Los Andes Ecuador

24/07/2021

www.losandesecuador.com
By David Sasaki

Their fanaticism for yogurt and pan de yuca (cassava cheese bread) led a group of young Ecuadorians to create Nativus, a company that aims to bring these delicious preparations to every corner of the United States. Diana Linares, marketing director of the company, and her brother Pedro, who serves as CEO, narrate that after finishing college they traveled to Florida, to study at university. While they were away from Ecuador, one of the things they missed the most was the food from their country, but especially pan de yuca. "We told each person who came to visit us to bring us frozen pan de yuca if they wanted to stay at our house, the rent was yuca bread," says Diana with a laugh. "We always wondered why there is no pan de yuca in the United States or if there was somewhere, why we did not know where to get it," they say. This concern stayed in their minds for a long time, until three years ago they decided, together with two other Ecuadorians, Rafael Valdez and Érick Solms, to bring this culinary tradition to the North American country. "We wanted to share it with other Ecuadorians who were in the same situation and, above all, make a totally new consumer fall in love with it, the North American consumer, who has no idea what pan de yuca is. It is gluten-free, healthy what it is, how delicious it is to mix it with yogurt," says Diana. Thus, they began to analyze how feasible their idea was, whether or not the business had the potential to grow, what were the best ways to reach their customers, among other factors. Being convinced that Nativus would have a great future, they began to work on the ideal recipe for pan de yuca and yogurt, which took about a year and a half.

Rafael, one of the founding partners, told his colleagues that there was a fairly old recipe for pan de yuca in his family and that it could serve them and, although it was useful, they had to do a lot of work to polish it, mainly because the US they did not find the same ingredients for the preparation as in Ecuador. Thus, they did countless tests, invited friends and family to try and even began to sell their yogurt and pan de yuca at a weekend market in West Palm Beach, where many families went to make purchases. They set up a kiosk, offered their products, and collected comments and recommendations. "I didn't want to have the pan de yuca flavor that I've been used to, I wanted a higher level," says Pedro. Countless anecdotes emerged from their journey towards ideal flavors, such as that they tried to make manaba cheese themselves for bread (later they found a distributor), some recipes failed because the size of the eggs was different, the fruits arrived mixed with water and that changed the flavor of the yogurt, they had problems with the ovens and had to buy others, among many other experiences. "Rafael has experience in restaurants and recipes, but not specifically in pan de yuca, so we work until we perfect how many grams of each item our pan de yuca contains. One day, around 03:00, we came up with the ideal recipe and from there we moved on with that recipe, which is the one we use to this day," says Pedro.

They were doing well with weekend sales at the markets, but they felt it was time to move forward even though they weren't sure how, and it was the pandemic that gave them the impetus for Nativus to take off. Approximately in March 2020 they began making more posts on Instagram and promoting their products to groups of Ecuadorians, that was enough for them to immediately have hundreds of orders. "We started by working in a certified kitchen, which is where we prepared everything for the markets. From that little kitchen we prepare at least 35,000 yuca loaves in a very short time," says Pedro. They took the orders, made the products, and on Saturdays they went from West Palm Beach to Miami to deliver them. They remember that there were nights when they almost slept in the kitchen because, in order to meet this great demand, they had to work in the early mornings. Pedro and Diana do not narrate those moments with discouragement. On the contrary, they emphasize that receiving order after order was the best evidence that their products were liked and had a huge reception.

Producing and marketing cassava bread ceased to be a casual thing to become his second job, so Pedro proposed to the others that they leave their main jobs for everyone to focus 100 percent on Nativus. To grow they needed more investment, so they sought out Giorgio Schiovane, an American who had previously approached them to offer financing, but they did not accept because they did not feel ready. They sold him 15% of the company. Thus, the main Nativus team was made up of Diana, as Marketing Director; Pedro, as CEO; Rafael, as production director; Érick, as chief technology officer; Giorgio, as an investor, and Denisse Linares, who also supports them in the marketing area.

The Nativus team does not stop dreaming big and has defined what its next steps will be. Soon they will launch a web page so that their customers can make their orders more easily; At the end of August they will open an island in the Palm Beach Outlets and hope to do the same later in busy malls in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and thus continue to expand throughout the United States. They are also working to distribute their products through US supermarkets such as Whole Foods or Walmart and continue with home deliveries, which they carry out in South Florida. Currently they already have a mass production center, with the equipment and personnel necessary to produce their products in large quantities. "We started by making pan de yuca with our own hands, we ourselves made the pan de yuca balls and froze them. Now we have a machine that produces 6,000 to 8,000 pellets per hour, something that before we could not even do with an army in an hour," explains Pedro. "If you ask me how I see Nativus in five years, with all the love we have given it and the good product that it is, my dream, and I know it is the dream of my colleagues, would be to reach Disney and that the children they are eating pan de yuca while they are in the amusement parks, and children not only Latinos, but also North Americans. For me that is a dream and it is a goal that we have, that the North American falls in love with this tradition," expresses Diana.

In addition to selling a product, they say that what they are looking for is to deliver a different experience to their customers. That is why they made a collaboration with the Ecuadorian artist Gabriel Cozzarelli, who is in charge of the creative theme and art of the brand. He has created over 30 characters that appear on Nativus glasses, cases, packaging and more. Diana explains that they want to create a connection with their consumers. So far, they consider that their strategies to get closer to their customers have worked and this is shown by the messages they receive daily on their Instagram account. "There are people who cannot go to their country (Ecuador) and literally, almost crying, they write us very emotional paragraphs," they say. They also have some stories very much in mind. One of them is Ralph, a Puerto Rican who bought ten packages of pan de yuca every week and they delivered it to his home, but last December they stopped receiving his orders. Three months later they received a message from Ralph's cell phone, but it was his wife who was writing. The wife wrote, 'Ralph died in December and they don't know everything I've done to find his number, to be able to contact them and ask for pan de yuca, because he served me pan de yuca and coffee for breakfast every day and that's what more reminds me of him.' Now she is the one who asks for pan de yuca," says Diana. Diana and Pedro agree that it fills them with full satisfaction to know that Nativus is successful because of its quality, but also because it is not only a business, but there are emotions and moments around its products. This motivates them to keep working hard for their goal: bringing yogurt and pan de yuca to every corner of the United States.

https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/ecuador/nativus-el-emprendimiento-de-un-grupo-de-ecuatorianos-que-busca-popularizar-el-pan-de-yuca-en-los-ee-uu-nota/

28/06/2021

28/06/2021

www.losandesecuador.com
By David Sasaki

More than 70 years ago, on the night of February 12, 1949, Martians invaded Quito. At the time, Quito was a small city with around 250,000 inhabitants. One of the main sources of entertainment was the radio. In 1949, programming executives at Radio Quito, in search of cutting-edge entertainment, decided to air an Ecuadorian version of "War of the Worlds." It didn't matter that Orson Welles aired a program in the US in 1938, creating widespread panic and leading thousands to believe that invading Martians were spreading death and destruction throughout New Jersey and New York. The panic persisted despite an announcement at the top of the broadcast that this was just a dramatization of the H.G. Wells classic story. But 11 years later in Quito, the broadcasters made no such announcement.

On that fateful night most of Quito’s homes were tuned in to Radio Quito when suddenly, an announcer broke in with urgent news. He said that Martian flying saucers had landed in Latacunga. Breathlessly, he proclaimed that Martians with their "death rays" had destroyed Latacunga and that the alien hordes were now headed for Quito. A reporter then did a remote report from Cotocollao, relating how the Martians had overtaken the Ecuadorian Air Force base and destroyed it. The report ended abruptly as the reporter gasped for air as a cloud of "deadly gas" enveloped him. Another supposed reporter, claiming to be on top of a bank building, which at six stories was the tallest in Quito, described the "monsters" wreaking destruction on their path toward the city. To add to the realism of the event, actors impersonating government officials issued communiqués asking women and children to evacuate the city and able-bodied men to remain to fight the invaders.

Panic overtook Quito. Police and firefighters were dispatched to the airport area to confront the aliens. The cadets at the military school were ordered to take battle positions along the perimeter of the campus. Men, women and children, still in their night clothes, took to the streets. Some tried to leave the city, while others sought shelter in the many churches that opened their doors. Convinced that this was the end of the world, thousands tried to confess their sins to overwhelmed priests. One priest allegedly instructed a group of faithful to confess their sins aloud so that he could grant them a mass absolution. Many did so and confessed to infidelities and other transgressions within hearing distance of their spouses and neighbors.

It took a while but finally the programming executives at Radio Quito realized that their re-creation of Orson Welles’ "War of the Worlds" stunt had gone too far. They announced that this was a dramatization, that it was all fiction, that there were no Martians and Quito was safe. Then, the real tragedy began. Instead of calming people, the announcement fueled tremendous outrage among the populace. A mob marched to the building that housed both Radio Quito and the main Quito newspaper, El Comercio. They threw rocks and some brought gasoline and set the building on fire. In their fury the rioters did not take into account the one hundred or so innocent people who were working in the newspaper offices and the radio station. The firefighters and police were delayed in arriving because they had to make their way back from the airport area where they had gone to fight off the Martians. The fire was finally put out, but the building was destroyed. The casualty figures vary, some accounts put it at six, Time magazine’s count is fifteen and other publications go as high as twenty dead.
This story is from Cecilia Alvear, an Ecuadorian journalist who grew up in Quito.

12/06/2021

l Mijines, Richie lo logró 🚴‍♂🇪🇨. https://bit.ly/3gmzzSh

12/06/2021

23/05/2021

www.losandesecuador.com
By David Sasaki
You might not think of Ecuador as a grape producer, but production and exports are on the rise. The grape season in Ecuador is from July to December every year, and there is optimism among producers for 2021, regarding production, internal consumption and export of the fruit, despite because it is a young product in the country. And it is that only ten years have passed since in 2011 Ecuador made its first shipment to an international market, Colombia. Currently its main destination market is England, which in 2020 received 250 tons, followed by the European Union, which imported 166.5 tons, and in the last two years 15% of the production has been exported annually to Europe, according to figures from the Association of Grape Producers of Ecuador (Apruec), a recent union, formed in 2018 and that currently represents five table grape producing companies, a segment that covers 80% of production At the national level, the remaining 20% ​​are grapes destined for the production of wine. Other destinations for Ecuadorian grapes are the Netherlands, Russia, Dubai and Qatar.

Anthony Escudero, director of Apruec , points out that 80% of the national production is concentrated in the province of Santa Elena and that currently eight table grape varieties are being developed for commercial purposes at the national level: RedGlobe, SweetGlobe, Arra 15 and 32 , Allison, Ivory, Jack Salute, Sweet Celebration, although he acknowledged that the industry in Ecuador is still developing. The country has almost 200 hectares of grape crops, compared to others in the more developed region, such as Peru with 25,000 hectares and Chile with more than 50,000, the latter with more than 100 years of production and the main supplier of grapes for the Ecuadorian domestic market, which last year received more than 14,800 tons from that country, which contributed 77% of the total grapes that arrived in Ecuador from abroad. An analysis carried out in conjunction with the public sector in 2019 revealed that the per capita consumption of grapes in Ecuador was 1.13 kg / year and that between 2019 and 2020 there was an increase of 20.13% in imports of table grapes from Chile, the United States, Mexico and Italy. "This indicates that Ecuador has been a country accustomed to consuming imported goods, that is why seeing national grapes in markets or supermarket racks causes a certain impression on the consumer. You get a fresh product after being harvested," says Escudero, who also highlights that Ecuador's production and export figures are also on the rise.

In 2020 Ecuador exported 557.58 tons of grapes, 29.88% more than in 2019 when 429.30 tons came out. Regarding production, it is estimated that this year will be 3,000 tons, from 500 to 600 tons more than in 2019, which feeds the expectations of the industry that so far this year has already developed a program of eight containers for local sale, an estimated 18,250 boxes, Escudero said. One of these companies is San Lucar , from the province of Santa Elena, which provides fruit to national clients such as Corporación Favorita (Megamaxi, Supermaxi, Gran Aki, Aki, etc.), where the wholesale market reaches directly, Portal, and Tía through wholesalers, according to Juan Donoso, agronomist manager of the firm, which internationally exports to Germany, Austria, Russia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, companies in the sector are constantly looking for new markets to place the fruit and also take care of those that have managed to open, indicates Escudero, who points out that one of the challenges to stay is to substitute or diversify chemical products with those of organic composition in their processes production, since the phytosanitary requirements of destination countries, such as Europeans, require minimizing the use of chemicals or reducing the doses of certain molecules. "National production is based on conventional and sustainable agriculture. The farms have Global GAP and Tesco certifications. Additionally, our exports to the European Union have complied in the last two years with the requirements of maximum residue limits (MRLs) that are imposed in the Regulation of the Commission of the European Parliament," says the director of Apruec. In addition, they also have the state certification of Good Agricultural Practices (PBA). Agrocalidad delivered two certifications, in December 2020, to the production companies Agrifrutti and Quilziolli , also located in Santa Elena.

Donoso agrees with the union leader, and says that in order to reach the best markets it is necessary to carry out pest and disease control strategies among chemical, organic and biological products. "We seek to meet the demands of national and international clients, who want a fruit with a low residual chemical load, this because every day consumers want a product that is more friendly to health and the environment," explains the manager and agronomist from San Lucar, who nevertheless rules out that the company seeks to produce 100% organic grapes. He indicates that these are different farms, although it recognizes that an organic product has a higher value and the consumers of these products have purchasing power above the average. "Any organic product is more expensive than a conventional one, and not everyone is willing to pay more," says Donoso, who says they always want to work as little as possible with chemical products. Escudero also discards this alternative, and says the producing farms are focused on traditional agriculture and at the moment there is no interest in producing organic grapes on a commercial scale in the country, because it is necessary to combat certain pests and fungi with agrochemicals and the cost it would be very high. However, they are looking to diversify varieties. Escudero indicates that one of the member companies develops a Test Block of one hectare in which there are more than 20 varieties under investigation to analyze their adaptation and development to the climates and soils of the Santa Elena area, in order to continue with the development and increase of the surface of the varieties that are reflected profitable to produce in Ecuador. Photo courtesy: Association of Grape Producers of Ecuador

https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/economia/produccion-y-exportacion-de-uvas-de-mesa-van-en-aumento-en-ecuador-nota/

13/04/2021

www.losandesecuador.com
By David Sasaki

Today, Cuenca celebrated 464 years since its founding in 1557 by Gil Ramírez Dávalos. The domes of the New Cathedral were lit in red and yellow, the city's colors. During a ceremony in the Old Cathedral, Mayor Pedro Palacios handed over the folded Cuenca flag to the Archbishop of Cuenca, Marcos Pérez Caicedo, as a kind of sign for the city to be spiritually protected.

https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/ecuador/cuenca-celebra-sus-464-anos-de-fundacion-con-misa-de-accion-de-gracias-entregas-florales-y-anuncios-de-obras-nota/

13/04/2021

www.losandesecuador.com
By Martin Carrión

Cotopaxi gave us all its splendor yesterday and we were able to enjoyed it and take photos for hours. — at Hostería Tambopaxi Lodge.

12/04/2021

www.losandesecuador.com
By David Sasaki

The statue of the Virgen de El Panecillo is one of the most recognized landmarks in Quito. Construction on the statue began in 1971. It's made of 7,400 aluminum pieces and is the work of the Spanish artist Agustín de la Herrán Matorras, who based his work on the 30-centimeter Virgen made by Bernardo de Legarda. The Virgen de Legarda, also known as the Dancing Virgin, now sits on the high altar of the Iglesia de San Francisco. It's considered the crowning work of the renowned Quito School of art. The Panecillo statue is the largest work made of aluminum in the world, with a height of 42.5 meters and weighing 124,000 kilograms. The base is made of concrete and lined with volcanic stone. The aluminum pieces were then shipped from Spain to Ecuador. Assembling the statue was like putting together a huge puzzle. It was finally finished in 1974. The statue was inaugurated on March 28, 1975.

In addition to being called the Virgen de El Panecillo and the Virgen de Quito, and statue is know as the Virgen del Apocalipsis. There is a plaque mentioning this. The Virgen is shown with wings and stomping the Devil, represented by a snake. She holds a chain in one hand. In the capital there is a legend that says: "When you hear the Virgen de El Panecillo make her chains ring loudly, and the snake that is tied to them escapes, it will be the warning of the end of the world." Another legend says that in the heart of El Panecillo, part of Atahualpa's treasure is hidden, which has never been found. It's also said on El Panecillo, there once was a temple dedicated to the Sun god, Yavirac. It was ordered destroyed by the indigenous leader Rumiñahui while resisting the advance of the Spaniards. After the Spaniards took control of the city, the site was used to collect rainwater intended for irrigation of the gardens of the Spanish mansion Bellavista and was later used as a defense site for the colonial troops during the Battle of Pichincha.