Unfinished homes and remesas

Something that has struck me since my first (solo) trip to Ecuador is the "unfinished" quality of the buildings. It's not uncommon to see people living in a building that looks like its second floor is still under construction, or to see parts of the structure obviously protruding, waiting for more work to be done.

I don't have any great pictures, but this kind of shows an unfinished house

I've asked around, and the common opinion is that this is one of the many results of migration. At the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s there was a major banking crisis in Ecuador that ultimately resulted in dolarization (from the now defunct sucre), and 1/6 of Ecuador's population of working age migrated, mostly to Spain but occasionally to the US. That's an enormous chunk of the productive population, and remesas- remittances, or money sent home by migrant workers to their families - now make up Ecuador's second most important form of income (behind petroleum). These remesas are sometimes used to construct homes, open small businesses, send children to school, etc. They are also sometimes used to buy a fancy (barely affordable) truck or car, a big screen TV, or high end fashionable clothes.

What does this have to do with unfinished homes? Families often start to build a house with money sent home by the migrant worker before they have received all of the money necessary to build the house. They assume a more or less steady income sent home, and start planning the home and begin construction. Sometimes parts of the house are left unfinished to allow for expansion when the rest of the money is received or if the migrant has advised that s/he thinks it's likely s/he'll get a raise. This is mostly seen in functional, flat roofs used for hanging out clothes to dry that could become potential floors of a second story. However, other times the house can't be finished because the migrant lost his or her job. With the international financial crisis in 2008 (and Spain and the US's stricter immigration laws around the same time) many migrants lost their jobs, especially if they worked in temporary jobs like construction or household labor. Homes being built in Ecuador had to be halted with the sudden end to income being sent home.

Not all remesa-financed houses are unfinished, obviously. While in Otavalo for the wedding, Amparo pointed out several homes that she said were obviously built with new (likely remesa) money because of their ostentation. While people in the US may "show off" their wealth with expensive materials inside their home (think nice wood floors or marble countertops), here it's important that everyone can see your wealth, so some houses are just absurdly built. Think of big Roman columns in the front, castle-like turrets, fancy details ALL OVER, etc.- all combined together. These houses weren't so much sad reminders of a lost job abroad but rather eclectic demonstrations of success.