Guayaquil: Human Rights Conference

November 18th:

Was is worth $130 to go to Guayaquil for 24 hours to be part of a human rights conference? UmmMmmmMm....YES! I woke up nice and early (5h00!) and then got on our way to the conference, which was everything I expected, but with a few surprises. The conference brought various organizations together to discuss what Plurinacionalidad meant to them; politically, socially, and economically.

Some of the topics became very heated because this term is very controverisal, many people see is as a term that is promoting regionalization and thereby making the country separate instead of unitng the country. However, I think these people are missing the REAL point of what plurinacionalidad is trying to promote, and that is:
a) respect for everyone
b) it's knowing who you are (as an Ecuadorin) and this comes into play because there are Ecuadorians who deny (or don't associate themselves with) thier roots and when asked what they are they say they say they are white, when in reality nobody really is, which is the hidden racism that appears to be in a lot of Ecuadorian minds. Now I should say that I am GENERALIZING and that this is always a tricky thing to do, but with the census coming around the corner this was a very big deal in the conference, because when people say they are white and they aren't they are not allowing an accuarate count of the population.
c) economicaly/politicaly asking for there to be more open dialogues to see what sort of reasources are needed and provide them; ex. in the rural areas of Ecuador there is a lack of education (no or bad quality of schools), daycare centers, better living conditions, etc.
d) there is a belief that this only effects indigenous communities...well its doesn't
e) There is a belief that there can/should only be one Ecuadorian culture, but this is true but you can be part of more than one culture. Ex. Just like in the States there are different cultures so is the case here in Ecuador, the people from the coast do things a little different than those of us that are in the mountains areas of Quito. Therefore one part is no more Ecuadorian than the other, and when someone moves from one region to the other they learn to mix this two cultures and it's the mix that plurinacionalidad is promoting and in a way encouraging...it shouldn't be you have to choose between the two (I mean how can you?)
f) This term is also aspiring to challenge Ecuadorians to create thier OWN image of who they are going to be, and not look to the occidental in search of this definition.

This is Jose, who spoke about the Afro-ecuadorians and hopes that they have faced, for example he talked alot about the word negro and how this was a word that the conquistadores gave people from Africa in order to exculde them from the Ecuadorian culture. He also pointed out that this was the way that Afro-ecuadorians were being acknowledged in the constitution until the new one was written in 2008.

We did have a break, which is when some of the membres of APDH decided to take me to this park where there were iguanas EVERYWHERE!! It was great!

This was the park of the iguanas :)

The iguanas were everywhere, on the side walks, trees, benches,
 etc. I couldn't get enough of of them.



Then I went on an errand with a member of APDH and then got back in time to hear the beginning of the closing panelists discourse which was Ecuador: integracion regioinal y una nueva arquitectura economica. From all the panelists Jorge Acosta was probably the panalist that mostly talked about what needs to happen as far as Ecuador's economy goes. He believes that Ecuador needed three basic things:
1) Go back to their currency, around the year 2000 Ecuador stopped using thier currency, sucres, and started to us dollars as thier currency.

Jorge Acosta, a politician during the morning and quite
the character at night.

2) Banco del sur, Jorge talked about the need of the creation of a Latin American bank that would be able to provide loans to developing countries in order for them to create better public services for thier citizens and better thier lives, which in turn be an investment for the country because then they would have more educated citizens with better health services at thier disposal.

Afterwords, they decided to take me around and it was a night full of laughs, dancing, walking, dancing, eating, and more dancing.

Guayaquil used to be very unsafe and poor, a lot has changed in the last decade, but
one of the ways they decided to deal with this poverty was by blocking off the poorest
of the poorest places from the nice places. This is a picture of where the blocking off began, which was right next to the bar that we were in watching un partido de futbol...wtf?!

This was the nice, touristy, part of Guayaquil...the part that we
are allowed to see and walk around. In fact, this was the beinning of the
hike up to this light house that was ontop, and each stair was numbered, I think
there were a little more than 450 steps that we climbed, no biggie.

Finally there!

View of Guayaquil at night, ontop of the light house, was amazing!!

November 19th:

I missed my flight, had to wait to see if I could get on the next one. I was. I went to school and then came back home and got ready to go see HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HOLLOWS!!! However, afterwords I tried to get into my house and realized I had lost my keys, and of course my host parents had decided to go away for the weekend so I was locked out, and had to ask my host dad's brother if I could sleep there fore the night (he lives downstairs with his family). The next day we had to get a ladder and someone that works for him climbed it and went through a window, opened the front door, and let me in...yup it was a very crazy 48 hours.