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All is Vanity See other All is Vanity Articles Title: [LWAN] Ecuador: Crime and Contrasts The Spanish classes have proven too much for too long and I discontinued them. It was great for the first few weeks but time is a good friend with new languages. Understanding others is difficult but I know enough to get around and ask for what I need. Just being here and letting what I got soak in is a good thing. Crime continues to preoccupy the mind in Quito. Here it is something to live with. In my own first few weeks here I heard only stories and saw "shadows" of crime, but has struck close to home. The internet cafe right across the street from where I live and where I take my laptop -- the one where I was always courteously shown to the back of the cafe -- was burglarized. Thieves bypassed the steel roll-up door and broke in through a side door which bordered a private yard, itself fenced in. About 15 computers were stolen. Computers and related electronic equipment are much more expensive here and can be a hot commodity. But the owner seems to have taken it in quality stride, and he's back up and running now retaining enough good nature to extend me credit when I didn't have correct change to pay, even declining my offer to advance $10, and declining to charge me for a short 20 minutes usage one day recently. Goodwill that's always good to find no matter where you are. The vast majority of crime is in the form of thievery and muggings, but it also extends to deception and lies. A guy begged a dollar off me with some sob story about his being robbed and needing to get out of town, swearing it was the truth. I figured he was probably lying, but I gave him a dollar anyway and he, without so much as a thanks, turned and left. Curious, I followed him to see if I was right and sure enough, he met up with his buddies 2 blocks away. Lies and thievery, when they are found, are shameless here. There are a lot of foreigners here and if you stand out as one it counts against you. One Australian student, here for only a week, nearly had her camera stolen her first day here. A retired but rather husky & bald Italian student, the first student I had met here and a fine & helpful gentlemen, was tricked in broad daylight into taking his backpack off and lost it amidst some orchestrated confusion by a gang of 4 or more conspirators. (If any stranger tells you your jacket is dirty or anything else that would encourage you to put stuff on the ground, your guard should immediately go up). Another blond haired German girl told me she was mugged by 5 men to the tune of $1.50. (She makes it a point never to be completely broke and always has *something* to give in such circumstances). No weapons were involved but with those odds, none were needed. All of these things have happened within the last 3 weeks. But I witnessed one tragic exception to the "normal" form of crime on my way to meet some friends at a bar. My path took me by a crowd of people and an ambulance, and what must have been 8 or 10 members of a family wailing in grief. A man had been killed. A few hours later I caught the news footage on the barroom TV. I couldn't understand the report and don't know the circumstances, but it appeared the victim was one of the city's many security guards. That was the first I had heard of any crime based death, much less injury. Was the homicide scene an unlikely run-in for me? I can hope that it's newsworthiness speaks to it's rarity. Curious, I checked on murder statistics. I could find none for Quito but a recent count put Ecuador as a whole at about 15 murders per 100,000 people, which puts it ahead of about 20 US cities. Of course the cities here would carry the brunt of the numbers and rank higher. Then again, about 25% of all Ecuadorans live in either Quito or Guayaquil (Ecuador's largest city) and the statistics are much lower than they were just 4+ years ago before the country dollarized and experienced serious economic woes. But is the crime as bad as I paint it? I should point out to critical readers that I am not traditionally a city guy. Suburban living is as much as I normally care for and as much as I've done in recent years. I've never before lived in the heart of a city so it's more than just a new country to which I'm adjusting. There are also brighter spots to Ecuador. Contrary to my earlier report, Ecuador does have modern commercial districts. Four story malls and a "Megamaxi" which approaches the selection of a Walmart with some 48 cash registers. Four dollars gets you a very comfortable seat in a first rate theater on par with the best in the USA. There is a small but modern amusement park which may be an exploratory operation by Disney -- small but big enough to draw Ecuadorans from afar -- and I attended a wine show in the "Palacio de Cristal", a completely enclosed pavilion or "palace" made of glass which was absolutely first class. Unlimited wine tasting for $15, not to mention samples of cheese, meats, fondue and other delicious restaurant samples. And yes, the food. Ecuador is far superior to the USA when it comes to food. Here it is plentiful, cheap, fresh and diverse. And it's not genetically engineered (the safety of which has gone unquestioned by the FDA, possibly due to it being controlled by Monsanto henchmen). And it probably never will be engineered since it's already cheap and plentiful. Corporate mega-farming is also less likely in this mountainous terrain than in the vast midwestern plains of the USA. There are many fruits here I've never even heard of before. I don't believe Ecuador will ever, at least in this lifetime, have a food shortage. Meats are proportionally more expensive here, but still less than in US retail markets. Lunches here start around a dollar. Oranges are a nickel each. A quality meal is about $4, but I splurged one evening at a Chinese restaurant with soup, an appetizer, the entree and 2 glasses of wine. Total bill: $8.30. And it was indeed good food in a fine atmosphere. All told, in spite of the crime, the decision to come to Quito to learn Spanish and do all I've done thus far was a very excellent one. It ranks in the top 5 best decisions I've ever made. It is great to be here and meet so many different people and experience so many different things, and meet many other foreigners here with similar sentiments. Some of them have quit jobs to spend time here to break a dead routine and have no specific plans for how they are going to return to their former lives. While there are obviously a lot of thieves and criminals here (someone has to be committing these crimes), the Ecuadorans I've met and gotten to know are wonderful people and their lives are full lives. Recently I heard the expression "third world country" innocently used to describe Ecuador, an expression I've used myself many times in the past. And though I've not discussed the term with any Ecuadorans, when I heard the expression it immediately struck me as derogatory. Sure there are problems here, but the USA has it's own dirty laundry and to imply that the USA has the best of everything is a flaming lie. That's just the way it is. Neil McIver Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 9.
#5. To: Neil McIver (#0)
Sounds like a business opportunity. What's the problem, are they expensive to import or what? Sounds like there's demand, Ecuador has to have some sort of seaport, what's the deal?
Tarriffs. The gov would rather let the citizens stay in the stone age rather than miss out a juicy cut on items they have to import. Same with mexico, electronics are very pricy.
#10. To: tom007 (#9)
That's kinda what I figured but thought I'd ask the man on the scene. It's absolutely pathetic how ignorant the govt of Ecu. must be to think so short term as to jack people trying to import 'puters. ...please, either shoot me or make me your monarch...
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