So last Monday Corrie and I tried to go to Zamora for a meeting with a doctor. The meeting was to be a brainstorming session about how to approach the problem of littering in our province. And it is a big problem. If there isn’t a trash can directly under the hand holding the trash to be thrown away, that trash is invariably littered. Thrown in the road, river, whatever. Nasty.
So we wanted to have a meeting to try to do something about it. That didn’t happen. Let me tell you why.
First of all, a brief history. My province is one of the most gold rich regions in the world, and there are a ton of gold mines around. Rich foreign gold miners get even richer, but poor people in my region get screwed over because the mines contaminate the water and farms. So the people want the mines out. The president said he would kick them out, but hasn’t yet because he gets a small part of the gold profits. So, whenever Ecuadorians want to protest something, they burn tires in the road and set up road blocks.
Which is what they did on the road to Zamora and all throughout Ecuador on this given day. People told us this, and said that if we still wanted to get to Zamora, we would have to get out and walk for an hour than wait for another bus on the other side of the road block. So we decided to do that.
This is the scene we rolled up to: police men fleeing on foot and in truck as rock throwing protesters pursued them. Their faces were covered with bandanas or shirts to protect them from the tear gas the police had been throwing.
No big deal. So we started to walk. We were met with lots of stares by rock, stick, and machete wielding rioters. Also, chants like “out with foreign miners”. Good thing were not foreign miners, right? We would have been in big troub… wait a second… we look an awful lot like foreign miners…hmmm.
Luckily I ran into someone I knew from Guayzimi. He was stationed by a pile of burning tires, and his friends and he were collecting rocks to fight with. The leader was instructing everyone to cover their faces, and telling 5 guys to go up on the hill for a better rock throwing position. I was talking to this guy, and asked if it was dangerous. He said only if the police start to fight us. But the rioters aren’t going to attack a couple foreigners…are they? “I hope not” was his answer…
I figured that most likely we would not get stoned to death, which would be a favorable outcome. But knowing what I know about social psychology and mob mentality, I knew it only took one hot-headed drunk to throw the first stone, then many others would undoubtedly follow suit. Also, I knew that as the day went on and they became more irritated by tear gas, they would really be looking for a fight by nightfall…which is when we would have to walk back through that mess on our way home.
So we decided to turn back. Luckily we found one of Corrie’s Ecuadorian friends who was walking in the same direction, so he accompanied us and nothing happened. Cool story though…sorry, mom.