Ecuadorians in Tri-State Area Vote on Constitutional Reforms in Referendum

Thousands of Ecuadorians living in the three-state region will go to the polls again this Sunday, April 21, to approve or not reforms and changes to the Constitution which President Daniel Noboa has proposed.

11 questions appear on the ballot for the exercise called Referendum and Public Consultation 2024, which focuses on the areas of security, justice, employment and international settlement.

“Do you agree with allowing the assistance of the Armed Forces in the activities of the National Police to fight organized crime, in part reforming the Constitution?”

“Do you agree that the state should proceed to be the custodian (owner) of assets of illegal or unjustified origin?” This is an example in the case of the five questions under the heading of Public Consultation.

Ecuadorians who wish to participate must fulfill only two requirements: have registered in the electoral register of Ecuador by January 9, 2024, and have a passport, ID card or original consular identification, regardless of whether its validity has expired end

Voting is direct in person and four places in the state were chosen, which are located in the Bronx, Queens on Long Island and the Hudson Valley, regions where a greater number of immigrants of that nationality are based.

Ecuador’s National Electoral Council, which is in charge of organizing the exercise, envisions popular consultation processes and referendums as “tools of citizen participation in which legal and constitutional changes are made.” decided by voting.”

Both among community leaders with long roots in the city, and among Ecuadorians who have recently arrived in the Big Apple, this new process has not aroused much enthusiasm and is even viewed with suspicion .

“I heard something about the Consulate’s monitors, but I’m not interested in participating,” apologized Brenda Peña, who went to Ecuador’s diplomatic headquarters in Queens to complete procedures. She indicated that she will work on this Sunday anyway, which makes it even more complicated.

Ecuador in the eyes of the international community

The first quarter of 2024 has not yet been completed and news has already appeared from Ecuador that have been trends around the world. The most famous of them happened last Friday, April 5, after newly elected president Daniel Noboa ordered the police to storm the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former vice president Jorge Glass. arrest, an irresponsible and unprecedented decision that brought unanimous international condemnation.

Since January, Noboa had stated that because his country was in an internal armed conflict, it was necessary to organize a referendum to, among other things, ask whether the Armed Forces should participate in it the internal security and to support the police in their work to keep the police inside. increase violence.

On March 11, at an event where new police cadets graduated, the president of Ecuador supported his opinion by calling for “the need for urgent reforms that will allow us to protect our security” and invited to support “through consultation”. National Police and the Armed Forces. “

However, the opinion of the Popular Consultation within Ecuador is blocked by a strong opposition block in the Senate where they joined the siege that did not agree with the decision of Noboa attack brought to the Mexican embassy. Very few movements and parties decided to campaign for YES or NO to the consultation and instead they are already considering impeachment as well as suspension of the president to put on any attempt at reform.

But it is not only in his own country that the referendum has been discredited. It seems that the same feeling is attacking Ecuadorians in the state of New York.

“I interpret it (the consultation) as political pieces,” says Walter Sinche, executive director of Alianza Ecuatoriana Internacional who received El Diario at his offices in Queens. “Change a little here, a little there when he (Noboa) with a pen worth a dollar or two, could do 10 or 20 orders” to reform the Constitution. The activist and educator calls the exercise a political show “where they spend 50 or 60 million dollars to do something they can do at will.” “

Sinche remembers that in order to declare a state of emergency “or raise taxes” he did not want to ask the people and just took those steps. In this atmosphere of tension and levels of insecurity reaching historic high levels in Ecuador, even winning the consultation and the agreement, President Noboa is not sure that there will be a Senate that is willing to go against him supporting the results and accepting the constitutional changes.

In New York, a lot of disgust and fatigue

Walter Sinche, executive director of the International Ecuador Federation./Juan Alberto Vázquez

Others questioned who on Friday the 19th went to the Queen’s headquarters at the Consulate General of Ecuador in New York to complete various procedures, they had little interest in participating in the exercise democratic. “Yes, I found out, but I didn’t try to register,” admits José Gutiérrez, who says they had to close the family food business because they were drowned in hate.

“In the last two years, in Latin America the Ecuadorian community is the one that has emigrated the most to the United States,” says Sinche again, which is an example of his community center that they went from ‘ serving between 25 and 30 people each week. before the pandemic “received between 250 and 350 in the same period” in recent months.

The diagnosis of this increase “is only one: political corruption, governments involved in the drug trade, insecurity, kidnapping, extortion,” laments activist Sinche. “In Ecuador everything is spending, for everything you have to spend money because everything was co-opted by organized crime.”

He tells of people he knew such as a public school teacher who was asked for “15 dollars to continue as one.” Someone who wants to be a judge “must enter by paying 40 thousand dollars, otherwise they will be rejected. “

Sinche explains that most of the Ecuadorians who arrive at the community center he directs, located at 104 -08 Roosevelt Avenue, have already been kidnapped or robbed, and some, who did not die on the way, wounded, by their divided family. , involved in the drama about forced migration. A few even come with the urge to commit suicide and seek psychological help anyway.

On the other hand, the Ecuadorian fatigue in New York may be due to the fact that this is the fifth time in just four years that they have been invited to the polls. In the first half of 2021, in the electoral process that won the presidency of businessman Guillermo Lasso, there was a vote in February and then in the second round in April. In February 2023, President Lasso called a referendum to change the Constitution and finally in October another presidential election was organized, from which Daniel Noboa was elected, who is now to call a consultation itself.

The United States Census Bureau recorded in 2021 that 830,000 Hispanics of Ecuadorian origin lived in the United States. This includes both immigrants and those born in this country, but of Ecuadorian ancestry.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center, Ecuadorians are mostly in New York (35%), New Jersey (18%), Florida (10%), California (6%) and Connecticut (4%).

Hence the emphasis that the tri-state area gives to this type of civic exercise.

Election centers in New York

The Bronx
Mott Haven Education Campus
730 Concourse Village W
Bronx, NY 10451

Flowing
John Browne High School
63-225 Main Street
Streaming NY 11367

Peekskill
Peekskill Senior Center
4 Nelson Street
Peekskill NY 10566

Patchogue
Patchogue Town Hall
14 Baker Street #6
Patchogue NY 11772