Ten years ago I was living in southern Ecuador about 3 hours from the Peruvian border. I was working as a facilitator/translator/guide for North Americans and Europeans who were living in or moving to Ecuador. I took people where they wanted to go, showed them different neighborhoods, helped with visas and other legal documents, translated for them in banks/stores/hospitals/etc.
In October of 2016 I spent 3 weeks in Cuenca with a client who was planning a move to Ecuador. We shared an AirBnb, so we were together for 21 days. We went out every day exploring the city, but also had hours in the apartment during which she would watch, on her laptop, one show after another promoting conspiracy theories. She informed me that Barack Obama was flying in plane loads of Muslims every night with the goal of getting rid of all the white people. This was one of many insane theories she believed with all her heart. She also told me Jewish people are the root of all evil and must be exterminated. This woman was raised as a Quaker, a religion known to be peace-loving, nonviolent and compassionate. Something had clearly gone very wrong for her.
It was a long 3 weeks, but I regarded it as a one-off event. Then the 2016 election happened in the USA and Donald Trump became the “leader of the free world” a couple months later in January 2017. Suddenly Nazi sympathizers were crawling out of every nook and cranny. Conspiracy theories quickly entered mainstream discourse, encouraged by the president, and spurred on by social media algorithms that hugely amplified the material. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and others became flooded with ideas targeting vulnerable groups and promoting violence. These items were published in multiple languages and I even came across Ecuadorians who had watched videos in Spanish promoting these lies, hatred and violence.
