Desalojos...

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. 

View from afterschool program before

After