Oil has changed the lives of Ecuadorians since 1974. Before, the state budget was 10 times less. With oil, the great road, educational and health revolution of the country began, which by then had most of its population in the fields, in addition to the arrival of radio in the 40s and television in the 60s, changed the way of relating, of seeing the world and our own life.
Militarism became a fashion, even my brother and I studied in a pseudo-military academy, the Colegio Brasil de Quito, directed by Colonel Jorge Salvador y Chiriboga, a former rector of the Eloy Alfaro Military College, and with military professors. like Major Druet, an active military intelligence officer in the army who gave us physical education and was not intelligent at all, Major Toledo, a math teacher, who was a brute, who knew how to add and subtract, or a sailor, Commander Paz and Miño, something more intelligent who taught us English.
In that school I was one of the best students from 1968 to 1974, becoming a rabid course commander. who often faced the cheater, hypocrite, liar, joker, or clown and more lazy, who was usually the president of the course elected by popular vote. From the age of 12, I learned that in my country the president of any organization is elected by the worst, not the best and that direct or secret voting is always a form of protest, of opposition to the current order, not a consensus, as it seems. Curiously, the rector's son, a complete neo-Nazi, who marched with his martial step when walking, dressed in our impeccable military uniform, and became head of the school, was a complete despot, who later studied in the navy, reaching to be a high officer of the naval aviation, and he was in love with Verónica, my wife, but she despised him for his mountain double standards because, like all the soldiers of those times, they believed they were the adonis, the playboys, the best gallants.
Unlike me, Luis, my dearest brother, the eldest, was lazy at school, skipped class, didn't do his homework, and loved racing horses, because my father was the president of the racetrack there, My brother was a judge, a friend of the vicious horsemen, who loved alcohol, brothels, fighting cocks, betting, while hyperthyroidism and mania depression ruined his life.
My mother recommended that I send him to the obligatory military service to correct it, meanwhile, I attended the law school of the Catholic University in his place because we only had the same names, which I had in addition to Luis Rafael Moreno, a third name Maximilian.
While my brother was conscripting at the Teniente Ortiz barracks, on the border with Colombia, in Tulcán, he was humiliated by the military, intimidated by other conscripts who nicknamed him a panther, because they said he walked like the Pink Panther from cartoons, Skinny, tall, white with green eyes, he secretly read books on communism and Marxism that he bought across the border, in these times of the PLAN CONDOR, where being a communist was worse than being a fagot. In the barracks he taught his companions, who were mostly illiterate peasants, to read and write. The barracks brought him closer to marginalized Ecuadorians.
At the Catholic University, I would meet in the cafeteria with my classmates, the cream of Quito, the rich kids who came to the university to show off their car, their clothes, their jewelry, and talk about soccer, the latest novels. , and of his friends, family, and high-ranking politicians, or in the trunk, as they were called, of his next party or disco day, His world seemed stupid, hollow, silly to me.
When my brother returned from the barracks he was physically and psychologically affected. The military, not only mistreated him, but they even used it so that my father freed them from courts-martial, in exchange for not continuing to martyr him, they were sergeants and officers who had committed violent crimes and fatal mistreatment of conscripts, for which they They were facing trials, in addition, my brother and his fellow conscripts had been forced to transport or let the contraband of the officers pass through the border and they even had to go looking for prostitutes for them in Colombia.
Communism books, my brother's stories, as well as the stupid life of my classmates at the university, touched my conscience. My country, in reality, was not a problem of laws and rulers, as the Catholic University made me believe, it was a problem of life and death of millions of human beings, where the military, who had already been in power for years, I had turned this territory into an unlivable place for the poor, where we were all useful to them, we served them to be the motherfuckers of this Homeland, whom we fatten in peacetime, defend in wartime and fear.
