A new
Spanish vocabulary word for me that I have not gone a day without hearing these
past couple of months is desalojo:
eviction.
A couple of
months ago President Correa announced his intention to evict families living in
invasion communities, including my home Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai is an invasion
community in which landowners technically do not have legal rights to their
land. This land was originally designated for agricultural purposes, but the
men put in charge trafficked the land and sold it as residential property. Most
people living in Mount Sinai paid for their land and have a document from the
original land traffickers as proof, but this is worthless in the government’s
eyes. In January 2011 President Correa refused to turn a blind eye to this any
longer. All families who had bought land from the original land traffickers
could stay, but no further construction could occur.
Fast forward
to present day and the President’s eyes are once again on Mount Sinai. A
satellite photo was taken in December 2010 during the President’s announcement
and another was taken recently. These photos are being compared and all new
homes are being marked for eviction. Families receive a two-week notice. Most
families, however, have absolutely no where else to move to. When the two-week
mark is up, police, military, and bull dozers come in and forcefully remove
people and then destroy their home, leaving a path of destruction in their
wake.
Mount Sinai
is a HUGE area, with more than 274,000 people living here according to a Hogar
de Cristo (my worksite) study. Therefore, this will be a long and arduous
process. Evictions thus far have taken place outside of the consolidated area
where my home is by the afterschool program we work at.
Greater
than the actual danger any of my neighbors may be in is the psychological
panic. A lack of clear information being distributed by the government and the
newspapers means that news is mostly spread through gossip, some accurate and
some not. It is always a topic of conversation. It is always a worry, an
anxiety, and a fear of my neighbors.
Mount Sinai
sits with a heavy air of uncertainty and fear over it. I too sit helplessly and
vulnerably watching on as this all occurs.
Please keep in your prayers this community, the
neighbors who sit in fear for the future of their homes, and the evicted
families with nobody to turn to and nowhere to go to start over.
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| View from afterschool program before |
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| After |
