Alfonso Morales

Making a Difference in Ecuador


By Max Paul Friedman

Alfonso Morales
Alfonso Morales

Tucked into the green mountains of Ecuador, the little town of Baños has long attracted visitors from all over the world who come to enjoy the reputedly curative waters that bubble up from its thermal springs. Today, thanks to the hard work and vision of Alfonso Morales, a different kind of healing is transcending the limits of the past.

Ten years ago, when Morales injured his spinal cord in an army truck accident, the young soldier thought that a grim life lay ahead of him. In a country with many social problems and few resources to address them, the attitude of most Ecuadorians toward people with disabilities is, “Why can’t they just sit at home?” In fact, many do. The brightly-colored beauty of Baños, the red tile roofs of its villas and the scarlet bougainvillea spilling down its whitewashed walls mask an infrastructure fraught with obstacles: Public transportation is inaccessible everywhere in the country except for a single trolley line in the capital, Quito; city streets are crowded with traffic; sidewalks are narrow and potholed; elevators rare, ramps and curb cuts rarer still.

Morales knew he would face prejudice and misunderstanding because he shared many of the same attitudes as his fellow citizens. “I always thought disabled people were just getting in the way,” he said. “I pitied them, but I couldn’t understand why they would want to be seen in public. After my accident, I didn’t want anyone to see me, either.”

Change of Heart
That all changed when he was sent to Cuba for rehabilitation. In Ecuador, when doctors had urged him to try exercises to regain some mobility, Morales rejected their advice with bitterness: “You tell me to do this and do that–but it’s easy for you to say, you can walk!” But in Cuba, his physical therapists were disabled themselves. When they told him he could learn to transfer easily and get around in a wheelchair by himself, he believed them because they were speaking from experience.

Morales not only learned wheelchair basics, but over the next few years he became a champion swimmer and wheelchair racer, training hard in the 9,000-foot-high uplands of Ecuador and representing his country at international athletic meets in Central America and the United States.

However, Morales is not solely dedicated to sports. He’s also an enthusiastic salsa dancer. Rocking his chair back and forth until well after midnight, dancing with outstretched arms and a big grin on his face, he calls out to another couple doing more conventional steps: “I wish I could dance like you”–already laughing at his own joke–“but the problem is, I have new shoes on!”

With his newfound perspective and ambition, Morales turned to the problems of his hometown. Just like in communities all over Latin America, many people with disabilities feel isolated and face obstacles to the basics of finding housing, work, transportation and medical care. Morales joined with several other disabled adults to provide support for one another. They created FUVIRESE–the Spanish acronym for the Foundation for Life, Reality and Service–and immediately tackled a wide range of projects.

With the closest schools for children with physical and mental disabilities at least an hour away on an inaccessible bus, FUVIRESE and a group of mothers pooled their money to hire a special education teacher for a few hours a day. From this humble beginning grew a center for physical therapy, rehabilitation and childhood development, with a full-time staff, three volunteer health workers from the Peace Corps, and more than 60 patients. If more sources of funding can be found, FUVIRESE hopes to establish a spinal cord injury rehabilitation program like the one in Cuba that helped Morales–to spare Ecuadorians the expense of getting treatment abroad. “Eighty percent of disabled people in Ecuador are poor,” Morales says. “That remains the principal difficulty we face.”

With the help of Whirlwind Wheelchairs International, the organization runs a workshop to manufacture and repair wheelchairs using a prototype for Third World countries developed at San Francisco State University, one that requires no expensive imported parts and is suited to the rigors of dirt roads. FUVIRESE now gets repair orders from all over the country and produces other mobility equipment–the workshop has modified vehicles with hand controls. Many of FUVIRESE’s paid staff members are themselves disabled, from the administrators to the messenger and driver. Others are parents of children with disabilities who need the income because health insurance for most people is nonexistent.

Morales for Mayor?
Baños draws tens of thousands of tourists each year, and 5 percent of them are disabled or chronically ill visitors who hope to find relief in the warm waters of the public pools. “Without making a judgment about the healing properties of the waters,” says Morales diplomatically, “we can certainly make a difference to the quality of their visit.” FUVIRESE has helped get ramps installed in the baths, put up helpful signs and distributed information about accessible facilities to tourists.

Without broader support from society and government officials, the energy of FUVIRESE members is required to keep things going. After the town agreed to designate several disabled parking spaces, it took a consciousness-raising session between FUVIRESE and the traffic police to convince them to enforce the parking restrictions. Volunteers and local businesses made curb cuts on the sidewalks of the main street and put ramps in buildings, making Baños the only city in Ecuador providing accessibility for wheelchairs in a comprehensive manner. But keeping the parking spaces painted with a blue wheelchair symbol so they won’t be blocked was too much to ask of city officials. Every two years, Morales goes around to the hardware stores, gets a gallon of paint here, a couple of brushes there, and spends a night repainting the curb cuts with a few friends. “You have to choose your battles,” he says.

Morales’ achievements have not gone unnoticed; his charisma and affable manner have made him one of the most recognizable figures in Baños. To roll through the central plaza with him is to stop every dozen yards so he can greet another friend; to drink a beer with him at a sidewalk café is to watch a constant parade of townspeople clap him on the shoulder and say “Hey, Alfonso, what’s happening?” After two days of this, I joked that I was going to start calling Morales “Mr. Mayor.” “Actually, you’re not so far off,” he replied. “I’m thinking of running for city council.”

Max Friedman is a freelance writer and former producer for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.


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