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From time to time, an article or column surfaces or resurfaces warning expatriates that they will have to learn the hard way, that time works differently in Latin America. The warning is often delivered with the authority of someone who has just been embarrassed by...
By Laurence Blair For more than 25 years, Jardín Sonrisitas (“Little Smiles Kindergarten”) taught kids their ABCs in Villa del Cerro, a working-class portside district in Uruguay’s capital. But in December, the beloved kindergarten closed: one of three local creches...
Dozens of doctors, nurses and patients protested Wednesday outside a hospital in Quito, expressing outrage at a public health care system so overstretched that patients wait months for surgery and are forced to bring their own syringes and medication to the hospital....
Ecuadorian business groups representing agricultural, exporting, restaurant and tourist interests are criticizing President Daniel Noboa’s decision to apply a new nighttime curfew in five provinces and four cantons from May 3 to 18. “This is a terrible burden for many...
Editor’s note: Originally from California, Rick Ingle describes himself as a “student of expatriation.” Rick has lived overseas since 1984 in the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Panama, and now Ecuador. He has lived parttime in Cuenca since 2011. He's currently...
By Ariadna Baulenas i Pubill The Wari people founded their capital in the Ayacucho Valley, now south-central Peru. From here their culture spread, forming what may have been the first Andean empire. It was almost 550 miles north of the Wari capital, in the Ancash...
Feeling heartbroken, in the fall of 1980, after breaking up with Gwen, my Vermont girlfriend, and with nothing to keep me there, I traveled west to try to reconcile with her. She had returned to her job in the oil fields of southwest Wyoming. My friends, Tom from New...
The National Electric Corporation (Celec) has opened the contracting processes for six diesel-powered electric generation plants. Although Celec says the plants will provide "immediate thermoelectric generation,” it says it will months before they are operational. An...
When V. S. Naipaul sat down to write The Enigma of Arrival, he was already some distance from where he began. Born in Trinidad, of Indian descent, he left his island and moved to England on the strength of a scholarship to Oxford University, and much later was awarded...
An urgent message is traveling from the Amazon to the United Nations. This week, Amazon Watch will accompany a delegation of Indigenous leaders from Peru and Ecuador to New York for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). As part of our...
President Daniel Noboa announced changes to his presidential cabinet Monday, appointing a new health minister and announcing that Minister of Energy and Mines Inés Manzano will be replaced at the end of the month. Guayaquil physician and hospital manager Jaime Bernabé...
In an interview in the newspaper Primicias, Ecuadorian fisherman Erick Fabricio Coello Saltos described how he and 19 other fishermen were attacked on the high seas by drones and then kidnapped on a U.S. military vessel. According to his testimony and that of others,...
In a recent column, I wrote about the point where living in Cuenca stops being the question and becomes something more personal. If you stay with that idea a little longer, something else begins to come into view. Not all at once, and not in a way that calls attention...
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Sunday he will sue his Ecuadorian counterpart, Daniel Noboa, who accused him of having ties to the leader of a ruthless criminal organization, deepening the diplomatic and trade crisis between the two South American nations....
As some parts of the country are experiencing blackouts, a government agency that reviews electric usage reports that 15.86% of total generation in 2025 was lost to theft and technical problems. It added that total losses appear to be increasing in 2026. The Agency...
By Stacey Colino If you’ve noticed that having a cocktail or two packs a bigger punch now than it did when you were younger, it’s not your imagination. Many people don’t realize that both men and women develop an increased sensitivity and a decreased tolerance to...
There are restaurants in the city center where for $3.50, a man in a white apron will place before you a bowl of soup, a plate of rice with something on top of it, a small salad of red cabbage, grated carrot, and papaya with half an avocado pressed into a rough...
Bored? - (De El Mercurio del viernes, 17/4) - VII Festival mantiene la 'Tradición Corazonista' (The 7th Festival maintains the ‘Corazonista Tradition’) - The VII Festival Interinstitucional de Danza ‘Corazonista Tradition’ will be held el 24/4 a las 19:00 in the...
I was invited to speak at the monthly “Storyteller’s Night”, at IdiomArt (Mariscal Lamar 14-25 y Estevez de Toral the other night. It was a totally cool evening hosted by my new neighbor and soon-to-be good friend, Barry Callen, who mc’d this second-Thursday-of-the...
By Ana Ionova and Max Bearak South America’s bustling seaports have never been under more watchful eyes. They are patrolled by armed soldiers and monitored by thousands of cameras. Drones look for divers stashing cocaine onto ships. Sniffer dogs, special agents and...
