Quito, Ecuador – Christmas comes to Ecuador in aircraft filled with emigrants returning to their native land bearing gifts and overcome by emotion.
At least 42,000 migrants, some 2,000 more than last year according to Migration Department statistics, have come back to their own country to spend the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
Typical of so many is Gisella Castro Cruz, who lives in Italy and now returns to Ecuador after four years away. With a long, tearful hug for her aunt Naila Bastidas, she begins her all-too-brief Christmas vacation, since in January she is due back in Genoa.
Gisella’s husband Orlando Oceguera,who was deported from Italy two years ago for not having his papers in order, also rushes up to kiss her and hug her.
The same story is repeated endlessly in Guayaquil’s Simon Bolivar Airport, where some 19,000 Ecuadorians arrived home in the first 15 days of December.
Most come from the United States, Spain, Italy, Germany, Venezuela and Chile, according to Migration Police reports.
More than 2 million Ecuadorians reside outside the country, particularly in North America and Europe, where they have gone to seek jobs and a better standard of living.
The presence of returning migrants gives a great boost to commerce in the larger cities and helps economies in crisis, as in the provinces of El Oro and Loja, two of the most affected by the racket run for the past 10 years by ex-notary Jose Cabrera, who died last October. Police still do not know the fate of the millions of dollars he is believed to have received from customers.
Cabrera appears to have carried to the grave information as to the whereabouts of between $400 million and $1.2 billion that he received from some 30,000 people. Thousands lost all their money and many today live in misery, a Machala merchant told EFE.
The holiday season is also a hard time for Indians and peasants who flock to the cities to beg from the urban dwellers.
In Quito, scores of poor people, above all women and children, gather in the main intersections – where they often put up cardboard shelters – to seek Christmas alms from passing motorists.
“Give a Christmas present” is the plea of peasants from the Andes, where freezing temperatures and drought have devastated their crops.
Thousands of needy people plod through the avenues and lanes of the city, selling candy, Christmas cards and other low-cost items of the holiday season.
Meanwhile groups of children in the country wait kneeling along the highways, and when cars go by beg the drivers to toss them some candy, clothing or food.
In a country like Ecuador, with some 70 percent of its 13 million population living in poverty – which means they earn less than two dollars a day – Christmas only serves to emphasize the tragic lack of social equality.
