politics...work...blah blah blah

After a summer filled with travel (DC, Pittsburgh, and Greece) I’m back to a normal routine in Quito. This week rounded out my fourth as a full time fellow at Asylum Access Ecuador, and because of an unexpected vacancy at the office, I’ve already been promoted to legal services director. I’m very excited about the job. It should be a good mix of supervising our legal staff, planning strategic litigation and policy advocacy, and tons of direct legal services. Because of the lack of services in general in Ecuador, my job requires a lot of patience and creativity. Things that should be simple, like filing a police report after having one’s refugee ID document stolen are often a bureaucratic nightmare.

It doesn’t help that many of our clients have debilitating psychological problems stemming from past persecution. A few days ago I was helping a severely traumatized refugee file a police report after a robbery. While we were sitting in a tiny concrete room in the police station, another man filing a report asked to go to the bathroom. The secretary told him the door was stuck and handed him an 8 inch butcher knife they keep in the office to pry open the door. The sight of a strange man brandishing a large knife scared my client so badly that we had to physically restrain her to keep her from running out of the room screaming. The fact that you need a deadly weapon to use the bathroom in the office where you seek help after being assaulted would be funny, if it weren’t such a serious oversight in the way things should work.

It’s not surprising that low level bureaucratic tasks are exceedingly complicated, given the way the top levels of the government deal with crises. The two biggest controversies of the past few weeks both involve high-level corruption. Several weeks ago a secret tape came out implicating President Correa and several of his confidants in a secret alteration of the text of the proposed constitution before it was presented for public referendum. Since the Constitution is 218 pages long, nobody noticed the alleged changes and now they are part of the supreme law of the land. (The changes were mostly pragmatic—“the government will promote” rather than “guarantee” food security—but still should have been approved by the Constitutional Assembly, rather than dictated by the President). The other big controversy was that after 19 years of legal battles and a potential $28 billon damage award for dumping toxic waste into the Amazon, another secret video recording came out implicating the judge in the Chevron-Texaco case of bribery and corruption.

So how does the Ecuadorian government respond to these serious accusations? By prosecuting the people who made and published the recordings, and proposing a new communications law that imposes heavy penalties for reporting on facts obtained from clandestine recordings. Teleamazonas, the station that first broadcast the recording of President Correa, will now likely be shut down for at least 90 days and possible permanently. By refocusing the debate on whether the evidence of the wrongdoing was improperly obtained, almost all of the news surrounding these two controversies has revolved around the act of making the recordings, rather than their content.

This has added fuel to fire in the battle between the media and the President, who they view as launching an attack on public information. Today El Comercio published a poll asking Ecuadorians why they don’t like Correa. Number one answer… “because of the way he is” coming in at 20.5%.

Nonetheless, as far as Latin American leaders go, Correa seems to be very smart, generally well intentioned, not too terribly corrupt, and still pretty well liked in a country with a notoriously short patience for its leaders. And his progressive policies regarding human rights, migration and refugee law all make my job a lot easier than my experience working on immigrant rights in the U.S., which often feels like banging one’s head against the concrete walls of an immigration detention center.

OK, enough ranting…it’s a beautiful day and Monique will be back from a trip to DC soon, so I’m going to head to the market. Hopefully I can avoid the indigenous uprising planned to shut down the country this weekend. Hasta pronto,

D&M

The past few months

My failure to post lately is no indication that life has become less interesting on the equator, but rather that I've been withdrawn from it. I've spent most of the summer locked in our study listening to terrible lectures about secured transactions and property, with my nose buried in a bar-review outline. Then Monique and I were in DC with her attending some USAID trainings and me taking the bar exam and MPRE.

Nonetheless, the Citizens' Revolution marches on in Quito, and this past Monday the country celebrated its bicentennial with the inauguration of the new government. I was still in DC, but Monique and my cousin Robin got to greet all of the big Latin American personalities, including Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. Robin is living in our old digs at the Swiss Hotel while she and her husband look for embassy housing, and all of the heads of state stayed there for the festivities. Check out Robin's facebook page for photos in the lobby of all the big-wigs. With the inauguration, President Correa now has 4 more years to push forward his ambitious agenda of battling (or cancelling) Ecuador's foreign debt, strengthening minority rights, equalizing the distribution of wealth in Ecuador, and establishing Ecuador as a leader in the new Latin American left. I'm sure all this will make for an interesting and exciting couple of years for us.

While I was studying for the bar, Monique and I did manage to sneak out of Quito a few times for fun in the mountains. Here are some photos from our jaunt to Quilotoa, a beautiful volcanic lake 3 & 1/2 hours south of Quito:

The trip out here was an amazing drive. We passed about 6 snow-capped volcanoes on one of the clearest days we've had in Ecuador. We hiked around the rim of the volcano surrounding Quilotoa lake for a few hours, then drove another hour on a crazy dirt road to get to the Black Sheep Inn, a very comfortable eco-lodge in a small indigenous community. The next morning we rode horses down into the canyon below our hotel, picnicked on a sketchy bridge across a river, and still made it back to Quito in time for dinner.

A couple weeks later, still struck with volcano fever, we drove to Parque Nacional Cotopaxi, a huge protected area surrounded by three volcanoes. Unfortunately, this time we weren't so lucky with the weather and had to face a lot of fog and wind. It was still beautiful, and after we abandoned our plans to hike up to the Refugio which sits at 4800 meters, we had a great time driving and hiking around the high grasslands, checking out the wild horses, and playing on an ancient Incan fortress where we were the only people within in a few acres.

Well...I hope these photos are enticing enough to bring some of you down here. We feel really blessed to be so close to so much natural beauty (and for those of you frightened by the gloves and hats, we're also just a few hours from the beaches or jungles, where temperatures will make you pine for that cool Andean air). Tomorrow we head off to Greece for my brother-in-law's wedding, but soon we'll be back to the excitement of Ecuador. In September I'll start working full time as the Georgetown Asylum Access Fellow, and I'm really looking forward to continuing my work advocating for legal rights of refugees in Ecuador. We'll keep you posted.

Abrazos,

D&M

Born to love volcanoes

If my blogging has been lax of late, it's because life here has become fairly routine...my days are spent arguing with BarBri or the post office about where my ipod containing everything I need to know about being a lawyer might be (somewhere between Jamaica, NY and Quito, apparently), and learing the rules regarding res ipsa loquitor for tort liability. As I suspected, you aren't that interested.

We did manage to pull off an amazing barbeque/housewarming party last weekend. I found the perfect grill on our way back from Mitad del Mundo, the super kitschy and scientifically inaccurate monument to the center of the Earth in Ecuador, which is actually about 200 meters away from the real equator. As you can see, this 50 gallon drum can comfortably hold 3 spooning beer-can-chickens and leave plenty of space for barbequed tofu. We had about 50 people over on our patio for barbequed ribs and chicken estilo americano, and everyone seemed pretty happy with the results.

Mom, stop reading here....

Today my buddy Nick and I decided we would climb Volcano Pichincha, which taunts me daily from the window in our living room. It's supposed to be a fairly simple climb from the end of the Teleferiqo, which drops you off at a little below 14,000 feet to begin the hike to the 15,700 ft. summit. Nick and I happily embarked on our trek towards the summit around 10:30 this morning. It was a bit cloudy, but conditions looked pretty good for most of the hike. When we got close to the summit, the clouds were in pretty thickly, but we decided we might as well push to the top. The trail had ended, however, so we just took off up a scramble of loose rocks with a bit of hand over hand climbing.

As soon as we reached the highest point we could get to (we call it the summit, although the actual path may have led to a higher spot on the volcano), the clouds opened up and we were surrounded by hail and lightening and thunder. I'm not a boyscout, but I seem to remember a few things from my youth about not wanting to be at the highest point in the city in the middle of a thunder storm.

Nick and I snapped a quick photo and started our descent, but we were surprised to learn that the hail that fell over 10 minutes was enough to cover our entire trail with slick ice. It made coming down the way we had climbed up almost impossible, and we ended up sliding down a few hundred feet over steep, sharp rock on our completely unprepared, blue-jean-clad behinds. At one point I suggested waiting out the storm in a cave, but when I started sizing up the choicest pieces of Nick should one of us have to eat the other, we decided we might as well continue down the mountain and take our chances with the lightening. After about 40 minutes of harrowing alpine slip 'n' slide, we made it back to the trail, and found a few other wayward hikers who were equally concerned in not being hit by lightening. By the time we made it down to this horse, I knew we had the same thing on our minds (“Why the hell am I up on this rainy mountain when it’s sunny in Quito?!?!) An hour later we were back in line for the ride back down the Teleferiqo (a LONG line, as the municipality was offering 1/2 price tickets for dad for Father's day), and we got to laugh at the sissies who were concerned about being hit by lightening just because there was a thunder storm all around the cable cars.

Thankfully, we soon made it back to home sweet home, where I lit a fire, Monique prepared an amazing lasagna, and we sipped duty free whiskey and chilean wine till Nick's girlfriend called him home. Next time I'll bring a better raincoat and some gloves, but otherwise it was quite the adventure.

Till soon,

D&M

"Stupid Face"

Just in case you thought the rhetoric surrounding the U.S. elections was exceedingly juvenile, I thought I should share this recent exchange between the two leading candidates in Ecuador's presidential election:

President Correa: [Lucio] beats his wife; he has a stupid face; he's unqualified and incompetent morally and intellectually; he's a puppet; and he's a vain marionette descended from a hairy Guayaquileña. (I'm not sure about the translation of that last one: "fantoche de la peluconería guayaquileña" -- any help from you native Spanish speakers would be welcome).

Former President and 2009 runner-up candidate Lucio Gutierrez: "I've never beaten my wife or any women. You, Rafael Correa, I accuse in front of the whole country of having beaten you father, don Rafael Correa Icazas, God rest his soul, when he returned from the U.S. where he was detained for 5 years for drug trafficking [true story, at least concerning the detention]. You, as is your custom, taking advantage of your youthfulness, beat your father."

These two men have each served as President of Ecuador, and together captured more than 75% of the votes in last week’s election. Gotta love politics.

La revolución está en marcha

I know…I start of every blog apologizing for the lack of recent posts. This time I blame TVCable, the local internet provider. We signed a contract with them a month ago and they are just now getting around to installing our system. Apparently they provided fairly good service until last year when the government nationalized the company because its owners weren’t paying taxes, and now their offices are as bad as any other Latin America (or D.C.) bureaucracy. I guess you take the good with the bad in Ecuadorian “21st Century Socialism.”

Speaking of 21st Century Socialism, we had general elections here in Ecuador this past weekend. It was a lot more tranquilo than the ones held in Guatemala while we were in the Peace Corps, when the U.S. Embassy was concerned that one of the candidates, an ex-president/notorious war criminal would take the office by force should he not be elected. (Peace Corps made us stay in our sites in groups on “lock down”…we had a 3-day home-made hot-tub party. No coup ensued. But I digress.)

Here the voting is mandatory (you get a fine if you don’t vote), and for the first time ever, 16-year old kids, prisoners who have yet to be sentenced, non-citizens with 5 years of residence, Ecuadorians living abroad, and active duty military were able to vote. Although President Correa was basically a shoe-in for the highest office, this was still a big election because the Constitution made almost the entire government provisional, so most offices in the country were up for grabs. Nonetheless, other than a few burnt ballot boxes, some angry rhetoric, and tons of fireworks, everything went pretty smoothly during election day.

Counting the ballots is another story. Monique has explained the system they use to count votes at least three times to me, and I still don’t understand it. It’s some complex formula by which they count votes for individual candidates and then count votes for entire tickets, discounting the weight for tickets with more candidates. I don’t feel so bad though, because the people in charge of counting the ballots also didn’t understand the system, and it looks like 30% of the votes will have to be recounted. Oh well. It’s clear we’ve got at least four more years of Correa, which I’m sure will make things exciting for us as he continues his populist “Citizenship Revolution.” And it was enough of a draw to bring Jimmy Carter down to check out the situation. Monique got to sit really close to him at a talk on Wednesday.

Our house is slowly shaping up, although our stuff is still not here (supposedly coming next week). But I’ve got a hammock, a terrace, a little grill, and a newly purchased hand-crank meat grinder for making burgers and (guinea pig??) sausages, so I’m pretty much satisfied with life. For anyone near the D.C. area, Monique and I will be back in town for my law school graduation the weekend of May 17. Hope to see you all there or here.

-D&M

Current Events

Sorry for not posting anything lately…I’ve had midterms over the past week, and although not quite as demanding as my work at Georgetown, it’s been keeping me busy.

Our star-studded stay at the Swiss Hotel is quickly drawing to an end, but rumor has it that along with Iron Maiden we have been neighbors with Santana and Richard Gere. We went to go see Santana at the stadium down the street and he actually put on a great show, even if he wouldn’t hang out with us at the hotel bar. Just about everything is now in order with our house, and we should be moving in next weekend, although our stuff is still somewhere on the high-seas between here and Miami.

It’s election season in Ecuador, and the air is rife with controversy. My favorite commercial got pulled off the air for violating election laws—it was a 2-minute long homage to Ecuador, set to the tune of Hey Jude, with “na-na-na” changed to “cuidadania” (citizenship) and “patria” (patriotism). The electoral commission said it was illegal publicly funded propaganda for the ruling party, but is sure was catchy.

The biggest election scandal has been the coming to light of a variety of connections between the current administration and the FARC, the largest guerrilla movement in Colombia. A former undersecretary and minister in President Correa’s cabinet are both currently under investigation for a wide range of personal and business ties to some of the more infamous military and narco-trafficking personalities of the Colombian conflict. The story has created quite a stir in Ecuador, although it’s probably not going to be damaging enough to hurt Correa’s reelection chances in April.

As long as we’re talking about the destabilizing effects of international involvement in Colombia, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the more astounding articles I’ve read lately, documenting the financing of paramilitary death squads by Chiquita Banana. This is just one more chapter in the ongoing saga of the banana industry being directly responsible for torture and murder in Latin America (Chiquita is the rebranded United Fruit Company, who helped the CIA spark the 35 year Guatemalan civil war). The article doesn’t mention it, but Attorney General Eric Holder (of whom I’m actually a big fan) was previously a defense lawyer for Chiquita in a case regarding these payments.

On a lighter note, Monique and I got to see some world class soccer yesterday at the Ecuador - Brazil World Cup qualifying match. We packed in with about 40,000 screaming fans (in Spanish the same word is used for fan and fanatic, and this match made abundantly clear why there is no distinction). The tickets were all general admission, and although we got there 2 hours early we still weren’t able to find a seat and had to stand for the entire game. But we did manage to corral a spot about 50 yards from the field, close enough to see Ronaldinho’s goofy smile whenever he came near the corner.

Despite being considered a less-skilled team, Ecuador outplayed Brazil for most of the game (probably because of the altitude), although Ecuador gave up a stupid goal with about 10 minutes left in the second half. We thought all was lost until Ecuador tied the game with about 2 minutes left, leading to the entire crowd to get soaked in beer, soft drinks, and home made confetti. I’ve never seen a crowd so excited about a tie, although considering that the Brazilians are some of the best players in the world I suppose it was quite an accomplishment for a small country like Ecuador.

Having learned Spanish in a little community in Guatemala where everyone is extremely formal in their mannerisms, I’ve always felt my vocabulary of vulgarities has been lacking. Fortunately, 90 minutes of Ecuadorian soccer filled in what 2 years in the Guatemalan campo could not. Seeing 14 year-old kids screaming chants that would make a sailor blush was a bit disarming, but I suppose it’s all part of the fun.

Well that’s all for now. Keep in touch and look for cheap tickets to come visit!

-Dan and Monique.

Iron Maiden...Excellent!!!

Just to let you all know what a VIP (pronounced "Beep" in Spanish) I am, today as I was leaving our hotel for work, I noticed a 12 foot banner across the street. A corner had fallen down covering the text, but I could see a scary-looking devil peeking out. I assumed there was a protest against the U.S. or Israel, so I went to check it out, and to my delight I saw about 200 black-haired tweens with piercings. It turns out Iron Maiden is staying at our hotel in anticipation of their concert in the national stadium tomorrow. I walked right by Nicko McBrain signing autographs in the lobby. I'm going to change into all black now and head down to the hotel bar humming "Wrathchild" to see if I can score some back stage passes.

Of Cable Cars and Guinea Pigs

Monique and I finally found a house that fits the embassy's daunting list of criteria...it's safe, in a nice neighborhood, and not too big or too small. The landlords have to ground all the plugs and make some other modifications, but hopefully we'll be moved in by April 1st at the latest. It's a great place with an amazing view of Quito, a big kitchen, a fireplace, a yard and a terrace. And lots of room for guests...we're very excited.


Now that we're done house hunting we have a chance to do all the fun touristy stuff we've been itching to explore. Last weekend we put our faith in Ecuador's infrastructure to the test, by riding the Teleferico up to the top of Pichincha Volcano. It was quite the harrowing experience.


The Teleferico is a cable car that launches from a hill above Quito, and climbs 4000 feet, dangling it's passengers high above the sides of a lush volcano for a mile and a half ride. You end up at close to 14,000 feet, and can see the entire sprawl of Quito along with the surrounding valleys. For a linguistically amusing description of the attraction, check this out. After a bit of hiking at the top, we hurried back down to beat the dark clouds rolling in (the thought of riding the Teleferico through a storm wasn't very appealing, although it didn't look like a few thunder clouds was going to slow down the operation). Lucky for us, there is a make-shift amusement park at the bottom of the mountain, where we played air hockey and rode sketchy carnival rides for the rest of the afternoon.





Our work has been very interesting lately. Monique got to travel to near the Colombian border this past week for the inauguration of some USAID funded water and infrastructure projects. It sounded like quite the event...the U.S. Ambassador attended, and they had a local karaoke star for entertainment. As thanks for the projects, the local government presented Monique with this basket of potatoes and carrots, along with a manila envelope containing a smoked guinea pig wrapped in foil. Monique refused to eat the little rodent (I think the teeth put her off), and I didn't think I could finish the whole thing, so after nibbling on the hind leg I gave it to one of the kids who camps outside our hotel selling bubble gum. I guess they don't teach kids here not to take guinea pigs from strangers, because this girl's eye's lit up when I asked, "¿te gusta cuy?" (do you like guinea pig), and as soon as I gave it to her she ran off to show the delicacy to her mom.

Although I have yet to be paid in guinea pig for my work, things have been very busy at the office. The Ecuadorian government is about to initiate a program to register the majority of the hundred thousand or so Colombian refugees who are now living under the radar, and Asylum Access is collaborating with other civil society organizations to make sure the process is carried out in line with international human rights law. The project is going to begin on the Northern Border and I probably won't get an opportunity to go up there until school is finished, but all of our clients are very interested in the process because it will be much more streamlined than the normal refugee status determinations. This weekend I gave a Know Your Rights presentation to about 30 refugees focusing on the new registration process, and also on the rights granted to refugees under the new constitution. The KYR presentations have been a really fun part of my job, because the attendees are very engaged in the presentations and excited to mobilize other refugees to assert the rights.

The weather has been great all week, so I'm going to try to enjoy some sun by the pool before the clouds come in. Hasta pronto,

Dan & Monique

Car knee vowel

This past weekend Monique and I thought we'd use one of our few mutual long weekends to see a bit of the country, so we took off for the coast to celebrate Carnival. Luckily we had bought plane tickets a few weeks earlier, because the week before the biggest festival of the year, in which most of the country heads for the coast, all of the roads out of Quito washed away in mudslides.


We were still a little late in the game making hotel reservations, so Monique reserved the first room that was open from our Lonely Planet...we decided to go to Puerto Lopez on the Manabi coast, a few hours south of the U.S. military base that Ecuador is in the process of closing down. The guide book described it as an idyllic laid back little fishing town with beautiful beaches and great seafood. We figured things would still be crazy for Carnival, but had no idea what we were in for.


When our extremely crowded bus pulled into P.L. the town reminded me of how I've always pictured Haiti in the summer--all of the town's dirt roads had transformed into gray mud pits from the weeks of rain. Barefoot children fought malarial mosquitoes and hookworms for a spot to play in the 6 inch pools of standing water. We got off the bus and hired a tuk-tuk to shuttle us the half mile to our hotel. The tuk-tuk zipped us through the town and down to the beach, which although crowded with fishing boats was indeed a pretty spot. Unfortunately, a drainage ditch filled with garbage, dead fish parts, and more frolicking little kids separated us from our hotel. No worries...the tuk-tuk drove right down onto the sand, waited for a wave to recede, and then hurried across the wake before the next wave could pull us out to sea.


For the Carnival celebration every restaurant in town had set up a little cabana on the beach to make cocktails and sandwiches, and no cabana was complete without a 6 foot speaker blaring reggaeton, bachata, or 80's American pop. If you didn't like the song played by your cabana of choice it was not a problem, because you could always hear 3 others playing at equal volume. The music seemed like fun until we got to our hotel, and discovered that there was a speaker aimed right at our room that would be blasting music from 8 a.m. until 4 a.m. every day. After a brief fight with the hotel operator we managed to get half our deposit back and look for new digs.


Once we got settled into a quieter hotel on a nicer part of the beach, things began to turn around. Although the beach at Puerto Lopez was really crowded and noisy for Carnival, we were only about 10 km from a protected nature reserve which included Los Frailes beach, a beautiful strip of white sand in a cove between two cliffs. Our trusty tuk-tuk driver would give us door to beach service across the muddy highway. We spent our days lounging at Los Frailes (both getting supremely sunburned), and our nights sipping fresh piña coladas and munching on wonderful fresh ceviche and fried fish.


In Ecuador Carnival is the one time when it's socially acceptable to douse a complete stranger with water, so we were constantly looking over our shoulders for kids with squirt guns, water balloons, or most often, buckets. It wasn't so bad being at the beach and having someone from the bed of a pickup truck suddenly soak you with warm soapy water, but I imagine it was considerably less fun in the mountains of Quito where it's only about 60 degrees and you are usually wearing jeans rather than a bathing suit.


We decided we definitely want to come back and check out the coast in a less crowded time. Once our car gets here we plan on returning and camping out in the national forest and checking out some of the long stretches of completely undeveloped coast that we passed on the bus ride.


That's all for now...enjoy the pics, if I managed to get the slideshow to work, and keep in touch!


-Dan & Monique

No Place Like Home

Sorry for the lack of posts lately… things have been rather hectic in our house hunting. It's sort of a goldilocksian search for a place that’s not too big, or too small, or too far away, or too dangerous… Our first choice was denied, so now we're back on the hunt.

Other than housing woes, things are great. During our one weekend when our housing request was pending and we didn’t have to look for places, we got to get out of Quito for the night. We stayed at this beautiful volcanic lake a couple hours outside of the city, and checked out a little village called San Antonio de Ibarra that is famous for woodworking. It was great to see some of the campo. While our embassy friends looked for furniture, Monique and I relived a bit of the Peace Corps days, sipping cheap warm beer on a concrete bench in front of a convenience store in the town’s central park.

The next morning we went to a very cool reserve that rescues large birds of prey from unpleasant situations around the Americas (usually crappy zoos or private residences that keep them as pets). They had several condors, which are pretty amazing, along with a bunch of hawks, eagles, owls, and falcons. While we were checking out this bald eagle, the head of the reserve came out with a cute little baby chick, which the eagle promptly swallowed whole before singing us a song.


School and work are going well. Monique has been able to travel a few times to meet with local mayors implementing USAID projects, and is so far enjoying her job. I’m learning lots about the new Ecuadorian Constitution, which is fascinating, and am putting my knowledge to use at our legal clinic. Last Saturday I got to give a Know Your Rights presentation to about 30 Colombian refugees, many of whom are being victimized through housing, employment and educational discrimination, because in a general view in Ecuador that Colombians are criminals. It’s very exciting and challenging work.

President Correa is also keeping us on our toes. He recently implemented a new system of taxes on almost all imported goods, as a means to stimulate the economy. Overnight the prices on tons of consumables went up about 40%. Sucks for us because Chilean wine and olive oil are too expensive; sucks for the rest of the country because cheap Chinese clothing and farm tools are no longer affordable. We’ll see if it spawns an uptick in consumption of Ecuadorian wine (which as far as I can tell is nonexistent). And there’s a rumor Correa's going to cancel Carnival celebrations, because Ecuador took too much time off for Christmas. Seems like a bold move a few months before an election, but we’ll see how things pan out. We've already got our tickets booked for the beach. For the moment he’s wildly popular in most of the country, but pretty much reviled by the middle and upper class Quiteños (especially all of my ruling-class offspring classmates).

Correa also caused some waves in the diplomatic circles by publicly ridiculing and banishing a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent when he cancelled a few hundred thousand dollars worth of aid to Ecuador (although the agent in question had left the country 3 weeks before he was banished). Seems like this was mostly sword waving, but it’s given me a new joke for the realtors: “How long do you expect to rent the apartment? … Until Correa deports us!" Ha ha ha.

And of course, the worst part about being in Ecuador this month (besides missing inauguration in DC) was not being in Pittsburgh for the Superbowl. We didn't take the camera out to the bar, but here was my preparation:

OK…off for more apartment searching. Keep in touch!

Abrazos,

Dan and Monique

Obamanos

Today the usual salsa/bachata mix on my bus to school was replaced by live coverage of the innauguration. Classes took a break at noon and about 100 students gathered around the TV in the main hallway to watch Obama take his oath of office. I spotted at least 6 different Obama t-shirts around Quito today.

I envy all of our friends who are celebrating in D.C. right now, but it's also exciting and inspiring to see what a transformative moment this is for the entire planet.

¡Si se puede!

Well…my eggs keep toppling, but I blame that on the fact that Quito is about 30 miles south of the Equator. The upside is that it’s technically summer here, and I have a good excuse to start my summer fitness plan. Since it kind of snuck up on me, I figured I could speed up the process with a steady diet of street food and tap water, and sure enough, after about 4 days here my body had violently expelled any remnants of the fatty American foods that plagued me throughout the fall. Now 15 pounds lighter and mostly adjusted to the altitude, I feel ready to tackle the excitement of Ecuador.



Stomach issues aside, Monique and I have really enjoyed our first week in Quito. We’re staying in a plush hotel near the center of the city. Here’s the view from the lounge on the top floor of the hotel, where we invited a few of Monique’s colleagues over to watch the Steelers dominate the AFC Divisional Playoffs. (that’s right…all you suckers who pay taxes are subsidizing this lifestyle.) I accidentally packed my terrible towel in the slow shipment, so I had to make due with a yellow dishcloth from the market. Third world living is tough.

The hotel gives us easy access to the city’s excellent public transportation system, although the embassy gives Monique a shuttle to work. Quito is basically a long narrow city, and 3 dedicated electric bus lanes run the length of the city. The buses get crowded, but it’s hard to complain when you whiz by the otherwise messy traffic for $.25. Our hotel is also about a 10 minute walk to the bus stop to my university, which is about 20 kilometers outside of Quito in a beautiful green valley. The bus ride reminds me of the road out of my village in Guatemala, with about 30 switchbacks over the course of a few miles, and a stream tumbling down the valley below.

It’s a very exciting time to be in law school in Ecuador, because they are basically restructuring their entire system of government. In October a national referendum enacted a new constitution that calls for major changes throughout the government. It’s a little surreal taking a constitutional law class when nobody knows what the constitutional provisions actually mean. On its own terms, the new constitution is extremely progressive. It guarantees a host of affirmative rights, including a right to housing, health care, work, food, and education. It also provides a much wider range of constitutional protections than the U.S., including a right to be free from discrimination based on sexual orientation, migratory status, or prior criminal conviction, an explicit right to freedom in making reproductive health decisions, and a right for natural resources to not be unduly exploited, enforceable by any Ecuadorian citizen.

It remains to be seen if and how these constitutional provision will be enacted into law, and most people are skeptical that the government will be able to simultaneously fulfill promises of universal housing and nutrition while respecting natural resources and private property. It seems clear, however, that the constitution will give activists a legal basis from which to demand change. Already a large group of environmentalists and indigenous rights activists have begun to organize against what they see as an unconstitutional mining law, and I’m hoping similar efforts can be made regarding immigrants' rights.

My internship with ASELER, the Ecuadorian branch of Asylum Access, is also looking to be a great experience. It’s a very small and rapidly evolving office, and I think I will have lots of opportunities to help the organization grow. Right now, my job will be interviewing migrants seeking refugee status in Ecuador, helping refugees prepare for their status determination interviews in front of the Ecuadorian government, and writing appeals for people who were unfairly denied refugee status. Again, it remains to be seen what the new constitution means for refugees, because it contains provisions that declare “no human being is illegal” and all people within Ecuador’s borders have a right to work and education. For now, however, being officially recognized as a refugee is an important step in allowing displaced persons (overwhelmingly from Colombia) to begin to assert their fundamental rights and rebuild their lives.

OK…enough rambling. Monique and I have to go look for apartments so we have somewhere for you all to stay when you come visit.

Abrazos,

Dan y Monique