Ecuaducation

So I've lived in Ecuador for nearly two years now, and this place still boggles my mind. Its diverse landscapes, Incan empire, and colonial legacy have shaped equally diverse cultures that can be tough to pin down. National identity is elusive in Ecuador; to understand its people one has to get familiar with each region, each community. I've found that reading the accounts of authors who've had more time, and perhaps more ability to synthesize all these observations, has helped me to gain greater cultural understanding - of Ecuadorian history and customs, as well as the sources of my own frustrations with the way things are done around here. The reading list below is mandatory for foreigners living in Ecuador, and enjoyable for interested travelers, culture and history buffs, or anyone looking to expand their horizons. Enjoy!
-oriana

Living Poor (1969)
An early Peace Corps account from an unusually astute observer, Moritz Thompsen's 1960s narrative of coastal Ecuador lends progressive awareness and synthesis to the tenacity of desperate poverty. While most of the artisan partners I work with at Andean Collection have emerged from the depths of malnutrition, infectious disease, and violence that define poverty, this narrative sheds light on what their lives were probably like just a generation ago, and helps me to understand how they view their world through that lens. If you like the author's style, check out his even more nuanced sequels, Farm on the River of Emeralds and The Saddest Pleasure.


Savages (1995)
An insightful and compelling account of the Amazonian Huaorani tribe's struggle to maintain rights to their ancestral lands, Joe Kane's work captures sensitivity but avoids sentimentality as it unravels the values, flaws, and determination of an ancient civilization confronting the avarice of the modern world. A memorable read.






The Mapmaker's Wife (2004)
A historical chronicle that reads like an adventure novel, Robert Whitaker narrates the story of the French expedition to map the shape of the earth in the New World (not quite spherical, with a bulge at the equator). It is "a true tale of love, murder, and survival" sweeping from Europe to the Andes to the Amazon in the time of the Spanish conquest. Along the way the story sheds light on colonial Ecuador (then Peru) and its fascinating and abhorrent caste system of Spanish aristocrats, creoles, mestizos, African blacks, and indígenas, the vestiges of which are very much visible in modern Ecuadorian society.


Portrait of a Nation: Culture and Progress in Ecuador (2010)
A good read for those with armchair interest in economics, political science, development, or Latin American studies, this analysis by former Ecuadorian president Osvaldo Hurtado argues that Ecuadorians, like all human societies, are shaped by their environment and their history, and in the case of his country there are many cultural factors contributing to Ecuador remaining poor. In this land of unusual richness of natural resources, the facility of agriculture and and an unlimited supply of indigenous slave labor was combined with colonial politics that prevented upward mobility and prohibited personal freedom. These social conditions ultimately resulted in a society that is low on innovation, creative problem solving, and trust - factors that the author argues will continue to prevent Ecuador from participating in the global economy until a cultural paradigm shift occurs.


The Panama Hat Trail (2001)
A meandering but well researched travelogue that follows the fabrication of Ecuadorian panama hats from the cultivation and harvest of toquilla straw in the coastal regions, to humble weavers in small villages outside Cuenca, to corrupt middle men, hat finishers, savvy exporters and salesmen in the US and Europe, where panama hats were chic, popular and expensive consumer goods for high society in the early to mid 1900s. Along the way, the reader is acquainted with the innerworkings of a typical value chain for handmade goods in developing countries - and the exploitation and profiteering that are enabled by classism and a strong colonial legacy.


The Villagers (Huasipungo) (1934, published in English 1964)
What could be called The Great Ecuadorian Novel, Jorge Icaza's fictional tale in fact recounts a harsh reality that was the life of Andean Indians in colonial times - the injustices of which endure today. A work of social protest, The Villagers is a story set in the Huasipungo era, a system in which an elite minority of whites controlled entire villages of indigenous peasants through forced labor and indentured servitude on huasipungos (plantations, encomiendas or haciendas, large plots of land that were owned and controlled exclusively by Spanish landlords). A significant contribution to Latin American literature, this book is both a historical account and a call for present day social revolution.