Ecuador

Yes, Ecuador is equatorial. That’s what the name is, gringo. Planning a trip to the Galápagos Islands for a Darwinian experience? You’ll be stopping in Ecuador first. Embrace it. And embrace Ecuadorian Independence Day. While the country didn’t gain its independence on that fateful day, it was 10 August in 1809 that the first demand for independence from Spain was made—not just the first in Ecuador, mind you, but the first in Latin America. Leading the charge. Fanfare, thanks.

Of course, before the Spanish arrived, the local civilizations came into the Inca Empire—wars, marriages, the usual. (Before that, Ecuador had been inhabited for a few thousand years. Go explore the pre-Columbian section of your local museum.)

So. The Spanish. Disease. Death. An all-round experience of mirth. That is, in the Edith Wharton House of Mirth kind of (extremely non-mirthful) way.

The whole country was independent from Spain by 1822—it then joined Gran Colombia for a few years before full independence in 1830. Smooth sailing from there? Not entirely. Territorial disputes with Peru developed into war in 1941. Needless to say, with World War II going on at the time, this was frowned upon, and the matter was resolved relatively quickly when Ecuador and Peru signed the Rio Protocol in 1942—Peru got the territory, but the Americas presented unity in opposition to the Axis powers. I hope Ecuador was at least pleased with the latter half of the equation.

Oh, and on the bumpy road (as opposed to smooth sailing) theme, the 1970s saw a military junta overthrow the government. The country was subject to military governments from 1972 until 1979—when elections brought back democracy. (Democracy is the new black.)

Hey, did you know that Conservation International has a “megadiverse” category? There are 17 megadiverse countries, and Ecuador is one of them. Awesome.

A poem for you, my dear readers. This one’s by Jorge Enrique Adoum, translated by the inimitable Wayne H. Finke, taken from the Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Literature 1960-1984. Titled “Ecuador,” how could I choose any other poem?


Ecuador

I. Geography

It is an unreal country limited by itself,
divided by an imaginary line
and yet carved out in concrete at the foot of a pyramid.
If not, how could the foreign woman be photographed
astride my homeland like on a mirror,
the line just below her sex
and on the back: “Greetings from the center of the world.”
(Children, large skeleton-like eyes
surrounded, and an indian weeping
mountains of centuries behind a burro)

II. Memory

The soul cavitied, that passageway aches in
the root’s nerve, and I, Pavlov’s dog, in a leap
sit beside the doorway of the tin-shop
(there it was always during the day) to sniff about the street
on which I returned and they follow the beating me.
When one has no homeland yet save
for that incurable sadness beneath one’s pride,
the homeland is the pocket of memory from which
I extract this: throngs of indians in the drunkenness
of the mass and flailed with kicks on Sunday afternoon,
the cemetery where I accompanied so many school
mates to review principles of law: this,
pieces of an old animal, this suffices me, I reconstruct
integrally the torrid patriotic Paleolithic folkloric,
the tanners of the republic, the daily clay
where we slip pleasantly. (You too, little dinosaur
bone, your ankle by which you are tied to
me, monstrous quartering, and your other ankle
by which you are bound, for I am you exile.)
And the song with which they lull the victim
so that he dies without uttering a word
and with which they torment the dog
in order to see how his member swells erect.
Willingly. Just for the experiment.

—Jorge Enrique Adoum
translated from the Spanish by Wayne H. Finke
from Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Literature 1960-1984