Foto cortesía de Lalineadefuego. All rights reserved.
In the heady days of the Constituent Assembly and the subsequent proclamation of Ecuador’s new constitution in 2009, there was much speculation about how the country’s ‘new economy’ might take shape. It was, they said, to be the economy of the bright new world of el Buen Vivir – Living Right or Right Living. Respect for the environment, social responsibility, greater equality and the possibility of overcoming poverty would be the pillars of this brave new world, and tourism, in particular community tourism, would be one if its main engines. But somewhere, something went wrong, and not just with the constitution.
For community tourism to work as a major element in the new order, it was clearly essential that priorities change, that the country should leave behind its dependence on oil and other primary resource projects, and place greater emphasis on the other forms of economy mentioned in the Constitution. But it didn’t happen the way it was imagined. Something did happen of course: there are new well built roads, hydroelectric projects, new hospitals, new schools; all more than necessary, but all insufficient to make the major change many had desired and expected. The big plans to build a new economy based on tourism, technology, knowledge, biodiversity, simply never took shape.
