel in Loja, and was subsequently wracked by vomiting and diarrhea for twelve long hours.

I ran out of water to drink and, bleary-eyed and weak-legged, made my way out into the street the next morning to find some refreshments. Not half a block from the hotel, a young girl on a fire escape above me dumped a bucket of water on my head. (Ecuadorians douse each other with water in the weeks preceeding carnaval.)

Long story short, when I think of humitas, the words “an astonishingly light concoction of fresh young corn that is ground and mixed with eggs and cheese and butter and anise and a bit of sugar” do not exactly come to mind.

That said, feel like making your own fanesca (the soup Trillin raves about)? Here’s a recipe. And if you’re a Spanish reader, here’s one from an Ecuadorian newspaper.

[*My eighty-five-year-old grandmother, Rosina, lives here in the DC area; I often go see her and we have lunch together. She gives me her old Econmist and New Yorker issues which, because she's a news junkie and has a lot of time on her hands, she usually devours the same day they arrive in the mail. Not only is she more well-versed in current events than anyone I know, but she also pays her bills online is an avid emailer. In short, she kicks ass.]

fanesca, Calvin+Trillin, New+Yorker

Watching America has the translation of an article from Spain about developing ties between the US and Paraguy. Interesting passage:

This was admitted by the vice president himself, who said that Secretary Rumsfeld was worried about the situation in the zone. “… We also spoke of countries closer to us in the region; they (the Americans) are quite worried about the instability of governments like Ecuador, that is on its seventh president in nine years, or Bolivia, which remains unstable, and the same with Brazil, which at the moment is experiencing great political upheaval.

“In comparison, Paraguay is an area where one sees strong political stability, governability and institutional strength…

(Via RobotWisdom.)

Paraguay

The details, from the BBC:

Ecuador’s state oil company says it is suspending crude oil exports following five days of protests in two provinces that have slashed production.

Hundreds of demonstrators in Sucumbios and Orellana have occupied oil installations and airports.

What it all boils down to:

Not all sections of Ecuadoran society have benefited equally from oil revenues.

The traditionally dominant Spanish-descended elite gained far more than the indigenous peoples, who make up a large proportion of those who live in poverty.

Ecuador, oil, protests