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Quito’s new Mariscal Sucre airport in Tababela continues to be plagued by weather and geographic problems that critics say were well-known from studies that date back 20 years. On Monday morning, the airport was closed for an hour due to thick fog, keeping a number of...
The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Francis will visit Quito the second week in July as part of his South American tour. It will be first papal visit to Ecuador since John Paul II visited Guayaquil and Cuenca in 1985. During his Quito visit, Francis will deliver...
Cuenca’s two smart phone makers, as well as five others in Ecuador, will soon be producing phones using the recently introduced 4G technology. Pedro Cordero, Operations Manager at Hipertronics in Cuenca, says that the rules relaxation concerning the assembly of...
By Laura Geggel For the first time in a decade, the top 10 happiest countries in the world are all in Latin America, according to the 2014 Gallup Positive Experience Index. Paraguay placed first out of 143 countries, with its people reporting the most positive...
By Fernando Luiz Lara Anyone trying to understand Latin American politics should pay close attention to urban areas. Of the 600 million people in the southern part of the Americas, 80 percent now live in cities. However, old narratives die hard, which explains why...
By Viktoria Vidali Editor’s note: Viktoria Vidali has been a piano teacher, publisher, TV and documentary producer, photographer, and executive director of an environmental and educational nonprofit organization. Her first children’s book, Francisco and Gabriel’s Blue...
Managers of Cuenca’s Continental Tire factory say they can meet much of the increased demand for tires created by the government’s 45% tariff on imported tires. They also say that there will be no increase in prices due to increased production. Continental is the only...
The Cuenca Risk Management Office and local police are warning the public to avoid river banks due to high water levels caused by recent rains. “This is the rainy season in Cuenca and we can expect more rain through early April,” a spokesman at the risk management...
Thursday afternoon’s protest march and rally opposing the government of President Rafael Correa drew an estimated crowd of 1,000 in Cuenca, far below the 5,000 that organizers had predicted. In Santo Domingo Plaza, the group which had marched from Parque San Blas,...
By World Crunch editorial board An economic slowdown in Latin America is coinciding with increasing social unease, a spate of corruption scandals, sharp drops in the popularity of several presidents and a more complicated panorama overall for regional governance....
The recent discovery of a previously unknown volcano in west-central Colombia has Ecuadorian geologists looking over old maps and NASA images in search of concealed volcanoes in the country’s Andes Mountains. The Colombian volcano is dormant but not extinct,...
Tomorrow's nationwide protest against government policies appears to be gaining momentum. Originally planned as a series of marches by workers' unions and indigenous groups, the protest is attracting other groups, including those opposed to new import tariffs imposed...
Ecuador’s attorney general Galo Chiriboga said he expects the United States to extradite a cousin of President Rafael Correa on a conviction of embezzlement. Chiriboga says he will meet with U.S. Ambassador Adam Namm to discuss the extradition. On Monday, the National...
Admitting that “mistakes may have been made,” Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Trade says it is reviewing tariffs on a number of imported products, especially raw materials needed for local manufacturing. Trade minister Diego Aulestia declined to say which imports might...
Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino has slammed Swedish prosecutors for their delay in agreeing to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at its embassy in London in their case against him on rape allegations. "If they had accepted Ecuador's offer to question him (at...
The International Court of Justice (CIJ) in the Hague ruled Thursday that a prior ruling by an Ecuadorian court that fined the U.S.-based oil company Chevron US$9.5 billion in 2011 should be upheld. The money would benefit about 30,000 Ecuadorians, most of them...
In a “state of the city” speech on Friday, Mayor Marcelo Cabrera says that 2014 was a banner year for the city of Cuenca and that 2015 will be even better. “Cuenca is a great place to live and it’s getting better,” he said Friday at the University of Azuay. He was...
President Rafael Correa joined the leaders of other Latin American countries in blasting the U.S. government’s listing of Venezuela as a national security threat while slapping sanctions on seven Venezuelan officials through an executive order signed by President...
By Julie Freeman I had never heard of the term “part-time expat” until recently. In my mind, one would be either permanent expatriate … or not. But it seems the “six-months / six-months” scenario is becoming quite accepted, and that the nomenclature is being commonly...
As many business leaders and economists had predicted, Ecuador’s tariff hikes are provoking a backlash. Chilean fruit growers were the first to protest on Tuesday and their complaint was backed up Wednesday by the Chilean government. Chilean trade officials have...
