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QUITO, ECUADOR - Environmentalists and Indigenous communities in Ecuador are concerned about the fate of the Amazon rainforest ahead of Sunday’s presidential elections, as the two leading candidates’ environmental plans received moderate to poor rankings from advocates. Illegal logging, oil spills and large-scale mining projects have threatened both the rainforest, often called the lungs of …
Continue reading "How will Ecuador’s elections affect the future of the Amazon? (Al Jazeera)"
QUITO, ECUADOR – Ecuadorians will head to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president amid widespread discontent over the country’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, an economic crisis worsened by COVID-19, and several corruption scandals. Sixteen presidential candidates will be on the ballot, though most have polled under two percent support and are …
Continue reading "Ecuador to vote amid economic crisis and widespread discontent (Al Jazeera)"
QUITO, ECUADOR - Claudia’s* life changed the day she saw a paramilitary group kill a man in her hometown of Buenaventura, one of the most violent places in Colombia. Not only did she see the killers. Worse, they saw her. They threatened to murder her if she told anyone what she had seen. She promised …
QUITO, ECUADOR — Paula had been in quarantine with her husband and two kids for 15 days by the end of March 2020 under Ecuador’s strict lockdown, which included a nationwide 2 p.m. curfew. Then, Paula’s boss called. Business was suffering; he would have to let some people go and cut salaries. He asked Paula if she would agree to …
Continue reading "Workers Resist Pandemic-Era Disaster Capitalism in Ecuador (In These Times)"
QUITO, ECUADOR - When the Kichwa community closed off their village near the Coca River in Ecuador's northern Amazon rainforest in March to protect themselves from the coronavirus pandemic, they planned to live off fishing and whatever food they could grow. But about two weeks into their quarantine, two damaged oil pipelines leaked thousands of …
QUITO, ECUADOR - In May, Al Jazeera interviewed me for their podcast The Take about how indigenous communities in Ecuador's Amazon were forced to deal with the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, lock down, environmental disasters, and oil spills in their communities all at once. This is the outcome of that talk: https://podcasts.aljazeera.com/the-take-episodes/2020/07/27/escaping-coronavirus-in-ecuadors-amazon (Photo Credit: Jeronimo Zuniga/Amazon …
Continue reading "Escaping coronavirus in Ecuador’s Amazon (Al Jazeera’s The Take, Podcast)"
QUITO, ECUADOR - When Victoria Sanchez and her mother, Eufemia Nicolaza Sanches Pin, showed up at their local public hospital in Ecuador's Guayaquil for Sanches Pin's weekly dialysis treatment last month, hospital staff refused to let the mother, a diabetic, in because she had a runny nose. Hospital staff worried it could be COVID-19 and …
Continue reading "Coronavirus pandemic exposes inequality in Ecuador’s Guayaquil (Al Jazeera)"
QUITO, ECUADOR - The first time I cried was Saturday, March 21. It was a beautiful morning, and I was sitting at my window, staring at the sun-kissed Andes Mountains around Quito. But I couldn’t hear cars honking on my normally bustling street. There were no car alarms, either. The furniture store next door wasn’t blasting reggaeton …
Continue reading "Visions of a Crisis: Difficult days in Ecuador (Literary Review of Canada)"
[Co-written with Anthony Faiola] The doctors and nurses began boarding planes late last year, Cuban professionals who had come to aid Ecuador’s health-care system, their time cut short by a government that no longer wanted them. Ecuador is one of a handful of U.S. allies that fell in step with the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy on Cuba, …
QUITO, ECUADOR - Nemonte Nenquimo, an Indigenous Waorani leader from Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, watched as her Indigenous colleagues, family and friends rushed back to their territory this past week, attempting to escape the threat of the coronavirus engulfing the region. Some travelled by car or bus, others flew by charter plane or travelled by boat …
Continue reading "Indigenous race into Ecuador’s Amazon to escape coronavirus (Al Jazeera)"
