Interesting Times

Avenida Amazonas, Quito

Today´s Election
Raphael Correa is Ecuador´s 8th president in 10 years. As you can imagine, the people don´t have too much faith in their leadership. Today´s vote on whether or not to install a constitutional assembly with the authority to alter the country´s constitution (bypassing the congress, which many see as corrupt) is a big deal here. Correa looks poised for a landslide victory as I write. Correa´s opponents have been comparing him to Chavez to try to scare people into voting ¨no,¨ but he maintains a 70% approval rating. I think the comparison is an effective exaggeration. My friend actually had Correa as her economics professor a few years back and said he was really a wonderful man. I guess we´ll see. By changing the constitution he will strip power from the congress and gain more executive power for himself to make changes. It´s not clear exactly what this means or how far he´ll attempt to go, but he says the goal is to decentralize power out of the hands of a corrupt congress. He´s marginalizing the major business influences (the rich) as well as the mafia in this effort, and a lot of people think he may get killed for it.

In a controversial move a few weeks ago Correa fired over 50 congressmen who tried to block the election move, and street supporters physically beat the fired politicians who tried to reenter their offices after the move was ruled illegal by the courts. I´ve heard several people including my professor half-joke that the CIA is also probably trying to intervene and prevent a change in the status quo. Ecuador is a country with barely any middle class, and obviously the rich control almost all of the wealth.

Beit Chabad
Nicole and I found our way to the Chabad House for the first night of passover. I guess you could say it went pretty much as expected. There were perhaps 30 guests, most Israeli and hardly any locals. All the men idled around the living room exchanging smiles and salutations, and the women and young girls slaved away in the kitchen. There was even the classic old woman matriarch stirring the soup. I made the immediate mistake of attempting to shake hands with the rabbi´s wife. In a country where kisses are the norm it is even harder to fathom that I´m not allowed to touch her. No matter, they were unbelievably welcoming and friendly, even if I struggled to understand the mix of hebrew and spanish.

My arrival was exciting for the rabbi. I was the tenth male present, and was therefore immediately whisked away for pre-dinner prayers as my presence completed the minion. Facing Jerusalem, I prayed between a Frenchman and an Israeli with the Rabbi chanting one thousand miles an hour into our ears. It´s been years since modern hebrew classes in college, but I can follow along just fine. Taking turns reading the Haggadah in hebrew around the table was a bit more difficult, but the Israeli family we sat with were very supportive and told me I read beautifully! I think they were surprised an American read at all. It´s difficult/embarrassing to explain that most mainstream American jews learn the alphabet and how to read but rarely the meaning of the words. It´s like sounding out spanish words but not knowing what you are saying. There was only one local Quito kid, and he struggled to read the same as us.

The seder was loooong. It started around 6:30pm, and Nicole and I cut out early around 12:30am to grab drinks with two new friends Julia (from Hawaii) and Asaf (half Morrocan, half Scottish). The rabbi and his wife thanked us profusely for attending and begged us to return as much as possible, any time. That, my friends, is Chabad. Unfortunately I felt sick from the food for the next couple of days so I´m not sure about my swift return to their table. There were no matzah balls in the soup, but there was matzah direct from Jerusalem, and instead of wine we had grape juice all night.

Julia lives in the colonial city of Cuenca in the south and I may pass through there in a few months. She and I planned to attend the mainstream jewish community seder the next evening, but I was not able to confirm directions or permission to attend (passport info, etc. and $10 was required). Plus it was like a ten or fifteen dollar cab ride way north of Quito central. What a pain in the ass, not exactly the open door you find at Chabad. I took Julia out for Thai food instead. At some point I´ll attend a Friday night service with Tomy Rosenberg.