You come to Ecuador for any number of reasons. If you’ve got the funds to lay down a couple of grand for a one-week cruise, you come to join the fleet of boats ferrying tourists out to the country’s own Darwinian cash-cow, the Galapagos Islands. If you’re an over-earnest American college student, you come to support Quito’s burgeoning markets in unregulated private Spanish-language schools, Internet cafés and black-market stolen goods. If you’re after an authentic jungle experience, motorised dugout canoe included, you come to fend off the malarial mosquitoes in the last tracts of Amazonian rainforest left undamaged by oil prospectors. If you’re into bananas or shrimp, well, you’ve just accounted for half the nation’s industrial output. If you’re in the midst of an Endless Summer-esque surfing odyssey, you come for the inconsistent waves, but warm waters and dirt-cheap seafood of the Pacific coast. If your reggaeton (Latin American dance music blending reggae, hip-hop and Latin music styles) fascination extended beyond the summer of 2005, you come for the multi-hour mix tapes blasting day and night on most long-distance bus rides. And if you’ve ever had the desire to teeter on the edge of the crater of an active volcano, as the combination of high altitude and sulphur fumes fuck with your balance and rationality, then you’ve come to the right place. What you don’t necessarily come for is to bust a move as armoured police tanks shoot tear gas canisters at teenage protesters across a crowded colonial square. But hey, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
For a professed politics nerd, strolling into the midst of a violent police–protestor showdown over – as it turned out – student public transport concession cards during a late morning search for breakfast in Cuenca felt like hitting pay dirt. What had obviously begun as a peaceful demonstration had escalated, following the paint-balling of a government building, to a situation where riot police were massing in the streets branching off the main plaza, as local shopkeepers went into lockdown, roller shutters falling like dominoes along the cobbled streets. In the square though, it was business as usual. Middle-aged women kitted out in full highland dress waddled through on the way to market, old men slept in the sun, and a crowd of high schoolers milled in one corner. Then the fun began. Too scared despite their helmets, guns and body shields to confront the protestors head on, the police hit upon the strategy of standing back while their black tank cut laps of the square. Each time it performed a drive-by the kids would take cover, then run out and pelt it from point blank range with rocks, wooden stakes, paint and any other debris they could lay their hands on. Watching from about ten metres away, the same sequence was repeated until it became almost comic – take a picture of the cathedral, look at the old guy starting to drool as he sleeps, there goes the tank again. At some point the police obviously snapped, and the next drive-by was punctuated by a couple of loud cracks, before a gun powdery smell began to waft across the square. Next thing I knew an intense burning sensation was rapidly spreading from my throat to nose to eyes, as each breath sent tear gas stinging down into my lungs, and narrowed my vision to a painful squint. As a kid running amok near me nonchalantly wrapped a t-shirt around his head and sent a stone clanging off the side of the tank, a moustachioed local patted me on the shoulder and assured me the situation was perfectly normal, even as an errant tear gas canister landed smoking a couple of metres away.
What my new friend was saying was basically true. This shit is normal in Ecuador. Standing in the square attempting rather uselessly to cover my nose and mouth from the fog of gas that had descended on the area, a conversation with Alex, a guide on an earlier volcano ascent came to mind. While the 47-year-old from Quito proved equally enthused with discussing the machinations of Ecuadorian politics as he did Jennifer Lopez, his genuine amazement at why Americans don’t just march on the White House and literally boot Dubya out of office – that’s real democracy! – began to make a lot more sense. Even in the populist, corrupt, dog-eat-dog world of Latin American politics Ecuador stands out. At last count the country had turned over seven presidents in ten years, the most crooked temporarily prevented from fleeing the country in a cash-filled private jet by masses of enraged citizens swarming the tarmac at Quito’s Bolivar Airport. Continuing a tradition begun way back in the sixteenth century, when the Incas finally clicked that they’d been fucked-over by a couple of hundred gun-toting but sweet-talking Spanish conquistadors, Ecuadorians have developed little respect for heavy-handed authority not seen to be working in their interests. So what do you do when the cops arrive and kill the buzz? Concede, regroup and take it to the next level.
Later that afternoon, while walking along a ridge overlooking the river that runs through the city, a familiar smell began to waft my way. Ignoring the now-familiar burning sensation and token objections of a couple of patrolling police, I high tailed it down to the river bank where it was all on again at the high school across the stream. Taking my seat on the grass amidst a gallery of admiring pubescent female onlookers and pre-teens too young for a taste of the action, I watched for the next couple of hours as the sequel played itself out. With one of the city’s main arterials blocked to traffic, the same kids had seized control of the school grounds and adjacent intersection and were showing little sign of moving. The police, rather than calling in reinforcements decided surgical strikes were the way to go, placing their faith once again in the crowd-busting abilities of not one, but two armoured tanks. With a decent run up this time, the tanks would barrel towards the intersection, before hitting the brakes and being pelted from all sides with rocks pulled from the river, more wooden stakes, and later, Molotov cocktails. Eventually the tanks started shooting tear gas into the schoolyard where the students were taking cover, but the canisters would be picked up by the kids and lobbed back out again. At one point, a school bus tried to squeeze through the intersection from the opposite direction, but was stopped by the students and almost collected by one of the tanks in the process. The driver bailed and narrowly missed being taken out in the crossfire, before being bundled into the tank. Within seconds a student had reversed the bus into a position half blocking the intersection. After each subsequent offensive the kids would take cover behind the bus, flinging rocks over the top in a game of cat and mouse that frustrated the police even more. Predictably, their subsequent water cannon strategy proved only marginally more effective.
Two hours in, and Cuenca’s finest had made little progress. A mission to recapture the bus eventually succeeded, and the ice-cream sellers capitalising on the student crowd had seen waves of tear gas dent their profits, but the kids were united, and the drive-bys continued as dusk fell. All was set for a classic battle of attrition, with scant sign of resolution. Only there was a resolution. And in the end it came quicker and easier than the police could have hoped. Ultimately, it wasn’t water cannons, or tear gas, or even the swift crack of a baton to the back of a teenage head that dispersed the stayers. No, it was a torrent of persistent, driving rain.
Yep. Even a tough teenage anti-government agitator would rather be at home on a cold wet night. And their reward after a long, hard day of raging against the machine? Not even a headline report on the nightly news. That honour went to a union riot in Quito. As they say, when it rains it pours.