Voting was a civic ritual, not a formality; It was a mission, not a procedure. The decision was discussed for a long time at the tables at home, at the workplace, in those times when the country was not involved in violence or in the confusion of networks or in the confusion of superficial and multitude of opinions. Those were times when parents and grandparents were conservatives or liberals at heart, or socialists or communists, because behind them stood deep-rooted values ​​and a clear sense of responsibility. There was a country that was not a political word but an experience; Back then, being Quito, Cuenca, Riobambeño or Guayaquileño was a concrete way to be Ecuadorian.

When did we lose it all? When do we stop believing? When did we give space to traders of ideas, professional liars, fair charlatans?

An hour and fifteen minutes of apprehension: this was an action to remove employees and capture those entering TC Televisión

We modernized, we traveled, the country started to annoy us and folk music started to stink. We have grown in money and power, but our hearts have hardened, our sense of duty has evaporated and “wise politicians” have told us of our innumerable privileges, we have emptied our old houses and gone without memory, we have left our premises and gone abandoned, among useless things, beliefs, ideas and ethics. We have become citizens-consumers, and the republic has become that empty word and that lie that now hurts us a little. The country has become a shrinking nostalgia, lost among the rush, corruption, noise and clamor.

When did we give space to traders of ideas, professional liars, fair charlatans?

When did we lose the sense of duty, the notion and experience that every right corresponds to an obligation? There used to be an idea, and perhaps a belief, that the country was a historical space that made us compatriots, neighbors, countrymen and that a republic was built on it, in it, which was expressed in respectable authorities, just rules. and binding prestige. Politics, despite its pettiness, was an activity with some decency.

A communication strategy is urgently needed in Ecuador to avoid disinformation amid a declared internal armed conflict.

Teaching law, therefore, was a kind of dedication to tasks that had to do with justice, solidarity and equality. It is true that there were robbers, but they were an exception, liveliness was socially condemned and this was a great support for the law.

Then, at some fateful moment, that social, cultural and legal structure collapsed, elites evaporated or became minorities, pressure groups, calculating clubs. Vividness and neatness have become rules, and laws are illusions for the naive. Majesty fled the institutions and cynicism became the dominant logic. And violence arrived, and with it fear, but also the habit of fearlessly looking at crime, shamelessness and insolence.

These are the 12 violent deaths recorded in 9 hours of unrest in Guayaquil

With the fall of the republic, civil society also collapsed. And today, with individual exceptions, it looks like a chorus of lamentations. It is a mass of eternally dissatisfied people, who know everything.

Will it be possible to restore all that and recover what was lost? (OR)