JEFFREY BECOM: THE PAINTED VILLAGES OF ECUADOR

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

This small village holds one of the largest indigenous markets in the country. It has hosted a working regional marketplace since long before the Spanish arrived. Thursday market begins before dawn in the cold mountain air and is wrapped up by the warmth of mid-day. Everything from lowland bananas to highland llamas, herbal remedies to dentistry, canaries to carrots, and woven cloth to dried shrimp are presented in a sprawling string of specialized plazas spreading out from the center of this old Colonial town.

No matter the plaza— animal, potato, grain, poncho, bird, or herb—the bundled-up sellers encourage the curious with the ubiquitous line, “Come to me, come to me, what do you want?”

The sheer diversity of potatoes and legumes in every size and color is astonishing. Local specialty foods are plied, including lamb-skull broth, cow-hoof soup, and the ever-popular delicacy: boney, gamey, simultaneously dry and greasy grilled guinea pigs.  Guinea pigs were the main source of meat before cattle were introduced by the Spanish. Cuy remains a status symbol because meat is a luxury. The animal market is a mix of mud and manure, shrieking pigs, and bellowing cows, crowing roosters and bleating lambs. Serape-clad cowboys atop sturdy horses drive cattle, while barefoot women lead their four-footed charges on ropes, pulling, pushing, and kicking the reluctant or chasing the runaways.

In the poncho plaza, textiles fill every horizontal and vertical space with brilliant color, texture, and pattern. Seamstresses pedal Singer treadle machines and spin their lamb’s wool thread. The variety of red ponchos—solid or striped—along with woven and embroidered designs on belts, skirts, and shawls give clues to each village of origin.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

Sigsig is one of a group of indigenous craft villages south of Cuenca. Its cluster of low, multi-hued, traditional adobe homes line narrow cobblestone streets leading down to an icy mountain river. Lush green hills push up against the town, providing fertile land for cultivating vegetables and pasturing a few cows and sheep.

Sigsig is a center of panama hat weaving. Most of Sigsig’s hats are ultimately transferred to Cuenca to be finished and sold. Six days a week while the men work the fields, the women of Sigsig sit weaving hats in the cool of their courtyards, giving this village the eerie feel of a ghost town. On Sunday market days, however, the culture of weaving moves outdoors. Women continue to weave as they sell chickens and eggs, barter for potatoes and beans, talk on street corners, or sit in the park. Wherever they are and whatever else they are doing, their hands know which of hundreds of straws to grasp and twist so that the hats seem to grow magically, without effort or thought.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

Riobamba, the quiet, provincial capital of Chimborazo Province, is set in the very center of Ecuador at a 9,000-foot elevation. Roads into this town snake through high Andean passes and fertile river valleys, affording dramatic views of three volcanoes. Riobamba sits on unusually flat terrain that allowed for the favored Spanish-grid layout of wide avenues lined with imposing, stone-fronted buildings. The town is mostly low and solid, the result of wisdom gained from earthquake-prone geography. In fact, the original location of Riobamba had to be abandoned due to temblores. Today’s Riobamba was finally settled in 1558, long after most Spanish Colonial towns were founded.

No matter the owner’s wealth or era of construction, urban homes in Riobamba follow the traditional Spanish plan of a simple, relatively unadorned street façade set with a plain door leading to a concealed courtyard. Filled with gardens and private life, this courtyard accesses living quarters for both residents and livestock.

The richly painted walls of this small adobe house belie the modest means of the owners. Fresh paint is all that is needed to express that this family takes pride in and pleasure from their home. At the same time these colors transform their typical, humble dwelling into a uniquely personal possession. Just beyond their forest green entry door is a courtyard filled with potted plants, flowering vines, caged songbirds, and an even more vibrant combination of colors on the patio walls.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

Perched in the mountains near Guamote, Alausí spills down to the steep Río Chanchan Valley. Incessant birdsong accompanies every step taken here past centuries-old buildings that line the narrow, stepped streets and alleyways to a small but famous train station whose tracks drop sharply to the coast.  

This railroad, known as the Nariz del Diablo or “Devil’s Nose,” is an audacious early 20^th-century engineering feat accomplished by a series of switchbacks down the treacherous mountainside. Beneath its tracks lie the tombs of many slaves brought from Jamaica to dynamite the mountains, inspiring legends of witches’ curses and ghosts.

In contrast to the quiet, traditional feel that permeates this mountain village, many of its local young men prove their machismo by riding atop the roofs of the swaying antique train cars as they clatter downhill. They seem somehow impervious to the rickety bridges that traverse steep ravines as the smoking beast drops precipitously down the cliff face.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

Cliff-top Cuenca is Ecuador’s third largest city, encircled by cloud forests alive with tropical birds and bordered by the rushing Tomebamba River and its tributaries. Founded centuries before the arrival of both the Inca and the Spanish, Cuenca was a Cañari settlement by 500 A.D. called “Land as Big as Heaven.” The Spanish renamed it Cuenca, because its steep site reminded the Conquistadores of their beloved Spanish city, Cuenca. Today, despite a UNESCO World Heritage designation for its intact Colonial center lined with old adobe and stone houses, tile roofs, cobblestone streets, and 16^th and 17^th century churches and monasteries, Cuenca still retains a provincial, insular feel.

The indigenous peoples of Ecuador have been weaving hats since long before the Spanish conquest. In the early 20^th century Cuenca became the center of the Panama hat industry, so called because these hats became wildly popular with Panama Canal laborers as a shield from the pounding tropical sun. When these workers returned to the United States, they brought their hats with them; and forevermore the hats were linked to Panama instead of their true country of origin.

Made from the fibers of the coastal toquilla palm, the hats continue to be woven by hand in the villages surrounding Cuenca. They are then blocked and formed in Cuenca workshops on antiquated steam machines. The highest quality hats are woven as tightly as fine fabric. This makes them so flexible they can be pulled through a wedding ring unharmed, as hat vendors are quick to demonstrate. I bought my last Panama hat in a small shop located down a long run of stairs below Cuenca’s historic town center. In this market area frequented by locals, the prices are lower and more of the profits return to the weavers.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

Tixan is among several small towns stretching along a flat, intensely cultivated river valley south of Riobamba, just downhill from the Pan-American Highway. This is an area that has been known for the mining of sulfur, copper, and gold since pre-Inca times. Today there is no evidence that any of this mineral wealth has found its way to the people of Tixan.

This rural, insular town of small adobe cottages and even smaller shops holds little for any traveler but me. I am always looking for painted color and traditional village life, and I find both in abundance here. Tixan was one of many surprising discoveries I encountered as I made my way down the spine of the Andes, exploring every Highland village along the way. 

Wherever I go, I always ask, “Why do you paint here when some of your closest neighboring villages do not?” No one has an answer beyond “That’s just the way it has always been—es custumbre.”

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

An hour-long bus ride north of Cuenca along the Pan-American Highway lies the small Sunday market town of Cañar. This is the center of native Cañari culture whose members have lived in these surrounding mountains for centuries before the Spanish arrived. The Cañari people once ruled much of northern Ecuador. For years they bitterly fought against Inca rule until they were finally brought under control through the marriage of a Cañari princess to the Inca emperor. Not far from town sit the mortarless granite walls of the largest remaining Ecuadorian Inca ruins known as Ingapirca. Most of this site is now just a low ruin, because locals have used it as a stone quarry for nearly five hundred years.

A warm rain was falling when I last visited Cañar. The air smelled of pine and eucalyptus. Heavy fog never lifted that day, but this did nothing to slow the weekly market activities. All village market transactions are a quiet affair, with bargaining conducted in whispers, at least until the cassette seller arrives blasting a weird mix of local Kichwa folksongs and foreign hip hop tunes.

Most Cañari women still wear their regional costume of embroidered skirts pulled on over layers of petticoats and topped with lace blouses, heavy knitted sweaters, high socks, and bowler-style hats—a swirl of bright, contrasting colors set against a backdrop of multi-colored walls and the intensely green Andean patchwork of fields and forests. The men are more subdued in heavy black wool ponchos over white shirts and short white pants, with dark felt hats and utilitarian rubber boots.

Cañar’s cobblestone streets are lined with small adobe houses clad in vivid colors. Some front doors open up as a tiny tienda offering the few basic products that cannot be made at home, plus simple luxuries like bottled soda pop and hard candies. Throughout Ecuador, all other needs including news and gossip are met at the weekly outdoor market.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

On a clear day, traveling south along the Pan-American Highway from Quito, nine of Ecuador’s ten highest peaks can be seen on the sixty-mile trip to Latacunga. An early Colonial center overlaid onto a pre-Inca settlement, Latacunga (“Land of My Choice”) has been continually rebuilt as repeated volcanic earthquakes have flattened the town. Modern Latacunga is a small, quiet provincial capital at 9,000 feet above sea level set into a barren, pumice-covered tableland that is loomed over by the snow-capped cone of Cotopaxi Volcano.

Small indigenous villages surround Latacunga where locals continue to use llamas to transport their goods to markets. Each village holds to its own unique customs, crafts, foods, and festivals. These are truly isolated villages, accessible only by one daily bus or by long hikes through the volcanic hills, around deep crater lakes, and past rich, green cow pastures. I could not find even the most basic services along my way; even bottled water was a rarity. The climate is cold and windy here, as mountain air sweeps down from the surrounding volcanic heights.

During the largest gathering of the region, the rebuilt center of Latacunga with its simple, painted street façades is closed to celebrate La Fiesta del Mama Negra. Officially in honor of the Virgin de las Mercedes, this festival is only outwardly Christian, with many pre-Columbian vestiges. The indigenous looking statue of Mama Negra (Black Mother) is venerated as Patroness of Volcanos. She is said to have stopped a major eruption in 1742. The Fiesta is a lengthy parade of colorfully costumed dancers representing Inca warriors, black slaves, and of course, Mama Negra on horseback spraying the crowd with “mother’s” milk.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

The old provincial capital Ambato was last destroyed and rebuilt as a modern city after a 1949 earthquake. Since 1999 the looming Volcano Tungurahua has been continually erupting, keeping locals on edge.

A rare instance of big city life in the Andes, Ambato boasts cultural sophistication, museums, and concert halls. But facing the main plaza, the Natural Sciences Museum is an 18^th-century throwback to the age of scientific exploration and the explosion of discovery and classification of exotic plants and animals. Its cabinets of curiosity are filled with jars of two-headed creatures, tattered stuffed jungle reptiles, and tropical birds covered in thick layers of dust, all with cracked skin and molting feathers.

Known as the “Garden of Ecuador,” Ambato is a major hub for the international flower trade. Its parks are filled with fragrant blooms and its streets, lined with trees. The city is surrounded by orchards and year-round fruit and vegetable cultivation. Everything from coconuts and apples to grapes and mangoes thrive nearby. Sometimes it is possible to guess what lies hidden behind blank urban walls, as with this multi-colored façade where the vigorous cactuses climb high above the owners’ private Eden.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

The small village of Guamote lies at 10,000-feet above sea level in a gently sloping valley south of Riobamba. A warren of brightly painted adobe buildings spills down the cobblestone streets. As with most indigenous Andean communities, local men for centuries have been forced by poverty and lack of options to migrate to large plantations on the coast to work for wealthy landowners at slave wages. 

When these men return, they bring knowledge of a wider world and a variety of building styles with them. Guamote therefore possesses several varieties of traditional village chozas: Half-timbered homes, houses with rough-textured stucco iced over adobe walls, and a scattering of wooden board-and-batten huts more common to the coast. All have one feature in common: They are all dressed in radiant colors.

Built of simple materials, Guamote’s houses are always low, single-level structures with small windows on the street, testifying that this is a fully indigenous community.  There are no Spanish-style courtyard houses here.

With agrarian reforms of the 1960s, many indigenous people have eventually been able to own the land they work. A better standard of living shows in the working- age men now seen in town, in the careful maintenance of their village and its gardens, church, and plazas. It is also apparent in the annual new coats of color on the houses.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

Saraguro, named for the native group who live here, was settled in the 15^th century by elite Inca soldiers who were relocated here from Lake Titicaca in Peru to control this stronghold of rebellious Cañari and Palta tribes. Miraculously, the Saraguro survived the Spanish conquest and prospered.

The town of Saraguro straddles the ancient 3,400-mile Inca Road that joined the Empire along the spine of the Andes. The Saraguro continued to maintain their portion of this stone “highway” under a centuries-old system of shared obligation until the mid-20^th century. Today these proud people are the best-preserved indigenous culture in all of Ecuador, retaining traditions in dress, language, religion, food, building, music, and herbal medicine. They continue to lead a quiet, pastoral lifestyle, sowing potatoes and quinoa in the verdant hills surrounding their town.

The Saraguro are especially known for their distinctive way of daily dress. Both men and women wear their hair in one long single braid. Men wear embroidered black ponchos, knee-length pants, and brimmed black hats. Women don long, black-pleated wool skirts, black shawls, multi-stranded bead necklaces, and broad-brimmed white felt hats with a spotted pattern derived from a local bird’s markings that once signified Inca royalty.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

Situated in the south of Ecuador near the border with Peru, Loja’s lower Andean elevation of 6,500 feet coupled with its proximity to the eastern jungle results in a tropical climate. Torrential rains and landslides frequently swell otherwise placid rivers that crisscross the town, often blocking access and isolating this already remote area.

In 1546 Loja was founded by Conquistadors as a departure point for exploration of the Amazon Basin in their search for El Dorado, the fabled “City of Gold.” A century later Loja was re-consecrated to Saint Sebastián, Patron defender from earthquakes. It did not help. Repeated tremors have left few of the original adobe or stone buildings standing. Nearly the entire town had to be rebuilt in wood in the 19^th-century.

Often referred to as the “Pharmacy of Ecuador,” Loja has long been a center for the investigation of the medicinal properties of tropical plants. This renown dates back to the 17^th-century, when a Franciscan monk cured a dying Peruvian Viceroy of malaria using an extract from the bark of the local quinine tree. Quinine remained the sole effective treatment for malaria for over four centuries.

Today Loja’s streets are lined with wooden façades that would seem more at home on the coast or in the jungle than in the Andes. Color abounds here, an ever-changing collage of brightly painted buildings reflected in slow moving rivers.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

Like all indigenous villages of the former Inca lands, Cotacachi consists of a group of traditional huts little changed in a thousand years. The choza is a simple, single, small adobe room with an open-hearth fire in the center. Chimneys were a Spanish import that never caught on in native villages. Since a choza has no chimney, smoke must find escape by filtering out through thatch or open eaves. Despite the respiratory and vision problems that arise, traditions hold fast.

When the days are warm, household activities can move outdoors; but much of the year in the Highlands, domestic activities all take place within a choza’s four walls: sleeping, cooking, weaving, storage, and prayer. In short, this one room with a single door and a few small, shuttered windows serves as bedroom, kitchen, workshop, closet, pantry, parlor, and temple for the entire family.

The indigenous people of the Andes possess only what they use each day. Corralled livestock and chickens surround their hut. Indoors, drying seed corn and sacks of potatoes and dried beans are strung from the rafters. The furnishings are meager: perhaps a rustic table, a couple of chairs, and some simple bed frames. A few flame-blackened terra cotta pots and a backstrap loom hang on nails from the walls. Bedding is rolled up during the day. Clothing and personal items are either stored in small wooden chests or stacked atop a hand-woven cloth on the cement floor. An alter honoring a favored Saint and treasured ancestors always takes pride of place in the center of one wall. 

Choza upkeep is as cyclical as planting the fields. Annual maintenance and repainting keep the adobe in good repair and are thought to assure that the home is “friendly” to its occupants. Indigenous people believe that a home has a soul, so it, too, needs to be propitiated with care and prayer. Both the choza and its family are sustained through a fresh coat of paint’s annual resuscitation.

Like the burning of their fields after harvest in preparation for replanting and starting anew, choza residents also deal a death blow to the previous year by ritually extinguishing and then relighting their hearth fire. In this way they believe they bring the power and protection of the sun back into each corner of their choza. During the reign of the Inca, the worship of Inti—Lord Sun—was encouraged over the many local cults that spread across its extensive Empire. The Incas considered their king to be Sapa Inca, “son of the sun.” But today, the agricultural goddess Pachamama—Earth Mother—has returned as the central figure of indigenous worship.

Also available: 20 x 30”, edition of 25, over-matted to 30 x 40”, $2,500; 30 x 45”, edition of 10, rolled (no mat), $4,000, or mounted & over-matted to 40 x 55”, $5,000

In the southern Ecuadorian Highlands, the Saraguro people are determined to hold to their own traditional path despite the opportunities and comforts that assimilation into Ladino-Spanish society could provide them. Immediately recognizable by their distinctive everyday dress and language, the indigenous Saraguro pick and choose which parts of the Latin culture to adopt or reject. For example, most Saraguros today raise cattle, but the use of horses is rare; they drive their herds on foot.

Descendants of the elite soldiers of the Inca army, today’s Saraguros celebrate their Inca heritage. They continue to speak Kichwa, a dialect of the official Inca language of Quechua. Historical records attribute their traditional black-and-white clothing to Inca nobility. The women’s wide-brimmed spotted hats recall the curiquingue bird whose black-and-white plumage was a symbol of Inca aristocracy. Both men and women retain their hair in long, single braids, another marker of Inca royalty.

The Saraguro were required by the Spanish to maintain an important tambo (way-station) along a major stretch of Andean Inca road. Unlike the majority of the vanquished peoples of the Inca Empire, the Saraguro shrewdly and successfully argued with the Colonial authorities that the operation and maintenance of the tambo required that they retain ownership of their ancestral lands and its resources. They continued to manage the tambo until the 1940s when a motor road finally reached the area.

While a large proportion of Saraguros still make their living through agriculture and cattle raising, many are now attaining higher levels of education and branching out into new occupations such as law, education, and medicine. Even so, they see no reason to leave the visual symbols and belief systems of their storied past behind.