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Special Report: The end of the Citizen’s Revolution in Ecuador? (ISSN 17414474)

Profile: Lenín Moreno

Ecuador’s new president is 64 years of age (born 1953), the son of a teacher who was based in the small town of Nuevo Rocafuerte in the Ecuadorian Amazon. He graduated with a degree in public administration from the Quito-based Universidad Central del Ecuador (UCE). Moreno also studied psychology. He had a succession of private and public sector managerial jobs, including roles in marketing and in the tourism industry. In a life-changing incident in 1998 he was the victim of a robbery with violence: two young men stole his car and money in a grocery store parking lot in Quito; as they departed one of them shot Moreno in the back, as a result of which he was left paralysed, bed-ridden and in intense pain. It took four years of therapy for Moreno to recover sufficiently to be able to move around in a wheelchair and resume work as a public servant. This recovery has been widely interpreted as indicative of Moreno’s ability to pursue and achieve a challenging objectives despite dispiriting odds. He used laughter therapy as one of his recovery techniques and subsequently set up Eventa, a foundation designed to promote humour and joy as a way of life. Moreno has published various books on the theory of humour.

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