Expat Central: Cuenca

Cuenca is a charming city of a half million people - a major regional center in the South Central highlands just west of the Andean cordillera. About 4 thousand non-ecuadorians have chosen this place to roost. American, Canadian, and European "expats".

So what is an expat? Well, that is what we are planning to become. An expat is a citizen of one country whose current residence is in another country. That's all. Nothing EX-PATriotic about it. We just get bored easily and fantasize that adjusting to new languages and cultures will keep us entertained for the rest of our lives. Sure beats TV.

Back to Cuenca. You can see the effect of the tiny expat population in the wider variety of restaurants and also in the realm of real estate development. The suburbs are full of beautiful homes, and gated communities.

So I was surprised to hear that most of this development surge is powered, not by Americans, but by Ecuadorian expats who have returned from the US and from Spain, countries whose economies are now struggling. Meanwhile Ecuador's economy is growing 6% per year, and the money these Ecuadorian expats are bringing back is bolstering that growth.

I don't know if there is a lesson in this. But maybe you could say that people who allow themselves to dream bravely would choose to live in the best circumstances they can imagine. Right now for us that is not in the US, and the returned Ecuadorian expats seem to agree with us.