BBC:
More than 100 people are feared drowned after an Ecuadorean ship carrying illegal migrants sank off the coast of Colombia, local authorities have said.
The boat is thought to have sailed from the port of Manta in Ecuador.
Ecuador, shipwreck, migrants, Colombia
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Thanks to a link from the excellent Global Voices Online, my post about Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Foreign Policy’s Failed States Index Map has attracted interesting comments from bloggers boz and Miguel A. Buitrago.
Boz agrees that the Index was flawed; he says the evaluators “tried too hard to rank all states on some […]
If you’re like me (and surely you are), you’ll be happy to learn that Google News has added RSS feeds for its news sections and individual searches.
Personally, the section feeds are worthless to me, because I think the Google News front-page auto-aggregator is worthless. But for news topics I monitor regularly — events from […]
Back in early 2003, when I was living in Ecuador, I rode atop the famous Nariz del Diablo (Devil’s Nose) train. And one of my favorite pics from the journey was this image of me and a vendor who climbed atop the train and was selling his wares during one of the stops:
(for a bigger […]
Check out Foreign Policy’s Failed States Index Map. Interesting stuff.
My gripe: Ecuador is listed as “borderline,” while neighboring Peru is described as “in danger.”
Is Peru really in worse shape than Ecuador, which has seen three presidents deposed since 1997? While Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo’s approval ratings have been subterranean for a while (only […]
A few years back, when I was living in Ecuador, Jill and I went to the sleepy coastal town of Puerto Lopez for a beach vacation. We stayed at the excellent Hosteria Mandala. As we were checking out, I noticed that the owners of the place, an Italian-German couple in their 40’s, had a big […]
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The News-Times of Danbury, CT has this interesting report about undocumented workers from Ecuador.
Some stuff I didn’t know:
If all the people who boarded boats in Ecuador last year and sailed toward the United States gathered in one spot, they could fill the University of Connecticut’s 40,000-seat Rentschler Field — and then some.
And that doesn’t […]
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Don’t ask me how I find this stuff:
How to play Cuarenta:
Cuarenta is played in Ecuador, mostly by people from the mountains, including the cities of Cuenca and Quito (the capital). Cuarenta means “40″ in Spanish; this is the number of cards in the deck as well as the points required to win. The play is […]
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The AP says:
An inmate has been voluntarily nailed to a wooden cross in a coastal Ecuadorean prison while two women sewed their lips shut as part of a widely televised national protest aimed at improving prison conditions and sentencing reforms.
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Chuta! Here’s a fabulous list of Ecuadorian slang. It’s full of gems — although I’d add a few choice words I remember from my year at latitude zero. Namely, buenaso (really good) and sigue no mas (go ahead).
I’m actually delighted to have come across this, as I assumed that a few of these were […]
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Miami: “Customs and Border Patrol officials said they have stopped an operation that was trying to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. by hiding it in a shipment of plantains from Ecuador.”
Australia: “Many Australians reacted with anger and shock after a Queensland woman they believe is innocent was found guilty of smuggling drugs into Bali and […]
“How to Become and Early Riser.”
I always struggle to get out of bed in the morning, even when I’ve had enough sleep. One semester, when I was teaching in Ecaudor, I taught a class that began at 7:00 a.m. I got up every day at 6:00, took a shower, drank some coffee, taught my class […]
A few more items re: Ecuador. I think this’ll be my last Ecuador-related post for a while.
First, an on-the-ground report from my Ecuadorian friend Dennis P. I emailed him to ask what he thought about all the turmoil. To paraphrase Dennis’s response in Spanish, he said this:
“It’s all a mess. I don’t know. I […]
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Jordan L. points out this interesting photo essay in the Ecuadorian daily El Comercio.
And as for the ousted Lucio Gutierrez, the AP tells us that he has taken refuge in Brazil.
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Mike A. is another gringo friend of mine who knows a lot about Ecuador. I lived with him briefly duing his year in Cuenca. He writes:
“I was surprised to see [Lucio’s ouster] happen when it did, but I’d imagine that Febres Cordero and/or (likely and) Nebot cut a deal with Palacios or believed that they […]
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