Guayaquil: The Extreme City

If you spend much time in Quito, the political capital of Ecuador, you get accustomed to hearing stories about Guayaquil, the economic capital of Ecuador. The huge port city is twice as populous and sprawling as mountainous Quito, is sweltering with humidity much of the year, has an even more extreme gap between rich and poor, and is supposedly riddled with thieves and murderers. Being from Oakland, I wasn’t overly daunted by this last fact, plus I was going to get a brief tour of the city from a local whom I figured could help me stay safe and alert.

My guide was Lupe, born and raised in Guayaquil. She is a doctor who works in the city four days a week, then travels 3 hours each way by bus to work in rural communities every weekend. She’s a small woman (at 5’2”, I tower over her) but formidable. She speaks at close to the speed of light, tells you exactly what she thinks, and uses her hands to dramatic and sometimes dangerous effect, especially if you are a non-native speaker leaning in close to try to understand what she’s saying.

She met me at the airport and launched into a detailed, rapid-fire story about her work, all the while leading me across a busy six-lane thoroughfare to catch a bus to her house. I realized then that thieves and murderers would probably be the least of my problems. Following the story, keeping track of my belongings, and trying not to get run over by maniacal drivers gave me a new appreciation for the term “multi-tasking”. By the time we squeezed onto the bus and Lupe, my bags, and I wedged into the last two hard plastic seats, I was exhausted. I’d been in Guayaquil 15 minutes.

I still don’t know what exactly Lupe said or what exactly I saw on the bus ride to her house. My receptors were on overdrive. But once I let go of the hope that I could make sense of things, I started to enjoy the chaos. I know we passed a lot of small, crammed together cinderblock buildings with rusty signs. The storefronts were blocked by bars, like at a bank teller window, through which people exchanged cash for soap, fruit, beer, diapers, or whatever else was on the shelves. People were out and about in shorts and flip flops, and we passed a lot of small restaurants that grilled all kinds of animal innards in big street side barbecues.

Lupe lives with her mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, and eight-month-old nephew in a working-class neighborhood in Guayaquil, which means she lives in a poor, but not desperate, part of the city. Although Lupe comes from a family of professionals—one sister is a pediatrician, another is a teacher, and one of her brothers is an accountant—they earn less than an Ecuadorian middle-class wage. Their house is their only investment. It’s an attractive if quirky building: stairs take you up a flight so you can go down a level and doors seem to appear out of nowhere. After spending a few hours there, I got the hang of the layout, in which everyone has individual space, though most of the time the family is together in the living or dining room.

Lupe and I ate lunch with her sister and mother, who welcomed me like their favorite neighbor who’d just come back from a long trip. We talked about the kind of food I like, how Arnold Schwarzenegger ended up as governor of California, the pending Andean Free Trade Agreement, Ecuadorian celebrities, and the weather. They also made sure I knew what a fabulous city Guayaquil is, from the climate to the variety of things to do to the major economic interests controlling the country from their hometown. Later, Lupe took me on a tour that began as an errand to buy an AIDS prevention video for the health promoters she works with, and that’s when I got a taste of the city her family described.

A couple blocks from her house, we caught the bus near the tributary of the river that runs through Guayaquil, one of the filthiest I’ve ever seen. Trash floated on the caramel-colored water, which rose to the level of the houses that seemed to grow out of the weeds. The bus dropped us off somewhere near the commercial center. I followed Lupe through an immense warren of stalls selling everything, including more bootlegged videos than I’ve ever seen in my life. Lupe, of course, charged through the maze with utter confidence, while I clutched my purse to my side and hustled to keep up with her, lest I be lost in Ecuador’s answer to Marrakech. Then we emerged from the central market onto a vast tree- and skyscraper-lined boulevard and walked several blocks to the Malecon, which fronts the river. But here, the water gleamed a natural green and reflected the thick cumulus clouds and lush vegetation on the opposite bank. And the Malecon itself is a marvel—several miles of boardwalk comprised of botanical gardens, modern sandstone and metal architecture, impressive monuments to Ecuador’s founding fathers, museums, shopping, and gourmet restaurants. The Malecon is proof that Guayaquileños have a vision for a world-class city.

The Malecon leads to an artsy hillside neighborhood called Cerro Santa Ana, a collection of colorful houses, restaurants, shops, bars and galleries. We climbed more than 400 steps to the top of the hill where a new lighthouse, modeled on the original from the 1800s, sits. From there, you have a remarkable view of the city and where the money goes. Directly below the summit is a slum slated for redevelopment as a tourist complex, to the east is the Malecon and the business district, farther afield is the area where Lupe and her family live, which was paved with streets and sidewalks just a few years ago. Next on the city’s list, Lupe told me, is to clean up the river that runs through her neighborhood. Short as my trip was to Guayaquil, I got the impression that just as the people, the weather, and the pace of life are more intense, the process of correcting imbalances between rich and poor is probably that much more painstaking, and changes that much more hard won. But perhaps those incremental victories are part of what makes Lupe so proud of her hometown.