Depressed in Quito

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Sitting in a small, brightly painted room of a hostal in Quito, Ecuador, I feel a deep wave of depression coming over me. Moreover, I am lonely and still have two weeks remaining of my Ecuador "vacation." I need to mentally and emotionally prepare myself. I need an outlet.

I spent the last week in a small coastal pueblo called Estero de Platano. I stayed with a very sweet family of nine who lives in a seaside shack on stilts. I am travelling with a Spanish instructor from Quito, and two additional relatives of the family also seem to stay there frequently, so the total household size during the week was usually 13.

They make their living as fisherman, artisans, and by cultivating cacao, maize, and plantains on small plots of land in the surrounding colinas (small mountains). Overall, life by the sea seems to be good. There is enough food to eat; though it is a shack, the house is breezy and comfortable with several hammocks that hang from the ceiling, which are perfect for lounging on a hot day or can be tied back to make room for rambunctious children to play about the house. In fact, those hammocks made me wonder why in my Boston apartment I have expensive and comparatively uncomfortable couches that will wear out in a few years, be difficult to move, and ultimately wind up as yet another permanent piece of junk in a land fill.

So why am I reeling inside now? Because the reality is that this sweet indigenous family is living on the edge. One flood, one bad harvest, one family illness will push them beyond dire straits, like so many other families all over Ecuador. And this is becoming an increasingly likely scenario for them. The price of food has sky-rocketed around the globe, but the benefits are being reaped by huge multi-national agribusinesses at the expense of small producers. Thus, to earn enough money to satisfy life's basic needs, people in this community have begun to clear more and more trees from the surrouding colinas so that the land may be cultivated. This deforestation - aside from destroying the natural ecosystem that the people and many other living creatures depend on - contributes to erosion that, with just one heavy rain, could result in a severe disaster for the community's source of food and income.

Why are so many people in Ecuador living on the edge? Why is the natural environment here being destroyed by deforestation, mining, and petroleum extraction? The answer is stark and painful: they are poor because I am rich. And if you are reading this, it's most likely true in your case too.

Few people in the U.S. know - or care - about the long history of U.S. government and corporate intervention in Ecuador. It's well documented, for example by former World Bank Chief Economist and Nobel Prize Winner in Economics Joseph Stiglitz, that in the 1970's, the World Bank (an institution created and controlled by the U.S. and heavily influenced by U.S. corporations) knowingly used flawed economic and statistical methods to justify huge loans to Ecuador and other developing countries. These loans were intentionally orchestrated such that the developing countries would never be able to repay them and thus be forever obliged to comply with U.S. political and economic interests. Moreover, the loans were conditioned on the use of U.S. construction and consulting firms for the implementation of the funded development projects. Thus, while the loan money was always immediately funnelled back to U.S. corporations, the developing countries remained saddled with unpayable debts. When one Ecuadorian President, Jaime Roldos, finally stood up to the U.S. and World Bank, he was assassinated in 1981 and in a ruthless coup, replaced with a corrupt leader more friendly to U.S. backed corporate interests.

Ecuador's "development" loans came shortly after Texaco discovered oil deep in the Amazon rainforest in 1968. A trans-Andean pipeline built shorty thereafter has since leaked over a half million barrels of oil into the rainforest. Presently, a lawsuit brought by more than 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians asserts that between 1971 and 1992, ChevronTexaco dumped into open holes and rivers over 4 million gallons per day of toxic waste water contaminated with oil, heavy metals, and carcinogens, and that the company left behind nearly 350 uncovered waste pits that continue to kill both people and animals.

Tomorrow morning, I will head to the rainforest myself to visit a local Kichwa tribe, where I will pass through the town of Shell. Yes, a town named for the oil company, hacked out of the rainforest to serve oil workers and as a military base.

Since oil was discovered in Ecuador and the World Bank made huge development loans to the country - conditioned on the use of U.S. corporations - the official poverty level has grown from 50 to 70%, public debt has increased from $240 million to more than $16 billion, and the share of national resources allocated to the poorest segments of the population have declined from 20 to 6%.

But clearly these facts are all well-known to me. What´s really gnawing at my stomach and heart right now is a much more subtle problem. It´s the slow transformation of entire cultures around the globe, already completely pervasive in the U.S. and well on its way here in Ecuador, that make us all numb to and willing to help perpetuate inequality. It´s the Burger King's, McDonald's, and KFC's scattered throughout Quito; the mass-produced, mass-exported U.S. pop music playing in the cafes and on the radio stations here; the Nike swoosh tattoo'd on the chest of an indigenous Ecuadorian fisherman who lives a simple life on the coast.

These observations make the prospects for social justice and sound environmental and financial stewardship seem hopeless. Resistence to the unequal distribution of resources has been growing around the world. But only because the situation is worsening, and through climate change, war, famine, and economic collapse, threatens to decimate us all.

Is there any turning back? Our system of social organization rests not only on human exploitation and the unending consumption and absorption of natural resources, but also on the absorption of us. Already nearly everyone on the planet has become completely absorbed by and dependent on television, commercial advertising, and processed food. If this is the case, how can we ever change things for the better? I hope that I am not spending my Ecuador vacation angry and weighed down by depression, in a brightly painted room in Quito, because the situation really is hopeless, but that we can actually find a way to open our hearts, minds, and lives to the possibility of another reality.

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