Ecuadorean immigrants worry from afar

NEW YORK - “We have had many presidents and it’s all the same,” said Luis Moran with a shrug as he examined several television sets at Creditos Economicos in Queens, New York.

The store, in the Jackson Heights neighborhood -- the first stop for thousands of immigrants to the United States -- allows Ecuadorean immigrants such as Moran to send shimmering American electronics equipment back home to relatives, the fruit of their toil in New York City.

Moran has been in the United States for five years, and worries about the economic hardship for his relatives back home as Ecuador stumbles through another dismal chapter in a saga of political instability.

Over the weekend, ousted President Lucio Gutierrez, fled to political asylum in Brazil as former Vice President Alfredo Palacio tried his hand as the nation's president.

The Organization of American States recently voted to send a commission to study the circumstances in Quito, according to an official at the Consulate of Ecuador in Washington, D.C. But for now, it's anyone's guess who can pull together the impoverished Andean nation of 12.5 million people.

Little change?
For Moran, the differences between the various candidates vying for power are miniscule. His prediction for the future is “no change.”

Ecuador native Dr, Marcelo Arboleda shared the pessimism.  “If we don’t like the president, we get rid of him,” he said.

Arboleda, the director general and founder of the Ecuador News, described the ouster of Gutierrez as the middle class throwing the populist party out of office, mainly because of the exploitation of the poor by the rich. 

“In Ecuador there are three parties…very bad parties,” he said.

Although the plight of Ecuador gains little attention in the mainstream media here, Ecuadoreans who number about 260,000 in the United States, with more than 47 percent living in New York, are desperate with worry about life in Quito.

Across the continent
“We all are in shock,” says Leticia Pino.  “It is not the first president to go home, it’s like the third in a row.”

Pino, a native of Ecuador, is president of Ecuador TV Inc., a national cable network that serves the Ecuadorean community in the United States.  “It’s the same problem all over Latin America.  Just look at the continent and see what they all have in common.”

That common thread, according to Pino, is the link between economic corruption and the populist party.

Gutierrez, who was elected on a populist platform to improve the lives of the poor, never lived up to those promises, Pino said.  “The poor became poorer and the rich became richer.”

Ecuador is South America's fifth-largest oil producer and the region's No. 2 petroleum exporter to the United States after Venezuela.

Yet, Transparency International ranked Ecuador as the 20th most corrupt country out of 133, as perceived by business people, academics, and risk analysts in 2003. According to USAID, Over 60 percent of the population lives in poverty and only 40 percent has access to safe water.

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