Coca is shitty. Believe it or not, I chose this adjective to describe the town where I am staying—also known as Puerto Francisco de Orellana—carefully. It would not, for example, be fair to say that Coca is poor. In fact, according to my interviewees, Coca is, thanks to oil money, pretty well off, a claim… Continue reading Festive, If Ugly
Being an EstadoUnidense* in Latin America should not be easy. Forget Pakistan; there is no region of the world with more legitimate and longstanding grievances against the U.S. than Latin America. Ecuadorians, for example, could complain about the CIA’s supposed role in the death of President Jaime Roldós in 1981, or, more concretely, the enduring… Continue reading The Long, Charming Reach of Racism
Go West, young man, and grow up with the country. The passageway into the bus terminal is wide and angled slightly uphill, with a big sign reading “Oriente” hanging ominously at the end. It could serve well enough as the setting for one of those dramatic movies, in which a group of astronauts / soldiers… Continue reading Go East, Young Man
Something tells me that now that this is public, I won’t have problems getting interviews anymore. I am, after all, pretty much famous.
Last summer, it was a beard. This summer, it’s Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Almost exactly one year ago, I arrived in Uganda, expecting to see some elephants, learn a bit of Luganda, raft down the Nile, and maybe, in between visits to national parks, do a bit of economic research on agricultural cooperatives. It didn’t… Continue reading Africa Beards, Expat Guilt, and Mac’n’Cheese
I am somewhat infatuated with Quito’s bus system. Perhaps it is a product of growing up in the mass-transit-is-for-wimps-and-commies American west, but I think I am peculiarly appreciative of the fact that, for $.25, I can traverse the entire length of Quito relatively swiftly while leaving it to someone else to deal with this country’s… Continue reading My Daily Collective Action Problem
A few months ago, when it occurred to me that I was going to a country about which I knew almost nothing, I turned to the world traveler’s trustiest friend. No, not Lonely Planet. I mean the CIA World Factbook. I’ve been infatuated with the Factbook ever since my sophomore year of high school, when… Continue reading Means and Medians
Yesterday I interviewed Pablo Fajardo, and – while I knew it before I went in – the guy is a genuine hero. It’s easy to find information online about Pablo—I recommend this Vanity Fair article (really) or the movie Crude—so I will keep this introduction brief. Fajardo is the son of poor campesinos, born the… Continue reading Inspiration in the most likely of places
A few days ago, I was thrilled at how things were progressing here. I had scored a few helpful interviews, found a few restaurants with decent vegetarian food, and—most importantly—progressed in my Spanish enough to be able to make my self understood, albeit in a broken and grammatically incorrect fashion. Half a week later, not… Continue reading Bilingual Blues
Over a week in, and I finally got around to doing some touristy things. Mia—a Princeton friend—flew up from Guayaquil, where she’s been working this summer. If she had told me in September that we would next meet in Ecuador, I would have a hard time believing it, but there we were! After a night… Continue reading Gringos do Quito
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 