Defending the Revolution

That photogenic populist, Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador, is in Cuba this week.

First the papers here in Ecuador reported he was going there for vacation with his family--I would too, if it weren't such a hassle. Later, the papers mentioned he'd be getting a medical check-up while there. Strange. Ecuador has good doctors and, as president, you'd think Correa could pretty much get whatever medical care he might need right here. (I wonder what Ecuador's doctors think about this?) The latest report from Cuba shows Correa in a tete-a-tete with a very hale Fidel Castro.

It is no secret Correa is an admirer of Cuba--he is firmly in the left-field of Latin leaders--and in this he's joined by most of his countrymen, who tend to feel rather kindly towards Cuba. This doesn't bother me. What does trouble me, however, is Correa's recent decision to bring a peculiar Cuban innovation to Ecuador. Which of Cuba's attributes does he have in mind? Cuba's vaunted public health system? Its post-secondary education model? The island's excellent disaster response and relief program? Nope. None of the above.

What Correa wants to copy is Cuba's revolutionary defense committees (comites de defensa de la revolucion, or CDR).

The CDR is Cuba's grass-roots spying program, in which neighbors report on each other to the government which, thereby, knows the whereabouts and doings of each person in every corner of the country. This neighborhood network has been one of the most effective organs of repression in Cuba since it was founded shortly after the revolution. The CDR was designed, in Fidel Castro's words, to be "a collective system of revolutionary vigilance" and to report on "who lives on every block, what everyone does, what relations each has with tyrants, and with whom each person meets." Yikes!

The other country in the region that has adopted Cuba's revolutionary defense committees is Venezuela. And what has happened there since Hugo Chavez instituted them? He has gone from being a one-term, interim president, to someone who seems to covet a sojourn in office that can only be described as Castrian. So far, he's at year eleven of his "revolutionary" reign and showing no signs of stepping down soon.

So, why would Correa want to replicate the creepy CDR program in Ecuador? And exactly what revolution is he so concerned about protecting?

Ecuador's "revolution" was a quiet one. In fact, it was no revolution at all. Correa may call it the "Citizen's Revolution" (la revolucion ciudadana) but it was really a series of populist reforms he instituted after his election two years ago, including a massive public works program, changes to the labor laws, etc. The culmination was a successful referendum to draft a new constitution, which was hastily done and rushed to a vote in a cowed--and soon to be disbanded--Congress. No Federalist Papers here, no provincial ratifying conventions, just Correa in the bully pulpit hammering away with the rhetoric of the citizen's revolution.

But now, Correa is concerned these changes may be at risk. In a recent speech, he warned the citizen's revolution is in jeopardy to unnamed elites in Ecuador. But what elites is he talking about? The right wing, business-dominated party that long controlled the county is in tatters after the death last year of its ancient and wizened leader. The press seldom criticizes Correa, so awed are they by his popularity and communication skills. He's changed the constitution and sacked the entire Congress; its successor, the national assembly, is full of Correa's political allies. So, with the assembly in his back pocket, a new constitution, a nearly silent press, and sky-high approval ratings, one wonders what Correa is so afraid of.

The answer, it appears, is Honduras. The revolutionary defense committees, he says, are necessary to prevent what happened in Honduras from happening in Ecuador. Correa is referring to the recent ousting of Honduras's populist president, Manual Zelaya, by the military--on the orders of the country's Congress, it should be pointed out--to prevent him from holding an illegal referendum to change the constitution. Correa is wagering that if he can effectively organize his supporters into neighborhood cells as in Cuba and Venezuela he'll be able to avoid being overthrown should his Assembly ever turn on him. (See those defenders of revolution, the red-scarfed Chavez and the dapper Correa, left.)

I asked a few Quitenos what they think of the revolutionary defense committees proposal.

"I think it is all a joke," said one woman. "He's just trying to take our minds off his other problems."

By other problems, she's referring to 1) allegations Correa's brother has been receiving preferential treatment in bidding for government contracts and 2) revelations Colombia's FARC guerrilla movement funneled money to Correa's presidential campaign. Given those headaches--particularly the second one--I'd probably be trying to change the debate, too.

But what about those scary revolutionary defense committees, I asked? Would these work in Ecuador? After all, they have been very successful in helping Chavez keep a vice-grip on power in Venezuela.

"This isn't Venezuela," said another Ecuadorian. "Venezuela's people have never overthrown a president. We do it all the time. We go into the streets. We'll do it again if he isn't careful."

Hmm. Perhaps President Correa does have something to worry about after all.

Is this what's worrying Rafael Correa?

Road Trip

Driving in Ecuador can be a pleasure.

The country's winding mountain roads weave through spectacular and varied scenery. In the course of an afternoon you can pass from the lush jungle of the Amazon basin to steep valleys where Holsteins graze on emerald pastures beneath snow-capped volcanoes (see left, and the magnificent Cotopaxi, above). Drive a bit further and you're certain to come upon a dry valley whose encircling mountains keep out the rain clouds, giving the land a rich golden brown color and turning the trees a dusty, olive-drab (see below, landscape near Quilotoa).

It's as if you are passing from the jungles of South East Asia to Switzerland and then on to the goldenrod hills of California in the space of just a few hours. I've never visited another country that can boast such variety in so small an area. After all, at about 270,000 sq. miles, Ecuador is only the size of Pennsylvania, New York, and New England.

But for the most part, driving in Ecuador is pure terror.

What makes it so bad? Well, let's start with the narrow, precipice-hugging roads themselves, festooned with white crosses to remind the driver that certain death lies just a few feet to right?

This stress is not fleeting. It lasts hour after hour. I recently drove from Quito to the country's third largest city, Cuenca, in the south, a distance of 432km (268 miles), a bit longer than the distance between New York City and Washington, DC. The trip took 10 hours. The country may be small, but when you're averaging 30 miles an hour, it can feel like Siberia. (See an exhausted me at hour five. "Next stop, Novosibirsk?")

Generally, the main roads are more or less smooth. But almost all the problems result from their narrowness. So far, I've only seen two places in the country where the highway is two lanes in each direction. Most of the time there is one lane each way without any median. If this isn't hard enough to deal with, every few miles the road goes through the center of one small town or another. In town, all traffic slows to a crawl. Even late at night you have to slow down because you never known when there will be a speed bump just waiting to jar your spine.

They love speed bumps in this county. Sometimes these speed bumps are marked. Sometimes they aren't. It only takes hitting one of these once at 40km/hr. before you become very alert to their presence.

Trucks are a constant menace on the roads. When laden, these only manage a few miles per hour on the steep mountain roads, causing long backups. No one can take the pain of driving 10 miles/hr for long so eventually you role the dice with fate and dart out into the oncoming traffic to pass. (See below, trucks in a work zone, on the main road east of Quito.)

The only thing worse than the trucks are the buses. In Ecuador, when you want to insult someone's driving you say they drive like a busero (bus driver). It's not that the buses go slow, far from it. They barrel down the road--generally the middle of it--at high speed. The problem is that they stop whenever and where ever there is a fare. Or a potential fare. And, of course, they don't pull over. They just stop. This, unless you are very far behind, will cause you to 1) slam on your brakes to avoid rear-ending the bus or, 2) pull out into the oncoming traffic to pass it. Your choice.

For a while I thought I could just stay safe in my lane and not pass anyone, even if it meant taking all day and all night to get to my destination. But this doesn't guarantee safety either. There you are, minding your own business in own lane and what do you see up ahead in the distance? A bus, in your lane, in the process of passing someone, and heading right for you. And what's the bus driver doing? Why, he's laying on his horn, warning you to get out of the way.

Another problem are the work zones. These pop up without warning. There you are, finally barreling down the road at speeds approaching 40mi/hr, happy to be making good progress and then--just around the curve--you come face to face with a bulldozer. As you slam on your breaks, the car lurches over the bumps and pits as the smooth asphalt road you were driving on disappears into dusty gravel.

There are very few road signs. And when there is a detour, there are even fewer. The message I took from this is, if you don't know exactly where you're going, you shouldn't be driving. Basically, you have to ask a lot of questions. The problem, however, is the iffy quality of the directions. My favorite was the woman in Salcedo who, when asked where the road to Quito was, pointed to her left and said, "It's just up ahead, on the right."

And did I mention that at night, people here like to drive with their high-beams on?

The highways of Ecuador are the great melting pot of the nation. All aspects of society meet and mingle on the roads. The poor hawk fruit and candies from the shoulders, rushing into traffic whenever it slows. When the poor travel they tend to pile into the backs of pickup trucks and seeing eight to ten people--sometimes with livestock--huddled in the bed of a small truck is not uncommon (see left). The lower middle class--commuting to work or traveling to visit friends and relatives in other cities--prefer to ride the endless stream of smoke-belching buses. It is vacation time and the upper middle class, their cars crammed with kids and gear, choke the roads to and from the beach in their Chevys and Toyotas. Meanwhile, the wealthy, in their shiny, silver SUVs speed past, arrogantly zipping in and out of oncoming traffic to pass the slower-moving vehicles, confident in the German-engineered performance of their cars.

But driving in Ecuador isn't all white-knuckles and adrenalin. I want to take a moment to pay tribute to one of the great pleasures of driving in this country: traffic circle sculpture. Every small town seems to feel the need to erect a piece of attention-grabbing art in the middle of their traffic circles. Sometimes the sculpture reflects local pride (like the giant ice-cream cone in Salcedo) but most of the time the subject matter seems utterly arbitrary. Regardless, they are all fascinating.

Here follows a portfolio of my favorite pieces of rotary art.

Maize. The ear of life.

A big faucet.

This one is fantastic. It looks like the moon is concentrating on trying to get some rest amidst the traffic of Riobamba. I can't tell if that bird is helping matters.

Homage to the hummingbird.

Look at this guy's right hand. Let this be a warning to art students everywhere not to skip foreshortening class.

Paying homage to the llama.

Ethnic pride near the Inca ruins of Ingapirga.

Honoring indigenous headgear?

Welcome to Salcedo, home of the multi-flavor ice cream cone.

Come on, kid, smile. You're in Salcedo.

This guy I call the pied piper of the the Gorgons.

Paying tribute to the potters.

Even the military gets into the act. Here, Pro patria; below, a soldier protects the strategic yellow starburst.

The institute of national development.

The shoe shine kids of Alausi take a break to play torreador.

And my current favorite, the enigmatic shoe-horn of plenty.

All of these sculptures must have a story. I just wish I knew what those stories were. Dissertation topic, anyone?

Feeding the beast. At a pit stop, near Salcedo.

Colibri

A hummingbird in flight is wondrous. The small body seems to hang suspended without support, the wings beating so rapidly they are imperceptible to human sight (although not to the camera). The rapid, frenetic movements as the tiny bird moves left or down, or sideways or up seem to obey no pattern. Trying to follow the bird's flight is more like following the movements of a bumble-bee than a bird.

Along my regular west to east walk across Quito--back to my apartment after Spanish class--there is a two-block stretch of road so steep that steps replace asphalt. It is an unlikely concession to foot traffic in this pedestrian-unfriendly city and it is one of the highlights of my 40-minute walk. The steps are bordered on either side by a strip of grass and set amidst the grass is a series of stubbly, flowering trees. The trees are in bloom at the moment and the little flowers look like minuscule, orange trumpets. The other day, darting between the flowers, I saw a hummingbird.

The sight of the tiny bird, contentedly sucking nectar just a few feet away left me staring in wonder. I've never been much of a bird watcher, but hummingbirds have always fascinated me. They are so tiny, so delicate, that after staring at one all other birds seem clumsy, lumbering beasts.

Hummingbirds--known as colibri in Spanish (that has a nice ring to it, I think, even better than hummingbird)--are notoriously sensitive to pollution and this city would seem too dirty to harbor the delicate birds. In fact, one of the most exhaust-choked places in my long commute is not two blocks downhill from where I saw the bird. There, the fumes are so bad I am often left coughing and out of breath. How could a hummingbird possibly live so close to that? It must just be a random bird that strayed into town from the hills nearby, I thought. Soon it would either fly away or die, I reasoned, and so I snapped as many pictures of the bird as I could before it tired of my stalking and zipped off to a higher tree.

I found a picture on the internet of a bird that resembles the one I saw (see left, photo by Paul Pratt). It's called a White-necked Jacobin. What a cruel name to give to this lovely bird; it makes the gentle creature sound like a rabble-rousing revolutionary. In my picture of the bird (right) you can see the similar shape of the head and curve of the beak.

The very next day I saw two of the birds working the same tree. I smiled at the thought that my little jacobin had a mate and his life on the rough streets of Quito would not be a lonely one, that his existence here was not a fluke of nature. I imagined the pair having chicks that would--with luck--survive to spread to other trees nearby. At that moment, as I snapped more pictures, a mother and her young son stopped on the steps to stare with me.

The street that is home to all this excitement is Ernesto Noboa Caamano--but everyone here simply calls it Noboa. Ernesto Noboa was a poet. He was born in 1891 in the gritty seaport of Guyaquil and died 36 years later here in Quito. His short life could not have been pleasant. He suffered from neurosis and became addicted to the morphine that gave him temporary relief. I can't yet read his poems but he was an admirer of Poe and Baudelaire so I imagine they must be brooding and dark, just the types of poems I enjoy. I look forward to the day when I can search his stanzas for clues to his life and to life in Jazz-age Quito. But will I find intimations of urban colibri?

A few days later, just after noon when the hot sun draws forth the full fragrance of the flowers, I was amazed to see another hummingbird of an entirely different variety. It had a smaller body than my jacobin but it sported an impossibly long tail. I fumbled blindly for my camera, trying to retrieve it from my backpack without taking my eyes off the tiny bird as it went zipping in and out of view between the branches. Then, for a split second, it stopped and perched on a limb in the bright sunshine, as if posing for his picture. The lucky shot shows him in all his majesty. Of the dozen pictures I snapped during those minutes, only a few show the bird at all. Most are just shots of thickets of branches, leaves, and flowers.

After the bird flitted off out of range for the last time, I rushed home to learn what type of hummingbird I had encountered this time on the smoggy streets of Quito. After looking through dozens of web pages devoted to the hummingbirds of this region, the best I can guess is that my new bird is a Long-tailed Sylph, although the one on Noboa street has a tail significantly longer than the ones in the pictures on line. Perhaps the city version of the bird sports a longer tail than his countryfied counsins I saw pictured on the web; think of it as the avian version of an urbane gentleman in his smoking jacket.

At left you can see my picture of the sylph in flight, its wings a blur as it strains to insert its beak into the horn or the flower, its tail so long that it stretches out of the frame.

Now, every day as I climb the steps of Noboa street on my way home I stop and stare into each of the trees to look for my friends. As I do, I can't help but think that Ernesto Noboa would smile if he knew that on the rough and smoggy streets of Quito--surrounded by walls covered in graffiti--colibri thrive.

Hummingbird Habitat

Morning Edition

Breakfast is sacred time for me. The food is important--and those who have seen me prepare my breakfast tell me it approaches ritual--but, honestly, what I enjoy most is lingering over the meal. It is quiet time, time to read, time to write, time to reflect.

I so jealously guard this time that no matter when I wake up, breakfast completely fills in the gap between then and when I have to leave the house. It makes no difference if I allow myself 30 minutes or three hours for breakfast, I will always be in a rush at the end and invariably late to wherever it is I need to be.

In my corporate career I attended my fair share of 7:30am breakfast meetings--I even called a few of them--but I never really enjoyed them. I'm not the type who likes the feeling of rushing out of the house to begin the day.

Here in Quito, my breakfast routine is similar in structure to what it was in New York, but the trappings are certainly different. I wake up at six, just before the sun rises over the eastern Cordillera and into my face. I like to be awake to watch as the clouds that invariably cling to the mountains turn pink and yellow with the sun. Sometimes, the illuminated adobe and granite facade of the church down the hill appears to take on the same creamy pinkish cast of the clouds at exactly the same moment (see image at the bottom of this post).

Breakfast begins with tea and Spanish vocabulary at my desk. (I save the excellent Ecuadorian coffee for my afternoon pick-me-up.) The rest of my breakfast I eat a bit later on the patio, in the full face of the sun (see left--can you believe that hat?). Generally, I eat bread and cheese and fruit.

The traditional Ecuadoran cheese is a non-aged cheese (queso fresco). It is bright white and soft, with the cool creaminess of mozzarella and the shape and texture of feta, but without the dryness. At first I was skeptical of it. Now I eat it every day.

Then there is the fruit. There is so much to say about the fruit here in Ecuador that I'll have to devote a future post to the topic. For now, I'll just mention the two in the picture below. Uvillas (little grapes) are a firm, yellow fruit with a slight tartness. They are about the size of grapes and have the skin texture of a tomato. I love the sharp, cool feeling as they pop and release their juice inside my mouth. I eat them by the handful. I've been going through about two pounds a week.

The other fruit in the picture is granadilla (little grenade), a type of passion fruit. To get at the sweet, gloppy fruit inside, you have to crack and peel the hard rind just like you would crack a hard-boiled egg. The grey, gelatinous insides of the fruit, which you eat with a spoon, are hideous. Ask people what it is reminiscent of and you'll get anything from snot to uncooked sheep brains. It is best not to think about these when eating grandilla.

Recently, I've also been eating candied black figs, which are not technically fruit, as far as I'm concerned. These come drenched in honey and are best enjoyed with slices of queso fresco (white cheese) to cut the sweetness of the figs. It's an excellent combination. The perfect finish to a long breakfast.

The NPR program, Morning Edition, has been part of my breakfast routine ever since I moved to New York in 1992. I miss it. Sure, I could listen to Morning Edition on line, but that wouldn't be the same. So, I listen to local radio. Lately, I've been listening to Radio Publica Ecuador (RPE). It's pretty good but if the name implies an NPR equivalent, that's not quite accurate. The station is free of commercials and has a peppy line-up of news, talk, and music--and lessons in Quichua, the language of the country's largest indigenous minority, hosted by my latest heartthrob, the effervescent Marta--but rather than being a station that attempts to reflect the broad range of views in the country, RPE is really the mouthpiece of the government. And in Ecuador, that means it is the mouthpiece of Rafeal Correa, the young, charismatic, and wildly popular president. The New Yorker recently wondered if he might not be "Another Obama." Here he is striding in the surf, Obama-like.

Correa is rapidly changing many aspects of society and government in Ecuador. He recently pushed through a new constitution which abolished the congress. Granted, it was a notoriously corrupt body, but I'm still trying to figure out how laws are now being made in Ecuador. Another constitutional change: abolishment of hourly employment. This was an effort to curb the use of third party contract agencies that paid workers less than minimum wage. What this will do to job creation is beyond me. Correa is an economist and should have been able to come up with a better way to curb wage abuses than by enshrining full-time employment in the constitution.

Like Ecuadorian fruit, Rafael Correa is endlessly fascinating and deserves a future posting here all to himself. But for now I'm interested in his relationship with the media. Almost since his election, Correa has been feuding with the press. Like Obama, he wants to reach out to his legions of supporters without the filter of the news media. But, as Obama is finding out, this is hard to do when the question is not a campaign but the business of daily government.

Correa's latest feud with the media came about a couple of weeks ago when the local press picked up a story that ran in Colombia alleging the FARC--the guerrilla movement in that country--had helped fund Correa's campaign.

It was around this time I started listening to Radio Publica Ecuador. At the height of the controversy, every hour on the hour, there would come a "special message from the government" in which a stentorian voice (not Correa's), harangued the news media, claiming it had been spreading misleading stories about the government. The two-minute long message warned the people to be wary of one-sided reporting and closed by saying the government supported the idea of some third-party watch dog organization to oversee the media and ensure fair reporting.

These messages stopped the day the government sheepishly released evidence showing the FARC's leader had indeed tried to give money to Correa's campaign, although without Correa's direct knowledge.

But this didn't stop the government from pushing its idea of an independent media watch dog. What happened when the government didn't get any takers on this idea? It went ahead and established its own. Independent?

These are exciting times to be a journalist in Ecuador--or simply a media watcher. Meanwhile, the Ecuadoran version of Morning Edition will ensure my breakfast time listening remains entertaining.

Morning twilight in Guapulo