Ecuador Living

One frequent concern that readers express when they ask about Ecuador is about the political stability there.

 

Personally I quite like Ecuador ’s current President, Rafael Correa and would like to share seven reasons why.        

 

The first reason I like Correa is that he comes from a rags to riches story.  If he were a US President his background would be compared to Abe Lincoln. He came from a family that was so poor that they struggled with having enough to eat at times.

 

He has been compared to Peron of Argentina or Hugo Chavez. But his background is very different.  Both Peron and Chavez came from military backgrounds. They were cunning, (not smart) soldiers who took over and ruled with a lot of help from military force.  Correa has never been in the military and appears to be smart. He comes from an entirely different upbringing and career. This was highlighted in Wikipedia which says:

 

“Correa earned an Economics degree at the Catholic University of Guayaquil in 1987. Following his degree, he worked for one year in a mission and welfare center run by the Salesian order in Cotopaxi Province , where he acquired some knowledge of Quichua, the language of the majority of the native pre-Columbian population concentrated in the Andes region. In addition to Spanish and Quichua, he is fluent in French and English.

 

“Correa received a Master’s degree in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain ( Belgium ), and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ( United States ) in 2001. According to The Washington Post, Correa’s adviser at the University of Illinois , Werner Baer, supports his former student. “He appreciates the market to a certain point, but he knows that the market left alone concentrates wealth,” he said. “He is not going to do anything foolish… because he is a fairly open-minded person.”

 

An article in the  Orange County Register by Amy Taxin entitled “A Lake Forest woman lives a dream while her son campaigns to govern Ecuador ” gives an even deeper insight and says:

 

“ LAKE FOREST – Norma Delgado starts out each morning feeding her 101-year-old father and 99-year-old mother breakfast and giving them their medication in their Lake Forest mobile home.  She tidies the house and begins preparing lunch. Sometimes, she heads outside to clip the fuchsia rosebuds she planted on the lot the family owns in the seniors’ community. Norma was born on a coffee and cocoa plantation on Ecuador ’s rugged Pacific coast. She walked to work every day and met her husband on the way, a road inspector named Rafael Correa who ushered her to dances, courted her and married her.”

 

The article goes on to say how when her son Rafael Correa was born and left for school each day, Norma cooked lunches she would sell to neighbors to make a living, asking the boys to deliver the food.

 

The article outlines how Rafael joined the Boy Scouts and excelled in public speaking.

 

It says that Correa’s grandparents, mother and aunt moved to California and became U.S. citizens and Rafael headed to Belgium for his master’s degree in economics and to Illinois for his doctorate. He eventually returned to Ecuador and began teaching at a university on the outskirts of the capital. He then served as Ecuador ’s finance minister in 2005.

 

Correa’s mother, aunt and many of his close family still live in California . They call him on Sundays. She still spends her days caring for his grandparents with help from his aunts, who shuttle in groceries from Costco every few weeks.

 

This is the first reason why Correa may be a good president.  He is a smart person of humble beginnings who has worked his way to the top. He is well educated, cosmopolitan and has an economic background as well as world experience and an international lifestyle with a Belgian wife and US family.

 

That said, no one can see within a man’s heart. No one can know how the system will react to the man nor the man to the system.  The rest of the Ecuador Living series looks at some of Correa’s actions to date in the hopes we can get a better clue.

 

All in all no one ever knows what politics will do in any one place to business and investing.  However when there is a perception of risk, the premium that gets added to the investment return is often more than the actual risk.  This may be especially true in Ecuador where the risk is magnified by misperception created by a biased press.

 

I am betting this is partly the case and investing more in Ecuador . 

 

However escaping poverty is no guarantee that a person will be a good leader. The next Ecuador Living updates will look at the six other reasons Correa may be good for Ecuador .

 

Gary

 

Come join us in Ecuador this November. See http://www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-tours-november-2007

 

You can read the entire article about Correa’s mother at

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1725064.php