Ecuador looks for electricity options; Fire burns 300 hectares; School’s back in session; Venezuela blacks out; Cuenca, Guayaquil symphonies join forces

Monday, 5/8/2024

Hello, Everyone –

Activities-

Symphonies make duet – An orchestral trip through Guayas and Cuenca will happen on Friday, 6/9 in the concert, “Symphony of two cities <directed by Maestro Charles Dickens>) The Youth Symphonic Orchestra of Guayaquil from the Casa de la Cultura, Ecuatoriana-Núcleo del Guayas will join the Orquesta Sinfónica de Cuenca in the concert on September 6 at 19:00 in the Teatro Casa de la Cultura (Luis Cordero and Mariscal Sucre).

About 330,000 primary and high school students plus 18,000 teachers are returning to classes this week for the 2024-2025 school year in Azuay, Cañar, and Morona Santiago. (El Mercurio)

Turismo rural (Rural tourism) – <I’m sorry for underestimating your intelligence and assuming I’d need to translate that title, but you know, some folks – > The Ministry of Tourism (Mintur) announced that it is boosting the diversification of destinations in Ecuador, promoting rurality and visits to haciendas which offer interesting tourist experiences. <Think Don Diego and Zorro, but don’t forget about that bull in the field.> Mintur has a catalogue of different options at www.turismo.gob.ec. <I couldn’t find anything and the site looks like it hasn’t been updated since the pandemic. But if you poke around, there is a guide in English. And if you look at Mintur’s address, it’s in the Edificio “la licuadora” (the blender).

From El Mercurio on Sunday, 1/9 (1 article):
Encouragement to visit the Municipal Craft Center. <This is for you brand new newbies or tourists.> The Empresa Municipal de Desarrollo Económico (EDEC EP -Municipal Economic Development Company) is inviting people to visit the Centro Municipal Artesanal (CEMUART – Municipal Craft Center) on General Torres y Pres. Córdova across from the San Francisco Plaza. 80 craftspeople show their work in textiles, ceramics, basketry, embossing, dolls, jewelry and more. This helps the local economy and promotes the traditional products of the canton and province.

Holder-

Return to classes for 2024-2025 period – Starting today (Monday), about 330,000 primary and high school students plus 18,000 teachers will return to classes for the 2024-2025 school year in Azuay, Cañar, and Morona Santiago. <Get ready for that 12:30-1:00 traffic and crowded buses near schools.> The first 4 weeks of classes will be for teachers to diagnosis and to assess students’ levels. The Ministry of Education has budgeted $28 million for textbooks, $46.4 million for uniforms, $11.4 million for transportation <Maybe those rural kids won’t need to walk 2-3 hours to get to school now.>, and $114 million for food.

Basin-

ARCSA detects cadmium in a batch of iodized salt (ARCSA) – The National Agency of Sanitary Regulation, Control and Monitoring found contamination with heavy metal (cadmium) in lot 02/24 of the product Iodized Table Salt, MAR Y SAL brand. ARCSA said consuming foods or water with high levels of cadmium can generate serious irritation in the stomach, causing vomiting and diarrhea. The legal representatives of the brand were ordered to remove the lot while an investigation was started to find out where the contaminants originated. If you bought this product, verify it’s from lot 02/24, and if it is, throw it out. You can also report its sale on the Arcsa Móvil app, which you can download for free from Play Store or Apple Store.

From El Mercurio on Saturday, 31/8 (1 article):
Girón and Oña, critical water and sewerage management – The Chamber of Commerce of Cuenca (CCC) and the company Sigma Analytics published a statistical report <I hope I didn’t make your eyes glaze over with “statistical report”, or your hackles rise because of lies, lies, and statistics.>. The report includes demographics, poverty, housing, health, education, environment, security, and the economic environment in Cuenca.

According to the report, during 2024, women were the ones most likely to consult doctors, with the age groups of 20-39 and 40-64 predominating. It said that most students go to instituciones educativas fiscales (public schools) with the highest net rate of attendance in primary and high school. It also said that the cantons of Girón and Oña are in a critical situation i regard to management of potable water and sewers. From 3/2019 to 3/2024, the crime of stealing auto parts predominated in Cuenca. In the same period, there was similar behavior with home and business robberies. Of the incidents reported in the 1st quarter of the year, businesses were robbed more often on Mondays and Tuesdays. <The criminals all blew their money over the weekend and need to restock their wallets?>,

Events-

From El Mercurio of Sunday, 1/9 (1 article):
300 hectares of vegetation affected – A forest fire that started last Thursday on the San Pablo hill in the San Fernando canton has still not been controlled <this is as of Sunday’s Mercurio — as of Monday, the fire was contained but is still burning>. The San Fernando Fire Department and neighbors are fighting the fire. The Comité de Operaciones Emergentes (COE – Emergency Operations Committee) of San Fernando has asked the Army to bring a helicopter with a Bambi Bucket to control the fire.

Nacional –

La amenaza de apagones acecha al Ecuador (Threat of blackouts stalks Ecuador) – The installation of the 100 kw Turkish power barge is delayed. Technical problems made a soil study necessary for the construcion of lateral reinforcements that will guarantee the operation of the barge. Nelson Jaramillo, from the Karpowership company, preferred to be prudent and said that executing the civil engineering work will take at least 15 days before starting technolical tests. The schedule planned by the Ministerio de Energía called for starting the tests at the end of agosto, but an unusual current in the river changed all the plans. He said that the barge did have chains available for immediate use.

There are other alternatives which can be applied. Returning to cloud seeding has not been ruled out. Colombia is working on revising the date when it will increase the cost of energy sold to Ecuador. A technical roundtable is planned for this week to talk about other solutions to avoid blackouts. The Ministerio de Energía has asked the Secretaría de Comunicación to speed up an energy saving campaign in the main cities. The goal is to use all communications media to promote turning off devices that increase energy usage. <How about we all turn off our computers and go back to reading books made out of paper — but only during the day when there’s light — and refrain from using power to make a lot of comments. That would be a nice vacation for me. I guess I could give up computer games for a while.>

Mundo –

De El Mercurio del sábado, 31/8 (1 article):
Venezuela sufre un apagón nacional por un supuesto “sabotaje eléctrico” (Venezuela suffers a national blackout due to an alleged “electrical sabotage”) – Venezuela suffered an electrical outage that started at 4:50 (on sábado?) which was blamed on sabotage by the extreme right. Various states were affected including Gran Caracas, and data gleaned from social networks confirmed at least 21 of the 23 regions of the country lost power. Different states suffer outages frequently, some up to a week. The last large national blackout was in marzo, 2019 when a large part of the country was without power for 4 days. <Makes our few hours long planned outages seem like nothing. At least we know when the power will be restored. So far.>

And that’s all for today so hasta ? –

Jeanne