Immigration

Last evening the CEDEI program hosted a talk by an Ecuadorian who had lived illegally in the US from 2000 until 2005. He explained that 2.5 million Ecuadorians live in other countries, most illegally and that this is a large problem for Ecuador. Ecuador has about 12.5 citizens, so this is more than 10% of the population that is not here. Often it is the men who are gone. My teacher told me that she has a friend whose husband has lived illegally in the US for 14 years and is returning to find that he has a 5 year old son. His other two children ages 15 and 20 hardly know him. I yelled ¨throw the bum out¨but she explained that divorce is not allowed in the catholic church.

The speaker explained that it costs $15,000 to go to the US and most mortgage their homes to go. The first part of the trip was to Mexico where he and 4 other ecuadorians got 6 days of training to become Mexican. They had to learn a Mexican accent, Mexican history, politics, food, and dance. Then they were given a false Mexican ID. The group of 24 left Mexcio at 8pm at night and climbed the border fence in Arizona. Then they had to walk across the desert for 3 days, walking mostly at night. But often helicopters would circle overhead and then they would hide in the bushes. They could only take the bread and water that they could carry, which was not much. AFter 3 days they finally arrived to a road where a truck was waiting and then they laid down one next to the other with rows of people on top of other rows. He said imagine how that smelled after 3 days of walking in the desert. The truck took them to Tucson where they were fed and then to Phoenix and on to LA. In LA they were told that they most also give $2000 for a plane ticket to other US cities. Our speaker went to Newark NJ and found his brother who is also in the US illegally.

Because of language barriers, he worked as a dishwasher in Pizza Hut and took English classes at night. He finally completed his GED in NYC but was not allowed to go to college because of his illegal status. Later he became a maintenence worker in McDonalds and then he worked the last 2 years as a babysitter. But our speaker came back to Ecuador because he wants to better himself and go to college. He was obviously smart and destined for more than those menial jobs. He stressed the problems of the immigrants in the US and also the problems that the immigrants are causing for Ecuador. BTW, he was working in NYC during November 11, 2001 and had quite a story to tell about that.

El Dia de los Inocentes

The evening of January 6 was most interesting. Of course you know that is day is Epiphany, the day of the visit of the 3 wise men. Well it seems that the people of Ecuador have taken the religious day and mixed it with a holiday of the indigenous peoples and have come up with a celebration akin to Halloween. I asked my Spanish teacher what is the connection between the two events and she said that now there is really no connection.

The event begins around 4pm and I could only compare it to Springfest in Salisbury. They close several streets and food vendors begin to arrive in mass. The shops all around town begin to sell halloween masks and there are even vendors in the streets selling costumes. By dark the crowd begins to assemble. I´m not sure when the parade starts but when we got there around 8pm it was toward the end. I´ve heard that it is the college students who create the floats and I was most impressed with the quality of the floats. Certainly nothing like Macy´s parade but definitely better than any Christmas parade that I´ve seen on the shore. One float had about 20 women dressed as geshia´s with elaborate costumes and makeup. The next was a truck pulling two extensions. One extension was a trampoline and the next had the mat. One athlete would perform on the tramboline rather dramatic flips etc and then land on the mat behind. Then the next would take over. There were about a dozed athletes and they were dressed in animal costumes. The interesting thing was that there were no spotters. In Ecuador, you just take your chances and this pertains to driving cars as well. the next entry was a group of men dressed as women, which is supposed to be the most traditional part of the whole event. There was another entry with a group of about 12 people dressed as puppets, much like they do in the musical Chicago. YOu get the idea..... I was most impressed that there was a huge crowd of people, which did indeed look like a crowd for a Macy´s day parade and I only saw 1 policeman. But everyone was so well behaved. There was no mischief that I saw. By comparison I cannot imagine any community hosting a large halloween event in the US because of adolescent mischief. I know that Springfest has suffered from that. The irony is that Ecuador is supposed to be the place of caution. We had a great time and our US students dressed up as well and went to a party hosted by the family that one students in living with.