Life in Far Away Places: Latacunga, Ecuador (2)
After college I spent four years traveling and living in the developing world. A few months ago I returned to Long Island and started working for the Smithtown Messenger. This is the forth installment of an occasional column about those four years abroad.
After I got back from my trip to Colombia I quickly became very attached to Ecuador and it started to seem that my prolonged post college vacation was one I would never leave. Of course there was a girl involved, but there was also a revolution; it was, undoubtedly, one of the most extraordinary times of my life.
Once I got back from Colombia things became serious between my girlfriend and I. For the first time in my life I spent my birthday, which is in July, outside of New York. I spent it with Rosy, who was quickly filling the void I had felt when I started living in such a far away place. We went to the Amazon rainforest to visit some friends for a long weekend, and woke up to monkeys knocking on our window after daybreak. My friends had a reserve and rehabilitated injured animals, including about three dozen friendly monkeys. Rosy and I took long walks through the rainforest near the house, stopping sometimes to go for a swim in one of the streams that crisscrossed the reserve. We didn’t have a guide per se, but every time we left we would be accompanied by a motley crew of rainforest animals that otherwise tended to stay close to the house. When the monkeys got tired they would jump on our backs, wrap their tail around our neck and sit on our shoulders like a small child. It was perhaps the most memorable birthday I will ever have. That Christmas I also choose to stay in Ecuador with Rosy, and once more found myself in the Amazon. Her family lived in the most south eastern part of the country, a long way from the mountains of Latacunga, where Rosy and I were living. It was the first time I had met most of her family, who all welcomed me with open arms, but I had met her mother on a few occasions previously during her travels; she was a politician of sorts.
Another big change in my life was my work. I had begun teaching at the public university, and it became an important and initially wholly positive part of my life. I took a big pay cut, the class sizes doubled, and books, I soon learned, were a luxury of private education. The conditions were less than favorable but I really enjoyed what I did, the concept of free education was a fairly new one in the country and I felt good supporting that and helping it grow. I genuinely enjoyed what I did. I spend my days at the university and my nights with Rosy and things were more than good, those months were probably some of the best of my life. But nothing like that is made to last I suppose.
Ecuador is not what one could reasonably call a politically stable nation; presidents rarely finish their terms. While I was falling in love with both girl and place, I had, again mostly by chance, found myself on the front lines of revolution. My new university was very active politically and soon after I started working there, the students in my classrooms formed the first waves of what ultimatly would overthrow the government. When rumors spread of a free trade agreement with the United States, indigenous farmers descended on the city I called home and in no uncertain terms cut it off from the rest of world. Because of the geography Andean cities have few roads connecting them with each other and so blockades are a popular and effective form of protest in Ecuador. The Pan-American Highway runs north to south through Latacunga and is the only way one can enter or leave the city, to the east and west there is nothing but steep mountains. Shortly after the rumors of the free trade agreement began, farmers from the countryside blocked all traffic in and out of the city. The protesters slept on the highway and kept up the blockade though the night, and the next day, with more people joining them, they shut down all the bridges, occupied government buildings and burned tires in every intersection downtown. Word spread quickly and soon what started as a handful of barefooted farmers marching into Latacunga exploded into nationwide revolt. Incredibly, Rosy, who was in another city when the blockades suddenly went up, walked twenty miles through tear gas and black smoke on abandoned highways to be with me. We waited out the rebellion together, in what was quite literally its center, fires burning non stop out my front door.
Out of the ashes a new country emerged. A young, charismatic professor started to make a name for himself during the unrest and Rosy’s mother was one of the first people to get behind him. This man, Rafeal Correa, is the current president of Ecuador. I met him a few times and at first was a big supporter of his and happy to be so involved with his rise to power, but with time I began to bitterly oppose him; though that’s a story for another time.
The university became ultra political and was “purged” of everyone not in the local Marxist party. I was spared because of my unique situation (I was the only native speaker the university had ever had), but increasingly came into conflict with the administration, which began to seem more concerned with politics than education. The ongoing revolution seemed to turn on me more with each passing day. It had become increasingly nationalist and I began to worry about my legal situation; I did not have a visa. When I first arrived in Ecuador I did not think I would stay long enough to need anything permanent and the political climate was very different, most westerners preferred to renew their tourist visas every few months, which came automatically. It didn’t seem like it would be an issue and I didn’t really think about it. But as my temporary vacation became permanent, the nation surged towards nationalism and started changing their immigration laws, finally, with the revolution moving forward; I was deported.
A few days later I crossed back in from Colombia, but it was the beginning of the end, the honeymoon was over. I lost my job and small life savings in the ordeal and things between Rosy and I began to fall apart amidst the stress of what became my everyday life. The incredible situations around us, that had at first drawn us so close, began to drive us apart. Finally, I just gave up, half a year after I snuck back into Ecuador, I gave up any hope that things would ever go back to how they were before that day; I left.
Two and a half years after I departed on what was just supposed to be a long working vacation, I got on a plane and headed back to New York. When my parents met me at the airport I had no plans for my life, but I somehow knew that my time in the United States would not last long.