[FRIAM] [ SPAM ] Re: Fun Times in Ecuador

[Steve Smith]

Hola Alfredo! It was satisfying that I could actually puzzle out your response in Spanish... much easier in writing than spoken, of course, but validating that my basic language skills are not lost.   I did have to touch Google Translate a couple of times to make sure I wasn't mis-translating, but of course a simple dictionary-translation can be as risky! I agree with what you are saying (as I understand it) that it is an important part of the human condition to be passionate about important things and the crises that go with various forms of unrest and change only aggravate that.    Even we (the US) have our passions (evidenced by the police/racial/class issues being revisited as if a time machine to the 60's)! I remember as a child, seeing the very hopeful progress in most of Latin America that had a back-slide starting in the 70's if not the 60's (from my perspective)...   I have a lot of respect for the intellectual and social culture of Latin America which has managed to keep more of the "passion" in it than much of Anglified (US/Canada) America...    Some re-aired interviewed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez after his death, really underscored that for me... juxtaposed with the changes/history in Cuba, etc. Sinceramente!  - Steve Hola La tensión política que se presenta en Ecuador también se presenta en la gran mayoría de los países de América del sur. En esta región algunos países están bajo el control de la derecha, otros lo están de la izquierda pero en todos los casos existen debates intensos con altos niveles de exaltación y con cierta tendencia a la intolerancia.  Lo que queda claro es que en estos países no hemos sido capaces de resolver algunos problemas que teóricamente en otros países del mundo se resolvieron hace decenios, siglos quizás. Sin embargo, situaciones como, por ejemplo, la tensión racial y el abuso policial en los Estados Unidos, las tensiones sociales que emergen en épocas de crisis en países del “mundo desarrollado”,  las tensiones con facciones radicales del Islam y de otras religiones, muestran que en ningún lugar del mundo nuestra especie humana ha logrado verdaderos estados de convivencia o de respeto por el otro o por la diferencia. Cada uno de nosotros concibe, interpreta y desea al mundo desde su visión particular o desde el rasgo que más lo define como individuo dentro de la sociedad a la que pertenece. Aunque la objetividad no existe y debido a que la verdad es relativa, creo que es mejor ser un testigo de los hechos que vivir con el apasionamiento de ser parte. Por eso la ciencia es a veces un privilegio conveniente. Para mala fortuna es muy difícil no apasionarse ni hacerse parte.  Regards 2015-06-30 22:31 GMT-05:00 Gary Schiltz <g...@naturesvisualarts.com>: [A long post follows - I hope it is interesting to at least a few on the list (I'm thinking especially of Ivan Ordoñez)] Despite living here in EC for 7 years, I'm still trying to figure the place out. There are so many things I could say about it, but most would be just sort of gut feelings. My Spanish reading skills have only recently reached the point where I can read newspapers with little enough pain to make it worthwhile. First, the good things. The country is extremely varied geographically. It is about the size of NM, with a population of about 13 million. We have Amazonian jungle, mountains over 21,000 feet, Pacific beaches, and then of course the Galapagos. I live at about 6500 feet elevation, so I don't need much heat, and never any cooling. It's amazing living on the west slope of the Andes. I can drive half an hour and get an increase in temperature of about 10 degrees F, another half an hour for another 10 degrees. Or, I can drive half hour up our gravel road for a decrease of 10 degrees. So, up to a 30 degree temperature range in an hour and a half of driving. It's very beautiful where I live, but quite cloudy (that's why it's called cloud forest :-)  People are generally very friendly here, but the idea of "the truth" seems to be a little flexible. Non-prepared food is cheap, especially fruits and vegetables. It is still legal for foreigners to own land here, and land in rural areas can be bought for between the low hundreds of dollars per acre, up to thousands. You can get permanent residency by several means; Karen and I did so by investing more than $25K by buying land (and then building two houses on it). In my opinion, the bad things pretty much begin with the current government. Rafael Correa swept into power in 2007 on a populist platform modeled laregly after Hugo Chavez of Venezuela - many have called him "Chavez Light". At first, he was pretty moderate, and spent all of Ecuador's income from oil (I believe we are a member of OPEC), which was high because of the price of crude, on infrastructure projects. I wholeheartedly support investing in infrastructure. So though I was initially a little skeptical, after 8 years of GW Bush, I had convinced myself that leftist governments are a good thing. However, within a couple of years, the entire national assembly was from Correa's party, and the populist rhetoric, replete with rich-vs-poor talk, steadily increased. Then he loaded the courts with his supporters, so with all three branches of government, he has pretty much gotten whatever he wants. He has a huge ego and hates to be criticized. So, he started passing laws restricting legitimate criticism, much like Chavez. After a couple of journalists were fined millions of dollars for "libel" against Correa, criticism pretty much died, and many people became genuinely fearful to say anything negative about him in public. When the price of crude dropped dramatically, there wasn't enough money to feed his newly created huge bureaucracy. So, he turned to a few countries, especially China, and got high-interest loans. At the moment, I believe EC is in debt to the tune of $35 billion, and even with crude prices going up somewhat, there still isn't enough cash being collected to maintain the bureaucracy. At first, he merely added "safeguards" (basically import quotas and higher import duties). After all, this only affected "the rich". Even that wasn't enough. So, he made a mistake that may (I hope) be his downfall. He proposed large capital gains taxes on real estate (I'm not sure, but my impression is that this may even apply when you don't sell). But the extremely unpopular thing that he did was to propose progressive high inheritance taxes. EC, like most latin countires, is very family oriented. He made the mistake of criticizing the ability to pass property down to heirs with little tax, and that struck a nerve. One remark that he made went like this: if you have property or a business worth, let's say $500K, and you have five children and ten people working for you, you can leave each child $100K, which would put them into the 72% tax bracket, which would mean they would each have to raise $72K just to receive their share. But, why not divide the estate into 15 parts, leaving $33K to each child, as well as to each worker? That would put them all into a much lower bracket, allowing them all to inherit their small amount tax free. That's pretty much when the shit hit the fan. Even communist-leaning folks tend to have a dim view of leaving the same thing to their workers as they do to their kids, especially here in family-oriented Latin America. So Ecuadorians have recently found their voice, especially the middle class. Emboldened by anger over his anti-family stance, people have finally started vociferously criticizing Correa. Starting a couple of weeks ago, people have been peacefully demonstrating in the streets by the tens of thousands in Quito, and even more in Guayaquil. I believe there were estimates of up to 300K people in Guayaquil alone demonstrating against Correa on June 26. In Quito, a group numbering in the tens of thousands marched to as close to the presidencial residence as they could get, chanting "Fuera, Correa, Fuera!" ("Out, Correa, Out!"). [#FueraCorreaFuera] They even broke through the police lines, but Correa himself was off somewhere else giving a speech to his mass of supporters, numbering in the low hundreds in that particular location. So, it isn't clear what's going to happen. Oh, the other thing that Correa has been pushing for is a change to the Constitution to remove term limits (he is two years away from the end of his second term, which is all that is currently allowed). The assembly apparently could amend the constitution by itself, but polls show over 70% in favor of a national referendum, which almost certainly would go against indefinite re-election, and thus, against Correa. The next few months will be pretty interesting, to say the least. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Agrónomo, IT, Candidato a MSc en Desarrollo Sostenible y Medio Ambiente +57 3154531383 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com