The crowd was of such magnitude that it seemed like selling tickets for a massive concert. Taylor Swift or the typical human avalanches in soccer stadiums. Thousands of young people gathered last Thursday at the Mall del Río shopping center, in Guayaquilto submit their resumes in search of work in a hypermarket that will open in the coastal city.
The lines went up and down the escalators and occupied several blocks in the surrounding area, amid chaos, crushes and even fainting. Arms were raised in the crowd to show the yellow envelopes with the resumes inside.
Desperation has spread among part of the Ecuadorian youth in the face of lack of job opportunities. It is demonstrated not only with the human tide on Thursday, but also with those who flee every day through the Darién jungle towards the Río Bravo border. After the Venezuelans, they have become the South Americans who most zealously seek to achieve promised land from North.
These and other young people, the majority in the country, are the ones who today will decide the destiny of Ecuador at the polls. “We young people trust you when they said Daniel Noboa has 2% (of support in the polls before the first round). We don’t stop believing in you, don’t forget our faces. We young people trust you“repeated a young indigenous man a few meters from the National Democratic Alliance (ADN) candidate during one of his end-of-campaign rallies.
And the centrist leader, one of the great surprises of the electoral year in the Americas, bet his electoral strategy on the employment and security dichotomy, with special focus on young people. There are plenty of reasons: a quarter of the electorate has not turned 30, among them more than 600,000 16 and 17 year olds who can already vote; The range up to 40 takes another good part of the electorate.