Cotacachi, Imbabura

June 1, 2011

As a rash of armed robberies of American retirees is showing, Cotacachi is not the paradise pitched to the hundreds of foreigners who have recently arrived to live there, lured by too-good-to-be-true real estate offers (“Live like a king for $400 a month!”). As a dual citizenship American living, working and raising my children in Cotacachi since 1999 I have been extremely concerned with the brazen manner in which real estate developers have entered into the fray here, especially since 2008. Imbabura province is a huge conduit for the narcotics trade and is home to organized crime, drug cartels, thousands of gang members, and increasing levels of violence and delinquency. In fact, as of June, eight gangland murders had taken place in Cotacachi in 2011 alone!

Are the developers who paint such a pretty picture totally ignorant of the social instability that characterizes Cotacachi? Do the foreigners who choose to retire in Cotacachi (to stretch their retirement dollars) realize the negative social, economic, and environmental impacts of their presence? Do they care? Do new foreign residents realize that levels of resentment towards them continue to grow as they are increasingly seen as ignorant, arrogant, and culturally disrespectful?

The purpose of this website is to provide information to foreigners living in (or looking to relocate to) Cotacachi, Ecuador, specifically for the purpose of contradicting many of the falsehoods told by certain real estate companies aimed at selling real estate to American/European immigrants. The purpose of this website is NOT to dissuade Americans/Europeans who want to live in Ecuador from doing so, but simply to explain—more completely than many other sources of information do—what exactly making such a decision should entail to preserve the human, political, and environmental rights of native Ecuadorians in Cotacachi and the surrounding area.

This website has not been created with the purpose of discrediting any specific organizations or people. It is instead meant to be a source of information alternative to other sources that attempt to attract North American seniors to Cotacachi, created in reaction to much of the harm to Cotacachi’s people, economy, and environment that has transpired due to the irresponsibility—though often with innocent intentions—of North American or European immigrants.

This website has been written based on information from personal interviews and research of other, less honest, sources of information about retiring in Cotacachi, Ecuador. To protect the privacy of those interviewed as well as those giving out false information on the Internet, this website refrains from using any specific names or referring to specific enterprises. The creators hope that after being exposed to the information on this site, however, readers will be able to determine which sources of information must be regarded critically and generally avoided during their decision-making process.

Yours in good citizenship,

Peter Shear