On Christmas Eve, a 12 year old latch-key boy disappeared from his home in north Houston. Several days later his burned and charred remains were found in a dumpster a couple of miles away. A 44 year old woman, in curcumstances that defy belief, was charged with his murder.
I mention this, not to in any way lessen the crime perpetrated upon Lobita and her friends and family, but to show the madness prevelent everywhere.
The recent insanity in Tucson has, no doubt, been heard around the world. Many here in the USA say it was caused by the political rhetoric. I don't know. I do know the LEFT wants to share our country's wealth - even if it means taking from the rich to give to the poor, and the RIGHT says, "I earned it, it's mine to keep, and no one can take it from me."
I say, "Let me outta here!"
When I speak to my friends and relatives in Europe, they think we are "gun nuts." In New England, we Texans are thought of as "right-wing" cowboys ready to secede and start another Civil War. Now, it seems, the State of Arizona is bent on challenging us mano a mano for "whacko" supremacy.
Are all Texans gun crazy? Are most Americans greedy and uncaring? I don't think so, but that's the image we are projecting around the globe.
As a kid who went to school with several DPs (Displaced Persons), that is, concentration camp survivors, I asked, why. How could their parents and other family members be killed by so few. It only took a few thousand Nazis to massecre six million Jews. Why did they not stand up and fight? How could they let that have happened to themselves.? No one had an answer.
In New Orleans, several thousand blacks died in the aftermath of Katrina. The numbers are far higher than the published estimates because many of those people were off the grid. Why! Because, unlike in any other state in the US, the poor - the poverty from which many whites escaped, but many blacks did not - in Louisiana developed a culture of dependancy on the government. Huey P Long started it, Edwin Edwards perpetuated it, and it continues to this day.
Now, look at Haiti. Last year the earthquake there claimed about 300,000 lives. The same year, in Chile, an earthquake about 500 times more powerul struck the capital but only about 200 lives were lost.
Why the difference? Again, much of it has to do with culture. In Haiti, practically the entire population depends on the government, or more realistically, NGOs, to tell them what to do. In Chile, local port authorities and marina managers warned the populace of and impending tsunami. Nearly everyone sought higher ground and survived. They did not have to wait for help from the Capital.
Think about this too. For seventeen days those trapped miners in Chile had no contact with the outside world. Their food and water was near nothing, but they stuck together and all were rescued.
I wonder if the same thing happened in America, where a "survival of the fittest" and a "law of the jungle", are so prevelent in our society, how our folks might have fared given the same circumstances.
CULTURE! You can't paint it with a broad brush. I'm sure there are many people in Ecuador who are of the ilk so descriptively pointed out by Boncur and Lobita in their posts. Given their history and years of exploitation and dependancy, I'm sure their numbers are many.
But not all. And I think that as Correa moves to improve health care, reduce police corruption, and create financial and other institutions that will serve the people, the culture will change.
For those reasons,we still plan to retire in Cuenca as soon as we can sell our property here in Texas.
Ray
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