đŞđ¨ Voice#06: Living as a Foreigner in Distressed Ecuador
Illegal for Foreigners to Protest in Ecuador
The following article has been written in collaboration with a foreigner living in Ecuador to share his experiences and how he tries to navigate living in an inflated and unstable government.
Rafael Correa, then-President of Ecuador, came on TV and said something Iâll never forget:
 âany foreigners caught in the protests will be promptly deported and barred entry into the country for life.âÂ
I was studying abroad in the capital, Quito, at the time. My house was about 15 minutes from the Presidential Palace he reported from.
He was trapped there by protestersâpresumably not many foreigners.
The Right to Protest is Granted ABSOLUTELY
You read about stuff like this in history books, and every once in a while, you see it on the news, but I never thought Iâd come face to face with a despot or a tyrantâsomeone who would stifle another human beingâs God-given right to protest or assemble.
It was surreal, watching this man on TV, knowing he was surrounded by a sea of people who wanted him gone, and he knew it. Yet, he looked straight at the camera unflinchingly and unapologetically.
The right to protest is enshrined in Ecuadorian law, but the government is not strangers to suppression of civil rights, and large swathes of the population support that suppression
Even my host dad, whoâd be considered very affluent in the country, said, âif the protesters would just stop, Police wouldnât have to resort to violence.â My face dropped.Â
How could anything think that? These people are fighting for their very survival.
Class System
Ecuador has a class system that many Americans and other westerners wouldnât understand. Itâs not just a rich and poor dichotomy; itâs much more than that.Â
There are the indigenous communities, who have been in Ecuador for centuries and live off the land, and there are middle-class families who own their homes and cars.Â
They have enough money to take vacations and enjoy life without worrying about paying rent or bills. Then there are the upper-class families who are part of a very exclusive club.
There are many subclasses within those groups, but within the last one, thereâs also the political elite. Most of them would be considered rich in any country, and many are educated at elite Universities abroad in Europe or the US.
Access to Information
The vast majority of people in the country are very poor, and the richest of the rich own everything. They own the property, they own the media, and they own import and export business. They make all the rules, and through the media, they dictate public opinion.
The eliteâs hold on power seems to be very dependent on playing the classes off each other so that upper-middle-class men like my host dad feared the poor more than the rich. Maybe he thought he could be part of the elite one day, but Iâll never know what went through his head.
Either way, what Correa had was a monopoly on information, and what foreigners like me posed was a risk to that monopoly. He was afraid of foreign ideas leaking into public opinion and tainting his grasp on power.Â
âYou donât understand South American problems because youâre not South American,â my âeliteâ friend would tell me.
The Rise of a Tyrant
The idea of a tyrant rising to power seemed so foreign to me, but now I see how it can happen. If a member of the political elite like Rafael Correaâwho went to the University of Illinoisâcan convince the top 5% of the country that theyâre better and more deserving than the bottom 95%, he can justify doing just about anything he wants.Â
Of course, what he wanted to do at the time was hold on to power.