Neoliberalism in Ecuador was above all reducing the size of the state, that is, fewer teachers, fewer doctors, fewer public employees, and fewer public works, it was not the privatization of everything, as in Chile, which even privatized water. The reason was that the water was managed by the first indigenous and community organizations called potable water boards, and these were powerful, because they had a great capacity for mobilization, and they were also the main source of income for the municipalities and parish boards, which At that time, they were not part of the general state budget, but were self-financing through the payment of property taxes, construction permits, operating permits, and in some cases, such as those of the municipality of Quito, with the generation and sale of electrical energy. The state was the main educator through free schools, colleges, and universities, but the government of León Febres Cordero, which offered BREAD, ROOF, AND EMPLOYMENT, did not create more schools, colleges, state universities, hospitals or health subcenters, or roads, reduced state investment, encouraged the creation of private colleges, schools, and universities with the traditional Catholic Church, made loans to private businessmen, to expand their investments or businesses, reduced taxes, kept wages low, favored the outflow of foreign currency, the promotion of private investment, to drug money launderers, who with Pablo Escobar and the Cartel From Medellín, very close, he laundered his dollars in Ecuador and financial speculators, who became the main landowners, investors and even powerful bankers like the Isaías. He supported the banana growers, the landowners, and, above all, the shrimp farmers, many of them military or ex-military, who invaded the mangroves, which were protected areas, and which turned Ecuador into the largest shrimp exporter in the world.
It was a different reality from Chile, where the state was not the big investor as in Chile, which had a large road, port, and airport infrastructure, a large number of workers affiliated with social security, that is, private and public employees, or had people and very rich companies, such as mining companies, fruit plantations, fishing companies, or foreign companies interested in managing public services, such as ITT, the North American telephone company, which was part of the coup against Allende.
In Ecuador, the general state budget depended on state oil, which was nationalized by the Rodríguez Lara military dictatorship. Private companies exploited oil, paying Ecuador for one out of every 5 barrels they extracted. The state company CEPE delivered all of its oil and income to the government in power, the trans-Ecuadorian oil pipeline, or the oil port, which was managed by the navy, was state-owned and leased their services, which gave direct income to the government.
Faced with this reality, León Febres Cordero concentrated his activity on the persecution of the leftists, who at that time were the priests of Liberation Theology, the students, the unionized workers, and above all the peasants who fought for the land, since the Two agrarian reforms, in 1968 and 1974, turned them into small landowners. Being small landowners was the obsession of the peasants and the main threat to the landowners, who were those who came to power with Febres Cordero, including Milton Bucheli. , the main landowner of Muisne, and its eternal mayor.
Febres Cordero considered the Liberation Theology priests a threat, for which he arrested Monsignor Proaño, the bishop of Riobamba, and the priests Graciano and Julián. Julian was deported to Italy, and Graciano was kept under surveillance in the Quito Sur neighborhood, guarded by Father Carolo, who was the parish priest of the wealthiest neighborhoods of the capital, La Mariscal, La Floresta, and González Suárez, which concentrated the greater number of colleges, schools, and private universities when education had become the main source of income for the Catholic Church.
I had finished my rural medicine in Cabo San Francisco, I had a wife and a daughter, but I had no job. Verónica, my wife was able to return to work as a secretary in Balao, in Esmeraldas and she became the breadwinner of the family, this did not separate, I continued looking for work or a scholarship in Quito.
Free admission to state universities and their gratuity, had produced 10,000 doctors, for a population of 10 million inhabitants, of which 80 percent were poor peasants, or inhabitants of miserable neighborhoods, who did not have the capacity to purchase medical services. or medicines, or who were abruptly impoverished by the El Niño Phenomenon, which even forced them to migrate.
In addition, I was experiencing a crisis in my family, which had been caused by my brother's suicide, my mother's hatred of my grandmother, and me, my grandmother's loyal ally, of my father. for his German lover and his two new children, but my parents, who lived in eternal fights, did not divorce for economic reasons, there were many assets and money at stake, which turned his house into hell.
The departure of the Liberation Theology priests Graciano and Julián de Muisne and OCAME, plus the murder or accidental death of their leaders or their corruption, produced a collapse of the organization, which took away the possibility of continuing to work. in the fields, where I felt happy, especially in front of the sea. Well, my favorite sport is swimming and walking.
Eduardo Estrella, my psychology professor, who was now also the director of the recently created Museum of Medicine, in the old San Juan de Dios Hospital, which I helped by collecting abundant information on medicinal plants, native foods, and useful plants in the Canton Muisne, at a time when peasants had to resort to forgotten food and medicinal plants due to the closure of roads and commerce, for a year, in 1982, when I was a rural doctor, information that helped him to write his new book, The Bread of America. While looking for opportunities in Quito, I helped the Museum of the History of Medicine, making a collection of Andean medicinal plants and the cloud forest, where my father owned property and my grandmother, who was an Andean plant healer, lived for a sampler in the museum.
Dr. Eduardo Estrella published a book called PROBLEMS SOCIOECONOMICOS DE LA MEDICINA, which I memorized as well as his book Aboriginal Medicine, also, as I was his teaching assistant in Medical Psychology, at the Faculty of Medicine of the University Central gave me the chance to work as a professor of social medicine and the new school of Environmental Sanitation.
Rural medicine during the El Niño Phenomenon of 1982, made me understand that health was not only a physical, psychological and social problem, as they taught me, it was an ecological problem, a religious problem, and a military problem, since the discovery of America, which brought pestilence, new foods, metals, gunpowder, navigation, the horse, which changed the way of moving also from diseases, that health was also an economic problem, a racial problem since the indigenous people did not have immune defenses, gender, or age, but above all, it was a communication problem, since writing and new languages arrived, which changed memory, the way of speaking, learning, and understanding reality, which was filtered or seen through the lens of a new religion, the Catholic Religion.
Health became a historical problem, where human beings were the center, a geographical problem, where Planet Earth and the universe were the centers, and a biological problem, where life, water, air, and land changed from one era to another and possibly from one planet to another, initially through comets, or possible space travelers, like current human beings, was also the center, for which I began to investigate the history and geography of health, in cultures aborigines and rural people from the natural regions of Ecuador, in the Museum of the History of Medicine and tell that to my students at the School of Environmental Sanitation.
Rural medicine and the Phenomenon of the Child, allowed me to understand that the greatest wealth of Ecuador was its cultural diversity, that is, its human beings, and its biological diversity or biodiversity, that is, the forms of life, the genetic information they possess, now that Genetics is what is revolutionizing medicine, agriculture, veterinary medicine, etc. that in the tropics it is abundant, not only its oil, or its bananas, as they told me.
Today that climate change, extinction, consumerism, human population growth, it's needs, and war has
become the main threats to this planet, health is something very different from what I had learned in university.
