Ecuador

Under a $6m US deal, hundreds of migrants from Colombia and Ecuador were deported back to their home countriesOutside the Lajas Blancas migrant camp in southern Panama, wooden shops are boarded up. A bed of cold ash lies in an iron drum barbecue which once served meat skewers to hungry migrants.Six months ago, hundreds of people would pass through the camp […]

Research finds yellow warblers near busy roads turn aggressive when traffic drowns out their territorial songs, and noise pollution could cause clashesIf the rumble of trucks, honk of car horns and bustle of the roads leaves you irritable, you are not alone – researchers say the sound of traffic can leave birds in a rage, too.Researchers have found male […]

Daniel Noboa, who is seeking re-election as president, announces partnership with Trump supporter Erik PrinceEcuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has announced a “strategic alliance” with the Donald Trump-supporting founder of the private military firm Blackwater to supposedly reinforce his controversial “war” on crime.Noboa, the rightwing heir to a […]

In the Zuleta community in Ecuador, farming is about more than just sustenance: it is about cultivating a deep relationship with the land based on ancestral knowledge. In her travels in the region, Colombo-Ecuadorian photographer Yinna Higuera collaborates with rural women, who in exchange share their understanding of medicinal plants and give her leaves […]

Historian David Olusoga sheds light on Hezekiah Moscow, a mysterious migrant seeking a better life in Victorian London. Plus, my suya obsessionHello and welcome to The Long Wave. Last week I watched Steven Knight’s historical drama series A Thousand Blows, in which Hezekiah Moscow (played by Malachi Kirby), a plucky young man from Jamaica, arrives in […]

‘Pepe’ Jijón loves his life in the Ecuadorian cloud forest, but for his son Jose, the excitement of New York city callsOn an October day, Jose Jijon rang up a customer’s $35 bag of coffee at a Brooklyn, New York, cafe. The transaction was one of many as shoppers poured in and out of Sey Coffee, one of the country’s most renowned roasteries.There […]

Afro-Guayaquileños mostly live in the impoverished belts of Guayaquil and have been made to believe their customs are ‘the worst’, say activistsPainted with the support of the city council in 2017, a mural spanning the entire side of a six-story building in Guayaquil’s financial district went largely unnoticed for more than a year in Ecuador’s most […]

Despite government efforts, armed groups control many remote areas. Now researchers are caught in the crosshairsRaul*, a biologist from Quito, has been leading conservation projects in the Chocó rainforest in north-east Ecuador for more than 20 years. It has not been easy, he says, recalling the threats he has received over the years for reporting illegal […]

Daniel Noboa fails to achieve anticipated victory over leftist rival Luisa González, forcing them to repeat 2023’s electionEcuador’s conservative president, Daniel Noboa, will face the leftist former congresswoman Luisa González in an election runoff on 13 April after a better than expected first-round performance by his challenger.With more than 92% […]

Voters who have become victims of crime wave linked to cocaine trade will determine outcome of presidential electionEcuadorians are voting in a presidential election that has shaped up to be a repeat of the 2023 race, when they chose a young, conservative millionaire over the former leftist president’s protege.Luisa González and the incumbent, Daniel […]

Marco Rubio heaped praise on a president who has jailed thousands with few legal niceties – but can work his model work elsewhere in Latin America beset by gang violence?Five hours after being shot in the belly, a Haitian accountant sat in a Port-au-Prince emergency room pondering how his homeland might be saved.“I follow the news,” said the […]

Voters go to polls on Sunday to give verdict on Daniel Noboa, whose crime crackdown has eroded human rightsCarlos Javier Vega, 19, asked to switch shifts at his father’s bakery in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, so he could help his cousin sell a puppy. A few blocks from the buyer’s location, however, their car was stopped at a checkpoint manned by […]

Archaeologists using 3D mapping are uncovering the remains of thousands of green metropolises with composted gardens, fisheries, and forests groomed into orchards For decades, archaeologists have believed that human occupation of the Amazon basin was far older, vaster and more urbanised than the textbooks suggested. But hard evidence was scant, artefacts […]

Populations have been falling for decades, even in tracts of forest undamaged by humans. Experts have spent two decades trying to understand what is going onSomething was happening to the birds at Tiputini. The biodiversity research centre, buried deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, has always been special. It is astonishingly remote: a tiny scattering of […]

Beatification ceremony for Clare Crockett, former party girl from Derry, draws more than 100 people to MadridA nun from Northern Ireland who was killed in an earthquake while she was teaching music in Ecuador has taken a step closer to sainthood.A ceremony on Sunday afternoon started the process of beatification for Clare Crockett, who died in Portoviejo, […]