Pirates of the Andean
6 October 2005 (Thursday) – Cuenca, Ecuador
Juan is a professor of the university and by luck, this week, classes were off and so, he had some free time to show me around. We passed by a photocopying shop to pick up some of the things he had left here to be photocopied.
I looked with amazement at the photocopying guys who were patiently photocopying one page by one page of huge scaringly-thick books. Wow… In my country, OK, in the first place, it is not legal to photocopy the entire book. But even if no one bothered about copyright laws, no one would do this job for you. It was way too tedious!
To prepare for this trip, I had the intention to photocopy just the maps from Lonely Planet of the various cities and towns that I think I would be going as it was impossible for me to carry all the guidebooks. But no shop would do it for me. They would only photocopy stacks of papers which they could just leave at the machines.
But here, many people HAD to photocopy books, especially textbooks for university as everything is very expensive. I told you, the standard of living here is really not cheap at all, considering how much the average Ecuadoreans earn in a month. Regular literature books, even those in Spanish, cost US$12, US$20 and above. I remember they cost less than half in Argentina. How could anyone buy books? As such, there are shops selling pirated books as well.
Speaking of pirated books, we took time today to count Juan’s VCDs and DVDs. I said, 200 last night. How wrong I was! He had perhaps more than 500 movies!! Naturally, all of them are pirated. Pirated movies are everywhere around the world, of course. But I could still recall proper CDs and movie stores which sell originals, along the streets and in shopping malls of Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia. Yes, these shops were bravely holding on.
But in Ecuador and, I know, in Peru as well, there are hardly any stores that sell originals at all. OK, perhaps a few in the capitals’ shopping malls but everywhere else, the pirate market flourishes. These stores are not selling the pirated CDs, VCDs and DVDs in secret but they rent a proper shop and have proper employees.
Movie of today – ‘La Tregua‘, 1974 Argentine movie adapted from Mario Benedetti‘s novel of the same title. I have this book. I watched the movie, hoping to understand it better before I attempt to read it in Spanish. I fell asleep halfway. But I believe it is a good movie, heh.
Tags: 07) Crossing Ecuador Line, Cuenca
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