21. How I Became a Liberal

21

DORADE AMPUERO

HOW I BECAME A LIBERAL

REMINISCING ON HOW I BECAME a liberal, I am immediately taken back to the days when I was a student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Being a mother of three whose children had gone away to college and a husband away most of the time on business trips, I chose to keep my days busy by taking continuing education courses in economics. Economics at George Mason were based on free market principles, whereas my undergraduate studies in Economics at the University of Guayaquil of Ecuador in the 70s were Marxist. Most of my professors in Ecuador had been Marxists, exiled from Chile after President Allende was ousted from government. Leftist groups, followers of the Soviet Union and China, were struggling to gain control of the university. One of my main textbooks was “The USSR Manual.” We were taught that capitalism was evil and selfish and should be destroyed, but most of the students were working in business firms serving customers to make profits. This was a dichotomy difficult for us to understand.

Shortly after, as a junior student, I attained a Georgia Rotary Student Fund Scholarship to study at a small college in Rome, Georgia. There I earned my bachelor’s degree in Sociology. I returned to Ecuador in 1959 and met my husband, Enrique, who was an agronomist. Enrique obtained a scholarship from Alliance for Progress program in Ecuador to do graduate work at the University of Florida. While in Florida I had the opportunity to do graduate work in Sociology because I felt Economics, as was taught to me, did not serve in explaining how the market works and the nature of the relationship between the individual and the state. After my husband’s graduation in 1965, we returned to Ecuador. There I lived as a typical housewife, raising three children in a Governmental Agricultural Experimental Research Station. My husband was promoted to General Director of the Government’s National Agricultural Research Institute. We moved to Quito, where I worked for a while as assistant to the deputy Minister of Finance. In 1979, my husband was forced to resign from his position upon a change of government. It is commonplace in Ecuador, at the occurrence of a change of government, to oust all past employees and replace them with government party members without regard to qualifications for the job.

Fortunately, my husband’s good standing made him worthy of a Rockefeller Scholarship to teach at Cornell University. We left Ecuador and spent a great year at Ithaca. Shortly after, we moved to Fairfax, Virginia, as my husband began a new job working for the Interamerican Development Bank. By chance, the home we chose to rent after searching for homes in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., happened to be within walking distance of George Mason University. I never would have dreamed of the unintended consequences of this move. Since I lived so close to GMU, I decided to take advantage of this to take economics courses there. I did not intend at that time to follow a formal graduate program, so I enrolled under the continuing education program. My first eye opening experience was a course in Microeconomics taught by Don Lavoie. For the very first time, economics began to make sense. I learned that individuals coordinate their actions in the market following their personal preferences and how freedom promotes the creation of wealth and development. I learned how big government has the power to intervene in the economy and restrict freedom. Don Lavoie introduced me to the most important literature on freedom: Human Action by Mises, the Constitution of Liberty by Hayek, the work of Kirzner, Lachmann, Rothbard, and many young intellectuals of the Austrian School who participated in the weekly seminars at GMU such as Richard Ebeling, Mario Rizzo, Jerry O´Driscoll, and Sudha Shenoy. I leaned a lot from the weekly seminars and from professors such as Karen Vaughn, Walter Williams, Thomas DiLorenzo, Jack High and so many others. Don Lavoie was such a great and stimulating teacher! During the summers, we gather around him in group discussions to read books on hermeneutics, critical thinking, and philosophy. Some of the students that attended these informal group discussions were David Prychitko, Pete Boettke, Steven Horwitz, Susanne Payne, Jerome Ellig, and several others.

When Professor James Buchanan came to George Mason University, I left my continuing education status and applied to enroll as a graduate student, mainly because it was required for taking courses with him. I took his Constitutional Economics and Economics Philosophy course. I found the Public Choice theory complemented very well the Austrian theory because it allows one to analyze the political scenario using the economic tools developed by the Austrians. I remember a very interesting conversation I had with Professor Buchanan after class, accompanying him to the parking lot because he was unfamiliar with the George Mason Campus and I had become a “veteran” after so many continuing education courses there. I fondly remember a group of students asking the Nobel Laureate Professor Buchanan regarding topics on Austrians Economics and him humbly replying, “Ask Dora, she is the expert in Austrian economics.”

In 1985, my husband and I chose to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary at Dartmouth College, where the Cato Institute held three-day seminars about liberty and democracy. We enjoyed the lectures of Professors Israel Kirzner, Leonard Liggio and Ralph Raico among others. I learned the principles that form a free society, how the economy works, and the role of institutions in a democracy. While I was a graduate student, I wrote some papers comparing the economic situation of Ecuador with the developed countries and I clearly discovered how government intervention in the economy was the main cause of Ecuador’s economic underdevelopment, along with other circumstances that only accentuated the problem, such as the discovery of oil in the Ecuadorian jungle and its nationalization in 1975. Large amounts of capital flowed into the government, which used these funds to increase bureaucracy and expand the government infrastructure. Corruption increased. Business people engaged in rent seeking activities instead of improving their businesses.

Armed with what I had learned in GMU, I felt compelled to take action to help disseminate my convictions regarding what was at the root of Ecuador’s economic problems. I asked myself, what can I do to change ideas? When I discussed my concerns with some classmates, they teased me that I would become a free-market preacher in a public park. Fortunately, I discovered there are better ways to promote liberal ideas.

One day, as I walked to class at GMU, I ran into professor Walter Williams. He said to me, “Dora, do you want to attend a Mont Pelerin Society meeting in Indianapolis? It happens I have a grant to invite some students to this meeting.” I accepted it and traveled with my classmate Charles Mensah of Ghana; years later, both of us established think tanks in our native countries. At the meeting, I was surprised to see so many people from around the world sharing libertarian ideas. I met for the first time a group of libertarians, leaders of the liberal movement in Latin America such as Manuel Ayau, Ricardo Zuloaga and Alberto Benegas. Attending the Mont Pelerin meeting inspired me to get involved in the promotion of liberal ideas in my country.

While I was at GMU, I had the opportunity to attend seminars at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. One day, chatting with David Boaz, I told him I was impressed with the work of Cato and commented that I would like to establish a liberal think tank upon returning to Ecuador but I did not know where to start. David told me to contact Alex Chafuen of Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Atlas helps people to establish liberal think tanks all over the world.

At that time Atlas operated on the GMU campus. I spoke with Alex; as usual he was busy and surrounded by books and papers. I introduced myself and asked him for his assistance to start a think tank in Ecuador. He told me he was very busy after returning from a meeting in Mexico and was preparing material for a meeting in Guatemala, which was to be held jointly with the Mont Pelerin Society. He said he would give me an appointment to talk with him next week. But I insisted so much that finally he said, “Come to Atlas for training. First, you are going to assist me in organizing the Guatemala meeting.” During the time I spent in Atlas, I had the opportunity to learn about the work of many free-market institutes all over the world and meet the most important freedom fighters. I learned about success and frustrations from these wonderful people in their daily work to spread liberal ideas. I became well acquainted with the Atlas network of institutes around the world that Sir Antony Fisher, the founder of Atlas, helped to establish.

In 1991 my husband retired from IDB and we returned to Ecuador. Upon settling down, I established the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Economía Politica, IEEP, in an office from my home. The institute bylaws were prepared when I was in training at Atlas. Our first public event was an International Workshop of Atlas held in Guayaquil. This event was a good initiation for the institute because important business people, politicians, journalist and academicians attended the seminar. Atlas support to IEEP during this decade has been crucial in accomplishing our objectives and helping us to keep in contact with people from other institutes who are doing the same type of work. We have also had received financial support from Foundation Francisco Marroquin and Earhart Foundation for seminars and courses to teach basic economics for university and high school students.

We had organized seminars and workshops to discuss the more important issues affecting the Ecuadorian society, such as constitutional reforms, free trade, the moral basis of capitalism, reforms to social security, property rights, government and corruption, democracy and liberty. IEEP has a monthly publication to spread liberal ideas among business people, academia, journalists and students. Our institute is part of the International Freedom Network and the Fundacion Internacional para la libertad. In 2001, I was elected a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

When I returned to Ecuador we did not find people who believe in liberal ideas. No other liberal think tank existed in our country. The liberal concept was associated with the traditional liberal party which is really a social democrat party. At the beginning it was very difficult to attract 20 persons to attend a seminar; now we have had 500 participants. A similar number of people receive our publications.

It is difficult to influence decision makers. Progress in the battle for the ideas is one step after another. Your gains are very small, and the frustrations are great when you try to change collectivist ideas. One of our significant contributions was to participate in a campaign to officially adopt the dollar of the United States as a substitute for our local currency for over a century, the sucre. Ecuadorians had lost all confidence in the sucre. The banking system was in crisis. The government had frozen all savings and deposits. The sucre was devaluated 289 percent in the period between 1998 and 2000. A small group of economists and IEEP proposed dollarization as a policy to stop the monetary crisis. In a desperate decision, President Mahuad decreed dollarization in January 2000 to stop the political and economic debacle. IEEP asked Kurt Schuler, a well-known economist and classmate of mine at GMU, to come to Ecuador to give a seminar on how to implement dollarization in Ecuador and also to carry out a study to give the technical support necessary for establishing the new monetary system. After three years of dollarization, all the economic indicators are positive. The economy is growing at the highest rate in Latin America.

Besides Kurt Schuler, another classmate from the GMU days, Dr. Lydia Ortega, has done several studies about the cost of government for us and spent a period as a visiting scholar at the IEEP.

Reflecting back after all that has transpired since my first class with Dr. Lavoie to my present work at the institute, the fact that I became a liberal without any planning catalyzed a series of unintended consequences that have been extremely beneficial to myself, my family and my country.

Dora de Ampuero is executive director of the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Economia Politica, Guayaquil, Ecuador.