OFF TO RIOBAMBA; QUESTONS ABOUT ECUADOR, POLITICS, FREE TRADE IN THE AMERICAS; ARRIVING IN RIOBAMBA
Sunday, July 02, 2006

I am able to pick up some translating work that was due to come in on Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Despite feeling terrible again with a stomach amoeba and dosing myself with some sort of pills I get from the farmacia, we settle up our bill at Hostal Runa Pacha, say goodbye, sling our baggage over our shoulders and saunter off down the now familiar streets of Otavalo toward the bus terminal.

We have learned to stop worrying about bus schedules when traveling in Ecuador. There always seem to lots of busses going wherever you want to go. This Wednesday mid-morning is no different. The parking lot that serves as the terminal is abuzz with activity. Underway the bus conductors take tickets, handle the baggage and generally keep things functioning. As they approach stops (usually unofficial stops) along the route and in the terminals they act as barkers who are constantly calling out the bus’s destination. At first we are only hearing other towns out of the cacophony: “Ibarra!”; “Tulcan!”; “Esmeralda!”; “Cotacachi!”; “Agato!”, they shout at us. I am familiar with the system now and I keep shouting “Quito?” back at them. They wave us along the row of busses until finally one of the barkers acknowledges us and waves us over. The hawkers are competitive but they always correctly assume you want on the next bus to leave. Soon our baggage is stowed below and we are spread out in the bus. This time I switch sides so I can enjoy the views through the high mountain passes from a different angle than on the trip up here.

On the way Kathleen and Antonia, sitting farther forward, make the acquaintance of an indígenos musician, Fernando, traveling down with us to the capital. He has a CD of music he has recorded and they buy one from him. The last part of the trip is through the endless suburbs of Quito Norte and we appear to be heading right past La Mariscal where Hostal New Bask is located, and where we intend to put up for a few days. Fortunately the musician is getting off around there too, and he helps us get the bus stopped at the right spot. We all pile off while the vehicular traffic swarms around the bus, beeping and hooting in best Ecuadorian fashion. The conductor throws our luggage off, we say a hasty goodbye to Fernando, let ourselves be cadged by a taxi driver who throws our luggage into the back and we are off through the traffic to Calle Lizardo Garcia.

Taxi drivers seem seldom to use their meters so there is a little tussle while we work out that the trip is going to cost three dollars flat. After that the discussion with the driver goes back to futbol. Fifteen minutes later we are at the hostal. I head for the internet café to pick up my translation. Kathleen, Antonia and William go into the hostal and are soon settled back in the same room we left nearly two weeks ago to go to Baños and Otavalo. The hostel is more than pleased to get the two room keys back that we had inadvertently taken with us.

Over the next few days I am tied up completely grinding through a German-to-English translation of a contract about computers. There should be a premium paid for translating boring texts! But it’s all money in the bank and I grind away at it. Meanwhile Kathleen takes the kids for the afternoon to Mitad del Mundo, the site of the observatory where French scientists took the measurements of the equator back in 1700’s. It is at the foot of Mount Pichincha. You can shake hands (or do anything else you fancy or can manage, I imagine) across the equator. There is also an interesting ethnological museum covering the indigenous peoples of Ecuador.

Back in town by late afternoon, the kids are left on their own as both Kathleen and I work at the upstairs internet café. She is getting lots of proofreading at present, and I have the translation. We both therefore need a computer. The internet place has a few tables at one end, the “café” portion. I set up shop near an electrical outlet while Kathleen goes online at one of the terminals.

Somewhere in all of this, we get calls back from Señor Santos and Consuelo about the workshop in Riobamba. It seems that we are to be there for a mid-Saturday afternoon rehearsal and that the workshops or intensive rehearsals or whatever is supposed to be happening down there will take place every evening thereafter for the following two weeks.

Just what is to happen in Riobamba is a little vague in our minds. But, as we have learned in the sailing world, “closer is clearer”. We’ll just head down there and see what happens. Consuelo calls back later to say that she has arranged a ride for us on Saturday morning with a friend who is a professor at the Catholic University, where she herself works, but who lives in Riobamba.

This seems a little tentative. But what have we got to lose? The whole idea of volunteering to do these music things was to get to know Ecuador and meet Ecuadorians as well as perhaps to learn Spanish.

“God works in mysterious way His wonders to perform.” Take learning Spanish, for example. Our ride is a native Spanish speaker. His English is non-existent but he attended the Deutsche Schule in Quito while growing up (that’s how Consuelo knows him), and studied philosophy for three years in Műnster and Bielefeld. We converse in German. He picks us up in his camionetta (pickup truck) and off we go for another trip in Ecuador. Gerardo is really interesting to talk with and he is able to answer a lot of questions I have been saving up for such an occasion.

Questions about Ecuador: Politics; Free Trade in the Americas

We talk about Ecuadorian politics and economics as we go along. He observes that the power in the country is now and has always been with the wealthy. Occasionally there is a blip on the political scene, for example, a land reform here or a tax adjustment there. But nothing really changes. Perhaps now the wealth comes from things like exporting roses (a fairly capital-intensive affair because of all the permits and bank guarantees required) instead of large agricultural estates. But it’s often the same people. At least the Ecuadorians change the families now and again, unlike the Bush dynasty in the U.S.A.

We discuss relations between Ecuador and the U.S.A., the country’s main outside influence. It’s not that the U.S.A. has much understanding of Latin American in general or Ecuador in particular. But there are several major issues burdening the relationship. The first is oil, the second is the free-trade agreement with other Andean countries like Columbia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, one the one hand, and the U.S.A. (and perhaps Canada and Mexico) on the other.

The Ecuadorian government is in favour of free trade as are the rose farmers and banana shippers. The former are in the hands of the well-to-do families, the latter largely in the hands of American companies like United Fruit Company. It is the small farmers, who are large in number, who fear and oppose free trade because they believe they will be wiped out. The rose growers and their friends believe that Ecuador is far enough from the U.S.A. that transport costs and the cheap labour and capital costs here will protect the local small farmers from a flood of agricultural products from the U.S.A. This has certainly not helped Mexico, however. You cannot go to a Mexican supermarket without realising that nearly every canned or fresh food comes from the U.S.A., even Washington apples and Florida citrus. American (and European) farmers are so highly subsidised by the taxpayer that their selling costs are not based upon the real cost of production. The taxpayer motivates them to overproduce and the surplus goes into cheap exports. And, as to transport costs, once a load is aboard a freighter, the cost is measured in pennies per ton. As an example, it is cheaper to ship crushed granite to Houston from a coastal quarry in Scotland than it is to truck it in from Austin, Texas.

But, according to Gerardo, free trade with Ecuador has been frozen by the U.S.A. because of the second big disagreement between the two countries: oil. Ecuador is the second largest supplier of petroleum to the U.S.A. after Venezuela. Oil is the largest single export from the country. It is drilled for in the Oriente, i.e. the Amazon headwater areas on the east side of Ecuador and shipped by a purpose-built pipeline to Esmeralda near the border to Columbia, where a trans-shipment terminal now exists. The deal cut between Occidental Oil (Arm and Hammer’s company) and the Ecuadorian government when it all began twenty years ago was that the Ecuadorians would receive 40 percent of the barrel price of oil and Occidental 60 percent. This applied only up to an oil price of $14 per barrel. After that Occidental would take it all. The Ecuadorian Government has been insisting that the contract has to be re-negotiated to split the profits fifty-fifty. Occidental, who, like most US oil companies, have excellent contact to the Bush administration and the Republican Party, has moved the US government to stop free-trade talks as a means of pressuring Ecuador in the matter of oil royalties. Clearly they hope the government here will be pushed by the beneficiaries of free trade to get the measure approved over the protests of the small farmers. Although we have seen no sign of it ourselves, the Ecuadorian Government introduced emergency powers to prevent protesters from demonstrating in five provinces. The Army can be used to this end. The Government says the measure will be put through, whatever, and the farmers should collect signatures and get a law introduced into parliament. In any case, although the other Andean countries have signed the agreement at diplomatic level, their parliaments have so far not ratified the agreements. The stories continue.

I asked about what the relationship is between the Army and the Government and learned that most Governments here keep an eye over their shoulders at how the military will react. The military look very well equipped and dressed and, we learned, they just got another pay rise to keep them happy. But every once in a while they take over the government if they are unhappy with the direction of politics.

Everyone is now wondering whether, after a long trend to liberal, free-market democratic governments, Latin American are starting to move in different directions. Many of the democratically-elected governments were not able to manage the economies very well and the middle class voters began to despair. At the same time, the liberal-capitalistic centred around open borders and globalisation have only benefited a small group of people while leaving the lower income people worse off than before. The governments have cut social security, health care and other social programs in an attempt to cut back “government” and balance budgets. This has benefited the middle-class taxpayers but left many worse off.

Chavez in Venezuela is seen by the U.S.A. as an enemy, especially so since the U.S.A., that great bringer of democracy to the world, toppled him once. He was re-elected and is madder than ever at the U.S.A. Left-leaning governments have appeared in other countries in South America too. Now, on Sunday, there is a presidential election in Mexico. Though the running is close, the left-leaning nationalist, Lopez Oberon, the popular and populist ex-mayor of Mexico City, looks set to win over the liberal-capitalist-internationalist Calderon. (The old PRI is way back.) Lopez says free trade and globalisation has not really benefited Mexico. Wait and see.

I really enjoyed the ride down for the many topics we could touch on and the questions we could get answered about Ecuador. We have been saving them up to find somebody we could talk with. As mentioned at the beginning, although we had not expected to be talking German, we had always hoped that the music workshops would bring more contact with Ecuador and Ecuadorians and it appears to be bearing fruit.

Arriving in Riobamba

Arriving finally at the Casa de Cultura in downtown Riobamba to find Cesar Ssantos and a group of about eleven young people ready to rehearse. Cesar took them through their pieces, which they had memorised (most of them do not read music.) Kathleen will rehearse the choir two hours every day for the next two weeks while Cesar is away. They may do a concert at the end of the period. She will be concentrating on singing technique, repertoire, tone and pitch, ensemble work, etc. They look like a fun group and proven that they are motivated since they turned out for practice while a fantastic match between France and Brasil was being televised!

The head of the Casa de Cultura made a very nice welcoming speech to us and we were chauffeured by car on a sightseeing tour through the city by a nice man named Peter. We stopped at the only piece of high ground in the Riobamba Valley from which we had a good view over the town and to the three volcanoes that encircle us: to the north, Tugarahua (active; 5,016 metres above sea level); to the south, El Arch (5,320 metres); and, to the west, the giant Chimbarosa (6,380 metres, the second highest mountain in the world after Everest and the highest in the Western Hemisphere.) Although we had seen Cotopachi on the way down from Quito, we were not able to see the tops of the three mountains since the weather had socked in a bit. Maybe one day.

The tour ended at the Hostal Puerta del Sol on the north side of town. The family that runs it, three generations under one roof, has apparently recently modernised the hostel, since the floors are all freshly tiled or of hardwood and the bathrooms are all with new fixtures and nicely tiled. The rooms are still quite impersonal and not really comfortable. There are no bedside tables and little storage and, as usual, the ubiquitous bare lightbulb in the centre of the ceiling. No reading lamps. But – Thank Goodness! – a good mattress.

Our windows overlook a big public market and the bus terminal for the Oriente and Baños. It is a beehive of activity when we arrive though it already late on Saturday afternoon with market women calling out their wares and bus conductors doing their routines. Ecuador is not over-run with cars. But there are lots and lots of noisy and stinking diesel-powered busses of an older generation and lots of diesel-powered trucks that appear either to have mufflers badly in need of repair or no mufflers at all. Since our windows are not of insulated glass, we resign ourselves to keeping the windows shut and sleeping with our earplugs in.

Today, Sunday, we relaxed and looked around the town, taking in breakfast at a greasy spoon around the corner and dinner at a hamburger place downtown near the market. When we visited the central market this morning we saw that that every food stall was serving roast suckling pig (Spanferkel) and, after Otavalo, we were eager to have this for dinner. After marching all the way down there again this afternoon late, we found the market had closed early for Sunday evening and we were forced into a fried chicken place. This turned out just fine and we came back after dark planning to play cards and get an early night to face the translations and proofreading expected in tomorrow and the first rehearsal of the week.