By Deke Castleman and Sylvan Hardy We’re all Gary’s children. Gringos lived and worked in Ecuador long before Gary and Merri Scott showed up in 1995, but the Scotts, almost single-handedly, put Ecuador on the radar screens of thousands of pilgrims to the Middle of the World. Almost all Cuenca...
By David Morrill and Deke Castleman “Los precios gringos” or gringo pricing, also known as the “gringo gouge” and “gringo tax,” is a hot topic in virtually all Latin American expat communities inhabited by norteamericanos. Even in the times of the coronavirus, the subject can raise a stir. The...
By David Morrill On March 26, local news media reported the first bodies on the sidewalks of Guayaquil. Within the days, the international media, including the New York Times, the Guardian and the Washington Post were in town to share the lurid images with the world, revealing, they said, what...
By Alice Residents of the historic district have a new grocery shopping option. SuperAki, which is part of the company that owns Supermaxi, opened in November a full month ahead of schedule --won’t wonders never cease!-- at the corner of Arizaga and Tarqui. For those who live in the historic...
Editor's note: This post has nothing to do with Ecuador, Cuenca or expatriatism. It is about one writer's obsession with the man who courted his great-great-grandmother during the U.S. Civil War. It appeared originally as a syndicated newspaper column about 20 years ago. When I make the two-hour...
By David Morrill No one knows exactly when the guitar-making tradition began in San Bartolomé, a picturesque village 20 miles east of Cuenca. Local historians agree, however, that it dates to the Spanish colonial era, at least 200 years ago, and many of the area's guitar makers can trace their own...
By David Morrill With the notable exception of the Otavalan craftspeople and merchants, no other indigenous Ecuadorian community has maintained its ethnic identity like the Saraguros. Centered around the town of Saraguro, 75 miles south of Cuenca, the Saraguro nation, which numbers between 30,000...
By David Morrill As an Ecuadorian court grapples with a U.S. extradition request for fugitive Paul Ceglia, a bizarre tale is emerging of the man prosecutors claim tried to defraud Mark Zuckerberg out of ownership of Facebook. A Russian expat couple tells how they worked with Ceglia on computer...
By David Morrill On September 10, 1783, Cuenca resident Melchor del Valle was convicted by the Spanish Royal Court of murdering his brother Sylvester. The sentence: "Two hundred lashes in the public square, then hanging on the gallows until death.” The court further ordered that, when the body was...
By David Morrill and Deke Castleman Most foreign visitors start their tour of Cuenca at Parque Calderón and many expats pass through the park on a daily basis. Travelers and residents accustomed to plazas in other parts of the world are often pleasantly surprised at the lack of beggars looking for...
We’ve taken the transcripts of the first two debate sessions and summarized what we believe where the main points of each candidate’s responses, to the five topics that were chosen by voter polling.
Some of the candidate’s responses were amusing, some almost non-sensical, and some quite accusatory. Continue reading
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