BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The small, South American country of Ecuador made the news last week as the government seized nearly 200 businesses to collect debts from a bank collapse. This move has given rise to fears of a dictatorship surfacing in the democratic republic that has substantial petroleum resources and draws in millions of dollars in foreign investment. However, the news did not shock Illinois Wesleyan University student Rachel Hodel, who spent this past spring studying abroad in the coastal village of Olon, Ecuador.
“It does not surprise me at all,” said Hodel. She believes many of the nation’s problems stem from a high percentage of people there who live in poverty. “In a country that deals with poverty everyday, everyone is struggling and people talk of corruption everywhere,” she said.
For nearly 30 years, Ecuador has been ruled by a civil government that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Factbook said is “marred by political instability.” The economy has suffered as well, with a bank crisis in 1999 that led to the adoption of the U.S. dollar as currency in 2000. Although the move helped stabilize the economy and attract more foreign investors, there was also a downside, according to Kim Priebe. A 2003 Illinois Wesleyan graduate, Priebe taught English classes in Vilcabamba, Ecuador, from 2005 to 2006 as an instructor for World Teach, an organization out of the Harvard Center for National Development.
Once a retreat for Incan royalty, Vilcabamba is a village in the southern region of Ecuador, located in a scenic area known as the Valley of Longevity because of the wide belief that its residents commonly reach 100 years old and beyond. When a New York Times article on Vilcabamba referred to the village as “a jewel,” “suddenly English-speaking investors were pouring into the place,” said Priebe, along with a wave of international settlers who were older and wealthy.