Antisemitism in Ecuador

I had my last day in Quito to myself, so I decided to ride the TelefériQo, Quito's multi-million dollar cable car that takes you up one of the mountains that surrounds the city. Unfortunately, it was kind of cloudy, so the view was only so-so, but luckily it didn't rain.


When I got to the top, I spotted two American-looking kids and introduced myself. They were two Bowdoin students, Rachel and Alex.

Rachel was studying abroad in Quito, and Alex was visiting her. We started playing the name game, and the coincidences started getting pretty crazy. One of her close friends on the program had gone to high school with me. Another girl on the program was the sister, who I met briefly, of the guy who sat next to me on the plane to Quito. And El Maple, the vegetarian restaurant where I had eaten the day before, was her favorite spot in Quito. At the same time, we both exclaimed, "maybe we're related!"
After that, I went and got lunch at a nice vegetarian restaurant in Quito, and explored La Plaza Grande a little bit.

From Eric Goes Around the World

From Eric Goes Around the World

I also met these guys, who were holding a sign that read "We are looking for an honest man..." I went up to them and said, "You guys looking for me?"

From Eric Goes Around the World

One common cultural trait of Ecuadorians is that they are very upset by the level of corruption in their country's politics, so I guess this had something to do with that.
I decided to go check out a museum with a Chagall exhibit, but right when I got in I found myself in a conversation with the guy selling books at the gift shop. We talked for over an hour, mostly in English, and I ended up missing the exhibit. At first, he talked to me about how difficult it was to find a job in Ecuador. He had gone to college ten years ago and studied marketing, but was never able to land a good job even though he had the contacts and recommendations. He had spent most of the time doing unpaid internships. He was 35 years old and living with his parents. His sister, who had gone to America, graduated from Wharton and was enjoying a successful career. Soon, however, he changed the subject to world politics. He told me he likes Obama (as almost everybody in Ecuador told me). But without warning he started talking about how much he dislikes the Jews for causing all the trouble in the Middle East. Nearly realizing his mistake, he asked, "Oh wait, you're not Jewish, are you?" I wanted to hear more of what he would say, so I told him I wasn't. He went on and on about how the Jews caused all the wars in the world, how the Jews are rich and look down on everybody else, and so on. He thought that Hitler had "the right idea," but maybe hired the wrong people or took it too far. He thought that Germany would save the world, but that damn Angela Merkel keeps apologizing to the Jews. I asked him if he knew any Jews. "It's funny, actually," he said. "There was a Jewish guy at the place I used to work, and he was the only guy there I liked." He also had a cousin who had become Jewish living in France, a psychiatrist. I asked if he was a good person. "Yes, he's a nice guy," he answered, "but I don't know why he would get involved with something like that." Strangely, he also talked about how much anti-semitism there is in Europe. I pointed out to him that his views were anti-semitic, to which he eventually agreed, but didn't see it as a problem.
That night I talked about this experience with Manuel, who is atheist. He said the problem is relgion, that Ecuador is a Catholic country and the people are taught to hate the Jews. When he was in elementary school, they would have religion classes, which he didn't have to attend (as an atheist), but the kids were taught that the Jews killed Christ and so on. Furthermore, he said, since there are so few Jews in Ecuador, to most Ecuadorians Jews are like Martians and the beliefs Ecuadorians hold about Jews have no basis in reality or experience.
That was the first time anyone had expressed such anti-semitic views to my face, and it gave me a lot to think about.

A Day in the Old Town of Quito

The day after getting back from the jungle, Irene, Gabe, Rachel, and I took a tour of Quito's old city. It's very beautiful, and there are a lot of museums. When we were riding the bus, Gabe was pickpocketed, but luckily (and cleverly) he wasn't carrying much with him, and he only lost a dollar. We spent a lot of time shopping (there were two girls with us), and we went to a museum in the center of the old city. The museum had a lot of artifacts from the colonial period, and we discussed the legacy of imperialism.



The statue that looks over all of Quito:

Rachel and I both wanted to buy a USB thumb drive, so we went to some large store and asked the employees if they had any. They went into some back closet and found three. They were all 2 GB thumb drives; One was Kingston, and the other two were HP. The Kingston one didn't have a tag on it, so they spent 20 minutes on the computer trying to figure out what it cost. Then they told us that of the two HP drives, which were identical, one cost $30 and the other cost $15. I tried to explain to them that this didn't make any sense, but they wouldn't budge. So I took the one for $15 and left.
In the afternoon, the rest of the group all took a flight to Esmeraldas, the coast, to enjoy the beach for a few days. I couldn't go because I had to leave Ecuador in two days, so there would be no time for the beach. After they left, I found a great vegetarian restaurant in Quito and ordered this magnificent meal for $3:

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trying to pay with a $10. Nobody has change in Ecuador, or Peru for that matter. They sent one of the waiters to the bank to fetch change, and I was left waiting for 10 minutes until he got back.
Manuel picked me up and drove me back to the house.
I don't know why but Israel keeps popping up:

Into the Jungle

The day after our night in Coca, we woke up early and left for another oil town where we picked up supplies. We needed to bring enough food to feed ourselves during our time in the jungle, and some food and extra things for the Secoya community we would be staying with. We bought them extra food, some gasoline (for the boats), and gum for the kids. And then we drove to the riverbank of the Río Napo, a tributary of the Amazon. On our way there, we saw acres and acres of African palm plantations, which produce palm oil, but destroy the forest. However, the Secoya territory is protected, and the palm plantations stop right at their border, and the jungle begins. Our friend Hernán picked us up there in his engine-powered canoe and took us to a smaller tributary river called Río Aguarico. In fact, the Secoya kids go to school every day in a schoolboat--a wooden canoe with an engine, packed with kids, making stops at every settlement down the river.


We arrived in the Secoya village of San Pablo, a collection of some wooden huts along the Aguarico.


The Secoya are an indigenous group of Ecuador and Peru, who have been living in the Amazon basin for centuries, possibly millennia. The Ecuadorian and Peruvian Secoya were separated in the 1960s when the two countries fought a war over territory, and the Secoya fled the border areas. Now, there have been reunification projects for Secoya who knew each other as kids to meet each other again. Hernán estimates the total Secoya population at 2,000 people. They have a vast knowledge of the rainforest, and especially its medicinal plants, many of which Western medicine has yet to discover. For example, the shaman, Delfín, brew a hallucinogenic drink called Ayahuasca (or Yajé). They made it for us, but I chose not to try it.
Delfín and I:

I found living in the jungle to be very difficult. The worst part was the bugs, little no-see-'ums that bite relentlessly. I guess I didn't apply enough bug spray, and they totally devoured my arm.

While we were with the Secoya, we didn't really do much, but we went on a nature hike in the jungle, rode on boats, and played with their kids. One day the kids just had a ball climbing all over me and having me swing them around. I even told them the story of Little Red Riding Hood in broken Spanish. Some of the kids are really great climbers--they're totally fearless.


I thought I'd give it a try, too, on the biggest tree in the jungle.

It's higher up than it looks, seriously.

The girls also caught a massive spider:


And I played with a pet boar...

And found a caterpillar.

The word the Secoya use most often to describe their environment and lifestyle is tranquilo, meaning tranquil or quiet. They live very close to nature and take life slowly. Life in the jungle is certainly difficult but they have found a way to make it work, with their cultural knowledge and some modern technology. For drinking water, they collect rain in large buckets with cloth filters (and this is a rainforest, so it rains quite often). For electricity, they bought solar panels with batteries, and so they have lights, cell phones, and TV. They grow most of their food themselves, such as plantains, rice, sugarcane, and cacao, and they raise chickens. The government provides some health insurance. In fact there is an American man who chose to leave his life in the U.S. and live among the Secoya instead. It's not what I would choose, but different things work for different people.

Coca

On Thursday we flew from Quito to Coca, an oil town and an outpost in the Amazon. You could tell that the entire economy of the town is built on oil; there are oil workers everywhere, big advertisements for oil companies, and oil infrastructure is quite visible. The Trans-Ecuadorian pipeline runs through the center of the city right next to the main road. There has actually been a campaign to bury the pipeline underground, because if there was ever a car crash that broke the pipeline, it would be a disaster.



Oil pipeline on one side of the bridge, by the road:

And on the other side of the bridge is a finca, or rural home, dangerously close to oil infrastructure:

We all practiced our Spanish by talking to the cab drivers. I asked our driver what his favorite movies were, and he replied: "Me gustan las pelìculas de Arnold. En Ecuador, las películas de Arnold se venden como pan caliente." (I like Arnold Schwarzenegger. In Ecuador, Arnold's movies sell like hot cakes.") Ironically enough, later that night at the hotel we were staying at in Coca, they were showing a Schwarzenegger movie.
The hotel we stayed at in Coca was an interesting place. They had some tropical birds in cages and a nice pool with a waterslide. The crazy thing is that they had about 5 monkeys just running around the hotel wreaking havoc. For example, as we were having dinner, a monkey jumped up onto a nearby table and started licking the ketchup bottle. He pushed it over the edge, it broke open on the ground, and then he started eating the spilled ketchup. When we were done with our dinner, but still sitting at the table, a monkey jumped up on the table and stole a french fry. When he tried to do this again, Irene pushed the chair he was standing on, but he just shrieked at her and took the fry anyways.


Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey. Look closely at the top of the pole and you'll see him.

How much is that monkey in the window?

The hotel had turtles, too, who got into a fight.

Ooh and a funky grumpy monkey, too!

We left Coca the next day for Shushufindi, a smaller oil town, where we picked up supplies for our trek into the jungle. Strangely enough, we found a Clinica Israel. I asked them why it was called that, and they said it was because the doctor is an Adventist.


(If you look real close, it actually says "Shalom Jerusalen". To think for all these years we've been spelling it wrong.)

Exploring Quito

Yesterday, two of David's friends, Irene and Gabe, came to join us in the afternoon, and David took us on a driving tour of the area around Quito. The scenery was dramatic and beautiful, with mountains, lakes, and animals.
In the evening, Gabe, Aaron, and I played some music on electric violin, guitar, and harmonica. Gabe is an excellent Spanish guitarist and has even competed in Spain.
Last night, Rachel, David's sister, joined us as well, so now we're really quite a large group.
Today we are going to fly to Coca, a town further east in Ecuador, and then tomorrow we will fly to the jungle from there. I don't expect to have internet access there so maybe no updates for a while.