¿Si or No?

Everything has been pretty normal for the past few days, school, salsa class, swimming etc. But the the city is alive with demonstrators and political activists. 

What are they demonstrating and being active about, you ask? Well Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, got approval to put forward a new constitution last year. The proposed constitution has been written and now it is time to vote! This is a one time thing, Correa cannot change the draft, propose a new one and you either like it or you don't. Its all the changes or none, Si (yes), or No.

The problem is, many of the proposed ideas are great, for example the new constitution would give better educational opportunities to the poor as well as better healthcare. Some changes are debatable, for instance gay rights, especially seeing as most of Ecuador's population is Catholic. Currently you can be arrested here for being gay, which seems rather absurd, but some people believe thats how it should be. And then there are parts of the new constitution that seem outrageous to someone from a western, capitalist, country. Correa sees himself as a robin-hood type leader, taking money, rights, and benefits from the rich and giving them to the poor.  He has said that he wants to make the country more socialist and give himself more power. He also dislikes the United States, despite having a U.S. college education. Tomorrow he is making a speech where he is going to lead the crowd in a song that criticizes the U.S. greatly, I will translate it sometime to show you. 

This whole situation is very tricky, though many people may not realize it. Currently Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have socialist presidents, Chavez of Venezuela being the most prominent. He openly hates Bush and the U.S. and is allies with communist China, who are about to gain control of the Panama Canal. If Ecuador starts going left, there will be a significant amount of latin american countries under similar governments, with the backing of a major communist power, China. 

Obviously this is all speculative, but it is something to think about especially with the United States in its current economic situation. 

So Ecuador goes to the polls on Sunday, the new constitution is expected to pass but we will have to wait and see. It is such a huge event, that we don't have school on monday because Benalcazar is a polling station and they are anticipating clean-up to take an entire day. All right!