Ecuadorian Inferiority Complex and Identity Crisis

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Ecuadorian inferiority complex: Facts & analysis

Native Ecuadorian

 To understand the inferiority complex of Ecuadorian Community in USA and all over the world, let's go trough history to the roots of "el mestizos" witch is the ethnological definition of Ecuadorians and all Hispanics, as a result of the multi level cross breed between Native Americans and Europeans, Since the discovery of the "New World" Until the vague immigration of Ecuadorians aka "los mestizos " to the European conquerors descendants's land (USA and Europe)...

Ecuadorians are Unique in the sense that Native Ecuadorians are special savage tribe who been completely isolated from the modern world until the recent decades, forced contact with westerner caused the savage murder of explorers. 

Modern Ecuadorian.

Posts go in the Chronological order of the events, since the Discovery of the American Continent...scroll down the posts to go trough History and discover Ecuadorians inferiority Complex roots...  

Bon Voyage.

Mr. Core

Native americans(Indigenous peoples)

Native Americans (also Aboriginal Peoples, Aboriginal Americans, American Indians, Amerindians, Amerind, Indians, First Nations, First Peoples, Native Canadians, or Indigenous Peoples of America) are those peoples indigenous to the Americas, living there prior to European colonization. This term encompasses a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of them still enduring as political communities.

Indigenous peoples of the American continents are broadly recognized as being those groups and their descendants who inhabited the region before the arrival of European colonizers and settlers .

Discovery of the new world:

Ever since the discovery of the New World the indigenous peoples have been treated not only unfairly, but also unrealistically pigeonholed into stereotypes. The early explorers, historians, nineteenth century dime novels and twentieth century western movies have contributed immensely to the stereotypical images of the American Indians.

Naturally, Native American women were no exceptions, they were stereotyped and misconceptualised. They have either been presented as primitive pagans or romanticised and mythified. On the one hand, the stereotypical Squaw image constituted the inferior, subservient, meek, lazy, wild and lustful woman. On the other hand, the stereotypical Princess was the guide, protector, helper, comforter, lover and rescuer of the white man.

They got pwned by Columbusduring the colonization of America, and their spirits have been crushed ever since. Native Americans are relatively untrollable due to widespread depression about their decimation.

Extermination of el Mestizos ancestors..

The enslavement, torture, murder, and extermination of the native people of the West Indies followed quickly on the heels of Columbus and his men. It was obvious from Columbus’s journal that the Native americans were not as used to battle and warfare as the Spaniards. Columbus notes that “with 50 men you could subject everyone and make them do what you wished” and that the natives were “such cowards and so fearful” that they were, therefore, easy to rule. This idea was carried back to Europe, setting the tone for the relationship between the natives and the European explorers.

The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.

By then [1891] the native population had been reduced to 2.5% of its original numbers and 97.5% of the aboriginal land base had been expropriated....Hundreds upon hundreds of native tribes with unique languages, learning, customs, and cultures had simply been erased from the face of the earth, most often without even the pretense of justice or law.

Europeans once ruled over 100 million Natives throughout the Americas.

European extermination of Natives started with Christopher Columbus' arrival in San Salvador in 1492. Native population dropped dramatically over the next few decades. Some were directly murdered by Europeans. Others died indirectly as a result of contact with introduced diseases for which they had no resistance -- mainly smallpox, influenza, and measles.

Later European Christian invaders systematically murdered additional Aboriginal people, from the Canadian Arctic to South America. They used warfare, death marches, forced relocation to barren lands, destruction of their main food supply -- the Buffalo -- and poisoning. Some Europeans actually shot at Indians for target practice.

Oppression continued into the 20th century, through actions by governments and religious organizations which systematically destroyed Native culture and religious heritage. One present-day byproduct of this oppression is suicide.

The genocide against American Natives was one of the most massive, and longest lasting genocidal campaigns in human history. It started, like all genocides, with the oppressor treating the victims as sub-humans. It continued until almost all Natives were wiped of the face of the earth, along with much of their language, culture and religion.

A Spanish missionary, Bartolome de las Casas, described eye-witness accounts of mass murder, torture and rape. Author Barry Lopez, summarizing Las Casas' report wrote:

"One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 people. 'Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight,' he says, 'as no age can parallel....' The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment.' They used nursing infants for dog food."

Hundreds of Indians were killed in skirmish after skirmish. Other hundreds were killed in successful plots of mass poisoning. They were hunted down by dogs, 'blood-Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives [mastiffs] to seize them.' Their canoes and fishing weirs were smashed, their villages and agricultural fields burned to the ground.

History of Ecuador

Ecuador is the second smallest country in South America, quite densely populated

with 13.4 million inhabitants, and divided into three mainland regions by the geographic

barrier of the Andes Mountains with the addition of the Galapagos Islands as the fourth

region. The coast (Costa) is the largest and most populated area followed by the

highlands (Sierra) where the capital, Quito, is located, and also the city of Cuenca, capital

of the province of Azuay. The Amazon region (Oriente) is largely underdeveloped and

much less populated but is the largest territory and produces the oil that is Ecuador’s

main export.

what’s really fascinating about Ecuador’s history is its indigenous past, which is present and palpable throughout the country today. Ecuador has both a large indigenous population and a large mestizo population. The great majority of the country’s indigenous peoples live in the highlands and the Oriente.

Ecuador's population is ethnically diverse. The largest ethnic group (as of 2007) is the Mestizos, who are the mixed descendants of Spanish colonists and indigenous Indians and who constitute 65% of the population. Amerindians account for 25% of the current population. The small minority of whites, mainly criollos, the unmixed descendants of early Spanish colonists, as well as immigrants from other European countries, account for about 7% of the population. Afro-Ecuadorian also a minority, including Mulattos and zambos, largely based in Esmeraldas and Imbabura provinces, make up 3% of the population.

How Did Native Ecuadorians Respond to Christianity?

An enterprising European official sailed to the Central American mainland in 1514. He hoped to settle large numbers of Spaniards there, to find gold, and to convert natives. He and his men adopted a simple approach.

They traveled by night, stopping at midnight outside a chosen village. Before they entered, they declared loudly: "Princes and Indians, there is one God, one pope, and one king of

Castile, who is lord of this country. Come at once and render

him obedience, or we will make war on you, kill you, and put you

into slavery."

Religion in Ecuador

Approximately 95% of Ecuadorians are Roman Catholic, and 4% are Protestants. In the rural parts of Ecuador, indigenous beliefs and Catholicism are sometimes syncretized. Most festivals and annual parades are based on religious celebrations, many incorporating a mixture of rites and icons.

With the Conquerors came the venerable (or ominous, depending on your point of view) "guns, germs and steel" and the Abrahamic desert religions, both of which were instrumental in the subjugation of the local people. Almost immediately after their arrival, the mixing of "white" blood and indigenous blood began. Today, "pure blooded" Euro-Americans, a distinct minority in Ecuador, wield an inordinate amount of the economic power. Mestizos (people of mixed blood), who come in every shape, size and color, are the majority of the Ecuadorian population and hence hold the political power. Mestizos also form Ecuador's vast "middle class."

Los Mestizos....

By any standards, Ecuador is considered ethnically diverse. The breakdown of the population is as follows: mestizo(mixed blood, 65%), Amerindians (25%), Euro-Americans (6%), Afro-Americans (3%), and Oriental (1%). Further, Ecuador's Amerindians are divided into 12 distinct indigenous nationalities.

Los mestizos

any person of mixed blood. In Central and South America it denotes a person of combined Indian and European extraction. In Ecuador—it has acquired social and cultural connotations; a pure-blooded Indian who has adopted European dress and customs is called a mestizo (or cholo).

As Catholicism and Western lifestyles have become more common in Ecuador, indigenous views and lifestyles have not only become less common, but are seen asinferior.

..groups of Ecuador include a number of Indian-language-speaking populations (often referred to as indigenous peoples or Amerindians) and highland and lowland Spanish-speaking mestizos (people of mixed Indian and European descent). Ethnicity in Ecuador is often a matter of self-identification. Most Ecuadorans consider themselves mestizo and tend to identify with their...

Ethnic groups in Ecuador

The main ethnic groups of Ecuador include a number of Indian-language-speaking populations (often referred to as indigenous peoples or Amerindians) and highland and lowland Spanish-speaking mestizos(people of mixed Indian and European descent). Ethnicity in Ecuador is often a matter of self-identification. Most Ecuadorans consider themselves mestizo and tend to identify with their region of birth; the mestizo culture is highly regionalized. In the highlands, residents of Carchi (in the far north) and Azuay and Loja (in the south) have developed especially strong regional identities. An individual of Indian descent who has adopted European dress and customs can be classified as a mestizo or cholo (mestizo-Indian). There are also some Ecuadorans who speak only Spanish but consider themselves Indians. These include individuals living in traditionally indigenous districts in the Sierra and children of migrants to the city or the coast. Many people living close to the Pacific coast on or near the Santa Elena Peninsula no longer speak an indigenous language but still exhibit traces of indigenous customs and identity. Descendants of Africans and more-recent immigrants from a variety of foreign countries, including Lebanon, China, Korea, Japan, Italy, and Germany, make up the remainder of the population. Most modern censuses have not inquired about ethnicity, language, religion, or origin, so the numbers of different groups are not precisely known

Huaorani (Aucas):Ecuador's Secret People

The Huaorani, Waorani or Waodani, also known as the Waos, are native Amerindians from the Amazonian Region of Ecuador (in the Oriente region) with some marked differences from the others ethnic groups from Ecuador. (The alternate name Auca is pejorative, given by the neighboring Quechua Indians and commonly used by Spanish-speakers as well. Auca – awqa in Quechua – means "enemy".) They comprise almost 4,000 inhabitants and speak the Huaorani language, a linguistic isolate i.e. unrelated to any other language.

They revere the jaguar and call themselves, Huaorani which means "human beings" or "the people," and refer to everyone else as cowode or "non-humans."

Huaorani culture and society is shaped by their will to self-isolation. Very little is known about their past, except that they have for centuries constituted nomadic and autarkic enclaves fiercely refusing contact, trade and exchange with their powerful neighbours, be they indigenous or white-mestizo colonists. Ever since their tragic encounter with North American missionaries in 1956, the Huaorani have held a special place in journalistic and popular imagination as "Ecuador's last savages".

Indeed, there is much about their life-style that would invite the label. They have no writing, no reason to count higher than 10 and no history other than a tribal recollection that their ancestors came from "downriver; long ago". They roam naked in the jungle, hunting monkeys and birds with wooden blowguns and curare-tipped darts; for pigs they use spears. They also Use spears to deal with the incapable elderly, and unwanted babies are strangled with vines, burnt or buried alive. And by and large their contacts with the Quechua or any other outsiders have not been notably peaceable.

Despite the "civilizing" efforts of missionaries, they have largely retained their distinctive way of understanding the world. Relations with outsiders, seen as murderous enemies, are fraught with hostility and fear; there seems to be little space for communication and exchange, other than complete avoidance or the threat to 'spear-kill' .

Cannibalism in Ecuador.

The Huoarani tribe in Ecuador that represent the Ecuadorians mestizos natives roots is canibalistic. The Huoarani tribe is the tribe that killed Jim Elliot and several others while in his missionary trips to the tribe in 1956. It's the only tribe on earth that is still canibalistic it's also known as the Aucas. Those tribes represent the “wild” Mestizos to the opposite of the already domesticated or civilized ones who inhabit urban areas.

"Men, women and children all go for the huge pots - gigantic vessels and uninhibitedly fish out bones and pieces of meat with their hands. Steam rises from the pots and disappears seconds later in the roof made out of leaves. There's a strange, yes almost eerie atmosphere in the hut. The Indians are slurping and smacking, and shamelessly giving free rein to their excess gastric pressure; they lick their hands up to their elbows, only to instantly return to dip them into the hot brew. The result is a unique and almost savage mixture of noises.

Approximately 96.4% of Ecuador's are Highland Quichuas living in the valleys of the Sierra region. Primarily consisting of the descendents of Incans, they are Kichwa speakers and include the Caranqui, the Otavaleños, the Cayambi, the Quitu-Caras, the Panzaleo, the Chimbuelo, theSalasacan, the Tugua, the Puruhá, the Cañari, and the Saraguro. Linguistic evidence suggests that the Salascan and the Saraguro may have been the descendants of Bolivian ethnic groups transplanted to Ecuador as mitimaes.

Ecuador - Indigenous Flags

Operation Auca

Operation Auca was an attempt by five Evangelical Christian missionariesfrom the United States to make contact with the Huaorani people of therainforest of Ecuador. The Huaorani, also known by the pejorative Aucas (a modification of awqa, the Quechua word for "enemies"), were an isolated tribe known for their violence, against both their own people and outsiders who entered their territory. With the intention of being the first Christians toevangelize the previously unreached Huaorani, the missionaries began making regular flights over Huaorani settlements in September 1955, dropping gifts. After several months of exchanging gifts, on January 3, 1956 the missionaries established a camp at "Palm Beach", a sandbar along the Curaray River, a few miles from Huaorani settlements. Their efforts came to an end on January 8, 1956, when all five—Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, andRoger Youderian—were attacked and speared by a group of Huaorani warriors. The news of their deaths was broadcast around the world, and Life magazine covered the event with a photo essay.

Americans brutally attacked in Ecuador, officials say

An extended trip to Ecuador by two Americans changed from a dream to a nightmare after a brutal attack last week, according the couple's blog and U.S. officials.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood confirmed Tuesday that the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador had been told that two Americans from Bend, Oregon, were attacked in the city of Esmeraldas, on Ecuador's northern coast. But he said he could provide no further information because of privacy laws.

Two State Department officials, however, said that the man was stabbed more than 24 times and that his fiancée was beaten and raped.

THE WORST PEOPLE ON EARTH

Time magazine called the Aucas “the worst people on earth”.

They were, the magazine said, “A pure Stone Age people, they hate all strangers, live only to hunt, fight and kill. Their most notable products are needle-sharp, 9-foot, hardwood spears for use against human foes. . . . Even their neighbors, the Jivaros, famous for shrinking human heads, live in constant fear of the fierce Aucas”.

MEET A TRIBE OF JIVARO INDIANS

The Aucas and Aguarunas are blood kin. They are both Jivaros. They were both headhunters The Aguarunas would kill as quick as those Aucas killed those five missionaries in Ecuador.

Most men have more than one wife – sometimes as many as six or eight. The father lives in a large thatched roof house that looks to be about 30 feet wide and 60 feet long. The roof, made of palm leaves, reaches nearly to the ground to keep the rain from blowing in. The entrance is at either end. The doorway is only about four feet high. The opening has a board across the bottom to keep the pigs out. It is difficult for a six-foot gringo to get into one of their houses. You had better be certain you are welcome before you even attempt to enter. The Aguarunas don’t take to strangers.

At the foot of every bed is a fire for cooking. They place three logs end to end and where the logs meet they build their fire. To cool the fire down they pull the logs apart. To get more heat they push them together. Those fires never go out. There is no chimney. The house is filled with the smoke of 20 fires. You are aware of the darkness when you enter the low narrow doorway. It is not just the darkness of the black, smoke charred roof. It is an evil darkness. An Indian man never turns his back to anyone. They stand with their backs to the wall. They will not allow even their own brother to walk behind them. That is the evil darkness of heathenism. You sense the foreboding spirit in the way they treat their children. I have never seen a man pick up a little child and put her on his knee and tell me this is my daughter or granddaughter. I have seen a father kick a little child across the room as if she were a soccer ball.

Headhunting and head shrinking is a common practice. It not unusual to find a shrunken head in the home of a Jivaro Indian.

Their marriage customs were a cause of many killings. Before an Aguaruna girl is three years old she is already married and living with her husband. Yes, three years old. An Aguaruna man is supposed to marry a specific girl. He must marry the daughter of his father’s sister. A man who has seven or eight wives will soon have 40 or 50 babies. They don’t want those kids. They are not going to raise them. If the woman cannot abort that pregnancy they will kill many of those babies the day they are born.

Ecuador: Rumbles in the jungle

Homosexuality Among Native Americans:The two spirit.

Definition: is a Term coined in the early 1990's by Native Americans during an LGBT gathering in Winnipeg. This modern term is used by many LGBT Native Americans to depict the dynamic balance of masculine and feminine energies within them.

Burned alive for being a thief

Homosexuality in Ecuador : A life style :

In 1998 Ecuador became the first country in the Americas to adopt constitutional language granting protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Pics of gays cross.

The History and Process of Head-Shrinking

Although there were many headhunting cultures throughout the world, only one group was known for the ancient practice of shrinking human heads (tsantsa). They were called the Jivaro clan who lived deep in the Ecuadorian, and neighboring Peruvian Amazon. The Jivaros are one of the most primitive societies that have caught the attention of the Western world because of their unusual customs.

Safety and Security in Ecuador

Ecuadorian thieves are opportunists. It’s extremely rare for visitors to be accosted by muggers or someone brandishing a gun or knife. Instead, they wait to catch someone unawares: a purse casually slung over the back of a restaurant chair or an ignored backpack at an internet cafe will quickly disappear. To protect yourself, never leave anything unattended and take extra care in places where careless tourists might leave their things unwatched, like cafes and bars

There are several places in Ecuador where pickpockets lurk, such as sporting events, public transportation and markets. The common denominator to all of them is crowds. Pickpockets can only work their trade if you are surrounded by jostling bodies.

The Girls

Ecuadorian girls look very indigenous with straight black hair, high cheekbones, thin eyebrows, and small eyes. Their bodies were not blessed with curves, but every city, no matter how small, has at least a few natural beauties. Regardless, this is not a country you should be coming for the girls, as most of them look like pictures of Native Americans in your high school history textbook. In smaller cities, the white man is looked on with an extra dose of curiosity, and his gringo status will attract an occasional prostitute working pseudo-undercover.

Quito:

Quito is not your everyday destination. It's edgy, scary and a tiny bit dangerous because of the constant threat of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions (Quito is located at the base of an active volcano). On the other hand, Quito is fresh, exciting, foreign and beautiful, making Quito a perfect junket for the adventurous American tourist. The trick is to see the sites of Quito without getting hurt or robbed.

Remember, Ecuador has a average income of only about $5 per day, and a visit to Quito transports you into a world where you are a relative-multimillionaire, a tycoon with mucho spending power who can live like a King in Quito.

The Two Prostitutes Of Tena

Tena is the whitewater capital of Ecuador. Before I bent over some Class IV rapids on the Jondachi River with my monstrous rowing stroke, I studied the townspeople by watching them from a park bench in the central square.

Within half an hour, two random girls sat on my bench even though all the others were empty. The alpha of the pair sat next to me and kept “accidentally” touching my leg and whipping her hair back and forth in dramatic motions. The giveaway was that it was 1PM and they were dressed like they were going to the club.

A bourgeoisie Frenchman I met told me he doesn’t get involved with locals from countries that are not equal to his own (i.e. Westernized); otherwise the girls are just seeing dollar signs and there is a good chance of getting drugged and / or robbed. I do agree with him, and it’s not a big deal in Ecuador because the girls here are extremely ugly, but it would be a shame if you travel through Brazil or Argentina and resign yourself to only sleeping with other tourists.

Ecuador

Ecuador is a constitutional republic with a population of approximately 13 million. In 2002 voters elected Lucio Gutierrez president in generally free and fair elections. In April following large-scale protests in Quito and the public withdrawal of support by the military, Congress voted to remove President Gutierrez. Vice President Alfredo Palacio assumed the presidency to finish Gutierrez's term. Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces.

While the government generally respected the human rights of its citizens, there were serious problems in some areas. The following human rights problems were reported:

unlawful killings and use of excessive force by security forces

torture, abuse, and killing of suspects and prisoners by security forces, often with impunity

poor prison conditions

arbitrary arrest

high number of pretrial detainees

corruption and denial of due process within the judicial system

attacks on those publicly critical of former President Gutierrez

violence against women

pervasive discrimination against women, indigenous people, Afro-Ecuadorians, and homosexuals

trafficking in persons and sexual exploitation of minors

widespread child labor

Ecuador has traditionally been a fragile democracy.

However, the events over the last twenty years have greatly exacerbated existing problems. The economic situation in

Ecuador deteriorated sharply throughout the 1990s, causing skyrocketing poverty rates and giving rise to a host of social challenges that continue to this day. During these years,

Ecuador experienced a number of economic, political and natural crises, which led to rapidly climbing inflation rates, record levels of unemployment, and eventually a mass exodus from the country. As a result, one million Ecuadorians, a record number in

Ecuador’s history left the country between the years of 1999-2000 alone. In the aftermath of these crises, the social indicators in Ecuador deteriorated sharply, with increases in insecurity and conflict as well as inadequate access to services.

Unfortunately, little has changed in the past year or two.

Economic crisis forces Ecuador to abandon its own currency

The small South American nation of Ecuador will abandon its own currency, the sucre, and dollarize its economy The dollarization of the Ecuadorian economy means that the sucre will no longer be accepted as a means of payment except for coinage. All bills will be withdrawn from circulation and only US dollars will be permitted as currency. The US Treasury, not the Ecuadorian government, would then have effective control of the money supply, interest rates and other economic policies. Ecuador would become the second Latin American country to suffer such a total collapse of economic sovereignty, joining Panama as a colony in all but name.

Dollarization

Dollarization has been used successfully in a few other economically hard-hit countries, including nearby Panama (where the US dollar is called a Balboa), but when President Mahuad declared his plan to dump the national currency, the country erupted in strikes, protests and road closures. On January 21, 2000, marches shut down the capital, and protesters took over the Ecuadorian Congress building, forcing Mahuad to resign.

Ecuador’s economic history

Ecuador’s economic history has not been a happy one. A lack of national cohesion has dogged the country ever since it opted for independence from Simon Bolivar’s Grancolombian Federation in

1830. From the start there was fierce rivalry between the residents of the highlands, centered on the capital Quito, and those on the coast, centered in Guayaquil. Fortunately, though, these rivalries did not lead to violent confrontation, and Ecuador’s history, although turbulent, has been peaceful.

However, the deep split between the interests of the coastal and highlands regions has at times—and certainly during the last five years—made it almost impossible for the government to pursue a

coherent economic policy.

In the late 1990s, Ecuador suffered its worst economic crisis. The 1999 economic downturn

was the steepest, and the following year inflation hit record highs. The underlying cause of

the upheaval was the collapse of the banking system, which was accompanied by a simultaneous currency and public finance crisis. The crisis involved 16 banks—out of the 40 existing in 1997—and was triggered by a combination of exogenous and policy-induced

shocks which led the market to lose confidence in both the banking system and the domestic currency, while government liabilities increased dramatically until the country defaulted on

its recently restructured Brady debt. On the brink of hyperinflation and immersed in a deep macro financial crisis, the government adopted the U.S. dollar as legal tender as a substitute to the sucre in January 2000.

Inferiority complex.

Ecuadorians still cultivate a deep inferiority complex. Losing some half of its territory [in the Amazon] to Peru in 1942 and the pervasive influence of the United States over its economy and politics have resulted in Ecuadorians belittling their nation.

The Panic to Leave: Economic Crisis and the "New Emigration" from Ecuador

Prior to the late 1990s, Ecuadorian international migration was directed primarily toward the United States. Of the estimated 400,000 Ecuadorians living in the United States, most are concentrated in metropolitan New York and many hail from the south–central highlands of Cañar and Azuay Provinces. In the mid– to late–1990s, Ecuador entered a political and economic crisis just as clandestine transportation to the United States became increasingly expensive and dangerous. Within two years Ecuadorian migration diversified radically and a "new emigration" formed. Many thousands of Ecuadorians from throughout the country migrated to Europe .

Hard times benefit one-way travel industry.(illegal immigration from Ecuador to Europe)

Newspapers the world over contain how-to articles about any number of subjects; fixing the roof, hiring a nanny, buying a car, etc. Of late, however, Ecuadorian papers have begun offering advice to the country's tens of thousands of would-be emigrants on how to sneak into European nations.

A recent article in Quito daily El Comercio warned emigrants trying to get into Spain while posing as tourists to bring at least $2,000 to $2,500 in cash so as not to alert immigration officials. The article also cautioned against making reservations at the cheapest hotels in town and admonished readers to bring guidebooks and vacations clothes in order to look like authentic tourists.

Ecuador #1 in Illegal Immigration

The number of Ecuadorians illegally entering the US by

sea has surpassed the number of Cuban boat people or illegal Hatian immigrants,

according to a recent study by the US Embassy in Quito, Ecuador. The

source of the problem is that the Ecuadorian government is not funding

any resources to stop this wave of emigration, as they do not

give it priority in their budget and military planning.

The Ecuadorian immigrants have thus become protagonists of the largest

wave of maritime ilegal immigration in modern history, according to the

Embassy.

Ecuadorian Society

Commercial sexual exploitation of children in tourism

Investigations show that in 1999 every second child came from a family that was not able to pay for food, housing, education, and medical care. As a consequence, these children do not go to school, and 20.5% are forced to start work at ages between 5 and 9 years and 53% between 10 and 14 years. In a country that is struggling against underemployment and employment, often the only opportunity to offer itself is prostitution. They then become victims of exploitation by traffickers and sex tourists.

Exploitation and human traffiquing

Ecuador is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. The majority of trafficking victims are believed to be children trafficked within the country from border and central highland areas to urban centers for commercial sexual exploitation as well as for domestic servitude, forced begging, and forced labor in mines and other hazardous work. According to a recent government study, the main destination provinces for human trafficking include Pichincha, Guayas, Esmeraldas, and Manabi. Ecuadorian children are trafficked to Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and the Dominican Republic for forced labor, particularly street begging, forced vending, and as domestic servants. Ecuadorian women are trafficked to Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, and Western Europe for commercial sexual exploitation.

The Government of Ecuador does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking;

CHILDREN-ECUADOR: CHILD PROSTITUTION IS GROWTH INDUSTRY

Poverty, homelessness, family violence,

and, most importantly, an emerging market, are fueling the growth

of child prostitution in Ecuador, according sociologists here.

Some 6,000 boys and girls between 10 and 15 years old, are now

engaged in prostitution in "date houses," bars, massage parlors,

and discos in Quito and Guayaquil, they said.

"This is not a problem concerning a certain sector of the

population, nor a gender problem...rather, it is a growing

phenomenon, like poverty, and it is sustained by a large market

which demands child sex

Children from Ecuador are trafficked into Venezuela to serve as prostitutes and work as street vendors and housemaids. The victims are usually children who are kidnapped, sold by their parents, or deceived by false employment opportunities. These children are first exploited through prostitution at the average age of 12. Children as young as 7 years old have been found to be sexually exploited.

"Venezuela is a country of destination for women for commercial sexual exploitation." Victims are recruited through job advertisements in major newspapers.Once gathered, these victims are trafficked abroad, "where their passports are taken away and they are prostituted in massage parlors and brothels."

Women and children are also trafficked into Venezuela. Children from Ecuador are trafficked into Venezuela to serve as prostitutes and work as street vendors and housemaids.The victims are usually children who are kidnapped, sold by their parents, or deceived by false employment opportunities. These children are first exploited through prostitution at the average age of 12. Children as young as 7 years old have been found to be sexually exploited. Of the 40,000 sexually exploited children in Venezuela, 78% are girls between the ages of 8 and 17.

Some 2,000 Girls Working as Prostitutes in Quito

Some 2,000 girls ranging in age from 11 to 16 work as prostitutes in Quito and a similar number are selling sex in the port city of Guayaquil, the Quito daily La Hora reported Monday. Poverty and a lack of employment opportunities are among the principal reasons why a growing number of minors are turning to prostitution in Ecuador, La Hora said.

The girls work in bars, cabarets, massage parlors, discotheques, brothels, strip-tease clubs and on the street, the newspaper said.

The precise number of underage girls working as prostitutes is impossible to calculate because many of the places employing underage prostitutes deny having minors working for them or hide juvenile workers, the newspaper said.

La Hora said the prostitution of minors also fuels other social problems including unwanted pregnancy, venereal disease, AIDS, drug and alcohol addition and crime.

Underage sex, driven by poverty, lures paedophile gringos to a place in the sun.

This city, on the north-east of Ecuador, is rich in indigenous culture, and rife with underage sex. Driven by poverty and lured by the prospect of wealthy gringo customers, girls as young as 12 prostitute themselves for as little as $2. "But I am already too old," says Adrianna, a pretty 17-year-old who has been working since she was 12. "Gringos prefer girls between 10 and 14."

Human traffiquing between colombia and ecuador

Colombian women are being trafficked into Ecuador to work as prostitutes and Ecuadorian children are being brought into Colombia to beg, claimed the government of Colombia's Nariño department this week.

The Crime Observatory in Nariño revealed that some five thousand women havd been recruited from cities across Colombia and sent to Ecuador as sex workers .

Women and girls are trafficked from Colombia to Ecuador for purposes of

commercial sexual exploitation. Interviews with women involved in the

commercial sex industry as well as law enforcement officials indicated a

strong presence of Colombian girls, who are highly preferred to local women

and who thereby earn more money for club owners.

Most high-end clubs are filled with foreign girls and women whereas local women are usually found in

the lower end clubs or the streets.

Foreign girls, while considered to be valuable to club owners, face

discrimination within the law enforcement system. Adult sex workers who

had spent time in jail indicated that, once in jail, foreign women are severely

mistreated. Discriminatory practices include being denied beds or even

bedding and being forced to sleep on the floor regardless of the weather

conditions.

Interviews and

recent news also reveals a growing pornographic industry in the country. Ecuadorian law

does not define pornography as a form of commercial sexual exploitation of children and

this loophole in the law hinders prosecution.

Ecuadorians in america:

NuevaDorians

Most Ecuadorians consider New York Andean nation's third-largest city

Ask any Ecuadorian to name his country's third-largest city and you may get a response that sounds a bit off, geographically speaking. After the bustling port of Guayaquil and the capital of Quito comes "Nueva York," at least according to popular opinion .

The population figures that give New York the No. 3 standing are a point of contention. Although Ecuadorians commonly claim to be 1 million strong in the tri-state area, four years ago the U.S. Census found only 176,567 in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Perhaps that means Ecuadorians are seeing quintuple or the census counted with its eyes closed, but in truth the answer lies somewhere between both extremes.

In that respect the census fell dismally short, a fault widely attributed to the format of the questionnaire, which required people to write in their national origin by hand but did not provide any examples.

"They created confusion in the way that they asked the question about people's Hispanic background," Logan said. "A very, very large number of people gave an ambiguous answer that got coded as 'other Hispanic.'"

The center's revised statistics put the number of Ecuadorians in metropolitan New York City (the five boroughs plus Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties) at 159,309 compared to the 111,722 counted by the census. For the entire tri-state area, Mumford counted about 250,000 Ecuadorians, 40 percent higher than the census tally.

"This is a natural phenomenon and we see it with every group. It's not anything special to Ecuadorians," Logan said. To say 1 million "is a kind of a shorthand, not that there's actually a million, but there's a lot. They use a term that suggests that there's a lot and it needs to be paid attention to."

they apparently have an home state origin inferiorirty complex...Ecuador’s inferiority complex, a perversely pleasing contrast to the Divine Righteousness here in the US. Besides, population-wise, New York is Ecuador’s fourth largest city .

National Identity :

The ecuadorian flagis rather symbolic of ecuadorians feelings of national identity.

Ecuador is a funny place.It is an Andean country, but it rarely identifies culturally with its neighbors and often sees itself as overshadowed by the more powerful nations that suround it. In fact , Peru(to the southe) historically has been a very real threat to Ecuadorian national security ,while Colombia (to the north) is popularly seen as being “culturally” better developed than Ecuador. Elites in Ecuador often talk bout what they referred to as “Ecuador's national inferiority complex”. Wich plays out in many ways. For exemple, foreign consumer products from lollopops to appliances are invariably considered superior to Ecuadorian ones, and Ecuadorians professionals seeking legitimation often brag about receiving their training “abroad”.

Throughout most of its history Ecuador has been plagued with an ill-defined sense of national identity, contributing to political instability and pronounced social inequality.

The roots of Ecuador's national ambivalence go very deep .During the colonial period the region that is today Ecuador (then called Quito). Was periodically reassigned to two differents administrative districts, the Viceroyalty of Peru to the south and the Viceroyalty of Santa Fe de Bogota to the north.

Because of the ambiguity and elusiveness of Ecuador's borders, there is a certain irony in the name given to the country in 1830. The equator (for which Ecuador is ,of course,named)is not a real line bifurcating the globe but only an imagined one -much like the country of Ecuador itself.

We can call Ecuador a symbolic 'imagined community” ,because it is a nation struggling to imbue itself with a distinct national identity in the face of countless obstacles.

A divided nation....

A further difficulty for Ecuadorian nation-state development , and one that contributes to the country's identity politics, is the question of how to integrate the large indigenous populations into a unified national identity. The elites of Ecuador, s elsewhere in the new republics of South America,were essentially white people who claimed Spanish descent and who rejected any cultural alliances with indigenous populations.

In the 1970s Ecuador embarked on a national programto promote a unified concept of national identity and began a public compaign that defined national identity through the concept of the mestizo (mixed white and Indian). The idea of promoting a mestizaje identity was to subsume the social and cultural differences between races and ethnicities under a homogenized category that could include everyone.One of the hopes behind this public compaign was that by embracing a mestizo identity Ecuadorians could cast aside old barriers and work toward a more equitable society. Unfortunately, the cultural politics of the day resulted in little real change, and mestizaje really meant that the Indians would, or should, become more like “ whites” rather than whites becoming more like “Indians”.

In the 1990s, in a different global political landscape, Ecuador shifted its concept of national identity yet again, abandoning the “mestizo” label and its amplied homogenization and adopting a pluri-ethnic pposition in which cultural and racial diversity were to be celebrated .The government began a series of public initiatives, including changes in school curriculums, to educate the nation about Ecuador's rich ethnic diversity.

Despite the rhetoric, however, by all indications real ethnic integration has not occurred in Ecuador.

The 1990s economic crisis has caused millions to flee Ecuador importing with them their deep lasting inferiority complex.

The National Flag of Ecuador

‘the new winds of third world nationalism getting nearer (to Ecuador), trying to recreate the 1960’s and 1970’s, decades that brought more poverty to our region. This new movement appeals to an idea of Bolivarian unity, to the unity of the south against the north, a worn out argument…. favored by those who share an inferiority complex in our continent”

Longos’ and ‘Cholos’: ethnic/‘racial’ discrimination among mestizos in Ecuador

The processes of ethnic/‘racial’ discrimination taking

place in Ecuador which have thus far remained hidden from research and policy

making by representations of Ecuador as a homogenously mixed or ‘mestizo’ state.

To uncover these processes, those generally identified as

Ecuadorian upper-class ‘white-mestizos’ in Ecuador’s two main cities, Guayaquil and

Quito, represent their ethnic identity and that of others in relation to the state’s

hegemonic discourse of mestizaje or ‘mixture’. By looking at the terminology used to

refer to certain mestizos, i.e. ‘longo’ and ‘cholo’, the upperclasses’

use of mestizaje hides discriminatory practices that inhibit the creation of

socio-economic networks among mestizos and, therefore, render the returns from

education for certain individuals limited, also checking their opportunities in the

labour market and impeding their social mobility. The state’s promises of social

inclusion and advancement through mestizaje are, therefore, rendered empty.

The Ecuadorian Republic has been historically constructed and represented as a

mestizo or ‘mixed’ state (Clark 1998, Martinez-Echazabal 1998), a construction that

has tacitly rejected Ecuador's indigenous (Muratorio 2000) and Afroecuadorian

heritage (Rahier 1999), advocating acculturation as a means for integration

(Stutzman 1981). The results of the 2001 national census appear to confirm the

success of this ‘mestizo paradigm’, showing that more than three-quarters of the

Ecuadorian population identifies itself as ‘mestizo’ or ‘mixed’ ethnicity/race.