Inside the Bubble: Educating Ecuador's Elite

Thea Johnson

World Policy Journal, Volume 28, Number 2, Summer 2011, pp. 41-48 (Article)

Published by World Policy Institute DOI: 10.1353/wpj.2011.0005

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wpj/summary/v028/28.2.johnson.html

Access Provided by Stanford University at 07/24/12 4:39PM GMT HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

Inside the Bubble Educating ecuador’s elite

THEA JOHNSON

UITO—It is springtime in the capital of Ecuador, and that means everyone is celebrating Carnival, as are people all Qover Latin America. In the halls of the Fundación Colegio Americano—the American School—in the neighborhood of Carcelén, students are gearing up for the annual election of the school’s “princess.” This is no suburban prom queen selection. The election takes a beauty contest and transforms it into a grand display of wealth. One candidate is chosen from each of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. Even in a school for the ultra-wealthy, filled with unusually attractive children, these girls stand out as the true beauties. As the three candidates campaign, six-foot photos of each hang in the school’s main foyer, greeting those who enter with a hint of cleavage and the come-hither expressions of fashion models.

In Quito, the wealthy stay north of their watchful Virgin. SUMMER 2011 41 HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

Three days of Carnival festivities have She is beautiful. Her skin is tan, but not led now to the climax—a school-wide dark. Her layered, dusky blonde hair falls dance where the princess will be named. over her shoulders. Her figure is flawless. At this grand finale, each class is charged As the glass ball descends slowly, ma- with the responsibility of creating an jestically, few look past it to the ceiling. elaborate dance routine before its candidate There, all but invisible to the wealthy for princess is “revealed” to the audience. throng below, dark-skinned men in blue The routines involve elaborately uniforms are balancing from the raf- choreographed theatrical numbers— ters. They are the school’s janitors and intricate matching outfits, dancers moving grounds keepers. Standing precariously in a harmonized bridge—in anticipation on the beams, without any safety net or of the arrival of the entrant. Along with belts, easily 30 feet off the ground, they my fellow teachers, I sit watching the are holding the rope attached to the glass performance. The audience fills with ball and its cargo. The men brace them- parents, relatives, siblings and friends, selves against the beams as they lower the as camera flashes create a circle of light ball as slowly and gracefully as possible. around the stage. They are sweating, straining with all their As the music builds, the mass of danc- might. The candidate smiles and waves ing teenagers reaches a crescendo of move- inside the glass. Finally, mercifully, the ment. Then, with a wave, all the students ball lands and the men relax their muscles. point skyward with one grand gesture. On the floor, the door to the ball opens and The audience follows the movement with the girl emerges. The crowd erupts. their eyes, craning their necks. And sud- denly, above, there appears a giant glass Limited mobility ball. Eyes take a moment to adjust, but Many outsiders would find this scene soon we can all see the first candidate, strange, if not downright troubling. But encased in the immense transparent ball, to the participants, and to most of the on- dangling dramatically from the ceiling. lookers, it seems perfectly normal—and not She is wearing a white dress with a cor- just because it happens every year. The girls set bodice and a full skirt—quite likely who vie to become princesses already are purchased from Miami, or hand-made by royalty of a sort, living out their entire lives a member of the small group of women in a glass bubble of tremendous wealth, in Quito who earn a living outfitting the a lifestyle of prosperity made possible by rich. This year the candidates are limited a permanent underclass that toils without to spending $500 on the gown. Before the benefit of a basic safety net. In a coun- the school imposed the price cap, these try where it is not uncommon to see child young women could spend $1,000 or “fire-eaters” earning pennies performing on more on the chosen dress. street corners, this three-day extravaganza The first would-be princess waves at cost each of the students’ families and the her audience, who cheer raucously below. school several thousand dollars. To them,

Thea Johnson spent two years teaching at the American School of Quito. She is now a writer and a public defender in New York.

42 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL INSIDE THE BUBBLE it is a small price to pay to demonstrate— the term used for those of mixed European mostly to themselves—their own affluence, and indigenous ancestry. In Ecuador, the and to reinforce their self-image as a class logic goes that the lighter one’s skin, the very much apart and above the rest. heavier his bank account. It’s difficult to They are not mistaken. Per capita know how many “white” Ecuadorians annual income in Ecuador is just under there are, because of the elastic nature of $4,000, qualifying it as a middle-income racial categories in this part of the world. economy, according to the World Bank’s Most estimates put the number at below classification system. But that income is 7 percent of the population. (Mestizos ac- distributed most unevenly. In Ecuador, count for about 60 to 65 percent of the the richest 10 percent control more than population, indigenous people about a third of all personal wealth. At the around 20 to 25 percent, and Afro-Ecua- other end of the spectrum, the bottom dorians around 5 percent.) If we assume 20 percent collect just 3.3 percent. this roughly 7 percent of the population Some 52 percent of Ecuadorians live on almost entirely overlaps with the wealthi- less than two dollars a day, and 20 percent est 10 percent of the population, we can get by on a dollar a day or less. estimate the tiny minority of white Ecua- Ecuador’s economy in the 20th cen- dorians controls close to a quarter of the tury was sustained by three major export country’s wealth. booms—cacao in the early part of the cen- This group and other wealthy Ecua- tury, bananas in the 1940s and 1950s, and dorians were largely spared the worst ef- finally oil, which was first discovered on a fects of the defining moment in modern grand scale in 1967 by a Texaco Gulf con- Ecuadorian economic history—the finan- sortium, and which has proved to be Ec- cial crisis of 1999-2000. The collapse of uador’s greatest blessing and curse. These 16 banks, among the 40 that existed at successive booms created a level of wealth the time, set off a period of rapid depre- sufficient to support a middle class, a mix ciation of the Ecuadorian sucre and a con- of intellectuals, businessmen, and gov- current increase in inflation. The crisis ernment employees. The oil years also al- also included a freeze on a huge number lowed some poor Ecuadorians to improve of bank accounts, containing money that their lot—partially on account of the rise would either never be seen again or would of labor unions—and join the ranks of be returned years later, greatly reduced. the middle class. But most of the boom Many wealthy Ecuadorians were saved from wealth accrued to the already-wealthy and the full consequences of this collapse be- those who controlled the major industries. cause at least some of their money was held Social mobility remained a phenomenon abroad in places like Miami. But for most of the lower economic tiers. In Ecuador, middle-class Ecuadorians—government it seems, the poor can become working- bureaucrats, teachers, professionals— or middle-class, but the middle class can the crisis wiped out all they had built. never become rich. In 2000, the Ecuadorian government What accounts for this? A major fac- made the American dollar the country’s tor, unsurprisingly, is race. Most of the official currency, providing a short-term wealthy in Ecuadorian society can be clas- solution to the problem, but ultimately sified as white or light-skinnedmestizos — putting Ecuador at a deep disadvantage

SUMMER 2011 43 HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

to its neighbors and creating an infla- uct of massive migration from surround- tion crisis that undid much of the so- ing rural areas. The wealthy stay north of cial mobility that marked earlier booms. their watchful Virgin. The middle class simply began to dis- In 2005, I was invited to the home of solve, with the percentage of Ecuadorians a wealthy family for Passover—a holiday below the poverty line soaring from 35 few in the country know about, let alone percent to over 50 percent. Between 1998 celebrate. Though the small Jewish popula- and 2002, somewhere between 300,000 tion in Quito is of Eastern European, not and 500,000 Ecuadorians—many of Spanish, descent, their “whiteness” still al- them skilled workers and members of the lows them a presence in a closed world, to middle class—left the country, most for which many Jewish families have had access the United States or Spain. Today, in New since they arrived in Ecuador, mostly in the York City’s borough of Queens, the most 1940s, fleeing the Holocaust. diverse county in the nation, the number When she issued the invitation, the of Ecuadorian immigrants outstrips those hostess reminded me that the event would from Colombia, Peru, the Dominican Re- be “a little dressy.” Having been raised public, and even Mexico. Jewish, I was no stranger to Passover sed- ers. I put on a pleated skirt and a matching NORTH OF THE VIRGIN blouse and sweater. My favorite taxista, Throughout these shifts of fortune, the Juan, came to pick me up. His eight-year center of power and wealth has remained old son, Juan pequeño, sat in the front seat, in Quito. To a greater degree than many and we drove up to the Quito Tenis neigh- other Latin American capitals, Quito con- borhood. We arrived on time, which in tinues to be defined by a set of traditional Ecuador is early, so the three of us drove mores, including around in circles, admiring the neighbor- Rich those governing hood and its palatial apartment buildings. Ecuadorians race and class re- I met Juan when he happened to stop lations. Even the for me one day in the Old Town area of are not a group geography of the Quito. We hit it off, and from that mo- that welcomes city hews to these ment he became my go-to taxi driver. traditions. Quito Juan would almost never say no to a outsiders, is essentially one job, even if it involved driving from the especially those very long valley. south side of the city to pick me up in with darker Northern Quito, my neighborhood, El Batan Alto, in the the area north of north. Many times, he had one or all three skin or smaller the Panecillo—an of his children in the car. Juan occupied bank accounts. elevated area where a well-populated socio-economic nether- the Virgin of Qui- world, a “working poor” class, hovering to statue stands—boasts select neighbor- above poverty but not particularly close hoods, such as Quito Tenis, named for the to middle class. While he did not have exclusive tennis and country club that the a stable income, he made ends meet by neighborhood grew up around. The south working brutal hours as a taxi driver, of the city, which faces the Virgin’s back, knowing that today’s fare likely paid for is a relatively recent creation—the prod- tomorrow’s school books, or food, or rent.

44 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL INSIDE THE BUBBLE

Juan had never seen Quito Tenis and Celebrating Freedom took in the surroundings. Meanwhile, his Located in the northern neighborhood son chatted merrily with me, stopping of Carcelén is the sprawling campus once with wide-eyed innocence to ask, of the American School of Quito. “You know people who live here?” The school, perhaps the most prestigious Finally, I decided I was sufficiently in the country, educates the children of the late to be on time. The apartment was the wealthiest and most powerful Ecuadorians. most spectacular I had seen in Ecuador—a These families provide a window into the duplex of exquisitely decorated rooms, country’s elite, which publicly embraces all offering panoramic views of the a concept of equality, while ensuring volcanoes that loom in Quito’s horizons. practices and policies that keep wealth As the other guests began arriving, it from being distributed more equitably. occurred to me that the Ecuadorian The school was founded in 1940 by tendency toward understatement the then-president of Ecuador, Galo Plazo had once again escaped me. “A little Laso, and the American ambassador to Ec- dressy” had apparently meant black-tie. uador, Boaz Long. It was meant to serve as The women arriving were in long gowns an alternative to Catholic schools and to or satin pants and silk tops. Usually, my the German School, which offered a Euro- skin tone gave me away as a foreigner in pean educational model. Until then, those Ecuador. In this palatial room filled with were the only viable options for wealthy white Ecuadorians, my cotton blouse Ecuadorian and foreign families. Then, as and sweater betrayed me. now, the school purported to play a vital I sat next to a graduate of the American role in the development of a democratic School, who was driven to and from the meal tradition in the nation. But the student by armed bodyguards—a precaution made body has always been comprised almost necessary, I assumed, by the exceptional entirely of the children of wealthy fami- success of his unnamed business. lies. The only exceptions to this homoge- He laughed as he told me about the neity are the children of the school’s mid- time his graduating high school class dle-class Ecuadorian teachers, who receive destroyed a boat in the Galapagos a fraction of the already-modest wages Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, during paid to the few foreign teachers, but who an alcohol-fueled party on their “senior get the benefit of sending their children to trip.” They were punished with nothing the school for free. more than a strong suggestion that The American School, in fact, is they never return to the islands again. somewhat of a misnomer. The school is not More than a decade out of high school, run by Americans, only a small percent of he still thought the story was funny. Americans serve on its faculty, and just I smiled politely and flipped through a handful of its students are American. the pages of my Haggadah. As we The school educates the children of the commemorated the escape of the ancient privileged in Ecuador—business owners, Israelites from subjugation, a legion of diplomats from other Latin American dark-skinned staff stood silently along the countries, politicians, oilmen. Among my perimeter of the room, poised to refresh students’ parents were the head of Pizza our drinks and clear our plates. Hut’s Latin America division, the owner of

SUMMER 2011 45 HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

all the major shopping malls in Quito, the issues of racism and classism in their coun- Brazilian envoy to Ecuador, and the head try and the world. The best paper I ever of one of the most successful restaurant received—one of the few “A+” grades I chains in Colombia and Ecuador— handed out—went to a boy named Santi- a delightful spot, featuring waffles of every ago, for an essay on the Rastafarian move- variety. The daughter of then-president ment. When I saw the paper’s topic, my Lucio Gutierrez was a student at the heart sank at the thought that I might have school. In 2004, her sudden transfer to a student who had figured out a clever way a school in the United States hinted at to extol the virtues of marijuana. What I her father’s not-unfounded fears of being found instead was a thoughtful piece on overthrown. (He was thrown out of office the foundations of the religion and its con- in a largely peaceful coup in April 2005.) nection to the Black Power movement, a Such students are the face of wealth and concept that must have been foreign in- power in Ecuador—a vastly different face deed to young Santiago. than the rest of the nation. The real question, of course, was what sort of impact Raul and Santiago, and Cannes vs. Cairo those like them, can have on this small That is not to say that wealth always leads group of rich Ecuadorians that comprise to a complete disconnect from the larger their friends and relatives. It is not a group society, especially among young students, that welcomes outsiders, especially those who are constantly exposed to ideas about with darker skin or smaller bank accounts. social justice through travel, television, and Indeed, during my time teaching at contacts with the world outside the bubble. the school, there was not a single black I once asked each of my students in Eng- student among the 2,000 enrolled, and lish class to write a brief essay on his or her only one indigenous student. Ecuador has favorite place, using all five senses. As the a robust indigenous movement, and its students sat writing quietly, one of them, Afro-Ecuadorian community has produced Raul, approached me and said he was strug- many of the soccer heroes worshipped gling with the assignment. He could not throughout the country. But the status seem to decide between Cannes or Cairo— that accrues to major athletes in much of a dilemma very few of his fellow Ecuador- the world is insufficient to allow entry to ians would ever have to contemplate. the tight circles of privilege that isolates Still, Raul was also a great lover of Quito’s elite. Che Guevara, and not just because T-shirts The few students who do not fit the bearing his image had recently become mold have a tough time. In 2004, the fashionable. He was deeply moved by a school admitted a young indigenous girl trip he took to Cuba, and fancied him- from the Otavalo region, whose family, self a socialist, even though—or precisely like others from Otavalo, had made a because—he came from a world where good deal of money selling traditional the difference between the “haves” and handicrafts abroad. She lasted just one the “have-nots” was rarely questioned. year. The rumor among the teachers He, along with a cadre of students, asked was that the ostracism of her classmates insightful questions about civil rights in drove her from the school. She suffered the United States and struggled with the no blatant exclusion. Instead, it seems, it

46 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL INSIDE THE BUBBLE was the cumulative effect of always being and Columbia, Trinity and Davidson, the only person of indigenous descent, where they were certainly exposed to ideas the only person not from old money, not of equality, democracy, and meritocracy. from a tony neighborhood in Quito or its But they are also inculcated in the surrounding suburbs. I once passed her in global elite—spending their time with the auditorium as she and her classmates kids who went presented independent-study projects at to prestigious Correa has the end of the school year. Her project schools in other yet to shake focused on the culture of her indigenous Latin American group. That day, she stood patiently by countries and now the roots of her poster boards in the traditional female have converged in the power dress of the Otavalo region—the colorful certain American structure. multi-layered skirt, a white embroidered universities. Most blouse with elaborate sleeves, a cloth of these foreign-educated students will binding her ponytail, multiple strands return to Quito to take up their assured of gold and red beads around her neck. places of leadership in the country. But Many teachers came to hear her despite being steeped from the age of five presentation and to view her exhibits, but in an apparently democratic system and most of her fellow students strolled past, American-style schools, most of these opting instead to check out the girls who students, like their parents, will still had created their own jewelry lines as their hold onto the Ecuadorian idea of social final project—a popular choice that year. mobility—that it halts at the middle It is not entirely surprising, of course, class. They will now also have connections that teenagers may be more interested in with all sorts of other elites, who espouse jewelry than indigenous culture, and com- the same value system. peting theories abound regarding the rea- There is no great mystery why the sons for the young woman’s departure from wealthy would want to maintain their the school. Still, the fact remains that this bubble. For those at the top, it is a very experiment in diversity failed. And it was good life. To be sure, it is a life with certain the only one I ever witnessed. The indige- challenges—a volatile political climate, a nous, who account for around one fourth of high crime rate. But economic privilege has the population and who, in some sectors, proved remarkably sustainable in Ecuador, are thriving economically, were complete- even as the country’s politics are constantly ly absent from the most prestigious school roiled by change. (Nine men have served as in the country. No matter how well-inten- president in the past 20 years.) tioned, the discussions about civil rights The question, of course, is whether in the school’s eighth grade social studies this will continue to be the case. classrooms ring a bit hollow. In 2006, Rafael Correa became president, promising to challenge the oligarchy and No Room At The Top the moneyed interests. Correa, much like Many of the school’s students will end my young student Raul, is an admirer of up in the United States and Europe for the forces behind the Cuban Revolution. college, just like the generation before (In Oliver Stone’s documentary, South of them. I watched students head off to Tufts the Border, Correa is interviewed while

SUMMER 2011 47 HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

sitting on a couch next to Raúl Castro). power far longer than any of his recent Like many of my former students, Correa predecessors. But for now, he has not is a product of the American educational seriously dented the elite’s hold on system, with a PhD in economics from wealth and influence. In fact, what the University of Illinois. limited success he has enjoyed may A friend of Hugo Chavez in Venezu- only have helped solidify the position ela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, Correa is of the ultra-wealthy. By increasing not the first leader to have made pledges social spending and decreasing poverty, of revolution in Ecuador. As early as 1895, Correa has allowed some Ecuadorians President Eloy Alfaro led a liberal movement a modest rise from their previous to divide up the estates of large landholders. station. In a country where few dream Correa has yet to shake the roots of the pow- of extreme upward mobility, any er structure. For all his promises of change, movement from poverty to working he has not fundamentally restructured the class serves, on some level, to reduce the way wealth is distributed. Of course, he has tensions brought on by intense poverty. turned a few heads. During his tenure, Ecua- Mild upward mobility is, in some ways, dor has defaulted on $3.2 billion in interna- a great blessing for those at the very top. tional debt. And Correa recently introduced In effect, Correa has helped a great a ballot referendum to alter the constitution number of Ecuadorians reach for the next in ways that will weaken the press and the rung, without ever dreaming of reaching judiciary. (It passed with more than 60 per- for the top. Still, if he finds the will to cent of the vote.) truly challenge the status quo and create a Yet the status quo remains. Correa’s new society, he will have a very powerful, rhetoric invokes dreams of a socialist well connected, and well educated group revolution, and his considerable political to battle. And battle they will, to protect skills have allowed him to hold onto their beautiful glass bubbles. l

48 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL