Otavalan Women, Ethnicity, and Globalization [1 ed.] 9780826349934, 9780826349910

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D’Amico

Otavalan Women, Ethnicity, and Globalization

Otavalan Women, Ethnicity, and Globalization

Subject isbn 978-0-8263-4991-0

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University of New Mexico Press unmpress.com | 800.249.7737

Linda D’Amico

Otavalan Women, Ethnicity, and Globalization

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Otavalan Women, Ethnicity, and Globalization ((( l i n da d ’ a m i c o

University of New Mexico Press

\

Albuquerque

© 2011 by the University of New Mexico Press All rights reserved. Published 2011 Printed in the United States of America 16   1 5   14   13   12  11   1   2   3   4  5  6 li b r a ry o f c o n g r e s s c at a l o g i n g - i n- p ubl i cati on data D’Amico, Linda. Otavalan women, ethnicity, and globalization / Linda D’Amico. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8263-4991-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8263-4993-4 (electronic) 1. Otavalo Indians—History. 2. Otavalo Indians—Ethnic relations. 3. Otavalo Indians—Social conditions. 4. Indian women—Ecuador—Otavalo Region— Social conditions. 5. Culture and globalization—Ecuador—Otavalo Region. 6. Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews, 1874–1941—Influence. I. Title. F3722.1.O8D35 2011 986.6’13—dc23 2011023527 Subsidy for color plates provided courtesy of Winona State University, Dean of Liberal Arts and Global Studies Department

To Peonia and Ezra

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Contents (((

Acknowledgments | Introduction |

xi 1

Part One chapter one Rosa Lema, Elsie Clews Parsons, and Me in Peguche: Gendered Ethnicity, Interculturalism, and Feminist Methodologies | 6 At the Crossroads with Rosa Lema | 6 Otavaleños, Otavalo, Peguche, and Interculturalidades | 9 Situating Myself in Peguche | 13 60+ Year Update on Peguche | 14 Transcultural and Intercultural Practices | 15 Feminist, Intercultural, and Humanistic Methodologies | 17

chapter two Gendered Globalization in Peguche, 1940 and 1941: Rosa Lema and Elsie Clews Parsons | 23 Auspicious Beginnings | 23 Recuperating Her Stories | 24 The Encuentro: Parsons’s Fieldwork in Peguche (Mining a Rich Anthropological Genealogy) | 34 Ethnicity, Gender, and Culture Change | 35

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contents “I beg the reader . . . to . . . realiz[e] that White and Indian refer not to blood but to ways of life” | 37 Elsie’s Life and Work: The Development of a Classic | 39 Rosita and Elsie | 44 Parsons’s Contributions to Andean Anthropology | 47

chapter three Rosa Lema in New York City, November 1949: Indigenismo Reimagined | 49 “They invited me because of my work” | 49 Pre-Hispanic Otavalo | 52 Colonial Otavalo | 53 Independence: The Emerging Republic | 55 Otavalo and Globalization in the Twentieth Century: The Emergence of Indigenismo as the “Modern” Antidote for “Underdevelopment” | 59 Mamá Rosa in New York City | 64 An Unprecedented Trip: Her Story | 65 “Everyone is nice to me” | 66 Repercussions of Her Story | 72

Part Two chapter four The Cultural Construction of Place: Otavaleñas Integrating Mountains, History, Folktales, Cosmology, and Well-Being Through Practice | 76 Enduring Folktales: Grounding Well-Being in the Andean Landscape | 84 Imbabura Visits Cotacachi | 85 The Mountains Play Ball | 86

Ilumán, 1991: María’s Stone | 88 Peguche, 1993: Marta’s Rainbow and Mermaid | 90 Peguche and Ilumán, 1992: Gladis’s Ritual Cleansing | 93 Mamá Rosa’s Hybrid Approach to Well-Being: Transculturation, Power, and Religion | 98 Interpreting Performances and the Values They Embody | 106

chapter five Otavaleño Foodways: Cultivating Social and Spiritual Networks Through Cuisine, Agriculture, and Ritual | 109 Geography, Native and Nonnative Culitgens, Diet, and Ethnicity | 111

contents

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The Power of Food According to Mamá Rosa, and Change in Peguche | 118 Peguche, 1940s–1964: Luz’s Life History | 122 Peguche Post-Harvest, July 1990: The Parva Performance and the Importance of Social Relations | 130 Peguche, November 1993: Ritual Cuisine and Feeding the Dead | 132 Flavors of Identity and Change | 137

chapter six Designing Transcultural Identities in Local and Global Marketplaces: Peguche, Otavalo, and Beyond | 140 La Feria | 141 Shifting History with Herstories: The Indigenous Fair Awakens the Otavalo Valley | 148 Peguche, 1992–1997: Marta’s Flowers | 150 Peguche, 1989–1990s: Ana Ascending in Business and at Home | 152 Barcelona, Spain, June 2001: A Transcultural Encounter with Isabel Alongside an Anti-Globalization Protest | 157 Barcelona, Spain, 2001: Isabel and the Macroeconomic Forces that Brought Her There | 158 Nested Identities in Transcultural Spaces | 162 New York, New York, 1997–1999: Ricardo, Juana, and Others | 164 Granada, Spain, 2001: Lourdes, Luciana, Marta, and Pacarina | 168 Back to the Future: Living History in Reverse Through Song | 172 Gendered Ethnicity Across Time and Continents | 175 Epilogue: August 12, 2002 | 179 Postscript, March 2010 | 183 Final Postscript, December 2010 | 185

Notes | 187 References Cited | 207 Index | 223 Color plates to follow page 178

Acknowledgments (((

This book is partially based on doctoral research at Indiana University– Bloomington, funded by Organization of American States Fellowships (1989–1990 and 1991–1992), Fulbright Research Fellowship (1990–1991), and an Indiana Center on Global Change and World Peace Research Grant, Indiana University. It is also based on a Wenner-Gren Postdoctoral Fellowship (1999) for research in New York City and rural Pennsylvania, and a Winona State University Faculty Research Grant (2001) for research in Granada and Barcelona, Spain. I am thankful to the generous funding these institutions provided, which supported my research over the years. I am grateful for institutional support in Ecuador from the Instituto Otavaleño de Antropología in Otavalo, the Facultad Latin-Americano de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), Comisión Fulbright in Quito, and the Office of the Organization of American States. The librarians at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia were extremely helpful in opening Elsie Clews Parsons papers, as was archivist Richard Hourahan at the Rye Historical Society in Rye, New York, where the Parsons family documents are housed. In addition, Carolina Mosquera graciously located the photos xi

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acknowledgments

of Galo Plaza and Rosa Lema’s trip to NYC in the archives of the Galo Plaza Foundation in Quito and Zuleta. The librarians at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid also offered their generous assistance in locating documents about the 1892 exposition. In addition, Kendall Larson at the Winona State University Krueger Library offered me assistance, as did librarians at the New York City Public Library. I am indebted to my former professor Anya P. Royce for her generous support and intellectual counsel over the years. Joanne Rappaport has been a model and friend who continues to demonstrate creative possibilities for scholarship and collaboration. Jeanette Sherbondy introduced me to Andean Studies, Lawrence Carpenter was an inspirational Quichua professor, John McDowell demonstrated ways that people’s stories count, and Geoffrey Conrad opened me to the world of Andean archaeology. Bonnie Kendall Bird showed me the possibility of anthropology as a way of life. Anonymous reviewers for University of New Mexico Press gave me valuable insights into reorganizing the manuscript, while Rosemary Zumwalt, Regna Darnell, and Quetzil Castañada provided important suggestions and encouragement in early versions. Kathleen Fine and Marc Becker challenged me to bring disparate parts into a cohesive work. In addition Paul Stoller introduced me to transcultural studies as a part of humanistic anthropology, while Peonia Vázquez-D’Amico’s and Mary Ellen Fieweger’s comments and editorial assistance have made the realization of this book possible. Niamichia Fernández offered valuable insights at the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Society meetings in Morelia, Mexico, in 2007. In addition, Peonia and Ezra Vázquez-D’Amico helped select and edit photos, while Dan Burman and students at the Professional Resource Center, Winona State University, digitalized my slides and snapshots. Peonia turned creative talents into the drawing and maps. The editors at University of New Mexico Press offered generous support to bring this project to completion. Special thanks to Elise McHugh, Elizabeth Albright, Marie McHarry, and Amanda Piell. My friendship with Rosa Lema enriched my life and helped frame much of this study. As a collaborator she constantly offered many insights into her relationship with Elsie Clews Parsons in 1940 and 1941, the substance of which opened a cross-generation transcultural and feminist discourse, evident in the text that follows. Her generosity of spirit, no doubt, also opened other doors for me and my children in the village of Peguche, Otavalo, and Ecuador. All the friends and acquaintances we made during

acknowledgments

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more than eight years in Ecuador continue to enrich us in inexpressible ways, and I am extremely grateful to the many individuals too numerous to name, with the risk of forgetting one of them. Without their assistance, I would never have been privy to the rich and complex stories that comprise and shed meaning upon their lives. I do have to acknowledge Mercedes Cotacachi and her brother Rafael Cotacachi, who instructed me in Quichua. Also, Arvelio Garcia-Rivas supported my ideas while I worked for UNESCO. My many colleagues at the Department of BilingualIntercultural Education (DINEIB) were open and gracious in intercultural collaboration as we worked together in indigenous communities throughout Ecuador, and those experiences sharpened my skills and enriched me. Peter Henderson, Ralph Townsend, Troy Paino, Colette Hyman, Tamara Berg, April Herndon, and other colleagues at Winona State University read or supported various versions or parts of this work and their comments were valuable to me. Other friends who provided me with unwavering support over the years include Cavery Bopaiah, Betti Sachs, Leonore Cavallero, Carlos Zorrilla, Sandra Statz, Diego Falconi, Geovanni Paz, Anga Miller and family, Mieke de Vet, Kathy Siebold, Bob Dover, Carl Ziegler, Marshall Becker, Judith Olmstead, Katie Pastel, Shahyar Daneshar, Margaret Trott, Beckry Abdel-Magid, Juile Chiasson, Bruno Borsari, Joan Schnabel, Jeff Falk, John Campbell, Yogesh Grover, and Gloria McVay. Because of my father’s Italian heritage, I was fortunate to learn as a child some of the delights of cultural difference. My mother, Helen Wallin D’Amico, who passed away in 2008, would be happy to know I completed this work. Her trajectory was unusual for a woman born in 1919. Early and throughout her life she sought out and took advantage of educational opportunities. She worked for the U.S. State Department in various European capitals during World War II, and reinvented careers (including working for Alfred Kinsey as his executive assistant) before marrying my father in Paris in 1949. Later she worked as a teacher and reading specialist, and after she retired, as a journalist. All her life she loved travel, boats, friends, and supporting the arts. Pathways she forged helped to open possibilities for me and my generation. My father’s second wife, Diane Huszagh D’Amico, also showed me creative possibilities for professional women, as she transformed from teacher to archaeologist to lawyer and back to teacher when I knew her. My siblings have been rocks for me during difficult times in my life and I offer Antonia Demas, Dawn Gable, and Bill D’Amico my special thanks.

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My ex-husband Efraín Vázquez Sánchez ensured that I spoke Spanish well and showed me the way into Mexican culture. My children, Peonia and Ezra, were loving companions in our extended sojourn in Ecuador. With them, the cadence of fieldwork was simply transformed into the rhythm, joys, and challenges of daily life. Their generous spirits, love, continued support, and ongoing critiques have motivated me to complete this work.

Introduction (((

\ my residence in ecuador, 1989–1997, coincided with the upsurge in global restructuring and the rise of the indigenous movement (Moreno and Figueroa 1994; Selverston-Scher 2001; Whitten 2003). During that period, I was witness to ways that increased global interconnectedness, compressed distances, and resulted in the rapid exchange of ideas, peoples, goods, information, and technologies. Specifically, my neighbors in Peguche, an indigenous village in the northern Andes, were regularly linked to dozens of countries through commerce, media, and family members abroad. Many responded to new challenges and opportunities by recalibrating intercultural skills with other aptitudes for the twenty-first century. As I became familiar with daily life in Peguche and its relation to regional, national, and global cultures, it was impossible not to recognize the overlay and mixing of diverse cultural frameworks. I began to see Otavalan native culture as dialectic, not only among Otavalans, but also joining them to other Ecuadorians and people from foreign cultures. I mixed with Otavalans repeatedly in varied social situations that challenged us to shift and adapt to new conditions. Through the unfolding lives we 1

2

introduction

lived and often shared, I began to understand how the substance of ethnicity is grounded in relationships having to do with cultural, social, geographical, and historical specificities that are improvised to meet changing realities. This is a book that weaves together those stories. In particular, my friendship with Rosa Lema offered me the serendipitous opportunity to reinitiate a conversation begun in 1940 about women, ethnicity, and change. She was eager to recount her memories of “Señora Elsita,” Elsie Clews Parsons, whose fieldwork in Peguche with Lema laid foundations for the development of feminist anthropology and ethnic studies. My study is a testament to these women’s overlapping lives. As the book argues, some of the details and consequences of their pioneering work and practices provided fresh cultural templates that others built upon creatively in response to globalized phenomena at the end of the twentieth century. I begin by tracing the life of an extraordinary individual as a way to better understand processes of globalization in relation to gender. Born in 1908, Rosa Lema’s life coincided with most of the twentieth century and tells a story of an indigenous woman who actively faced challenges and sought out opportunities in private and public spheres of her life. By following Rosa Lema’s personal history, I am also able to outline the rise of interculturalism as an indigenous ideology, not only in response to globalization processes, but also as the recognition and theory that different cultural groups have things to learn from each other. This theory emphasizes the multi-directionality of cultural change, and reconceptualizes strategies for achieving an inclusive and more equitable society. Indeed, the most critical (and fortuitous) key to framing this book was my route to Rosa Lema (known to me as Mamá Rosa). Her frequent reminisces of Elsie Clews Parsons from 1940 and 1941 and continual insistence upon my collaboration in writing an anthropological update on Peguche, compelled me to think about the consequences of anthropology within contexts of globalization. The fact that Mamá Rosa’s story is entangled with the life and work of Parsons, one of the founding mothers of anthropology, is providential. Their relationship was a harbinger of other kinds of social interactions that proliferated in Peguche at the turn of the millennium. Indeed, Parsons overshadowed my relationship with Mamá Rosa in many ways. By rediscovering Parsons’s work with Mamá Rosa, I learned intercultural and feminist methods that proved to be pivotal for making connections. I ended up taking many cues from their work, in addition to

introduction

3

having the opportunity to redocument Mamá Rosa’s narratives, insights, and instructions. This ethnography takes into account some of the historical and methodological intricacies that played upon one another. In so doing, I learned not only new ways of knowing, but also some of the processes for acquiring that knowledge. Thus, this book demonstrates some of the possibilities that intercultural ventures helped to create and is a tribute to the seminal relationship of Parsons and Lema. It brings an uncanny prescience to ways intercultural processes embody and support transnational realities. Rediscovering Rosa Lema’s voice also adds to the understanding of history from a gendered and ethnic perspective. In addition, by revisiting Parsons’s ethnography, historical depth is added to Rosa Lema’s emergence as an intercultural and feminist pioneer. In chapter one I discuss how I met Rosa Lema and came to do fieldwork in Peguche.1 By explicating and continuing a dialogue through a feminist methodological framework begun by Elsie Clews Parsons, I suggest that the exchange between and across cultures is key to understanding the interrelationship between gender, ethnicity, and globalization. Chapter two gives an overview of the lives and ideas of Rosa Lema and Elsie Clews Parsons. Although she came from another world accentuated with great privilege, Parsons’s life mirrored Rosa Lema’s in the sense that they both were innovators and adept at crossing cultural boundaries. Their association represents the nascent cross-fertilization of gender and interculturalism within what turned out to be the broadening context of globalization that intensified over the century. Many of the social processes that emerged out of this crossroads laid out effective and more equitable paths for women and indigenous people in terms of sociocultural and economic rights. Chapter three documents Rosa Lema’s reflections about her experience in New York City in 1949 as an ambassador for the Galo Plaza government’s cultural mission to promote economic integration. Particularly notable are the historical precedents and the indigenist ideologies that shaped Ecuadorian (as well as those of other states with large native populations) modernization programs, which framed the official purpose of her trip. Chapter four focuses on ways Otavaleños interpret sacred geography and construct history with regard to everyday practicalities that involve health and well-being. Chapter five highlights central tenets of traditional agriculture in relation to foodways and ritual. Chapter six describes the Saturday Fair as a trope for performing identity and offers vignettes of Otavalans in commerce with outsiders and

4

introduction

living transnationally. The epilogue offers a picture of Mamá Rosa in the thick of village life the last time I saw her, in summer 2002. Finally, the March 2010 postscript muses upon the socioecological ethos of reciprocity as the underlying principle of Sumak Kawsay (or Buen Vivir/Well-being), a Kichwa concept that integrates the Rights of Nature and Pachamama with Human Rights in the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution of Monticristi. The final December postscript considers the fact that living multilocally means that you can go home again.

Part One

CHAPTER ONE

Rosa Lema, Elsie Clews Parsons, and Me in Peguche Gendered Ethnicity, Interculturalism, and Feminist Methodologies

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At the Crossroads with Rosa Lema \ mid-morning autumn 1990, I returned to Peguche on a crowded bus from the food market in Otavalo with a large basket of tropical fruits and vegetables. “Food is always a useful gift and fruit is a welcome treat,” was a mantra/maxim I adhered to and shared with many researchers, students, and others who came to my home in Peguche for informal orientation and advice over the years. My notion of private space was shattered every time I pushed my way through bodies crowded together like sardines to get off a bus. It was always a relief to finally stand on the side of the Pan American Highway at the top of the hill overlooking the town of Otavalo as the noisy bus departed in a dark cloud of diesel fumes and dust. On the day in question, several other people managed to get off the bus before I did, including an older woman who seemed to pause before entering the village. She carried a bundle on her back, and in her round face, wrinkled with age, black eyes sparkled with self-assurance. She turned to me, her body bent but strong, and in a way completely out of character for Otavaleña women, who tend to be reserved in the presence

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Chapter One

7

of strangers, began asking questions as we walked along the dusty cobblestone road. In a mixture of Spanish and Kichwa, she asked what I was doing in Peguche. Her curiosity was warranted. Peguche had not yet become a Mecca for tourists seeking authentic indigenous experiences. Gringos1 were few and far between, and those who did find their way to the village were not carrying heavy baskets of food. The four inches of coral beads wound around each wrist and the many necklaces she wore identified her as a woman of means. Before we reached the corner where the cobbled road forks and the new brick houses stand, she told me with a wave of her hand that all the adjacent land had been her father’s, already providing me with a hint as to her importance. When she heard that I was an anthropologist, she seemed to glow. It was there, in the shadow of Imbabura Mountain, I met Rosa Lema, the same Rosita described by Parsons fifty years earlier as “the most enterprising person in all Peguche” (1945:13). Rosa Lema, though not great in physical stature (she was only about five feet tall), had a regal bearing and she also had, as I would come to realize, a will of steel. She knew how to get things done. Mamá Rosa seemed to embody the royal title “Indian Princess” assigned to her by The New York Times and El Comercio in 1949; she capitalized on that characterization, becoming something like the “Princess Emeritus” of Peguche. Respected and beloved by most villagers, as well as by county, provincial, and national leaders, she was politely assertive. She claimed with immodesty to have known every Ecuadorian chief of state since the mid-1920s. Mamá Rosa was also accomplished in farming and commerce and did not hesitate to call upon her vast social network to expedite matters for her and her family’s benefit. She always dressed in the traditional long, belted skirts—the anacus—and the ruffled, embroidered blouse topped by a shawl, which are characteristic items in Otavaleña women’s dress.2 Mamá Rosa had a keen eye for detail and an ear for village gossip. Through her extensive web of friends and relations, her commercial and political influence reached well beyond the region. She and her relations were in positions of relative power. Mamá Rosa was eager to have her story told from where “Señora Elsita” (Elsie Clew Parsons) left off. I became the key to writing an account of what she deemed her distinguished life, and I found myself in the middle

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part one

of a conversation begun decades earlier. Within ten minutes of our meeting, Mamá Rosa had informed me of her visit to the United Nations, New York City Hall, and the Truman White House in 1949.3 This octogenarian claimed to have single-handedly transformed possibilities for native Otavaleños, pointing out how her contributions generated the surge in the global cultural economy that affected many Peguche families during the 1990s. As luck would have it, Mamá Rosa had a house for rent, her daughter Matilde’s 4 weekend residence, and within several months of our first meeting, I moved in with my daughter and son. Over the years, we shared many hours of conversations about facets of our lives and many other activities as well. Mamá Rosa was always ready to talk and thus it was easy to revisit questions posed by Parsons or to explore new ones. “I get up every morning at five and bathe with cold water,” she told me the first day I moved in. Her vivacious energy was always poised to seize the day for her advantage.

Rosa Lema in her Peguche home, 1995.

Chapter One

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Otavaleños, Otavalo, Peguche, and Interculturalidades Otavaleños are a Kichwa group who reside in and around the county seats of Otavalo and Cotacachi in the province of Imbabura.5 Hailed by many Ecuadorians as the “model minority” since the end of the nineteenth century because of their “outstanding” features (Muratorio 1996), Otavalans are identified by their ethnic dress, connection to place, entrepreneurial savvy, and bilingualism (Kichwa and Spanish, although many also speak multiple other languages). Their choice to distinguish themselves by what they wear serves as an exclusive sign of solidarity and an ethnic marker of difference. Their ethnic traje, or dress, is gender specific and includes a ruffled embroidered blouse with two long, belted skirts, a shawl, and a headscarf for women, and traditional white pants and dark blue poncho for men. Hairstyle traditionally includes long single braids for men and a belt wound around a long plait for women. These overt symbols are complemented by less visible signs that are filled with meaning and connect Otavalans to a shared past, beliefs, values, surroundings, and to each other. In 1989 Otavaleños resided principally in dispersed and marginal communities (with regard to services), located around the municipality of Otavalo or the neighboring municipality of Cotacachi (both at an elevation of approximately 9300 feet).6 In recent decades Otavaleños have transformed the region. This is evidenced by the fact that Mario Conejo and Auki Tituaña were elected as the first indigenous mayors in Otavalo (2000) and Cotacachi (1996) respectively; Nina Pacari became Minister of Foreign Relations (2003) and is currently a justice on the Supreme Court. Otavaleños are now some of the most cosmopolitan and wealthiest residents in the region, in spite of the fact that many still remain poor and marginalized. Within these and other ambiguities, my extended stay in the Otavalo region during the last decade of the twentieth century demonstrates ways Otavaleños enacted an enduring and emerging cultural style to face challenges of intensified globalization. The ethnographic pictures below convey some of the complexities of that time, and highlight the agency of women as they actively rewove traditions to suit contingencies of everyday life. Since prehistoric times, the region stands out as an intercultural commercial center for textiles and agricultural products (Ponce de Leon [1582] 1982; Hassurek [1868] 1964; Herrera 1909; Espinoza 1988; Salomon 1981). Residents from the village of Peguche (the parish seat of Miguel Egas in

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part one

the cantón of Otavalo), are particularly noted for their creativity and business acumen with regard to design and sale of weavings, as well as rich traditions of music (Parsons 1945; Buitrón 1947, 1951; Buitrón and Collier 1949; Villavicencio 1973; Salomon 1981; Chavez 1982; Kyle 1999; Meisch 2002; Colloredo-Mansfeld 1999; Wibbelsman 2005). Crafts include (but are not limited to) the design and manufacture of hand-woven belts, tapestries, shawls, and ponchos; Andean musical instruments; machine and hand knit sweaters; and backpacks, bags, and hammocks. Peguche natives continue to sell their wares from their workshops or at the handicraft market in the town of Otavalo, heralded by locals and foreigners as the largest indigenous commercial center in South America. Others live multilocally within what sociologist David Kyle calls the “trade diaspora” (1999), traveling the globe as merchants, musicians, and workers, while still others subsist on wages earned as itinerant laborers or by farming. Many of the parish’s three thousand inhabitants, 98 percent of whom are indígenas, have seized and developed business, educational, artistic, and political opportunities, and coordinate within and across global networks.

Otavaleña at her kiosk on Plaza de Ponchos, Otavalo.

Chapter One

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This volume of stories makes heretofore unknown voices known, as the means to learn from practices that are socially, politically, and ecologically oftentimes marginalized in terms of power. Many of these voices and practices are traditionally inclusive; moreover, they reveal collective values within which gender is a central organizing principle that animates cultural life. They also bring into view tensions associated with being anchored to the northern Andes, while contending with global processes. Feminist methodologies developed by Elsie Clews Parsons and others opened doors to see ways Otavaleños manipulated symbols and deployed culture in everyday practices, and thereby continued to endure and emerge as a distinctive group. As Otavaleños managed their complicated lives in the 1990s, they negotiated tradition and change with lots of hard work through innovating and testing cultural repertoires. The wide array of ethnic expressions that people reshaped to meet the circumstances at hand show supple strategies for maintaining and evolving ethnicity; moreover they specifically reveal ways indigenous Otavalans carved out positions vis-à-vis the dominant culture and continued evolving distinctive identities as native Ecuadorians. Their intercultural prowess, including the capacity to learn from outsiders while upholding their cultural values, exemplifies finesse in dealing with difference and power. These skills and principles are embedded in the indigenous ideology of interculturalidad. Interculturalidad translates into English as interculturalism, ideally a social and political principle through which interactions between groups are constructed on a basis of reciprocal respect and concern.7 Interculturalism espouses “horizontal” associations among social groups. Ideally, these associations lead to non-hierarchical relationships where exchanges are mutually beneficial. To grasp how highland Kichwa, who live in Otavalo and surrounding villages, have carved out a relatively advantageous position vis-à-vis other native groups in Ecuador, it’s important to get a picture of how they fit into the national context and imagination. Crossed by the equator and located on the Pacific coast between Colombia and Peru, Ecuador’s rich diversity has long received attention from social scientists and biologists. In 1989 political scientists characterized the nation as “an island of peace” in contrast to its neighbors where civil and political unrest have reigned for decades.8 Ecuador’s ecological and topographical diversity 9 is complemented by the heterogeneity of the human population, which predates the Spanish invasion. CODENPE (Consejo de Desarrollo de

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part one

las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del Ecuador/Council for the Development of Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador—a government agency) points out that between 30 and 40 percent of the population is indigenous (Wibbelsman 2003:376). However, those figures vary greatly depending upon whose agenda is foreground and the situational context and can range anywhere from 6.85 percent to 55 percent.10 Kichwas, the largest nationality of indigenous peoples, are concentrated in the Andes, and are also one of the largest groups in the Amazon region.11 Historically, there exists a socioeconomic hierarchy in Ecuador, although there have also always been ways of contesting and changing that structure (stories of which I include below). Within such a hierarchical framework, the elites at the top claim to be descendants of European conquerors and colonizers. They are known as blancos or blanco-mestizos. Mestizos of mixed European and indigenous descent are individuals in a diverse group that ranges from the nueva generación (or the new generation who are carving out a new way for the twenty-first century) to those who, according to Lynn Stephen, are “aspiring to ‘whiteness’ to escape the stigma attached to Indianness with the hope of securing employment in stereo​typically non-Indian jobs” (1991:320). Finally, at the bottom of this legacy of inequities established during colonial times are indigenous nationalities and AfroEcuadorians (Wibbelsman 2003; Crespi 1976; Stephen 1991; Whitten 1981). Ecuador Otavaleños are uniquely positioned and don’t necessarily adhere to the constraints of the historical socioeconomic hierarSouth America chy. Rather, this ethnographic inquiry highlights ethnicity as an active strategy that helps individuals and the collective make sense and manage complexities in their lives by connecting them to traditions while Map of South America.

13

Chapter One engaging with change. Their resilience stands in the face of an institutionalized racism in Ecuador that limited opportunities for most indigenous people for centuries, and in particular during the twentieth century when modernization programs attempted to strip them of their Indianness through assimilation and peasantization (Becker 1999).

Province of Imbabura Cotacachi

Peguche

Otavalo Quito

Ecuador

Situating Myself in Peguche Introductions from Kichwa professor Lawrence Carpenter brought me to Peguche. I disMap of Imbabura. covered that what was most valuable in my fieldwork was similar to what was valuable in Parsons’s—its gendered orientation. In my case, this was perhaps an inevitable concern given that my daughter and son, eleven and eight at the beginning of my residence in Ecuador, were with me. I often recall the sound advice professor Bonnie Kendall Bird gave me which bolstered my confidence, “for researchers doing fieldwork, if you don’t have children, rent them.” 12 Because of my dual role as mother and researcher, I juggled fieldwork with daily household and childcare tasks, common activities for other women in the village. For example, during the first five years of life in Ecuador, making a phone call was often a major ordeal that could take half a day and even then not be successful. More daunting was the fact that access to clean water in Peguche was a constant concern that could never be taken for granted. Although the chores were sometimes frustrating, occupying much of my time, the experiences led to friendships with other women and insights into domestic life in an indigenous community. In this regard, my neighbor Mamá Michita coached me as I learned how to drop a bucket twenty-five feet down a well to get water for cooking, cleaning, and bathing while listening to anecdotes about her life. Carrying

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water home on my back—a half-kilometer trek—for three months in 1990 also taught me about managing vital resources. These included material things and the social networks I cultivated. My family’s health depended on both. The joys and problems we shared went beyond the relationship of anthropologist and informants, although they were on occasion mediated by difficulties and differences. Through a broad range of experiences, our lives intersected as our children grew up, and I sometimes happened upon local knowledge at the most unexpected moments.

60+ Year Update on Peguche It is fitting and an uncanny coincidence that I write an update on cultural configurations in Peguche more than sixty years after Parsons.13 Mamá Rosa, the name she was fondly referred to during my tenure in Peguche, along with other Otavaleña women, gave me an opportunity to trace cultural continuity and change in Peguche during the 1990s.14 While Parsons’s work helped me frame my research agenda, it was the women themselves who revealed to me the significance of everyday and ritual practices, thereby demonstrating the consequence of face-to-face social exchange. By engaging in an intersubjective methodology, I shared hundreds of activities and conversations with a wide range of individuals. Such engagement over time allowed me to see how Otavaleños deploy values that regenerate or reconfigure cultural meanings. Our relationships also afforded me glimpses into some of the resourceful inner-workings that feed into a complex transnational and intercultural dynamic that affects and is affected by Otavaleño identity. I know my life and my children’s lives were transformed forever. Particularly because the predicaments of daily life were often grounded in my children’s experiences, we were exposed to the interstices where Kichwa, Hispanic, and Western cultures overlap. By having access to and delving into those spaces, I learned to resolve quotidian dilemmas and about the dynamics of the plural society we were a part of. At times my presence was central to that dynamic, as Ecuadorians did not hesitate to request my skills as translator, visa strategist, or emotional comforter as they prepared for journeys or awaited the return of loved ones. I learned how to “read” and interpret their complex realities, while raising my children where boundaries of insider and outsider were often ambiguous and blurry. My involvement in female networks made me cognizant of ways in which women keep operable social webs of interrelatedness through the

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cycles of life even at great distances. Such valuable relationships gave me an understanding of how Otavalans were able to maintain and reinvent memories of the local in spite of the impact new global experiences were having on their lives. I became familiar with the importance of reciprocity in daily life and the ways in which simple exchanges can be rooted beyond social realms and into spheres of the natural and cosmological. These holistic networks are embodied in the Kichwa term “Pachamama,” the mother of the cosmos, who plays a material and spiritual role in Andean tradition. These traditions, though constantly reconfigured, were the invisible stuff that helped to structure cultural energies into specific actions and voices, and kept Otavalans anchored to the northern Andes, even while far from home. At the turn of the millennium, culture had become unbounded for many Otavaleños as their lives extended far beyond their villages. With the advantage of a vibrant cultural identity, many successfully integrated seemingly disparate elements into fluid patterns and a way of life where global connections were integral. Fifty to sixty years after Elsie Clews Parsons’s fieldwork in Peguche, I found myself sometimes retracing (almost literally) her pioneering footsteps, beginning with my relationship with her principle informant, and in a fortuitous position to comprehend how gendered ethnicity has changed over time.

Transcultural and Intercultural Practices My fieldwork “emphasize[d] the experiential, [took] a contextual and interpersonal approach to knowledge, [was] attentive to the concrete realms of everyday life and human agency, and [was] constructed with empathy, connectedness, dialogue and mutual consciousness raising” (Harrison 2007:24). Through these methodologies I explored how individual women contribute to social change. For me, the intersection of our lives opened a framework for understanding some of the possibilities of women shaping worlds, not just being shaped by them. Additionally, in following Parsons’s and Lema’s footsteps, we stretched cultural and personal boundaries. Through my immersion-participation in everyday life, I was able to explore the significance of how people experience ethnicity, gender, and class within various traditional and intercultural junctures. In particular, I saw how Mamá Rosa, María, Gladis, and others constantly juggled cultural knowledge as they utilized material culture, while considering outside ideas and technologies within their own logic. Such intercultural

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junctures were like the “contact zones” discussed by Mary Pratt (1992). These zones were fertile grounds that generated transculturations or selected cultural borrowings, which opened up new ways to be Otavaleña, and taught me to be flexible. These multiple transcultural encounters provided Otavalans (and me) with opportunities to creatively adjust local knowledge with outside skills, ideas, and technology or vice versa. At the same time, these new possibilities led to changing cultural parameters or the re-valuing of tradition or both. The Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz first wrote about processes of transculturation in the 1940s to point out the creative agency of marginal or colonized people. Based on the Cuban experience, he explained that to a large extent they determined what they absorbed from the dominant culture, and how they used it. By doing so, he refuted the reductionist notion that the dominant culture simply swallowed or assimilated older or traditional cultures. I find his theory useful because he, along with Parsons, dispelled the paternalistic idea of passive subjects in need of acculturation. Indeed, my study shows ways Otavalans are masters in appropriating selected features of Hispanic and Western culture and reinventing them. For the length of this inquiry, they activated transcultural processes in health systems, foodways, religion, and market places in Otavalo and around the world. These strategies were developed through relationships with outsiders and social institutions that increasingly included formal education. Many of Mamá Rosa’s and Parsons’s interactions were documented by Parsons and divulge an example par excellence of an interactive interculturalism. Mamá Rosa’s recollections of those and other interactions articulate a model for how interculturalism works: on the one hand it resulted in Parsons’s book and the opening of innovative anthropological approaches, and on the other, Mamá Rosa’s and others’ adeptness in navigating in and out of Peguche. These transcultural practices permitted selective appropriation of globalized phenomena, enhanced by the digital and communications revolution in the late twentieth century. Specifically, Mamá Rosa’s own cultural moorings and life history reveal possibilities of how to discernibly incorporate innovative ideas to meet challenges poised by globalization. In so doing, she sought out and developed relationships with outsiders that were mutually beneficial. (opposite) Rosa Lema and author in corridor of Lema’s Peguche home, 1995.

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Feminist, Intercultural, and Humanistic Methodologies I was privileged to have intercultural interactions daily at the village level (which informs the substance of this book), and professionally, while working with colleagues at UNESCO, the Ministry of Education, and Culture/Department of Indigenous Intercultural-Bilingual Education, and various NGOs. Both in my social life and work life I was constantly in contact with people from diverse cultural worlds and consistently challenged to understand diverse perspectives and stretch my perceptions in new ways. It was not always easy. As a North American woman, I had to overcome my own preconceptions as well as stereotypes projected on me. With necessity, diligence, and practice, my intercultural competences evolved. This monograph is an outcome of repositioning myself through extended fieldwork and dialogue with friends and colleagues, where I was intrigued to grasp their ways of apprehending the world.15 In particular, Rosa Lema and other Otavalan women taught me that gender is a critical axis of cultural and social production. Lema in particular was intent to “set the record straight”16 and repeatedly demonstrated how marginal identity, in terms of indigenousness and gender, was centered in Peguche. Her spirited agency provides a model for women to make culture and become the subjects of history. She substantiated the right of Otavalan women to be free and creative, with the possibility to be recognized and to recognize themselves as important actors in a plural democracy at the turn of the millennium (Cuvi 2006:x). Within such a feminist framework, this text shows women shaping and being shaped by

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Otavalan culture. The association between Lema and Parsons was a significant wellspring from which intercultural ties produced feminist methodologies that add to theory and mechanisms for social transformation. My entanglement with these two women, directly in the case of Mamá Rosa, and indirectly in the case of Parsons, brings to light a gendered perspective that speaks across time and space. It stresses human values that come out of lived experiences, and which engender a unique way of perceiving the world. This kind of methodology, grounded in the everyday life, offers a distinctive way of knowing—a way of knowing that is generated by the pragmatics of tackling chores, whether in the kitchen, on the farm, with the healer, at celebrations, or at work. This feminist frame grows out of daily practices, practices which embody or shape cultural logic and are the building blocks of ethnic identity (Aptheker 1989; Anzaldúa and Keating 2002; Mohanty 2003). By focusing upon contributions of women in and out of domestic and public spaces, and across continents, I also highlight anthropology as a transcultural process; transformative both internally, in the sense that new insights reframe theory, and externally, in the sense that intercultural interactions open doors for social transformation (Castañeda 2004a; Pratt 1999; Ortiz 1947). In the following pages I offer stories of how Rosa Lema, Elsie Clews Parsons, and others intentionally cultivated contacts across, within, and between cultures and were changed by those processes. These vignettes showcase a common sense of dwelling that is part of the cultural vernacular articulated close to or far from home. I show women creatively restitching basic values into the fabric of their lives, while open to new strands. As I demonstrate, women are at the forefront of cultural continuity and change as they constantly confront predicaments of contemporary life, whether at the kitchen table feeding the family or at a global marketplace trying to get the best price and network out of a deal. Tradition matters. History is lived, contested, celebrated, and integrated seamlessly into an ecocosmology that anchors people to home for comfort, well-being, and nourishment. Food is a powerful messenger that touches people viscerally and is traditionally the result of a lot of hard and cooperative work. Commerce is a social interaction that has ripple effects in and out of Andean villages. All are sources of cultural autonomy and appropriation and reinscribe an aesthetic parameter in the action at hand to get things done. These stories illustrate patterns in an aesthetic style with a wide range of idiosyncrasies. They embody an intercultural ideology, wherein the

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social networks that humans construct and maintain also extend to natural and spiritual worlds. Ultimately, these values, enacted as cultural expressions, create emerging and enduring identities. The shared codes are not monolithic or static, but interpreted variously across time and space. What comes into view is a collage of complementary and contrasting pictures, which portrays some of the diversity within collective norms. Otavaleñas were generally quite deft handling the complexities of the late twentieth century, but the intricacies of managing social transformation within the rubrics of traditional values were complicated and sometimes messy. These involved contending with macro political economic forces and global restructuring, whereby Otavalan women, men, and families were affected in different ways. Within the struggles for cultural survival and social equality, they contributed to a cultural and political revitalization. As a result of exploring some of the synergy generated between Rosa Lema’s and Elsie Clews Parsons’s association, my intention is to update and recoup some of the vitality and diversity of women’s heritage in Peguche. Within Parsons’s methodological tradition, my sketches offer an aggregate of a few selected individuals in order to illustrate a complex yet coherent narrative of contemporary life. The ethnographic picture begins with details of particular individuals’ lives as a means to demystify the village context. What emerge are patterns of some of the cultural continuities, transgressions, and transformations since Parsons’s research in 1940 and 1941. These practices bring to life some of the diversity of family patterns, cultural expressions, and the way people interact with each other. Their stories are rich and varied and give a picture of Otavalans’ lives that are inventive, dispersed, fragmented, and multitasking; experiences that articulate holistic values, beliefs, and unique ways of knowing the world. The fact that my young daughter and son accompanied me in 1989, and we stayed for more than eight years, colored my findings in a gendered and humanistic manner as our social relationships deepened. Indeed, over time the notion of fieldwork as a social science methodology dissipated as we became more integrated into the community and were caught in the joys, trials, and tribulations of daily life. We cultivated what have turned out to be lifelong relationships with people from the village and town as our children grew up together. I was able to form a wide array of social networks important in the navigation of the many different roles I played. Foremost, I was a mother raising two small children, but I also juggled the roles of

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Peonia and Ezra Vázquez-D’Amico with author, circa 1989.

anthropologist, (at first) graduate student, comadre (co-parent), friend, colleague, stranger, foreigner, and professional, each of which offered me a foray into distinctive relationships and perspectives. Living in a nice house in Peguche did not guarantee that my children and I lived without major inconveniences. There was near constant uncertainty regarding basic services, including the presence or not of running water; the very erratic service of electricity; the fact that phones did not come to the village en masse (other than the one at the teniente político’s [local magistrate’s] office) until 1995; and public transportation that, although offering frequent and widespread service, was overcrowded and posed safety hazards. We learned to live with a set of contingency plans and, at the very least, always had extra containers of clean water on hand. All these disruptions were generally offset by the satisfying relationships we developed. Village experiences gave me firsthand knowledge of village life and a wide social network for accomplishing daily tasks. From there I began to discern some of the underlying principles and values upon which behavior was based and enacted. However, these facts alone did not prepare me for the changing unpredictability of settling with my family there for nearly a decade. At

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first I was a student anthropologist with an agenda to complete research, but as mentioned, also a mother. My children were kids growing up and, like most kids, just wanted to fit in with their peers who lived in different realities. Many of the tensions that arose and challenged them as outsiders were precisely what taught me about shifting cultural boundaries in a plural society and the importance of multiple identities. Just as I learned to switch languages from English to Spanish to Kichwa, I became comfortable in Otavaleño, Hispanic, mestizo, white, and expatriate circles. Many times, borders overlapped and it was in those spaces in particular I learned about interculturalism. That’s not to say that there were not times when we witnessed brutal racism—like the time we were on a bus and the driver’s assistant hit a poor indigenous woman as he shouted at her to move using racial slurs. In addition, tensions surfaced between local groups as many blancos-mestizos felt native Otavalans were usurping them, as fortunes shifted both economically and politically. As residents of Peguche, we mediated both worlds. Thus, intercultural encounters became the repetitive patterns of our lives—at school, at work, in the market, on the bus, with neighbors and friends, with the suffocating Ecuadorian bureaucracy, and with our increasingly wide net of social relations. Through this approach, which was grounded in actual experiences across time, patterns emerged that bring insights into tradition within a changing society. I cannot pretend that I ever was viewed as an Otavaleña or Ecuadorian. Power differentials played out in unexpected ways and I had many valuable lessons in humility. Our integration in the community was at times awkward, other times fast or superficial, and not always easy. We gravitated toward people with whom we developed emotional affinities, but could not avoid daily dealings with all kinds of people. Through extended interactions over time, I became privy to some of the inner-workings of society and learned that many of our neighbors’ lives embodied not only ongoing traditions, but also creative improvisations that increasingly included long-distance interconnectedness. As my relationships deepened, I realized that the cultural landscape was not bounded in Peguche, Otavalo, or even Ecuador, and I began to understand firsthand what it means to live transnationally (as I myself was doing with my family). What’s more, I came to understand that the salience of tradition, although represented by readily visible and heterogeneous symbols, was deeply rooted in people’s memories and senses. Those symbolic forms derived largely from a world

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view that dialogically integrates different forms of knowledge and keeps people culturally anchored even when far from “home.” We returned to the United States in August 1997.17 I got a temporary position in West Chester, Pennsylvania. From there I was able to make contact with individuals from the Otavaleño community in New York City and rural Pennsylvania. After a move to Winona, Minnesota, in the summer of 2000, I met Otavalans in Barcelona and Granada, Spain. I am fortunate that shifting field sites and summers in Imbabura have continued to offer a depth of time and space in my association with Ecuadorians. Susan Paulson observes in Bolivia that gender and ethnicity are not set roles, rather should be seen as verbs that embody a way of becoming (2002). This is a productive way to frame the Otavalans’ changing positions in society. In the following chapters, my discussion of gendered ethnicity focuses on, in particular, Otavaleñas’ fluid ingenuity in connection with the varied spiritual and socioeconomic conditions of their lives. I highlight dynamic ways they shaped worlds that extended from and beyond their everyday routines. My ethnographic endeavors reveal concrete ways Otavalans enacted gender and ethnic identities, and seemingly lived by the axiom: “tradition is change.” By describing gendered ethnicity in action, I show how it was constructed according to the complex circumstances of the individual at hand. Otavaleños’ various pathways joined disparate cultural elements through the enactment of shared values tailored to specific situations. These values keep Otavalans linked to a rich repository of cultural and historical resources, some of which are discussed below. But first a brief detour to narrate the historic relationship of a famous anthropologist, Elsie Clews Parsons, with a remarkable Otavaleña, Mamá Rosa, and how they forged new alternatives in Ecuador and beyond.

C H A P T E R T WO

Gendered Globalization in Peguche, 1940 and 1941 Rosa Lema and Elsie Clews Parsons

((( Auspicious Beginnings My father didn’t let me cook. . . . If I had been a man, I would have been a real prize. Ever since I was eight years old, I helped my father. Being the oldest of three daughters, he treated me like a boy. He loved me a lot. I just worked for him. I never went to school. We used to travel on foot to Quito and Haciendas Zuleta, Cusín, and Pomasquí, buying and selling cattle. He loved me so much and worked me like a man and that’s how I learned to speak a little Spanish. [After I was married,] Señor Gorell came for weavings and he brought Señora Elsita [Parsons in 1940]. Her book [Peguche] is important. I made the first trip to the United States because of my work. I knew it all: sheering sheep, mixing wools, zigzag spinning, dying, weaving . . . We made the finest cashmeres and tweeds. People from the American Embassy came and placed orders. (Interview with octogenarian Rosa Lema, Peguche, Ecuador 1991)1 \ historical and ethnogr aphic research reveals that unique globalization processes in the early 1940s brought together in Peguche sophisticated New Yorker, Elsie Clews Parsons, with Otaveleña native, Rosa Lema. Data suggests that the encuentro or meeting of these two 23

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women, who reckoned from very different cultural realities, proved to foretell some of the patterns of globalization for the rest of the century. Their interactions were pivotal in the creation of intercultural and transcultural networks that extended over national borders and borrowed elements across cultures. Such a social design was mutually beneficial to both women who saw each other as equals. In this case, pioneers Lema and Parsons opened new opportunities in Peguche and within the emerging field of feminist anthropology. As substantiated with examples below, Lema and Parsons’s collaboration had ramifications in commerce, tourism, and identity politics of the 1990s. In addition, the implications of their encuentro for feminist anthropology continue to resonate in methodologies practiced today. By carefully outlining trajectories and intersections of Lema’s and Parsons’s lives, I demonstrate ways gender and ethnic statuses were negotiated and challenged prescribed cultural boundaries. Specifically, this chapter delves into circumstances that connected Rosa Lema to Señora Elsita and discusses subsequent changes that occurred within the context of Lema’s family, village, and region. I also provide an overview of Parsons’s life, with the intent to compare and contrast how both women had dynamic impacts on their respective worlds. Lema shared with me many of her reflections about her long life, a picture that provides a historical depth in gendered globalization. Rosa Lema deployed superlative social skills inside and outside Peguche and created relationships within and across cultures that facilitated commercial and other transactions. Her narratives show how her early and remarkable deftness at juggling seemingly incongruent realities foreshadowed the importance of cultural and gender dimensions in globalization during the final decade of the twentieth century. The turn of events through which she developed many such capacities is connected to her encounter with Señora Elsita: the intersection of their lives helped to create transnational and intercultural linkages that are important and continue to reverberate today.

Recuperating Her Stories Life histories bring forth “voices” and experiences. They link the personal and the political, the private and the public. Mamá Rosa’s stories reveal a retrospective that sheds light on changing parameters of Otavalan culture with her as the principal protagonist. Over the years I was afforded many opportunities to know her as a grandmotherly figure, friend, and mover

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and shaker. She never wanted for words and knew how to get what she wanted done. Nor did she ever hesitate to give herself flowering accolades and relive her glorious moments of fame. She repeatedly reiterated how she repositioned Peguche and Otavaleños through her aptitude for interaction with outsiders and with her positive attitude. “God accompanies me, and I have made our province [Imbabura] worth something [known],” Mamá Rosa said to me in September 1991 as she sat on the porch of the same house where fifty years earlier she had chatted with Parsons. She continued: I was born in Quinchuquí (1908). My father was from Peguche. My mother, Andrea Cotacachi, was a treasure. She was from Quinchuquí and when she married, she moved in with her husband’s family in Peguche. My father worked wool. He also bought and sold pigs, and then cattle. When I was a child, we lived totally apart from whites. When they came, we would hide, my father would hide us because they would bother us, especially the girls. My father taught me the essentials: how to do the math, everything about textiles, how to buy and sell cattle, how to plow, how to speak Spanish, and how to deal with the world outside our community. I went with him. We would walk through the countryside, sometimes for eight days at a time, and we visited different haciendas. We purchased animals and took them to market [in Quito]. He taught me how to buy and sell wool. I learned how to make quality textiles. Thanks to my father I learned business and how to deal with people. But I never learned how to read. I never went to school. My father thought schools were for idle people. Mamá Rosa’s earliest recollections of ethnic and gender differences recall a segregated childhood. In a mixture of Spanish and Kichwa, she credits much of her success in commerce and textiles to her bilingualism and subsequent bicultural capacities. Through the tutorage of her father, she was able to become an expert intercultural businesswoman. She added that her father, Manuel Lema, raised her, as the eldest of three sisters, like a son. Whenever she recounted her story, she challenged me with hypothetical

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math problems using pounds of wool or meat as the variables in word problems to test my math skills. Her mind was sharp at eighty-three, her age when we met, and remained so until the last time we spoke in the summer of 2002. Mamá Rosa’s unconventional girlhood helped to build a strong character with unflinching confidence. Inculcated by her father with an entrepreneurial ethos, she learned the benefits of crossing cultural boundaries and gained the requisite social skills for successful interactions with all kinds of people. About her marriage and work life she said: My life has been like this. I never fought with my husband. We weren’t in love when we married. He was thirty-three years old and I was sixteen. It was the order of my parents and his; that’s why we married. My family liked him. Our fathers were friends. They got together and decided they wanted to be family. They were in agreement. They were happy. I was so young in the wedding that they put me in a room like a prisoner. Someone stood guard at the door and I couldn’t get out. My father said he wanted me to marry, but I told him I was still too young. “It’s up to you,” he said. I was the first daughter and he told me it was time. My husband’s family sent gifts every month. This went on for a long time and all was settled. For the wedding all the relatives got together. They put a table in the middle of the room with carnations, and the fragrance permeated the room. They put the rosario and rings on the table, by the white and red carnations. Those are the colors of the Lord—red is for blood and white for purity. They called in the bride and the groom and made us kneel on either side. The family did everything. An elder who knew the words of the Lord, asked if we wanted to marry. I said yes. It was an order from my father and mother. It was an obligation our families had agreed upon. They blessed us in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It was a serious occasion. They put the rings on us, and our hands together and we embraced. Then we kneeled in front of every family member for his or her blessing. Then we went to the Magistrate’s office for the civil marriage. Still the marriage

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was not consummated. After the church service, then we could get together. Now it’s not like that. Isidro Ayora, the president [1926–1929], was my godfather for marriage.2 He came through Peguche on the train on his way to the bullfights in Ibarra. He stopped and chose me as a goddaughter. I didn’t think I was going to marry, ever, but my mother and father wanted me to marry. They decided who was going to be a good husband, [that’s how] they decided then. Of course my husband didn’t have any money. We weren’t rich. My father was also poor. He had to scramble to get money. We were self-sufficient except for salt and lard; that was all we bought. But my father taught me how to buy and sell cattle, to do business. I knew the whole process with wool. I estimated the weight of cattle. We bought them at twenty sucres and sold them for eightyfive sucres. It took a week to get to Quito with cattle. Leonidas Plaza [Galo’s father] loved the cashmeres we made. He owned the Haciendas Zuleta, Quilaba, Machaquí. Those cashmeres sold like crazy. Mr. Plaza gave us three thousand or more for what we sold for three-hundred sucres in Peguche [ten times as much]. I returned back to Peguche in a hurry to make more cashmeres. I worked at night so I could help my father with cattle. I sold almost all the cashmere to the Plaza family—uncles, the father, and their in-laws. And that’s why Matilde [her oldest living daughter] has a house in Quito on Leonidas Plaza Street. They owned the whole block. We became good friends because of cloth. This is the truth. No one else knew how to make it. They introduced me to the people at the U.S. embassy. I bought wool from Pedro Maldonado, José Fichamba, and Mr. Ruís. They helped me. All the hacienda owners wanted to buy my cashmere cloth—including owners from haciendas Carcelín, Pinsaquí, San Justín. Even Carlos Calisto, father-in-law of Borja [president of Ecuador, 1988–1992] and Borjas’s father bought my cashmeres.

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My husband died in a car crash in 1958. My godfather didn’t let me stay and live here in Peguche. He took me and the children to Quito. I lived there twenty-two years. I was born working, and my life has been good. My grandmother always said greeting people is like greeting the lord. It’s the civil way to be. And I’ve always greeted people, and people have responded.

Rosa Lema’s house in Peguche, 1990.

Mamá Rosa’s narrative reveals how she combined her effervescent personality and hard work to promote an entrepreneurial ethos that extended to her growing web of many relations. Her forthrightness reflected a character more commonly suited for a man at the time, qualities that sought technological innovation, while expediting intercultural exchanges. Mamá Rosa had an uncanny sense to be at the right place at the right time. Her life history demonstrates how she borrowed elements and established relationships with those from the dominant culture with relative ease. Ultimately,

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those transcultural strategies contributed to the transformation of typical gender constraints. Perhaps the key to her success was the ease with which she cultivated and maintained a wide social web in and out of village life. She was always ready to seize local, regional, and global connections. She spoke of how prior to her trailblazing, Peguche residents were generally suspicious of outsiders. The legacy of Spanish oppression and domination was still in their memories. They didn’t want the whites to enter [Peguche] . . . but I had friends from other countries; otherwise they never would have let anybody enter. At first they threatened me. Now they’re calm and even travel and are friends with foreigners. They’re calm because of me. I was the first one. Before they would have killed them because of what happened with the brutality of the Spaniards. It was clear that the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion were physical as well as cultural. With Mamá Rosa’s foray into other worlds, she stretched those boundaries and cultivated strategies for a multifaceted and dynamic identity. To comprehend Rosa Lema’s position in Otavalan society, it’s important to gain a basic understanding of Otavaleño gender role differences visà-vis the dominant Hispanic culture. Gender relations among Otavaleños are complex: in certain aspects they follow traditional notions of Andean complementarity, but at the same time it is apparent that Hispanic values and hegemony seep into daily life, particularly with the infusion of five hundred years of Spanish Catholicism. In traditional terms, Otavaleño daily life is strongly shaped by cultural ideas about roles for women and men. Particularly for older generations, almost every social, political, economic, or religious role was strongly associated with one’s gender. For example, it was considered more natural (and even had cosmological ramifications) for men to plow the earth (Lyons 2002) and women to sow the seeds, or for women to spin yarn and for only men to weave. In fact, I’ve been told by elderly Otavalans that bad luck would befall the weaving workshop or household if women entered while men worked the looms. Nonetheless, women were integral to textile cottage industries in tasks such as cleaning the wool, spinning, and brushing the final product. Those clearly defined roles reflect Andean complementarity or gender parallelism, as both genders

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worked as a complementary unit to maintain the subsistence household. However, complementarity does not necessarily connote gender equality. When I queried a professional Otavaleña colleague about gender equality, she pointed out that before the Spanish conquest the Incas selected young girls to be chosen women to serve the empire as spinners and weavers of fine cloth, superlative cooks, and Virgins of the Sun, or concubines for the nobility. “Women were not choosing, but chosen in this Inca model,” she commented. Further, it must be noted that from the scant pre-Colombian records regarding gender relations, women were not counted in the Inca census and were dependent on their relationships with the dominant men in their household (Powers 2005; Conrad and Demarest 1984). The Spanish conquest redefined gender roles, and it became more natural for men to deal with the outside world, learn Spanish, and perhaps even go to school. Thus their power within civic life (dominated by Hispanic values) grew disproportionately vis-à-vis the power of women. Some men gained important skills, including literacy, the ability to speak Spanish and deal with the bureaucracy, and the expectation that they would be able to navigate successfully within Hispanicized civil society.3 Meanwhile, the stuff of women’s lives commonly consisted of cooking meals, assisting in the fields, childcare, washing, small animal husbandry, sewing, and taking care of their husbands and families. They also wielded marketing skills and added value to their households in myriad ways. In the case of Peguche in 1941 according to Parsons, the skills expected of a marriageable young woman included the ability to sow and cultivate and harvest, to prepare grains, to cook, to wash clothes, to embroider shirts, to use a sewing machine, to take care of a baby, and to take care of a man when through drink he is as helpless as a baby but more troublesome. She will have learned some part or other of textile production, since that is the special interest of her family. She will have learned all the trade values of everything she has to use as well as the techniques of bargaining. (1945:53–54) Mamá Rosa’s narrative (on previous pages) emphasizes the importance of business acumen and the fact that women shouldn’t be defined according to their marriagabilty. When asked fifty years after Parsons listed the above requisites, a reflective Rosa Lema responded that she had

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more than mastered those listed fundamentals while opening new possibilities for future generations of women and men (her emphasis). The gendered division of labor continued to be restructured to meet contemporary demands largely in response to structural adjustments beset by the neoliberal political economy during the final decades of the twentieth century. At the onset of neoliberal reforms in the 1980s, this meant the migration of mostly men, at first mainly to Quito and later also abroad, although some women and girls were recruited as domestics in Quito and a few migrated outside Ecuador. Nevertheless, many Otavaleñas were still trapped by traditional Hispanic and indigenous ideals that circumscribed conservative behaviors. For example, in many households girls had fewer educational opportunities and women less access to financial resources. Most women could not get bank loans without their husband or father’s signature. However, as heads of households many women managed local and even transnational household economies, ably shuffling their knowledge and social capital in informal and formal economies to access what they needed. These skills illustrate that with increased stress and more work, many women creatively stepped out of traditional roles, not necessarily with a feminist fervor to redefine themselves, but more commonly out of necessity to make ends meet for themselves and their families.4 Commonplace gender stereotypes of Latin Americans are expressed through the concepts of machismo for men—who are valued for individualism, bravado, and competitive behavior—and marianismo for women—who should be inconspicuous, modest, and nurturing. Within such stereotypical behavior, males are expected to be egotistical, daring, and self-promoting, while females are expected to be passive and self-abnegating. Further, women’s behavior is expected to emulate the sacrifice and piety of the Virgin Mary. Within such a patriarchal ideology, women’s activities are expected to be behind the scenes or in domestic or private spheres, which typically limit the span of their relationships and remunerative possibilities. Until recently, it has not been customary for most Latin American women of means to work in civil society; rather, they were expected to be occupied in the spheres of family and home. Women who have to work generally receive less pay and fewer opportunities. For example, I was told on several different occasions by young women who sought employment at banks in the 1990s that they were required to be single, whereas married men were viewed as an asset. The bank manager considered this policy necessary

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because he believed that married women were likely to become pregnant, which would invariably impede or interrupt their work and be a liability to the bank. In contrast, Latin American men generally spend much more time in the public sphere where they participate in organizations and activities that extend well beyond the household and community. These economic, social, and political positions commonly afford more prestige, power, and networking possibilities than activities in domestic or private spheres. Such a configuration pigeonholes women and men into social structures that have characteristically kept women in subordinate positions. In general, indigenous women don’t necessarily fit the familiar Latin American gender hierarchy. In particular, many contemporary Otavalans build, name, negotiate, and contextualize their gender and ethnicity within the changing frames of their lives. This is due in part to globalizing forces, economic necessity, higher levels of education, and the subsequent realignment of some institutional and organizational structures. Yet for the most part, in village life women are still expected to guard family morality and care for the family. In many households they end up doing double and triple duty to keep things going as families are under increased emotional and financial pressures. In 1981 Susan Bourque and Kay B. Warren acknowledged and explored the changing social context in the lives of Andean women in two serrano communities of Peru. By focusing on a broad spectrum of economic and domestic arrangements of seven women, they formulated concepts for understanding the variability of women’s power, parity, and influence in their homes, the marketplace, and in national development. I likewise examine the changing social context in Otavaleñas’ lives as a means to grasp how women operate in different cultural frameworks and make meaning. I concentrate on some of the details in Rosa’s, María’s, Gladis’s, Luz’s, and other women’s 5 lives as the means to recognize gendered ways of maintaining and reshaping of Otavalan society. Their stories highlight some of the conflicts and conciliations that played a part in an enduring and evolving identity. In that regard, I harken back to some of the same issues raised by Elsie Clews Parsons concerning the transcultural interplay between indigenous and Hispanic people in the 1940s. Parsons recognized the importance of history and of social interactions with outsiders and insiders: Yesterday Rosita was visited by Father Samuel, a Franciscan friar who was born at Burgos, Spain, thirty-one years ago and came to

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Ecuador when he was eleven years old. Juanti [Rosita’s helper]6 had seen the Father and a youthful companion approaching on the railroad tracks and ran home to notify Rosita, just as he or Andrea [Rosita’s helper] or one of the children used to do when I began to call. Unusual visitors of any importance should be prepared for. A basket of trash was hastily removed, the pegged down hen repegged at a distance, and a chair set out. Rosita looked pleased and was all aflutter. (1945:160) In this case Father Samuel was the representative of a powerful institution in Ecuador, the Catholic Church, and Rosita offered her house as a kind of cultural center. This kind of relationship not only increased her access to important outsiders but also to many insiders, while augmenting her status and self-assurance on both fronts. In addition, Parsons’s observations on the cultural construction of race opened frontiers in the social sciences for studying ethnicity: Between race and culture there is considerable confusion of thought in Ecuador, as elsewhere . . . As the following highland study is concerned primarily with culture, not race . . . I beg the reader, particularly the Ecuadorian reader, to keep this distinction clearly in mind, realizing the White and Indian refer not to blood but to ways of life. (1945:1) Peguche presents race as a fluid negotiation among social groups with a preponderance of certain enduring cultural traits. Parsons was mindful that sociocultural behavior is learned and not genetic. Her works illustrate a gamut of human experience and understandings of the world, intent on deepening the appreciation of difference. Some of Parsons’s methodologies and analytical framework proved to be invaluable for me in my work and collaborations even as social and economic contexts rapidly changed in the 1990s. Her text served as a benchmark to measure and assess cultural and social change, resilience, and persistence.

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The Encuentro: Parsons’s Fieldwork in Peguche (Mining a Rich Anthropological Genealogy) Mother is an anthropologist by profession. You may have met her through your reading—Elsie Clews Parsons. She is among other things a lover of scenic beauty. I have told her that although she has traveled widely, I am sure she has yet to see anything comparable to the magnificence of your Andes. (letter from Lissa Parsons to Colley, March 1, 1940, cited in Zumwalt 1992:300) Elsie Clews Parsons was at the apex of a long and distinguished career when she did what turned out to be her final fieldwork in Peguche in March through May 1940 and September to November 1941.7 She was a prolific writer and researcher, a pacifist and a feminist, a benefactor and philanthropist, and in 1941 the first woman president of the American Anthropological Association. After a tour of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador in 1940, she settled in the Andean village of Peguche to do ethnographic research. At the suggestion of Julian Steward, who received funding in 1939 from the Bureau of American Ethnology to compile the Handbook of South American Indians, Parsons set out to investigate the topic of acculturation in the northern Andes of Ecuador (Ibid:372).8 As Zumwalt points out [i]n notes for the manuscript “The World Changes,” Parsons wrote that acculturation involved “knowledge of both cultures and the point of view that what is happening under his eyes is just as significant as what happened in earlier periods.” She added, “too often fieldworkers have not been comparative minded enough about their own culture to be adequate observers of how that culture was affecting another culture.” (cited in Zumwalt 1992:332, emphasis in Parsons) Parsons recognized that historical processes and zones of cultural contact are mutually transforming. She grasped some of the complexities of transcultural processes, where new associations engender dynamic cultural innovation in multiple directions. As Regna Darnell commented, “What she laments is very latter-day Boasian—both the need to go beyond particular ethnography and the search for a more reasonable model of acculturation” (personal communication 2001), or ways globalization processes including anthropological fieldwork spur cultural variations and change.

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Ethnicity, Gender, and Culture Change The people I met in Ecuador who are not confused were the Indians, because to their way of thinking, if you are living like a Blanco [white], you are a Blanco, and they distinguish between the two ways of life without hesitation or uncertainty. (from Elsie Clews Parsons’s 1941 field notes, American Philosophical Society, cited in Zumwalt 1992:308) Parsons considered that her research in Peguche and time spent headquartered in Otavalo would allow her “to observe contacts between the Whites and Indians and the particular forms of Hispanic culture from which the Indians have borrowed” (1945:iv). Parsons framed her study in what today anthropologists identify as the cultural construction of race or ethnicity or both. She was unequivocal in her consideration that cultural roles reflect a “way of living,” and that cultural values are learned, not biological. Moreover, her study illustrates that cultural borrowings and exchanges are not unidirectional or static. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, she also highlighted women as active agents of cultural traditions and change. Parsons arrived in Ecuador with a sheaf of letters of introduction. She met with the wife of the British ambassador who presented her to Juan Gorrel, a U.S. American who owned a farm in rural Cayambe. Gorrel was a collector of textiles and acquainted with weavers in the region. He was ultimately the one who connected Parsons to Rosa Lema in Peguche. Biographer Delsey Deacon explains that “as Parsons recounted it to [her former student Gladys] Reichard, she could not resist the opportunity that Peguche offered: ‘I went there at once and stayed until it was time to come home’” (1997a:375). According to Parsons, “Rosita provided an example of the opportunities for acculturation through her unusual personality.” Moreover, “white connections seem worthwhile to Rosita and, more than anyone else in Peguche, she understands how to keep them” (Parsons 1945:150–51). Parsons observed that it was Rosita’s extraordinary capacity to build social and cultural capital in and outside the community that set her apart from the other women in the village. And indeed Rosita’s relationship with Parsons increased her social capital and offered her broad social currency and skills that kept her as Peguche’s premiere citizen until her death in 2003.

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Deacon discusses Parsons’s 1940 and 1941 fieldwork in Peguche: Its central focus and raison d’etre is Rosita Lema. If anything tempted the vacationing Parsons to stay in Otavalo, it was this young woman, so like herself at thirty. In her town gossip chapter, “In Peguche Houses,” Parsons vividly portrays the changing culture of the town through the eyes of Rosita, this Ecuadorean “inventor of the future.” (1997:383) Parsons compiled empirical data through participant observation and in-depth interviews. Her ethnographic methods included cross-cultural comparison and her analyses focused on ambiguities inherent in cultural persistence and change.9 In Peguche, she spotlighted Rosa Lema to explore how an individual articulated tradition, while at the same time she engaged in innovation. Through these portraits of Rosita, the reader comes to appreciate how an individual interprets culture within a social structure and in the face of change. Much like Parsons herself, Rosita embodied a charismatic character willing to experiment and reevaluate convention within new parameters. “As Parsons self-critically observed in the [1941] AAA presidential address that she did not live to deliver: ‘I am scrambling a good many things together that you would expect me to keep separate’” (Babcock 1991:16). Rosa Lema also scrambled hybrid beliefs and activities. This kind of scrambling involved cultural borrowings adapted within her cultural logic. Such transcultural processes provide a fresh way for apprehending intricacies of change. Both Elsie and Rosa exemplify women who managed multifaceted identities in various places and contexts. They were cultural pioneers in that they unraveled and rewove cultural boundaries, seemingly at ease as they traversed different worlds and reincorporated new elements into the old. Their relationship exemplifies ethnography as intercultural and transcultural processes that were both mutually engaging and beneficial.10 Their association exhibits creative strategies that were subsequently incorporated into the fabric of Otavalan daily life and the annals of anthropological scholarship.

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“I beg the reader . . . to . . . realiz[e] that White and Indian refer not to blood but to ways of life”11 Elsie Clews Parsons (1874–1941) was in the vanguard of New York society during her lifetime as an activist and social scientist. She launched anthropology in new directions that went beyond masculine and ethnocentric points of view. By focusing on how women operate in different cultural frameworks, her work demonstrates ways gendered social processes create specific values, meanings, and cultural places. She lauded women’s contributions and fully appreciated them as sociocultural protagonists. By raising the importance of their roles, she played a part in their emancipation. Parsons practiced anthropology through extensive fieldwork and by explicitly documenting the layerings of history, multiple cultural systems, and change around her. In recognizing race and gender as social constructs, or ways of life, her work was a precursor to ethnic and women’s and gender studies. Finally, Parsons’s association with Rosa Lema helped propel and define globalization in new ways in the northern Andes. Parsons’s contributions to sociology, folklore, and anthropology remained almost forgotten until a resurgence of interest by women’s and gender studies scholars in the final decades of the twentieth century. Rosalind Rosenberg included a chapter about her in Beyond Separate Spheres: The Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism in 1985, which was followed by an array of articles and books, including those by Parsons’s grandnephew Peter Hare (1985), Lousie Lamphere (1989), Barbara Babcock (1987, 1988, 1991), Rosemary Zumwalt (1992), and Desley Deacon (1997a, 1997b). These authors were intent on making known one of the great minds and founding mothers of modern anthropology and folklore studies. They reassessed the importance of her writings, because unlike her mostly male predecessors and contemporaries, her texts provided female perspectives for interpreting events. Parsons is considered a feminist pioneer because her work created discursive space to understand women as important social actors, while challenging a wide audience to think about social values, gender, sexuality, and race in new ways. Her scholarship recognized that gender and race were not immutable and was the foundation of constructionist theories that are still being discussed. Parsons engaged in anthropological scholarship and cross-cultural comparison as a way to confront what she deemed the stifling constraints of social convention at the end of the Victorian era. Her work coincided

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with the beginning of the twentieth century and helped to usher in modernity. She did not hesitate to repeatedly contest what she regarded as the constricting social structures that marginalized women. Through the publication of numerous articles and books, she promoted gender equality and redefined social classifications and possibilities for the future. Her life challenged oppressive norms that limited opportunities and roles for women. For example, she advocated that even women of means work outside the home. Early on (and with discouragement from her family and fiancé Herbert Parsons), she put her theories into practice and was one the first women to get a PhD from Columbia University in 1899. She demonstrated through her work and life that women had academic potential, when most U.S. Americans believed that women were born to be mothers, not intellectuals, and could not possibly be both. She exemplified change as she shook off the confining Victorian shackles of the nineteenth century in both her very independent personal and professional life: she traveled and did fieldwork in faraway places and had friends, colleagues, co-activists, collaborators, and lovers while she was a mother and a wife. “ . . . [S]he saw herself as an inventor of the future, consciously demonstrating what a modern marriage could be” (Deacon 1997b:172). She was exceptional in many ways and as Deacon points out: “No one is ahead of his time,” Parsons’ contemporary Gertrude Stein pointed out, “it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who also are creating their own time refuse to accept. . . . That is the reason why the creator of the new composition . . . is outlaw until he is a classic.” (Ibid:171) So, how did Parsons get “ahead of her time” as a renegade woman and finally become a “classic” during the last decades of the twentieth century? Why did it take so long to recognize her accomplishments as a pioneer in anthropology? Further, what brought her to Peguche, Ecuador, in 1940? In the following pages, I trace personal and professional paths that included anthropological practices, which also offer alternatives to patriarchal forces that shaped ways of knowing the world. Rather than reinforce a system of knowledge and power controlled by men, Parsons’s ethnographies delved into other kinds of wisdom and power. Her work brought marginal perspectives out of the shadows and valued them.

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Elsie’s Life and Work: The Development of a Classic According to Deacon, Parsons’s father, Henry Clews, immigrated to the United States from England when he was sixteen and made a fortune selling bonds during the Civil War. Thereafter he was a successful New York banker with his own brokerage firm and married Southern socialite Lucy Madison Worthington Clews (a descendent of President Madison). Elsie was born November 27, 1874. Her two brothers followed in quick succession. They grew up amidst fabulous wealth and privilege in New York City. French and German governesses taught Elsie at home until adolescence, and by thirteen she was fluent in both languages. These strong, independent women fanned her intellectual curiosity and were (in some ways) models for the woman she would become (Deacon 1997a). As Elsie came of age, she did not accept biology as her only destiny. She rebelled in spite of her mother’s constant complaint that “a scholarly daughter is not companionable” and completed an undergraduate degree in education and sociology at Barnard College instead of becoming a debutante (1997a:18). After her graduation, rather than accompany her mother to Paris on a shopping trip in 1897, she turned to social activism and worked in the settlement houses for recent immigrants in New York City’s Lower East Side. These actions concerned her mother, who worried that study would ruin Elsie’s health. Science at the time supported her mother’s unease. In 1873 Dr. Clarke, a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers and a former faculty of the medical school, pointed out that too much intellectual activity for adolescent girls and young women would “permanently damage their reproductive capacity.” According to Dr. Clarke, higher education posed a “grave danger” for the female sex (Deacon 1997a:20; Rosenberg 1982:5). However, Elsie was able to manipulate her mother’s anxiety and engage in rigorous sports activity on the beach at the family summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. There, out of the confining parlors of upper class New York society, she interacted with unmarried men and women, debated social and intellectual issues, and stepped outside constraining social norms. Elsie’s interest in sociology did not wane. She completed a master’s thesis entitled “On Certain Phases of Poor-Relief in the City of New York.” Clearly, she was moving further out of approved roles for women of her class and time. Despite repeated objections from her family, she continued to study, which her parents considered the lesser of two evils: they

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feared she would otherwise go live at the Greenwich Settlement House.12 Elsie set new parameters of what was possible for women when she gained a doctorate from Columbia University in 1899. She majored in education with minors in sociology, philosophy, and statistics. Higher education gave Elsie the intellectual rationale and social network to apply ideas from her studies to her own life. This kind of experimental approach to life was most evident in what turned out to be her unconventional marriage and her long career that involved fieldElsie Clews Parsons in front of her family’s work, anthropology, and Newport, Rhode Island, summer home, folklore studies. 1916. courtesy of rye historical society, According to biograelsie clews parsons papers. phers, when Elsie Clews and Herbert Parsons, who was a Republican politician, met in 1894, they shared a sense of civic responsibility and sought to use their vast riches and position for the common good of society. Although Herbert had hoped to marry her after she completed her first graduate degree, Elsie was determined to complete her doctorate and establish herself professionally. She viewed her marriage in 1900 to be a trial relationship, from which she gathered insights about marriage and gender roles. It was considered highly unorthodox for a woman of her means to work after marriage; however, she was intent upon shattering conventions and continued working during pregnancy and motherhood. She taught sociology at Barnard College, continued doing activist social work at Greenwich Settlement House, and published articles in the press and academia, while

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satisfying her roles as wife and mother. Although considered scandalous, she wrote openly about sexuality, using cross-cultural comparisons as a means to suggest that gender was a social construct rather than a biological fact. She used her position as a married woman of privilege as the platform from which to advocate reproductive rights and birth control more than a decade before Margaret Sanger.13 Her first book, The Family, was published in 1906 and contains essays largely compiled of lectures from the course she taught at Barnard College. The last eight pages of the book were controversial and shocking: she proposed that women work outside the home for financial security and independence and that trial marriage could actually strengthen relationships. Such social freedoms were regarded as blasphemy. The titles of two New York Times book reviews demonstrate how scandalous her ideas were considered: “Dr. Dix on Trial Marriage: Rector of Trinity Says Mrs. Parsons’ Views are Barbarous” (November 18, 1906); and “Trial Marriage Idea Denounced in Churches: Dr. Parkhust Calls It Merely Consecutive Polygamy: Disgusting, Says Dr. Wylie,” (November 30, 1906). Parsons’s ideas concerning social and women’s rights were “ahead of her time,” and certainly not appropriate for the wife of a congressman (Deacon 1997). Herbert was elected to Congress in 1905 and soon after they moved to Washington, DC. There, Elsie struggled with the stifling intellectual environment for women. In her personal life she experienced the death of an infant, a miscarriage, and Herbert’s indiscretions with another woman. “In Washington, as in India,” she reported, “a wife assumes her husband’s qualities,” and “the wife, however young, of a senator or a cabinet officer precedes the wife however old, of a representative or general. Les femmes n’ont pas de rang [Women have no rank]” (Rosenberg 1982:162). Serendipitously, her husband’s close associate William Taft, the secretary of war at the time, invited Elsie to go on a congressional junket to the Philippines. This trip proved pivotal in her career as an anthropologist, and upon her return she began to read voraciously about other cultures. After the birth of her third living child in 1909, Elsie renewed her interest in travel. Her intellectual interests fully focused on anthropology after a trip to the American Southwest. She made contacts with museums in Washington and read avidly about the Southwest through the pregnancy and delivery of her fourth child in August 1911. The family returned to New York that same year after Herbert lost his seat in Congress. In New York she found a network of like-minded radical women working on social justice issues, who

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(above) Testimonial banquet in honor of Herbert Parsons, Washington, DC, 1911. (Elsie and Herbert are second couple standing on left.) courtesy of rye historical society, elsie clews parsons papers. (left) Elsie as part of Taft party to the Philippines, 1905. courtesy of rye historical society, elsie clews parsons papers.

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became her lifelong friends and colleagues. She and Herbert increasingly led independent lives, although they remained married (Deacon 1997a). Parsons’s association with anthropologists Robert Lowie, Alexander Goldenweiser, and Pliny Goddard at the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University opened her to the intellectual milieu she craved. Further, her wealth14 provided her with the wherewithal to conduct fieldwork, so she could test her ideas about social conventions through cross-cultural comparison. As she developed collegial relations with Franz Boas at Columbia University, her affluence enabled her to move Ruth Bunzel and Esther Goldfrank from secretarial positions in the Anthropology Department in his office and Gladys Reichard to do fieldwork and professional anthropology (1997b:179). Although Parsons never held a tenured position at an academic institution, she channeled some of her wealth to keep the American Folklore Society alive and mentored more than a generation of fieldworkers. Gladys Reichard remembered her “innate sense of simplicity that allowed her to be at home in any company” (Deacon 1997a:372). As a feminist public intellectual, she, along with friends and colleagues (partially in protest to WWI) supported an experiment in higher education by founding the “Free School” in 1919, which later became the New School for Social Research. Parsons authored scores of articles and many books for both lay readers and academia about the politics of gender and women’s roles in different cultures. She discussed how the power of classification engendered cultural constraints, which were not natural but socially constructed.15 She conducted fieldwork in the American Southwest and Southeast, the Caribbean, and Mexico, but also traveled extensively around the world. As a talented fieldworker, she enjoyed the give and take of personal interactions and participation in community life as a method to understand culture change. In her 1936 book Mitla: Town of Souls, she was “concerned with acculturation, with what the Indian culture took from the Spanish” (xi–xiii) and assessed ways individual actions shape institutions. Her inquiries centered on women as individuals within society, with the expressed purpose of challenging U.S. Americans to reconfigure family and social arrangements as they embarked upon the twentieth century. In Pueblo Indian Religion (1939), Parsons intended to prepare an encyclopedia of Pueblo culture with cross-cultural comparisons to better apprehend Pueblo religion as “an instrument of life,” or way of perceiving the world. Her writings demonstrate ways in which anthropology can be a tool to

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educate the public about human diversity and to think critically about different social and cultural realities.

Rosita and Elsie Elsie met Rosa several days before Rosa gave birth to her third child, Matilde. Parsons portrays everyday and ritual life in the village largely through Rosa’s perspective in 1940 and 1941. In the first chapter of Peguche, she takes note of the self-sufficiency of most residents: Most of the Peguche people own land—a house site and a field next to the house. Some have an additional field or fields. Of 122 households, only 3 households are “hacienda Indians,” tenants working out their rent on the hacienda. Economic independence is generally true of the Indians throughout the valley, who are more distinctively landowners than other mountain Indians. (1945:8) Parsons mentions that “[n]eighboring Quinchuquí displays a more advanced state in White penetration than Peguche,” because the church and commercial activities surrounded the plaza and were adjacent to the cobblestone Pan American Highway.16 She met with José Cajas, who she identified as one of the few Indians with a house in the center of town, who was “the first Indian to use a Spanish loom” (1945:9).17 Through interviews, Parsons learned that the Cajas family married into the Ruis family in Peguche (Rosita’s paternal aunt had married a Ruis), and as a result the Spanish/treadle loom was brought to Peguche. She recognized that technological innovations opened specialty markets for Otavaleño textiles production, and keenly observed the weaving workshop in Rosita’s household, in addition to their farming and commercial activities. Parsons outlined the basic residential segregation that existed at the time. Blancos (whites) lived in the cantonal (county)/municipal seat of Otavalo, and Indians lived in outlying villages with fewer, if any, basic services such as potable water, sanitation, and electricity. She observed that Otavaleños ventured to town to shop and sell, especially at the Saturday market, “perhaps the most outstanding in the country,” for the occasional odd job, and to conduct church and civic business at offices. She identifies the social interactions between groups as one of “mutual economic

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convenience,” and that “[i]n church and elsewhere the attitude of the Indians is not at all subservient; rather is it a matter of keeping in their place as a guaranty of independence” (1945: 10). In chapter III, “Technology and Material Culture,” she describes in detail tools used in farming and weaving, pottery, foodways, dress, and the Saturday market. According to Parsons, some of the cultural values shared by the Peguche community consisted of keeping land in the family, hard work, distinctive dress, and hair grooming. She gave an overall picture of family life, religion, folklore, and ritual. In particular, Parsons pointed out the importance of intercultural interactions. For example, during Parsons’s stay, Rosita’s baby Matilde was baptized by godparents from Otavalo who were nonnative. Rosita’s contacts with White people are by no means confined to representatives of the Church. She trades with Whites in Otavalo and in Quito and she chooses Whites rather than Indians as compadres [co-parents/godparents]. One of her compadres is the municipal comisario in Otavalo, another is a well-to-do produce merchant whose wife was reared on the hacienda of Quinchuquí, and another is the leading surgeon in Quito. White connections seem worthwhile to Rosita, and more than anyone else in Peguche she understands how to make and keep them. (1945:150) Additionally, Rosita took her children to the blanco-mestizo school in town each day, and she and her husband opened their home (free of charge) to a maestro de capilla/catechist, who offered religious instruction in the community. These are examples of Rosita fine-tuning her intercultural skills as she built social capital across cultures in the early 1940s. In “Peguche Houses” (chapter IX), Parsons describes some of the daily rhythms of village life and profiles Rosita’s position in the community: Rosita has an embryonic sense of class, and it would not be difficult for her to think of herself as an Inca lady, if she knew anything about the Inca or a class-stratified Indian society. And when I picture the Inca ladies, I see Rosita, (I also see Flora Surni of Zuni). It is primarily from her sense of distinction, not from toadying, that Rosita associates easily with White gentry. To be sure, there are other reasons, as the following anecdote indicates. Nobody

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from Rosita’s household attended the Otavalo street-opening minga,18 and so the agent of the comisario municipal came and in the absence of Rosita and José confiscated from the line in the yard a swaddling cloth worth about 6 sucres. Rosita asked me for a lift into town, and from the comisario, her compadre, she got a note ordering the manager of the minga to return the piece of cloth. Rosita gave the note to a relative at the minga to give to the manager and get back the cloth. The next morning the cloth was around Matilde. (163) Through her web of relations, Rosita exercised a sense of confidence and entitlement that did not permit intimidation, and reinforced her relative position of privilege. As the preceding passage indicates, she had the social network to exercise power and manipulate outcomes in her favor. She wielded this kind of power until the end of her life, when she exerted her influence over judges in a case that involved her son accused by other relatives of swindling them out of most of their life savings. Indeed, her social capital was extensive, far-reaching, and well-cultivated even in 1940 when Parsons observed: Because of her comparatively close relations to the Church, of her trading relations abroad, and her fluent knowledge of Spanish, Rosita is becoming more and more aware of White culture and more and more critical of several aspects of her Indian culture, for example, of the validity of dreams or of witchcraft. And yet she is far from being aloof from neighbors. She has many visitors within and without of the family connection, and in our visits to other houses she was pleasant and very talkative. “You talked a lot to them,” I remarked one day on our way home. “Yes, they like that,” said she. Her personality and her prestige as a trader render her conspicuous, I surmise, to her neighbors, a telling example. Rosita furnishes an illustration of the opportunities for acculturation through unusual personality; indeed, one of the most outstanding instances I have ever observed. (1945:151) Parsons returned to Peguche for two months in 1941 and was dismayed to find Rosita bedridden and out of sorts. A priest from Otavalo had already dispensed the last sacrament to Rosita. Neither native nor

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Western cures had succeeded and her condition was truly grave. As a last resort, she made a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Quinche, but her family did not allow her to accompany Parsons to Quito for fear that she might die. Rosita “did not want to go to the hospital . . . because there were too many sick people there” (1945:167). Her diagnosis ranged from severe anemia to espanto/fright.19 Parsons recorded a variety of treatments and lamented the ineffectual health system: “without knowledge of Indian home life and without the services of the district nurse,” they were ill-equipped to treat Rosita (1945:169). Parsons’s work foreshadowed the development of medical anthropology in the final paragraph when she raises questions about “cultural pressures” and the importance of intercultural communication for effective treatment. In 1995 Mamá Rosa recalled her last meeting with Señora Elsita: “She loved and trusted me. I was sick and immobile when she returned. When she left, she was very, very sad. Then, she died instead of me. Just like you are working, she worked.”

Parsons’s Contributions to Andean Anthropology Parsons’s scholarship presents a paradigm shift in the social sciences. Foremost, her work repositioned women as active cultural agents and highlighted how they lived their complex and multidimensional lives. Her focus was cultural change and changing culture. She emphasized that history, gender, and race/ethnicity were not immutable monolithic constructs. With the use of detailed ethnographic examples, she deconstructed commonplace Western classifications and by doing so upset existing power structures. As Parsons challenged positivist notions of progress, she propelled the social sciences to develop methodologies for better understanding and appreciating difference. These were variants of Boasian ethnography that focused on gender and ethnic differences. The feminist methodologies she developed offer a holistic approach to doing fieldwork, the results of which include heretofore marginal perspectives as central for apprehending different realities. As a result, her fieldwork created intercultural bridges that underscore new possibilities for social equity. Her final work, Peguche, is notable for the detailed descriptions of village life and stands out for the portrait of Rosa Lema. She described Rosita as someone who took advantage of intercultural exchanges to build her social capital, while carefully maintaining traditional networks of kin and

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fictive kin within in her own community. By offering a profile of Peguche in general, and Rosita in particular, Parsons’s work suggests that through actual historical circumstances and mixing of cultural realities, gender, racial, and ethnic boundaries are not fixed. She also showed the agency of an individual affecting change. In the chapters that follow, my work rediscovers Rosita’s voice as a means to bridge our understanding of change as it unfolded in Peguche after Parsons left. I also offer a picture of day-to-day village life as traditional worldviews overlap with global realities. But first, in the next chapter, I begin with Rosa Lema’s recollections of Elsie Clews Parsons and her trip to New York as the historical baseline from which to understand some of the creative entanglements of gender with globalization in local and transnational venues at the end of the twentieth century.

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Rosa Lema in New York City, November 1949 Indigenismo Reimagined

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“They invited me because of my work” Everyone here was so provincial and so scared. Thanks to me, and my important friends, everything has changed. I was invited to the exposition because of my work: I knew how to do everything with wool. (Lema interview 1991) The new woman means the woman not yet classified, perhaps not classifiable, the woman new not only to men, but to herself. (Parsons, Social Rule, 1916, cited in Babcock, Parezo 1988:14) \ rosa lem a’s wor ds echo those of Elsie Clews Parsons and emanate the self-confidence of a “new woman.” She acknowledges the importance of her social networks and other abilities, and reflects on her momentous trip to New York in 1949. Mamá Rosa conveys a sense of self-aggrandizement, as she boldly credits herself for opening up global commerce and transforming

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Peguche. Certainly, her words underscore Parsons’s observations fifty years earlier: Rosita is quite well aware that in her own community she is exceptional, and it gives her a sense of superiority, which to me at least she was ever ready to express. (1945:151) Rosita’s method of feeling superior is to run herself and her family up rather than to run others down. She was seldom critical of particular persons and not gossipy. I often wished she were. (Ibid: 152) Mamá Rosa parlayed her exceptional sense of self toward more intercultural encounters, purposefully onto a path with new opportunities. Over her lifetime she moved with ease in and out of circles with other indigenous traders and weavers, in addition to interacting with blanco-mestizo clergy, doctors, businesspeople and politicians, and of course, foreigners like Parsons and myself. Through these interactions she borrowed ideas and ways of doing things, while maintaining underlying cultural values, and thereby offered a flexible model for embracing change. In that way, she contributed to the successful global commercialization of indigenous handicrafts and culture during the last decade of the century. After Parsons’s final fieldwork in 1941, Rosita’s life in Peguche changed rapidly. Soon thereafter, Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Quito frequented her home/workshop in Peguche most weekends to purchase textiles, and she made friends with some of them. In addition, Rosita gave birth to two more children, Cecilia and Amado, while José’s textile workshop grew and employed more workers. During this period her friendship grew with Galo Plaza Lasso, who was at the peak of his civic career. She had known his family since childhood, when she traded in cattle and wool at his family’s Hacienda Zuleta, located not too far from Peguche in a valley on the other side of Imbabura Mountain. As the son of a former president and representative of the landed elite, Galo Plaza served as Ambassador to the United States (1944–1946) and was an original signer to the Charter of the United Nations. He was elected president of Ecuador in 1948 on a platform of “development and democracy,” and governed during a period of relative political stability and prosperity.1 His administration applied a Western model for development on rural Ecuador, with the intent to modernize agriculture as the means to accelerate the integration of Ecuador

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into the global economy. This policy focused on industrialized agriculture and monocrop production to enhance yields and export. However, at the same time, his government perpetuated the status quo through the administration of socially conservative policies that kept power, privilege, and land tenure in the hands of the elite.

Galo Plaza Lasso intent upon opening Ecuador for development. courtesy of galo plaza foundation, quito, ecuador.

Galo Plaza with two Otavaleñas. courtesy of galo plaza foundation.

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Unexpected seismic events provided a set of circumstances that inadvertently began to shake up the social hierarchy. On August 5, 1949, an earthquake, epicentered in Ambato, Tungaragua (two hours directly south of Quito), devastated the Ecuadorian highlands. With Galo Plaza’s connections, the United Nations responded quickly with aid for the victims. In November 1949 Rosa Lema was selected to visit New York City as a cultural ambassador to thank the United Nations for that assistance. Perhaps the fact that the individual selected was a native Otavaleña is surprising, given the colonial legacy that kept most indigenous people tied to haciendas as indentured servants until the land reform of the 1960s. However upon closer scrutiny, her selection was part of a larger modernizing political agenda that represented an ideology of indigenismo (indigenism). Throughout Latin America, indigenistas (indigenists) began analyzing the “Indian problem” in the 1920s and 1930s. Generally, indigenists were from the dominant class who had the best intentions for improving indigenous people’s economic condition. They proposed that native integration was imperative for building a cohesive and modern nation-state. Indigenismo emerged as part of a deliberate political project in nation-building in Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Guatemala: it recognized the poverty and social marginalization of native groups as impediments to national development. Indigenists advocated policies for assimilating marginal populations into a homogeneous national identity. However well-intentioned, indigenism represented a paternalistic ideology because it failed to consider indigenous people’s perspectives with regard to their own future. Rather, indigenists developed “benevolent” strategies to “rescue passive victims” through assimilation, so that the Indian would no longer be an obstacle to progress. To comprehend the marginalization of native populations in Ecuador that gave rise to indigenismo, the particular status of Otavalan natives, and why Mamá Rosa was selected as a cultural ambassador, a brief prehistorical and historical overview follows.

Pre-Hispanic Otavalo Archaeologists and ethnohistorians agree that prior to the arrival of the Incas in the mid-fifteenth century, agricultural diversity, textile production, and complex social organization were foundations for an affluent society in the Otavalo valley (Espinoza Soriano 1988:217). Pre-Inca

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northern Ecuador was under the sway of the Cara and Carangue chiefdoms (Salomon 1981; Oberem 1981; Buitrón n.d; San Félix 1988; Kyle 1999; Colloredo-Mansfeld 2000). According to Salomon, these chiefdoms included a special class of exchange specialists or mindalá corps “not entrepreneurs so much as political operatives and the object of their travels was less likely to have been the accumulation of wealth objects than the channeling of interzonal flows in the direction favorable to the interests of their sponsoring lords” (Salomon 1986:99). Thus, pre-historic leaders created a political economy that combined the exchange of specialized products from ecological microzones with diplomacy as a model for peace and prosperity. Undoubtedly, this kind of political maneuvering involved well-developed intercultural aptitudes because there were multiple linguistic groups marking different chiefdoms. Scholars generally agree that the Incas were present in northern Ecuador for less than fifty years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1534. The significance of the Incas’ presence is yet to be fully understood, although it is clear that they chose Otavalo as one of their northernmost administrative centers (Kyle 2000:115; Espinoza Soriano 1988). The greatest Inca impacts involved the introduction of llamas and alpacas as providers of wool and the imposition of a lingua franca, Quechua (now known as Kichwa), on the ruling class of an already thriving interregional trading center.

Colonial Otavalo The Spanish introduced sheep, European crops, and the pedal loom as a way to expand the already thriving textile and agriculture production and markets. However, for natives of the region, the trauma and devastation of conquest is incalculable. Geographer Linda Newson estimates that the population of Otavalo was reduced from approximately one hundred and fifty thousand to less than twenty-five thousand in the sixty-five years after the occupation (1995:341). Historian Kris Lane points out that much of the demographic cataclysm was the result of disease, violence, land degradation, deforestation, and overwork. In addition, the native population was subject to christianization and the application of Spanish colonial law, including forced labor called the encomienda. Under the encomienda, or entrusteeship system, “conquerors and other Spaniards enjoyed rents, or tributes, derived from indigenous surplus production and male labor”

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(Lane 2002:89). Spanish settlers were granted usufruct land rights and control of the indigenous people who lived there. The native inhabitants were required by law to serve as laborers and work the land. Under the power of the Spanish Crown, the encomendero (Spanish settler/trustee) took responsibility for defending the territory, collecting taxes, and christianizing the native population in exchange for land tenure. Spaniards administered Otavalo until changes in the royal administrative system converted indigenous labor into conciertos, or contract laborers in the late eighteenth century. The reform was intended to improve working conditions for the indigenous laborers but was in fact a form of debt servitude. Agriculture was the primary economic interest in Ecuador and the mainstay of most indigenous people’s lives throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: many labored as huasipungueros, or in quasi-serfdom, where they received a small plot of land for cultivation and water and firewood rights in exchange for their labor on haciendas. A small percentage of the native population was made up of free Indians who cultivated their own plots of land. During this period, Indian villages continued to be separated from white settlements by law, which unwittingly enabled them to maintain some independence and cultural traditions. Additionally, two obrajes, or textile sweatshops, were important to the economic structure of the region, where weavers were conscripted into labor. In Peguche an obraje operated from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century and produced much of the cloth for miners in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador (Deler et al. 1983:138). The reach of such economic institutions were global and focused wealth and power from textile and agriculture production into the hands of a small elite. Throughout the eighteenth century, Álvaro San Félix notes that the Otavalo mindalá corps, or exchange specialists, carried on an independent trade of niche-market products from distinct ecozones. These experts paid tribute in the form of specialty products, unlike other yanaperos, or free subjects, who directly served a cacique, or native lord (1988:209). This political economic model featured the skill set of intercultural trade and relative autonomy, with mindalá operatives combining social diplomacy and commerce in ways that continued to set Otavalans apart from other groups. Historian Andrés Guerrero points out the high percentage of yanaperos or free Indians on the tribute lists in Otavalo and Cotacachi of 1804–1805: 63 percent compared to nearby communities with fewer than 15 percent in this category (Guerrero 1991:156; Oberem 1981:348). In many communities, large landowners still exercised

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control over the other 37 percent, who were mostly huasipungueros and worked for the landlord in a form of debt servitude. However, the fact that Otavalans were a heterogeneous group, with a large percentage economically independent, proved to provide many of them with advantages that came to fruition in interesting ways at the end of the twentieth century. At the turn of the eighteenth century, as a stronger capitalist worldsystem emerged more able to seek out raw materials and labor, nonEuropeans became more enmeshed in global processes. The British Empire muscled its way into global markets with value-added mechanized woven goods at comparatively minimal costs. England’s wide use of mechanical looms and the introduction of steam engines in the early nineteenth century precipitated the closure of many of Ecuador’s obrajes. Handmade fabrics could no longer compete on the same scale with industrially produced textiles that were imported into Ecuador. However, local responses were not mute and shaped cultural outcomes in rural communities in Ecuador. The textile factory in Peguche was able to remain open, albeit under private ownership, and weaving for local consumption continued to supply an internal niche market in the region (Stephen 1981:323) as Otavalans created more markets in Colombia and Venezuela.

Independence: The Emerging Republic Independence from Spain in 1822 shifted power from Spanish-born peninsulares, who administered the colonies for the Crown, to members of the criollo, or Ecuadorian-born Spanish elite. For indigenous people, the power structure remained intact. Friedrich Hassaurek, the first United States minister to Ecuador visited Otavalo in 1863 and documented the situation in Peguche: In the factory of Peguche, coarse woolen goods are made, such as bayetas for ponchos, jergas for the Indians, and shawls for their women . . . cloth for coats, vests, pantaloons, carpets, etc. These goods are exported chiefly to New Granada, as far as Pasto and Popayan in the interior, and Barbacoas on the coast. The laborers employed in the factory are almost all Indians. They are concertados, or peons. The factory yields about thirty pieces of cloth per month. (1964:151)

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Hausserek also notes that: The Indian farm laborers, and it is only the Indians and Negroes who work on the farm, and by the sweat of their brows maintain the white population by whom they are oppressed, are called gañares, or concertados, or peones. Their wages do not exceed a medio (half a real per day, which would amount to twenty-three dollars per year). In addition to this, the landowner is obliged to give to each man a suit of coarse common cloth and a hat every year. He also gives them a small piece of ground, which they may cultivate for themselves, and on which they may build their huts called huasipungos. For this miserable allowance, they are compelled to work from early dawn till five or six in the evening . . . Besides the labor, which they must perform for their masters, they are also compelled to do a thousand little things for their curates, who are generally more despotic and cruel than the landowner. (Ibid:169–70) According to Guerrero, in 1887 Pedro Fermin Cevallos, an important writer and intellectual of the time, captured the sentiment of the elites. He tried to justify debt servitude as a social institution that “helped” the “hungry and naked” Indian. As Guerrero points out, debt was both a means of economic domination and, perhaps more significantly, a legal weapon that guaranteed a labor force across generations: workers who were in debt and attempted to leave the hacienda were jailed, and their debts were inherited by their children (1991:50–51). The landed oligarchy, particularly on the coast, was intent upon shaping Ecuadorian trade and commerce to fit within a global economic system.2 Their liberal policies sought to open markets. Cacao was the perfect product for export; however, the tropical climes where it grew contributed to the demise of native populations through disease after the Conquest. To facilitate what turned out to be an economic boom (1860–1920), political leaders looked to the sierra for laborers and instituted reforms, including trade liberalization.3 Their aim was to expand markets and promote international economic integration. Within such an objective they were keen to present a “civilized” face to the mother country as well as other European powers. Anthropologist Blanca Muratorio examined historical records from 1892, a year that marked four centuries since Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas. Muratorio’s research in Ecuadorian congressional archives

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indicates that legislators were asked to send natives and artifacts to an exhibition in Madrid for the fourth centenary celebration. This prompted a debate in regard to which group could best represent Ecuador. The congress classified Otavaleños as “model Indians” in comparison to what they labeled as their “wild” counterparts in the oriente, or Amazon. The goal of the organizers, the political and economic elite, was to demonstrate to the civilized world that Ecuador was ready for foreign investment and to increase export production. Muratorio cites the 1892 Report from the Ecuadorian Congress, which highlights the “entertainment value” of Otavalans: By contrast, despite the fact that the Otavalo Indians are not “pure,” according to Mr. Pallares, they remain “outstanding” for their “correct features,” their “above average height,” and their “vigorous forms,” characteristics that they have “preserved” from their “Cara” ancestors. In addition, they are “intelligent, hard working, sober, of good manners, and accustomed to neatness, order, and cleanliness.” Most important, however, the Otavaleños have “special abilities,” such as their “San Juan dances,” their “ball game,” and their totora [a reed from which a number of items are woven] boats with which they could sail the lakes of Madrid Park. All these exotic talents would not only attract and entertain the public, but the small fee that would be charged for this entertainment may “even help to pay for all the expenses incurred in transporting and housing the Indians themselves.” (1993:24) Because of the attention expended in the congressional debate with regard to the selection of which indigenous group to send to the Madrid Exhibition, I was curious to see how Otavaleños were received in Spain.4 At the Biblioteca Nacional Española (Spanish National Library) I searched through the archives of Spanish periodicals. After looking through the popular press from Madrid September–December 1892, I found scant information about the exposition with regard to “Indians” from the “new world.” The publications I reviewed extolled the heroic pursuits of the revered Christopher Columbus and paid little or no attention to the illustrious officials visiting from former colonies. The fact that I found no direct statement about indigenous people at the exposition speaks volumes to their lack of status—they were simply not worthy of mention. Instead, the exposition was seen as a scientific query into the archaeological past as

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a means to demonstrate the progress that the “enlightened” Spanish had wrought through positivist ideologies. From the perspective of the mother country and civilized Europe, Columbus had done the people of the Americas a “big favor.” An article in La Ilustración Española y Americana states that “the last stone of four centuries of historic work is being put into the Exposición HistóricoAmericana. Thus it can be said that the genius of Europe was due to Spain and Columbus’s discovery of America in 1492, and that the genius of Europe returns to Spain in 1892 as the means to explore America before its discovery” (November 1892). In other words, Spain was again in the vanguard of science and discovery, with the Americas as its object of the past and ready for development. In the popular publication, Blanco y Negro (September 25, 1892), a caricature portrayed rowdy “pure” indios dancing with nose rings, feathers, and hyperbolized racial features, while El Album Ibero-Americano (October 14, 1892) presented a stunningly beautiful and passive Indian woman. The Catálogo Especial de la República del Ecuador includes a demographic overview of Ecuador, which applauds the fact that “little by little the life of Christian civilization is entering [Ecuador], thanks to the government and the missions.” The catalogue lists ceramics, masks, stone tools, and other artifacts supplied by the Ecuadorian committee and announces the illustrious delegation of Ecuadorian politicians, including President Antonio Flores and Pallares Arteta. No Otavalans, or any indigenous peoples, are mentioned. The boon that Ecuadorian elites expected the Madrid exhibition to yield as a response to the modern country projected in part by the image of “civilized” Indians seems to have gone unnoticed by the Spanish press on the eve of the twentieth century. However, back home in Ecuador, that appraisal privileged Otavaleño identity in the Ecuadorian imagination. According to Muratorio, this is when Otavaleños became “model” Indians in the national psyche (Ibid:25).5 To be sure, it is this representation of indigenous culture as a curiosity welcomed by nonnatives that resurfaced again and again in debates over indigenismo, folklorization, cultural renaissance, and ethnic tourism in events surrounding the Columbus quincentenary one hundred years later.

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Otavalo and Globalization in the Twentieth Century: The Emergence of Indigenismo as the “Modern” Antidote for “Underdevelopment” 6 Population growth in Ecuador increased dramatically: it tripled from 816,000 in 1850 to 1,400,000 in 1900 to more than 2,160,000 by 1930 (Weaver 2000:70). By 2000 it was over 12,000,000. This rapid demographic growth necessitated and promoted internal markets. It also created pressure for land tenure reform and propelled migration to the cities and to the coast, trends that continue, in addition to foreign emigration. Global capital markets expanded at the turn of the nineteenth century, with more raw materials from Latin America exchanged for manufactured goods from industrialized countries. Regional elites on the coast solidified their power with control of cacao production and the prolonged boom (1860–1920). As noted, mass-produced British textiles diminished the obraje system in the highlands even before independence in 1822. However, indigenous merchant-weavers gradually refilled some of the internal markets in Ecuador, and by the second decade of the twentieth century they were offering innovative designs that competed with foreign tweeds. A niche market opened in 1915, when World War I interrupted international commerce. Significantly, this is when two native weavers from the village of Ilumán (two kilometers north of Peguche) were asked to replicate English tweed by the manager of Hacienda Cusin (Buitrón 1952, cited in Stephen 1981:323).7 Their innovative production of highquality tweeds opened important new regional and national markets for Otavalan textiles. The Ecuadorean state had a well-articulated political economic vision during the last decades of the nineteenth century, including the promotion of long-distance international trade and investment in one crop, cacao. This monocrop model was like putting all of one’s eggs in one basket, and without diversified products, was doomed to boom or bust economic cycles, with the accompanying periods of political and social instability. The Ecuadorian export economy was structured by international financial, monetary, and trade concerns that represented the interests of a minuscule percentage of the population. Much of the rural countryside in the highlands still operated under nearly feudal conditions with huasipungos as the prevailing labor relations.8 After the worldwide economic depression in the 1930s when international trade was greatly curtailed, the Ecuadorian government urgently

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sought to modernize agriculture and other industries.9 It is no coincidence that the hemispheric indigenista (indigenist) ideology emerged as a modernization principle that promoted national integration through the assimilation of Indians into the state. Particularly after the border conflict with Peru in 1941, the Ecuadorian government was eager for the large and diverse indigenous population to have a national identity. However, full citizenship and suffrage rights were restricted to literate individuals until laws changed in 1979. The first Inter-American Indigenist Congress was held in 1940 in Pátzcuaro, Mexico.10 Mexican President Lazaro Cárdenas addressed the congress, and Franklin D. Roosevelt sent Commissioner John Collier of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who had played a central role in the development of the international treaty for the protection and advancement of indigenous people in all the Americas.11 These activities elevated indigenous issues onto the international arena and put in motion links across national boundaries for a transnational approach to resolve the “Indian problem.” This kind of official indigenismo sought to assimilate native peoples into national cultures and society without any input from them.12 The conference provided political and economic openings for indigenist policies throughout the hemisphere. More significantly, it also promoted educational opportunities for native peoples. In Ecuador, Pío Jaramillo Alvarado launched the indigenista movement with the publication in 1922 of his book El Indio Ecuatoriano. He glorified the indigenous past, while fighting for native rights and advocating their need (according to him and modernist ideologies) to assimilate into the national culture. Jaramillo’s activist position pressed for legislative changes with little success; nevertheless, his intellectual influence on later indigenistas was considerable. He helped found the Ecuadorian branch of the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (Inter-American Indigenist Institute) and served as its director from its initial conception in 1941 until 1960. Jaramillo’s student, Gonzalo Rubio Orbe, became the most prominent indigenista anthropologist in Ecuador. Punyaro, written in 1956, assessed multiple aspects of indigenous culture in northern Ecuador and looked at the impact of missionary incursions into native life. Rubio also promoted development in indigenous communities and cultivated transnational exchanges with leading Mexican indigenistas. In 1947 Ecuadorian anthropologist Aníbal Buitrón wrote several articles for América Indígena, where he recognized two groups of Otavaleños;

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those who owned land, either on valley floors (such as in Peguche) or on steep and remote hillsides; and those who lived like slaves, or huasipungueros,13 on haciendas. He pointed out that those with microenterprises in close proximity to blanco-mestizos and whites generally had a higher standard of living. He emphasized cooperation and reciprocal networks as the foundation for social integration within native society, but he observed such tightly knit social cohesion also limited interaction with the dominant group (1947). Although the indigenistas were sympathetic to the plight of “the Indian,” their general aim was to build a culturally homogeneous society within a singular national identity. Even though they were not intending to redistribute any of the resources to the underclass of indigenous people and campesinos (rural folk), their attempt to integrate them into a modern workforce was considered forward thinking at the time. Just the fact that they considered improving the lot of economically disadvantaged people was progressive. According to indigenista logic, indigenous people lacked the opportunity to reach their full economic potential because they were marginalized and poor, and only through integration could their backwardness be overcome. In this light, Indians were regarded as passive victims who needed well-meaning outsiders to protect and direct them. This attitude did not consider the larger political-economic picture, which included four and a half centuries of civil and economic subjugation. Indigenista concerns were paternalistic, romantic, and humanitarian. They followed a unidirectional ideology, which conceded that although indigenous people had had a glorious past, only the Western notion of modernity could save them—they needed to be guided out of their “antiquated ways” and into a productive future (Barre 1985). Coincidentally in this scheme of modernity, native people and campesinos could assume roles as productive laborers in new industries. In such a logic, being Ecuadorian and being indigenous were mutually exclusive—to truly be Ecuadorian, one would have to shed her or his native identity. However, there was debate among indigenists, and some proposed integrating them economically through the production of handicrafts. Along those lines, the key to modernizing Ecuador was to assimilate and integrate indigenous people into the European-oriented culture. In this regard Galo Plaza noted during his presidency: The Indian is indeed a problem, and no government can solve it in the space of four years. I do not believe that much can be done

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with the present Indian generation. But with an educational program including instruction in agriculture and domestic industry and the inculcation in the Indian child of habits of hygiene and the necessities of civilized life, there can be developed a generation which will produce miracles. (Jaramillo Alvarado 1983:239–40) Galo Plaza’s approach did not mean strengthening native identity and selfdetermination. On the coast it meant attracting indígenas and campesinos as a labor force to a booming agribusinesses of bananas, cacao, and coffee. In the highlands, agriculture, tourism, and handicraft production for export were heralded as important paths to modernization. Along those lines, in 1949 John Collier Jr., a gifted photographer, and Anibal Buitrón, an Ecuadorian anthropologist, published the stunning visual ethnography, The Awakening Valley, about Otavalo. This book was a trope for progress. Notably, Aníbal Buitrón’s father14 was former comisario nacional (head of National Police) of the cantón of Otavalo, and John Collier Jr., was the son of John Collier Sr., the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs under Franklin Roosevelt. Collier Sr. was considered an activist for native affairs and a community organizer, who reformed U.S. federal Indian policy. Collier Jr. and Buitrón’s book comprises black and white photos that highlight Otavalans in daily and community life. Within the backdrop of the dramatic natural environment, the author and photographer metaphorically poised Otavaleños on a threshold to “awaken the valley” through their unique resourcefulness, and hailed them as the different “Indians.” Now the Indians of Otavolo [sic] have an opportunity to make money without working far from home or toiling on the local haciendas. Within a generation, a primitive farming culture has been transformed into a manufacturing and trading economy. Money profit for the Otavalos make it possible to buy more land. In a relatively short time, they have developed a new mode of culture that sets them apart from other Ecuadorian Indians. So industrious, so full of personal enterprise are they becoming, that both travelers and native Ecuadorians are coming to regard them as different from other Indian groups. It is hard to realize that the Otavalos are the same people as the Indians who slaved on the haciendas. The success of the Awakening Valley has not yet altered the white

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man’s disparaging concept of the “hopeless Indians.” But the characterization no longer fits the Otavalos, for a shift of economy has made them a new people. (1971[1949]:160) Were they a “new people” or simply deft at taking advantage of the historical circumstances? The Awakening Valley helped to pave the way for the cultural renaissance of the 1990s, particularly as Otavalans co-opted and redefined the image on their own terms. Buitrón’s and Collier’s “awakening valley” was adopted as an official plan by the municipal government to promote cultural tourism and handicraft production for regional development.15 However, substantive changes to address the “Indian problem” did not occur until the Agrarian Reforms in 1964 and 1973, the latter after significant deposits of crude oil had been discovered in the Ecuadorian Amazon.16 The rationale for the 1964 reform was premised on the idea that economic development could only occur with a reorganization of labor relations, which in turn would promote increased productivity on farms

Entrance into the awakening Otavalo Valley via San Pablo Lake with Mt. Cotacachi framing the sky, 1990.

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(Iturralde 1988). According to political scientist Liisa North, “as late as 1956 it was possible to find press advertisements of highland estate sales ‘with horses, sowed land and huasipungeros’” (2000:1). The land reform liberated huasipungueros from “semi-feudal working conditions—thereby granting them civil rights previously denied—and outlined mechanisms for gaining access to land. Social programs in education, health, social security, and infrastructure also accompanied the land reform” (Yashar 2005:92). The period of military rule in Ecuador 1972–1979 consolidated political power by exerting control over petroleum resources and constructed a nationalist agenda with reforms. Concurrently, import substitution industrialization (ISI) programs, recommended by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, boosted quality-oflife indicators in this period of relative prosperity.17

Mamá Rosa in New York City A different kind of change was occurring in Peguche after World War II. After Parsons’s fieldwork, foreigners and others continued visiting to purchase fine textiles. Moreover, a momentous change occurred after the 1949 earthquake: Rosa Lema, with her cousin and daughter, were selected to visit the United Nations in New York City. The Ecuadorian government chose them as a part of their development strategy to showcase “clever Indians” as “attractions” from whom to purchase ethnic curios and spark the nascent tourist industry. The selection of Lema and her relatives mirrors the 1892 preference for Otavalans as representatives to the fourth centenary in Madrid. Both instances promote a cultural political economy that to some extent attempted to commodify their identity. After World War II, Otavalo was targeted as a place for foreign investment and tourism, an important industry ripe for development. Rosita Lema was charismatic and a proven conduit to other worlds. As a woman, the elite men making the decisions viewed her as non-threatening and sympathetic. Within their view, she could be an object of interest without necessarily being an interested party, a strategic choice for the Ecuadorian government to showcase their country in New York City. Tourism development required financial resources on many levels and Rosita was considered an asset with a proven entrepreneurial spirit. Correspondence between Galo Plaza and his Consul General in New York, Clemente Durán Bellén (brother of Sixto, who became president 1992–1996), indicates they had

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read Parsons’s ethnography, from which they selected Rosa Lema as their cultural ambassador. The cultural mission had specific objectives, including to act as a messenger for tourism, to promote handicraft diversification, and to invigorate indigenous education. Furthermore, according to anthropologist Mercedes Prieto, Nelson Rockefeller submitted a report entitled “Economic Development in Ecuador” to Galo Plaza on March 3, 1949, which called for the development of cottage industries within densely populated areas of the sierra, and for building markets for handicrafts (2008:180–81). Certainly, Rosa Lema’s cultural mission fits within these parameters: it was believed that her trip would facilitate international integration and modernization. The government of Galo Plaza outlined the aim of the cultural mission in a pamphlet stating: Our visitors will study the way they can cooperate with the government of Señor Plaza as the means to adopt new methods of production, diversify handicraft [cottage] industries in order to reach a higher standard of living through their own work, with support and a clear vision from official leaders. (Government of Ecuador 1949:22–23, as cited in Prieto 2008:180–81) However, Rosa Lema’s trip to New York in 1949 was a sign of many things to come for Otavaleño women and men. Her full story reflects her skill in forging a multifaceted identity, an identity with deep historical roots that continued to be constructed by forces from within and without the borders of Ecuador. She did not see herself as being used by the Ecuadorian elite: there was no doubt in her mind that she was their equal. In terms of what was later named interculturalism, she practiced horizontal relationships that turned out to be mutually beneficial. She also unleashed important currents in a global cultural economy that reverberated for the rest of the century and into the next.

An Unprecedented Trip: Her Story Mamá Rosa loved to talk about her first trip to New York in November 1949. She savored her recollections and paraded them not unlike a peacock unfurling its feathers to remind people of a majestic splendor always within reach. She recognized the importance of the relationships she cultivated with foreigners after meeting Parsons in the early 1940s and

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especially after the publication of Peguche in 1945. Those relationships centered upon visitors who came to her home to purchase textiles. She related the following story to me on November 11, 1993, versions of which I had heard many times before and after. On that occasion she sat in the corridor of her beloved home untangling skeins of synthetic yarn as she spoke. Children scurried around the courtyard, playing and helping when called upon. Gregorio Panama and his family lived with her—she called him her adopted son (their relationship was similar to the one she had with Andrea and Juanti in 1940 when Parsons observed social class and household economics, within which are inherent cultural expectations and responsibilities). As Mamá Rosa spoke, Gregory’s wife, Luz María, finished sifting cracked barley, while he chopped wood and watered animals before going out to the fields.

“Everyone is nice to me” Ever since I was very little, I knew how to do things, and learned everything and kept working. My father was a weaver, but he didn’t want me to weave. But I hid and learned, and he was proud of me. I worked and traveled on foot to Quito. It took one and a half days to get to Quito on foot. Most people took three days, but we only took one and a half. We brought textiles and sold them to merchants. We dropped merchandise off and then returned. I worked cashmeres [tweeds]—no one could make cloth like me, the tweeds were made with yarn spun by hand—zigzag.18 We took the cashmeres to families with haciendas in the highlands. They bought all the cloth we had, the Plaza, Velasco, Barba, and Ponce families. They all had big haciendas in the north. Señor Plaza sent me to sell at the U.S. Embassy. I had a little baby [Cecilia] who I carried on my back, and I carried all the merchandise to Quito, to their houses. “Do you want to purchase pieces of cashmere?” I asked at their doors. I worked very hard. The Plaza family recognized my work and sent me to the U.S. Embassy. Then on my own initiative I went to the British, Cuban, and other embassies.

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My work became well known—everybody knew the work I did. They began to come here [Peguche] directly. That room was just for storage [she pointed to a huge warehouse-like room of her house]. We had twelve big looms here in the veranda. We bought the wool from the haciendas. That’s how I knew all the people in Quito. There was a man, Carlos Calisto—he owned three big haciendas. He was Rodrigo Borja’s father-in-law. 19 His wife was very nice to me. We were good friends. I was very prepared.20 My friends in Quito said I needed to have an exposition. We made cashmeres for coats and jackets for men and women, bedspreads, and blankets. I went to the United States in 1949. They sent me [her own emphasis]. Many people came from the embassy in Quito to find out about my weavings and purchase merchandise. Thanks to Galo Plaza, who was born in the U.S. and had many friendships with many tourists, they came. Many of his family members worked there. His sister Laurita Plaza was a tourist guide, and [at that time] all the tourists were going to Guatemala, not one was coming to Ecuador. No one had heard of Otavalo, and hardly anyone even knew where Ecuador was, except for on a map. But they came here—we had twelve looms—we only wove cashmeres. The president came to this house; seventy people came and ate lunch here. We ate only food from our fields: little purple potatoes, quinoa, different corn dishes, barley, broad beans and beans, and chicha. I had to prepare it all, from my fields. I had people help me. We sat on reed mats on the floor and ate with wooden spoons. They wanted to take me then. But I had a little baby. Cecilia was only sixty days old, so I couldn’t go with such a tender infant. “You have to go. The money is there and will stay there until you use it. They want to see you and what you can do. This money is for tourism,” Plaza told me.

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Years later, I wanted to take my husband, but he couldn’t leave all the workers and all his work here in Peguche. Instead, I took Daniel Ruis, the nephew of my husband, [who died and was the father of Alonso Ruis, Peguche’s magistrate]. Daniel was very mellow, considerate, and was married to my cousin. He was humble [respectful and unpresumptuous] and I thought that maybe he could earn something there. The exposition included my cashmeres, Daniel’s ponchos, and my daughter Lucila’s embroidery. First we went to Panama. We were met there with a military salute, bands, and fireworks. They called me the Queen of the Indias. There was a party for us from seven to eleven in the evening and then we took another flight to Miami. They greeted me as the Indian Princess. Next we arrived in New York. It was like a dream, I can’t really explain, just like a dream. They came from all parts to meet us at the airport. There were Indians from Colorado and Mexico. They extended the Peace Pipe. I didn’t know how to smoke, but I took the pipe in the airport. There were bands to welcome us that even played some Ecuadorian music. The military saluted us. Daniel played the panpipes [she sang in a high pitched voice] “In all of Imbabura, Otavalo is the best In Otavalo, panpipes open doors to what you want.” It was wonderful how they received us. They showed us everything and took us everywhere. We had a special meeting with the archbishop. Presidents from all over the world visited us. In the Plaza of the United Nations, that was really huge—like from here to Otavalo, there was a big dinner, where many dignitaries greeted me and kissed my hand. They took us to the best theaters and places. I remember the wide streets. They had a parade. The cardinal gave a Mass for me in

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St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The honor guard escorted us down Fifth Avenue. They were ahead and behind us on motorcycles in their uniforms. One day we walked for two blocks. The street was very crowded and busy. But on the other days we went in huge cars for diplomats. This is my pride. I have lived and enjoyed my life. I’m not so old [decrepit] because everyone has opened up to me with cariño [fondness] and good will. That’s why I’m not so old and still happy. (Interview 1993) Those vivid memories of New York City and her acquaintances in high places fed her imagination and were seemingly on the tip of her tongue to be retold whenever prompted. What stands out in her story is the access she had to powerful people, the deference she received on her trip, the pan-indigenous solidarity, in addition to her sense of purpose with regard to the great value she put in human relationships as she extended her web as wide as possible. She saw her role as merchant and diplomat, a highly skilled envoy who opened doors for tourism and commerce. She did not doubt that it was her talent and relations that put her in the right place at the right time that

Rosa Lema with her cousin Daniel Ruis and daughter Lucila on top of the Empire State Building, November 1949. courtesy of galo plaza foundation, quito, ecuador.

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consequentially put Ecuador and Otavalo on the map for tourism. Nor did she doubt what she viewed as her importance in repositioning Otavaleños on a global stage, as she launched and helped define a new wave of globalization in Otavalo. The New York Times and El Comercio, Quito’s largest daily, reported Rosa Lema’s trip. She was sponsored by Panagra, Ecuador’s state-owned airline, and the Ministry of Tourism “to showcase native culture and to open markets for handicrafts.” In articles that appeared from November 16–23, 1949, both newspapers identify Rosa Lema as the “Indian Princess” who traveled in a police motorcade to Mayor Flint’s office; visited Secretary General of the United Nations Tryvie Lie and UN President of the General Assembly Carlos P. Rómolo; and later posed for photographs with Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York. Mamá Rosa also claimed that she was invited to the White House in Washington21 and never ceased to delight in recalling the trip and the subsequent fame it brought her. She recalled the marvelous cityscape and was particularly fond of remembering how well she had been treated. Her entourage attended a performance with “angels” at Radio

Rosa Lema at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, November 1949. courtesy of galo plaza foundation, quito, ecuador.

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City Hall and were special guests of Guy Lombardo and his orchestra at Club Nocturno. According to the press in Ecuador, the trip was part of the government’s modernization and acculturation policy, intended to provide a vehicle for indigenous people to introduce themselves and their products, to observe how other people live and act, [to see] the level of culture they’ve reached, and to later cooperate with the Ecuadorian government in introducing new methods of production [and] diversifying the handicraft cottage industry, as a means to raise the standard of living, with the support and clear vision, of course, of official leaders. (El Comercio, November 24, 1949) The series of articles appearing in El Comercio describes Rosa Lema on a mission to New York “organized by the Tourism sector, which believes it is important to revaluate the Indian in order that . . . they be convinced of their value which could be increased if they took advantage of civilization without losing their precious native qualities” (November 16, 1949). The article notes that these “superlative” Indians stand out as leaders. It is important to emphasize that they are descendants of a tribe that was never conquered22 . . . [T]hey represent an ancient culture that maintains and respects its traditions . . . All our Indians are very good with their hands. With the aim of national integration, the article harks back to a glorious past, maintained by tradition and very laudable manual skills. The subtext announces the “arrival” of Otavalans as international tourist attractions. The Ecuadorian press highlighted the activities of a “model Indian,” who as a woman was not perceived as a threat to power relations in place for over four hundred years. Rosita and her entourage were presented as ethnic “exotica” and clever creators of handicrafts. From Rosa’s perspective, however, she was treated as a person of consequence, which she would never forget. Rosa Lema’s trip proved an impetus for Otavalans in unforeseen ways, laying the groundwork for what eventually became a multimilliondollar handicraft and tourist industry. Its protagonists have to some extent

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reinvented this tale of progress on their own terms. Moreover, this trip and two additional visits abroad would fire Rosa Lema’s imagination for the next half century. She would tell the story repeatedly, highlighting her own role for opening countless opportunities for her people. Rubio Orbe points out that three exhibitions to New York followed Lema’s groundbreaking cultural mission, including two straw hat exhibits in 1950 and one Olga Fisch23 exhibit of Salasaca carpets in 1950. He asserts that these activities facilitated a new public appreciation of indígenas and their material culture (1953:212). He proposed that the government provide assistance in product diversification and the formation of indigenous cooperatives. However, the government did not have distribution plans or a way to market products, even with the promotion through diplomatic channels. This led to the formation of Instituto Ecuatoriano de Antropología y Geografía (IEAG [Ecuadorian Institute of Anthropology and Geography]) and Punto IV (Point IV) to train indigenous artisans. Many of those responsibilities were transferred to the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana (House of Ecuadorian Culture) headed at the time by Jan Schrueder. Schrueder was a Dutch artist and instructor of indigenous painters, whose aim was to stimulate the rebirth of native creativity, generate markets, and prepare artisans to return to their communities to organize cooperatives. Through his contacts within the Dutch government, he later found funds to construct the Plaza de Ponchos, which catalyzed and became the central attraction for both tourism and handicraft innovation in Otavalo. Prieto suggests that the cultural mission to the United States was part of a modernizing project, whereby elites revalued indígenas as subjects of development rather than as objects of civilization; indicating a shift in power relations (2008). To be sure, the fact that Lema had paved the way certainly made possible the inauguration of the first Otaveleño Fair of native handicrafts in 1951, attended by President Galo Plaza, as well as commercial innovation through the rest of the century.

Repercussions of Her Story Rosa Lema’s reflection on her trip to New York in 1949 demonstrated her belief that the agency of one individual, namely herself, directly affected change. She negated the indigenist notion that a passive and submissive Indian was “waiting to be saved from herself.” Instead, her journey solidly

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planted seeds for the cultural renaissance and indigenous identity politics that would take another four decades to fully flourish. Her story highlights the importance of one woman within a particular history and social structure, and is consistent with a central question that Parsons raised: What is the role of creativity and the individual within society? By giving the reader a portrait of Rosita, Parsons illustrated an individual’s capacity and strategies for change. Rather than pointing to a uniform and essentialized picture of Peguche life and culture, the reader gains an appreciation of some of the internal cohesion, differences, and conflicts. Parsons’s findings in Peguche in 1940 and 1941 were direct and unequivocal; cultural difference is not biological, nor static. Her portrait of Rosita demonstrates that culture is learned, it permeates everyday life and is much more responsible for differences among human groups than are genes. In retrospect, Mamá Rosa’s experiences challenged conventional boundaries of gender and ethnicity in Peguche and opened new doors. Rosa Lema’s New York story illustrates the ways in which her network bore fruit, and how intercultural relations enhanced her possibilities. She was adept at building relationships to connect her with public and political spheres that were out of reach for most indigenous people at the time. As noted, the historical moment after World War II was ripe for progress with modernization as its mantra as the global economy rebounded and penetrated isolated places. Within the official policy of an indigenista political agenda, Rosa’s trip was to reassure the world that Ecuador was moving forward. As the “Indian Princess” in New York, she represented an Ecuador that was attractive, safe, and ready for investment. However, for herself and her community, the invitation signaled a shift in possibilities with regard to how power could be deployed. Rather than co-option and assimilation, it represented the potential for further economic independence and cultural self-determination. After her return, she was able to reposition herself and gain more relationships that promoted economic innovation with direct benefits to native Otavalo communities. But this did not happen without the hard work of many individuals and much emotional hardship. In the 1990s Mamá Rosa and others related to me stories about their lives, which are recounted in the chapters that follow.

Part Two

CHAPTER FOUR

The Cultural Construction of Place Otavaleñas Integrating Mountains, History, Folktales, Cosmology, and Well-Being Through Practice

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\ one day in 1991, a curious sheep in pursuit of our cat slipped out of its knot and wandered into the house while Mamá Rosa was visiting. After the hilarious commotion subsided and the sheep was once again tethered outside, efficiently mowing and fertilizing the lawn, we relaxed on the veranda facing Taita Imbabura, the volcano to the west, in the mid-morning sun. As we sipped tea, I asked about the history of Peguche. Mamá Rosa began: The Ley de Comunas,1 or was it Ley de Comunistas, [she pondered aloud] returned to indigenous people what was rightfully theirs. But how did the Spanish get the land to begin with? No one sold it to them. The last indigenous rulers, Atahualpa and Rumiñahui,2 were muy bravos, sinchic, sinchic [fierce and brave] . . . But the Spanish tricked them with false promises, mirrors and beads. Then they forced the Indians to work long hours at back-breaking tasks. The Spanish whipped many of them, forced pregnant women to do heavy agricultural work, and were cruel and unjust . . . but 76

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indigenous people, even though they didn’t know how to read or write, managed to copy down certain words. What do you think they wrote with? Here she paused as she motioned and outlined the volume of a mountain with her hands and arms. Then she continued: They wrote with lignite [charcoal], something provided by Taita3 Imbabura. These records are our legal claim to the land. They [our ancestors] stored the documents in a chest and buried [them] deep in the mountain, so that the blancos [whites] wouldn’t burn them. Ultimately, that is how Indians have proof that all of this land is ours. Her gestures, while mimicking the profile of the surrounding landscape, punctuated the narrative in a manner that includes the natural world. In relating the short story, she connects geophysical forms with history, land tenure, and indigenousness. Mountains are seen as a kind

Mt. Imbabura, ancestral repository of Otavalo history.

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of distant kin that record space and time in a concrete way. For Mamá Rosa the physical environment acted as a text writ large to record cultural memories. Her cultural logic and imagination inextricably linked her to the surrounding topographical landforms. The narrative reveals that she viewed the physical countryside as an animate ally, who not only witnessed atrocities, but held in safekeeping documents to ensure her people’s claim to the land. Alongside the folktales of frolicking mountains,4 Mamá Rosa’s story illustrates how local geography is a manifestation of Otavalans’ hereditary relationship with the land, whereby Taita Imbabura is the repository of hallowed principles that mirror a web of interconnectedness. Although illiterate, she acknowledged the power of literacy and appropriated that power within her cultural logic: mountains are living testimony of native people’s struggles and beliefs. In this way her interpretation of literacy extends beyond linear written forms and sees the earth as a multidimensional text that includes time and space. Her reading of the landscape grasps its symbolic significance in a way that morally and lawfully reclaims her people’s rights to the land. Thus, what might appear to Western eyes to be no more than a beautiful mountain is, for many Andeans (like Mamá Rosa) the personification of natural and supernatural forces that act as an archive of their history.5 In this way the mountains are living history and merge into historical consciousness as affines. This relationship with the environment circumscribes the Otavaleño worldview and resonates within traditional practices. Mamá Rosa’s narrative illustrates her groundedness in the landscape, a trait that remains alive in spite of, or alongside, her cosmopolitan self. She recognizes the contentiousness of land as an issue among groups, not only in terms of what is remembered, but also in terms of how it is remembered and with regard to how resources are distributed. Her historical logic concomitantly discloses a cultural way of knowing that integrates the environment with memory and Otavaleños’ unique place in the world: History is not a linear progression guarded only in books; it is mirrored in the Andean surroundings and reminds Otavalans where they come from. This epistemology derives from a web of relations that extend from the earth. Key to understanding this holistic system of knowledge is the notion of a reciprocal ethos that keeps various dimensions of reality coherent and in relative harmony. Such metaphysics provides a worldview that does not consider difference in dualistic terms. Rather, this approach is inclusive and functions not unlike an ecosystem, where human interactions with

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the environment and the supernatural are on par and looped together with social relations. Nurturing those interconnections is critical for personal and social well-being. Thus, in traditional terms, the environment is an important historic, spiritual-religious, and social resource, as well as a provider of sustenance through agriculture. In particular, Otavaleñas weave symbols from the landscape directly into practices that affect well-being and good fortune (or not). Their ability to read or stay in tune with topographical features of the earth demonstrates cultural dexterities important for spiritual and historical continuity, and proves crucial for health and well-being. As Keith Basso tells us about the Apache, For Indian men and women, the past lies embedded in features of the earth—in canyons and lakes, mountains and arroyos, rocks and vacant fields, which together endow their lands with multiple forms of significance that reach into their lives and shape the ways they think. Knowledge of places is therefore closely linked to knowledge of the self, to grasping one’s position in the larger scheme of things, including one’s own community, and to securing a confident sense of who one is as a person. (1996:34) Following, I describe specific practices of Otavalans to elucidate multiple facets of an Andean mosaic of thinking. Their distinct ways of knowing have pragmatic results. The ethnographic snapshots show ways that women interpret native cosmology in their pursuit of well-being. Otavaleños taught me that where people dwell is more than a place of shelter or community; it is a constellation of relationships where distinctions between the animate and inanimate are often ambiguous. The detailed accounts show ways in which Otavaleñas expressed their transcendental beliefs and values through actions intended to heal. Theirs was a multidimensional and often hybrid spirituality that connected them to the supernatural, social, and natural worlds as a means to tackle problems in their households. As they put their beliefs into practice, they supported cultural continuity and (re)shaped many in the next generation’s worldviews through the care and hard work of everyday activities. Their actions demonstrated relentless and creative approaches for maintaining healthy households. They also embodied intercultural strategies, which enacted traditions, sometimes and to varying degrees, with new cultural forms.

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In particular, I focus on specific endeavors of Marta, María, Gladis, and Mamá Rosario, in addition to 1940s and 1990s vignettes of Mamá Rosa. Thus, I offer a picture of an array of women as they actively procured well-being, or the state of good physical, spiritual, and mental health for themselves and their families. Their deployment of techniques and symbols to enact cures was moored to the local topography. Their practices suggest a flexible cultural blueprint from which experience was organized, interpreted, and improvised upon. The ethnographic pictures are linked to Parsons’s ethnography and through variations of healing performances by shared and mutable cultural values. These values were enacted in response to the individual crisis that was at hand, but all demonstrate the importance of reciprocity among the diverse sentient actors that included humans, rocks, mountains, and other beings. Marta’s, María’s, Mamá Rosario, Gladis’s, and Mamá Rosa’s specific actions, alongside Parsons’s ethnography, indicated ways in which beliefs and values are linked to the past and future, and helped to ensure their practical well-being and survival. Their actions represent a kind of integrative cultural logic that is distinctive from Western concepts that separate body and spirit. Such Cartesian knowledge emphasizes the rational nature of the individual and generally has a linear progression with empirical explanations for illness and disease. It is a reductive science that detaches people from the natural world. In contrast, well-being in traditional Andean terms involves community and is steeped with local knowledge that extends beyond human realms. It derives from a sense of dwelling, and can be activated through shamanistic healing, dreams, and divinations. At the same time biomedicine is readily available in doctors’ offices and at pharmacies. Interestingly, Parsons observed that Rosa Lema’s “eclectic” approach to health had an intercultural resonance in 1941. On my return to Peguche in 1941, I found Rosita lying bundled up in bed, weaker than just after the birth of the baby eighteen months before . . . She was listless, and even the gilt brooch I brought her aroused little interest . . . Rosita was doing no work of any kind and little or no trading . . . Everybody in Peguche knew Rosita was sick, and wherever I visited I would be asked how she was, especially after a collapse when she had taken the last sacrament. That, of course, was public notice of imminent death.

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There was indeed a twofold notice, for, eclectic to the last, Rosita had sent for a Franciscan to confess her and the next day for her parish priest to give her the sacrament. In Otavalo all three White doctors as well as the Sisters who keep the apothecary shop had been visited. They had given Rosita prescriptions for anemia, without blood test or general examination. But with other remedios [remedies] Rosita was more experimental. One day after visiting the miraculous Virgin in the new municipio Andrade Marin,6 lighting two candles for her and saying a long prayer, Rosita kneeling on a prie-dieu and Lucila standing next, we picked up on the Ibarra road Mamá Dolores, an old woman returning home to the Hacienda Palestina. Dolores was well known as a curer of fright, espanto, and did not Rosita have all the symptoms of that affliction—pains in head, neck, and back, no appetite, lassitude? . . . “How long sick?” “A year, and no doctor can cure me.” Dolores says a little prayer to La Santisima, and begins a vigorous massage, as Rosita sits with her back to her. It hurts somewhat, not enough to groan but enough to indicate espanto. (“Si hay dolor, hay espanto; si no hay dolor, no hay espanto.” [If there’s pain, there’s espanto; if there is no pain, there is no fright.]) Then Dolores holds Rosita at the waist and jerks her up and down as she sits, saying “Rosita, elevante, elevante! Shungo! Shungo!” [Rosita, get up, get up! Heart! Heart!] From her carrying basket Dolores takes some leaves of granadilla and applies some lard to make them stick together in pairs . . . massages the temples a little and blows from the lips, three times, on top of Rosita’s head . . . She is to come to Rosita’s house Friday morning—this is Tuesday—and treatments should be given Tuesday and Friday. On my last visit to Rosita I find her sitting up in bed because she “got tired lying down,” and on a chair next the bed her saints’

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pictures are propped, the candle butts in front indicating that prayers have been said, probably the night before. At the moment Rosita’s sister Carmen is fumigating near the bed with palm and romero against a source of sickness they do not mention. Mal aire? Or given the family feud, have they succumbed to fear of witchcraft? (1945:166–69) This is an intimate view of Rosita’s health crisis in 1941 and her intentional pursuits to remedy the situation. In grave spiritual matters having to do with life and death, Rosita turned to diverse advisors of different Catholic religious orders. In addition, she turned to Sister of Charity apothecaries (who acted like present-day pharmacists), went on a pilgrimage and offered prayers to the Virgin in Andrade Marín, and also elicited services from a traditional curer. It seems that the urgency at hand demanded a multifaceted approach for getting better. Rosita’s modus operandi even within the confines of grave health was to form as many relationships as she could. She reached across and within social, cultural, and ethnic spaces, and was willing to incorporate new technologies and medicines into a flexible worldview. This was at a time when residential and cultural segregation was the norm. At thirty-one, she lived to make history and tell many more stories. Unfortunately, Parsons passed away soon after her return to New York. During my tenure in Peguche, people generally continued to juggle a hybrid health system to see which worked best. In traditional terms, this might necessitate the coming together of the individual’s body and mind with collective values through a shamanistic curing, where patients 7 reconnect to the topographical body, i.e., the mountains.  Through folktales and cultural remedies, Otavalans (and others) are reminded of ancient times and living features of their surroundings. It is not uncommon for Otavalans to fondly refer to the mountains as animated, sentient beings, like distant relatives. In particular, “Taita Imbabura” and “Mamá Cotacachi” use the diminutive and affectionate Kichwa terms for father and mother to refer to the two volcanic and largest mountains that frame the valley.8 Such shared understandings of the physical environment evoke sentiments that keep people culturally linked to each other and moored to the local geography. In general, Otavaleños believe that illness can be caused by a variety of sources: these include but are not limited to eating the wrong food,

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drinking contaminated water, being affected by a change in the weather, susto/espanto, envidia, mal ojo, and bewitchment. Susto (or espanto) has psychological overtones and connotes an illness resulting from a sudden fright and varying degrees of soul loss. Susto can also occur through anger, fright, grief, and anxiety. I recall on several occasions when I suddenly tripped or fell and my companion immediately recited, “shungo, shungo, shungo [heart, heart, heart],” a Kichwa incantation to help keep malevolent spirits away (as noted above with Mamá Dolores in 1941). If I or my children ever became sick, I was always asked if we had fallen or something out of the ordinary had frightened us. On several occasions we were directed to lay healers or shamans who intervened to restore balance and health. Envidia/mal ojo, or envy/evil eye, on the other hand, can be a form of bewitchment. An important social strategy at the village level involves the casting of wide social nets, based on actual and ritual kinship. As a result of tightly knitting together these associations, community members are kept informed of the goings-on in the lives of family members and relatives. This system also serves as a support system and may help forge business and/or other opportunities. However, these interactions might provoke conflict at times, especially in the form of envy, and might even become the source of psychological and physical maladies. Some people attribute such illnesses to witchcraft. The research George Foster did in Mexico in the 1960s is informative with regard to his notion of the “image of limited good.” According to Foster, by “Image of Limited Good” I mean that broad areas of peasant behavior are patterned in such a fashion as to suggest that peasants view their social, economic, and natural universes—their total environment—as one in which all of the desired things in life, such as land, wealth, health, friendship, home, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply, as far as the peasant is concerned. (1965:304, emphasis in the original) An example of this can be drawn from my village experience. If I spent time in X’s house, Y might feel slighted because I had less time to spend with her, thus diminishing her chance to create the kind of social capital developed in relationships with foreigners. In Peguche relationships, knowledge and other assets may enhance or detract from possible

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social, spiritual, financial, or material gain. So it is important to position oneself accordingly. If only a finite amount of social capital or gain was possible or available, social interactions might be sneaky or slandering as a means to best situate oneself. Consequently, social tensions were sometimes unwieldy and resulted in discontent or jealously and these might produce bewitchment in the form of ill health. Although on the surface politeness was requisite behavior, people generally were not open and were reticent to disclose too much. It was a fine line I had to tread in intracommunity politics, lest I alienate an ally or potential ally. It was important to be plugged into the grapevine in order to know what was going on and how those events were being interpreted. Chisme, or what is poorly translated into English as gossip,9 was a pervasive form of communication, often tinged with cosmological nuances, with roles assigned to God or mountain deities or both, and to brujos, individuals capable of casting spells. Moreover, the grapevine in question—at least the one I was privy to—was constructed and maintained for the most part by women. Their roles in the fluid articulation of cultural discourse are made evident in the following pages. They emerge as negotiators on the front line of cultural reproduction and change. Furthermore, their stories link mountains with traditional healing and well-being, and thereby show how religion and cosmology bring together seemingly incongruous dimensions of reality through the underlying ethos of reciprocity. Ultimately, women pursued health and well-being for themselves and their families through the construction of relationships that conveyed cultural canons and created webs of meaning in everyday life and for future generations.

Enduring Folktales: Grounding Well-Being in the Andean Landscape Taita (father) Imbabura and Mamá (mother) Cotacachi are the two volcanic mountains that form the east-west axis of the Otavalo valley. Taita Imbabura is considered male (west) and Mamá Cotacachi female (east). Legends recount that they are spouses, and the many surrounding mountains are reputed to be their offspring. The tale of animated, frolicking mountains who set the mood for the day was popular among Otavalan children and adults during my life there. Mamá Rosa related the following story to Parsons in 1940.

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Imbabura Visits Cotacachi

Imbabura Old Man [Mt. Imbabura] was in love with Huarmi Rasu, Snow Woman [Mt. Cotacachi]. He went to visit her. In the house of his love they prepared dinner. Imbabura Old Man dined. They ate baked turkey. Then later after dinner Imbabura Old Man felt a pain in his stomach. He almost died. Then they doctored him. When they gave him medicine, he vomited everything. He vomited snakes, serpents, lizards, frogs. Imbabura said he was frightened; never again would he eat turkey, nor would he ever come back. He and Snow Woman ceased being friends. It was ended. The remedy Snow Woman gave him was urine. So it is customary to this day to take urine for stomach ache. The pain goes. Urine is Imbabura’s remedy. It is a sure remedy. (Parsons 1945:127–28) Mamá Rosa, and others, told me the same tale with variations on several occasions between 1990 and 1999.10 Such a legend recalls mythic times and reminds individuals that cosmic forces are acted out through geophysical forms. The fact that it is retold generation after generation exposes its staying power as a good story, while serving as a kind of charter of underlying indigenous beliefs. Many Otavaleños continue to imagine the same mythic or original history, out of which come shared values that keep them attuned to their environment. Through the antics of the beloved mountains, listeners hear how geophysical forms have sex and display human weaknesses. Many Otavaleños agree that moods of the sentient sierra account for changing climatic conditions. In addition, Imbabura, Cotacachi, and Mojanda are mountains whose characters directly intervene in the lives of Otavaleños. Those peaks circumscribe the star-filled sky and are the place where the clouds and rains come from, so important in the agricultural cycle. From various people came accounts of Taita Imbabura or Mamá Cotacachi with headaches when their peaks were in the clouds. The subtext is earthy and sexual and pervades Otavalan lives in pragmatic endeavors and other more ethereal beliefs. Along the same lines, the following story about the mythic contest between the impish mountain spirit Chuso Longo and the mountain

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Imbabura was collected by Parsons in 1940 and retold to me on several occasions. The Mountains Play Ball

Chuso Longo had very long hair. He had a little bit of a poncho. He had a little staff of shining gold.11 He was strong, strong. Nobody could fight him. He lived on Yanaurco, Black Mountain. Imbabura Taita, Father Imbabura, went to look for Chuso Longo to play ball. It was not truly a ball they had; it was a rock as big as this house. Chuso Longo was to throw it to Imbabura, and Imbabura was to throw it to Chuso Longo. Chuso Longo succeeded in throwing it. Imbabura could not throw it. The ball fell halfway, at Jatunyacu, “Big Water.”12 Imbabura was unsuccessful in throwing it; he lost the game and Chuso Longo won. Because Chuso Longo won, Black Mountain has everything—water,

Freshly plowed field and home in Peguche at 9,300 ft. with Mt. Cotacachi at nearly 15,000 ft.

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wood, trees of all kinds, tillable land. Having lost, Imbabura has nothing, no water, no wood, no trees; he stayed poor. (1945:128) My friend Alfredo first told me the story of jatun rumi (giant rock) on a Sunday in 1990. He had taken my children and me with his daughter on an outing, up the mountain past the village of Quinchuquí, to above the tree line at an altitude where the air was thin and corn, chochos (lupines), and even potatoes did not grow. The view was spectacular and presented a condor-like vantage point: both the valleys of Otavalo with its bustling commerce and that of San Pablo with the sparkling lake of the same name were visible at the same time. Almost as astonishing was the jatun rumi, stuck upon the steeply sloped field and the size of a several-storied apartment building. He showed us where to climb up on the backside and standing upon the giant rock, we felt literally on top of the world. Alfredo related the following tale to explain the presence of jatun rumi and another less substantial rock further down the side of Imbabura. As we stood high upon the jatun rumi, he pointed out with a wave of his hand features in the local topography, including the river Jatunyacu that carves out the valley’s rich bottomland at the base of Imbabura and is the boundary between Peguche and Otavalo. Found on the Peguche side of the river, he signaled, lies another single boulder, conspicuous and large. “Where did these two big rocks come from?” he asked rhetorically. According to Alfredo, Chuso Longo is the mischievous mountain spirit who represents Black Mountain, or Mojanda, at the northern end of the valley. Chuso Longo and Imbabura engaged in a seemingly innocent game that had lasting repercussions with regard to the distribution of resources on the two mountains. The two big rocks are the evidence of their cosmic games. What is not included in Parsons’s version, but is common lore according to Alfredo, is that Chuso Longo, although somewhat ragged, had a magical weapon in his contest with Imbabura. They each stood on their own mountain across the valley from each other, and flung their rocks to see which would go farther. Chuso Longo was victorious because of his skill with his slingshot-like equipment. He was able to get his larger rock very high on his opponent’s mountain and all the way across the valley, while Imbabura only managed to send the smaller rock sputtering down his own flank to the banks of the river. “Under Chuso Longo’s poncho,” I was told with an embarrassed smirk, “was hidden his secret weapon.”

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Mojanda’s advantage came from the power of Chuso Longo’s virility that hurled the boulder over the valley and high above Imbabura’s tree line. Alfredo went on to explain the tale as an allegory as to why Mt. Mojanda contains more natural resources—Mt. Imbabura was lazy, and like an immature adolescent was slow to get up in the morning. In Parsons’s version, the staff 13 is a clue to Chuso Longo’s power as a leader among humans and as a divine being. But the secret catapult unleashed unexpected powers, and Chuso Longo won a very serious cosmic game for Mojanda. The story suggests that appearances can be deceiving, and one must, therefore, be alert. It is important to be able to read the topography and understand the inscribed stories and their subtexts. The fact that this tale continues to be told more than sixty years after Parsons documented it, illustrates the enduring importance of geological features in people’s lives and imaginations. Cosmic tales about mountains and their whimsical personalities are important elements in a tradition where reciprocal relations with the environment are prized as integral for spiritual, social, and physical well-being. These narratives are common currencies that disseminate cultural beliefs and values.

Ilumán, 1991: María’s Stone I first met María in 1989, in part because our children played together. She lived in Ilumán with her family, where they straddled (and struggled with) subsistence and consumer economies. On several occasions I had asked about the renowned shamans of Ilumán,14 but she always ignored my question. I learned to swallow my frustration, that is until the day we were in the kitchen scrubbing and peeling potatoes in buckets of water we had hauled from the public tap. As we worked, guinea pigs emerged from dark corners of María’s kitchen. They squeaked and squealed as they devoured the peels, fattening up for the day they would be the main course in a special meal. As she stoked the fire, María rather uncharacteristically launched into an extraordinary story that featured the power of a stone.15 The story took place on a clear laundry day, a day of hard work for women who lack running water, washing machines, or washboards in their homes.16 María bundled a heavy load of laundry in a large sheet that she then tied to her back and carried to a stream a couple of kilometers from her house. The drudgery was offset by the fact that laundry day is often a social affair, so María packed a picnic lunch and looked forward to relaxing

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with family and friends while the clothes dried. That day, as always, she washed dozens of articles of clothing, pounding them on the rocks and taking care not to use too much soap. Next, she spread them to dry over large rocks and grass at the edge of the stream. Then she rested and gazed over the fields of ripening grains that formed a patchwork on the surrounding landscape. As she sat on a boulder at the edge of the stream, snacking on parched corn, the bell tower at the far end of the valley on the flanks of Cotacachi Mountain caught her glance. A chill broke her reverie: light angled more steeply from the west, and the shadows quickly deepened. It was time to gather the clothes, hike back up the hill, bring the cows home, and prepare supper. As the sun’s rays became more tenuous, María tied the bundle to her back and gazed at the stream. There she noticed a black stone, its surface smooth, round, and shiny. It seemed to beckon. She picked it up almost robotically, wrapped it in her laundry, and carried it home. The rock was forgotten until a month later. Juan’s illness had come on suddenly and at the worst possible time. It was the season for potato planting, and he needed to yoke up the oxen to prepare the field, a task too demanding for all but the strongest of women. The plowing had to be done while the moon was still new. By then, Juan had been in bed for a week and his condition was deteriorating. María even called the doctor from town. The physician had no idea what the problem was, but he left a bottle of foul-smelling medicine and a large bill. Fortunately, a son-in-law returned from a trip in time for the plowing. Then the planting began. One night after sowing potatoes all day, and with Juan still sick in bed, María felt unusually tired and slept very deeply. That’s when the dream came to her, just before dawn. She awoke moments later and pieced the images together. The dream featured the smooth, black stone, who told María that it was an emissary of Cotacachi, the female mountain spirit. In her dream, María told me, she was at the stream with her relatives doing the laundry. The spirit approached like a breeze and parted the waters. A door appeared, and the spirit opened it. María went through the door, entering the mountain’s inner chamber. The walls glistened with jewels and there were fountains making music so enchanting that she was spellbound. In the center of the chamber stood an altar covered with a cloth, and on the cloth sat the same stone that beckoned her. It was black and brilliant. María also recognized the cloth: it was her husband’s old poncho, the one

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he had stained years ago while picking blackberries. Then she realized that such an offering represented the cure for his illness. In her dream, she went over the mnemonic details so that she could replicate them on waking; placed around the stone were the favorite foods of the malevolent spirits that troubled her husband. There were also flowers that provided nourishment that would make the spirit go away and leave Juan in peace. But the candles on the table were burning low, and María understood this to mean that her husband’s life was about to flicker out. María sat up with a start and rummaged under the bed in the semidarkness until she found the stone. Then she got Juan’s old poncho and took it to the attic where she set up an altar. She gathered foods from the kitchen and flowers from the garden. Time was of the essence. She told her daughter to make breakfast, and ran to the store for candles, cigarettes, and liquor. She told no one about the altar. By mid-afternoon, the offering had worked: Juan regained consciousness. Since that day, María has used the stone, dreams, and food to restore harmony in times of crisis. The spirit does not eat the offerings in the sense we do, she told me, but consumes the essence of the meal, leaving it without flavor. She might offer, for example, “hominy with salt, a delicious dish, that the spirit eats, which leaves the food tasteless.” This is how I learned mountain spirits appear in dreams as portents of illness and health, and that stones from certain mountains are a part of the collective cultural memory, symbols laden with spiritual significance. Fortunately, with the assistance of the stone seen through the conduit of her dream, María reestablished the well-being of her husband and harmony in her household.

Peguche, 1993: Marta’s Rainbow and Mermaid 17 Marta was a single mother with access to few consumer goods. She deemed herself in luck to have a stream bordering her land in Peguche, even though it was located in a ravine. Traditionally, ravines are considered to be marginal spaces and portals that can be good and beneficial or cause and house harm. In Marta’s case, the creek meant there was always abundant water for laundry, cattle, and her flower garden. However, she told me that spirits sometimes lurked there, and not always benevolent ones. During a conversation in 1993, she pointed to the rash on her ankles and explained:

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The rainbow did this to me. It comes out of there, right out of the mountain where it seems to cry, where the water is. I’ll be there washing clothes on that large rock and this little rainbow comes out and I fight with it and say, “You are not the owner here.” Surely that’s why it got angry and gave me this rash. Marta’s experience reflects a general belief concerning rainbows: unlike the common notion held in the west, with its promise of the proverbial pot of gold, the rainbow in the traditional Andean world represents uncertainty, possible danger, and evil. Later she described how the ravine was filled with other special powers: My father always talks about the Sirena and the Sireno18 (the Mermaid and the Merman), spirits who live there. He says that he often hears them at night playing music from deep inside the mountain. They play so loud that the music “broadcasts out” beyond the ravine. He can even hear their music up here, at the house [about one hundred meters away, even though he was halfdeaf according to his daughter]. Yes, I, too, hear them playing on many nights. The music is good. Rumor has it that musicians, and those who travel,19 like to go there and listen at night. They stand with their instruments, on a nearby path, and perform in the dark, hoping to get energy [inspiration] from the spirits. But even when they learn to play very well, they are beholden to the Mermaid and Merman and must remember the ravine. In this instance, Marta articulates the importance of physical geography as a source of delight, power, and inspiration, and suggests that otherworldly sentient beings, such as water spirits in the form of mermaids and mermen are never far from the surface of people’s lives. She recounts how deep within the mountain sirens perform music and how these spirits communicate with human beings. For her, the wondrous melodies that emanate from geophysical forms are reminiscent of an ancient past, while at the same time affirm cultural continuity. Her text implies that songs live in the earth. By tracing the wellspring of certain creative expressions

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to the folds of a mountain in a ravine, traditional religious-aesthetic principles and expressions can be grasped. At the same time she reminds us of the awesome and ambiguous power of those natural and cosmic forces, and suggests humility when dealing with them.20 These stories divulge what Paul Connerton terms a “symbolic collective text” (1989:5) in which spirit emissaries provided Marta, María, and others with insights and power. Their tales describe some of the communicative possibilities between humans and spirits and between humans and place. Through the senses they linked themselves and others to concrete places in consequential ways. Their approach to understanding and making a place in the world fit nicely with Connerton’s interpretation of Bakhtin: they “create a dialogic and upset the hierarchy” (1989:5), that is, the environment, spirits, and humanity all have a place in the world. This shared space is dependent upon reciprocal relations and mutual respect, and extends the notion of interculturalism to beyond the human realm. Their traditional willingness to share and learn from natural and cosmological realms does not mean inequalities are invisible, but provides for a worldview with more equanimity and ecological awareness, an inclusive awareness that emphasizes interrelatedness including and beyond social bonds. Marta and María’s stories illustrate ways that mountains reach into their lives, sometimes as key protagonists. In the first instance, with the assistance of the stone seen through the conduit of her dream, María was able to choose an alternative path for reestablishing the well-being of her husband and the harmony of her household. Secondly, Marta wrestled and appeased the rainbow spirit to get rid of her rash. Both women connected as individuals and as a part of a larger community to their surroundings, and this connection helped to shape the ways they think. In this worldview, there is more to poor health than bacteria or viruses. They cultivated a keen sense of dwelling and operationalized their cultural knowledge as a source of empowerment to resolve problems in their lives. Their experiences illustrate the tapping of traditional resources for healing. Marta also underscores how musicians tap creative forces for musical innovation. They used traditional understandings of the world to successfully negotiate in a changing cultural political economy where their aptitudes in folk music were marketable at the time. Including stones, renegade rainbows, and sirens in the lexicon of daily life makes these practices pragmatic responses to illness and globalizing forces that often impelled migration. María and Marta manipulated symbols to come to terms with some of the

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promises, challenges, and crises in their lives. They did this by creating and drawing upon a cultural framework that includes the interdependence of humans with other living species and the earth. These holistic views include the systematic integration of different living and non-living forms, and demonstrate a kind of socioecological pluralism, where the blurring of boundaries does not necessarily privilege anthropocentric perspectives. Their experiences help bring into focus some of the pragmatics of socioecological pluralism, a kind of interculturalism where humans share the privilege of being on earth with other animate and inanimate beings. I later learned that it is common for native healers to call upon mountain spirits from near and far to augment their powers during healing rituals. As in María’s experience, these spirits were found in special rocks that become the focal point of the healing or cleansing ceremony. In one instance, a female healer called upon three mountain couples— Taita Imbabura and Mamá Cotacachi, Taita Chimborazo and Mamá Tungurahua, and Santo Domingo and Mamá Francia—in a healing ceremony I participated in in late 1991. The fact that she mentions Mamá Francia suggests shamanistic connections to the Oriente, or the Upper Amazon, where French Jesuit orders had missionary outposts in the eighteenth century. This is also, according to local lore, where powerful shamans are known to reside. These intercultural connections between the sierra and Amazon highlight the resilience of traditional beliefs concerning animated and gendered mountains who live in pairs. The shaman’s “calling” of coupled and sacred energies across vast geographical zones provides a glimpse into widespread oration in ritual healing even in the face of Christian religious authority. These interzonal spiritual linkages include the exchange of powerful stones, plants, and other symbols, and are a testament to the power of shamanism as a response to hegemonic forces and as a form of cultural resistance and resilience.

Peguche and Ilumán, 1992: Gladis’s Ritual Cleansing I became friends with Gladis early in the 1990s. She was married to Marco, a man from a prominent Peguche family. His artistic work was widely recognized as contributing to the indigenous renaissance. Gladis was a woman in her late twenties and met Marco in her village while he was completing a project for his university studies. They later married and moved back to Peguche. The couple lived in a large brick house overlooking a ravine with

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a small eucalyptus grove at the edge. The house was built on inherited land at the far end of an extended family complex. It belonged to Marco’s brother who lived and worked in Ibarra, the provincial capital. Gladis’s landlord and his wife were bilingual teachers and often visited family in Peguche on weekends and holidays. Though brothers in large families often helped one another out in this fashion, in this case there were serious tensions between the wives, who were barely on speaking terms. At the time of the episode recounted here, Gladis had three young children. As I got to know her in Peguche, she seemed increasingly frustrated with her isolation from her family. Marco was often gone to attend meetings in Quito or at overseas conferences. She appeared to get little personal satisfaction from her husband’s success in his travels around the world, having discovered that there was little glamour in the demanding tasks of childcare and housework, particularly in a place where basic services were erratic at best. In addition, she told me of the increasing unease she felt living in her brother-in-law’s house, especially when her husband was away. Matters came to a head in the early months of 1993, when Gladis complained to me about health problems she and her children were having. She visited doctors in town on a regular basis and they prescribed all sorts of medications. At first, the fact that one ailment followed another did not seem to shake her faith in Western medicine. However, she also turned to an elderly neighbor, Taita Nico, to cleanse her children when they exhibited the sudden symptoms of fever or susto (fright). Taita Nico was a subsistence farmer who dabbled in simple cures, a lay-healer rather than a virtuoso with the extraordinary powers of a shaman. His basic cleansing technique involved blowing tobacco smoke over the patient and passing a raw, unbroken egg over the body. As he rubbed at certain points, the egg seemed to harden, making a rattling sound within the shell, evidence that its composition had changed in the course of diagnosing the problem. Then, by way of substantiating the diagnosis, the old healer broke the egg into a glass of water to display the cloudy egg white with an “obstruction” in it. Soon after Taita Nico completed the cure, the child was back to normal activities in the instances I witnessed. But sometimes Taita Nico’s methods produced no results, and Gladis’s anxiety grew. Gladis also went to some remote hot baths to the north, at the suggestion of friends. The thermal waters came from deep inside the volcanic mountain and eased her anxieties. But her maladies reappeared a few days after the visit and thus, and as a last resort, she decided to visit a

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yachac mamá—a female shaman—in nearby Ilumán. She was advised that the best time for healing was on a Tuesday or Friday at twilight, and we decided to go together. We made a preliminary visit to the shaman to find out what was required for the ceremony. Mamá Rosario, a tiny woman who appeared to be very old, was reputed to be a powerful healer. She had learned technique and inherited her power at a very young age from her father, and told us that her calling had come in a dream. After preliminary introductions, we made an appointment for late the following Friday afternoon. On the appointed day, Gladis and I walked the path to Mamá Rosario’s packed-earth dwelling high above the village center in Ilumán Alto. There, above the tree line, we saw Cotacachi Mountain in the west, framed by the pink and purple of the setting sun. Our arrival was made known by the incessant barking of the skinny dogs with protruding rib cages that guarded the modest home. A young woman in Western dress came from the patio with several children to escort us to Mamá Rosario. By now the air was cold on the porch where there was evidence of daily activities— half-shelled cobs of corn were piled in the corner next to a spinning wheel. The young woman invited us (in Spanish) to have a seat and said that her grandmother would be with us shortly. Then she went back to her spinning wheel, surrounded by piles of carded wool and synthetic fiber. Gladis and I brought the items requested for the ceremony: a pack of filtered cigarettes, a half-dozen red carnations, two liters of locally brewed cane liquor, a bottle of cologne, four dinner rolls, four eggs, candles, and branches of fragrant shrubs from the countryside. Mamá Rosario had also said to bring a scarf or shawl that had been close to the patient’s body. In addition, we brought the requisite yapa or bonus for her services that included fruit, candy, eggs, and extra bread. As we sat on the narrow, hand-hewn low benches, we shivered from the dampness sweeping across the mountain as night fell. Then Mamá Rosario stepped out from the shadows. She motioned for us to enter the one-room waddle and daub hut. We sat on a reed mat as she stoked the fire in the corner. There was no electricity. Darkness, except for the glimmer from the blaze, was complete. She asked for the scarf, candles, and other essentials to assemble a miniature altar on the mat. However at that point her granddaughter interrupted us with children in tow to ask for bread and money for the evening meal. Mamá Rosario turned from us and lowered a large basket that hung from the ceiling. She pulled some bills

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out of the overflowing heap and handed them to her granddaughter, who then left for their modest home across the field. At this point, the interruptions ceased and the atmosphere turned solemn. That’s when Estela, dressed in the traditional attire, slipped in to briefly assist her mother. The shaman climbed on a rustic wooden platform about a meter off the ground that served as her bed. She reached under the wooden planks and lifted out four large black stones and a number of three-inch yellow plastic soldiers stored in a box. Meanwhile, Gladis spread the scarf on the mat in the far corner of the room, as instructed. The rocks were heavy and rounded, smooth and black. Estela helped her mother carry the stones to the mat and then left the room. Mamá Rosario, who spoke in Kichwa, asked Gladis for the carnations. She spent some time examining these, inquiring about their provenance. Then she stroked the blossoms and, with great care, separated the dark red petals, combing them with her fingers into the shape of four individual crosses. She lit several cigarettes and puffed smoke over the altar. The air was thick by the time she asked for the cologne to lure the spirits into the room. Then she blew more smoke on the carnations and sprinkled them with cologne as she arranged them on the altar. Next, with great concentration, she placed the four rocks on the carnations, still puffing smoke and chanting in a low voice. As she positioned the plastic soldiers around the altar, she called to Mamá Francia. She held up one rock and explained that it was from the Oriente (in reference to the powerful healing traditions still practiced in the Amazonian region, and a way of further legitimizing her art). Then she arranged the plastic soldiers on the altar. Finally, she placed four rolls and four cigarettes on the scarf at each of the cardinal points, explaining that they were offerings. She told us that the altar was now prepared to receive the spirits. With great deliberation, Mamá Rosario picked up the candles and handed them to us. She instructed us to rub them over our bodies, especially around our hearts. As we did this, she opened the bottle of liquor and tasted a mouthful. Then she took the candles from us and stood them in the center of the altar and lit them. The room became very quiet as she prepared to read our maladies in the flames. But then she hesitated. The issue of payment had to be settled first. Her fee turned out to be high by local standards and exceeded what most medical doctors charged. She added that she was very fond of fish; a way of hinting that the next time such a bonus would be greatly appreciated. She informed us that

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her daughter’s payment was extra, as she would be assuming the most unpleasant task associated with the healing: the disposal of the polluted substances extracted in the course of the session. The candles flickered wildly as the divination began. In the silence, we felt the wind swirling through spaces between the tiled roof and the earthen walls. The tiny flames seemed to dance in frenzy while Mamá Rosario mumbled a monologue directed to the spirits. As she listened to our answers to the questions she put to us, she read the flickering candles, piecing together the cause of the malady within the context of Gladis’s life. Finally, Mamá Rosario pronounced her diagnosis for Gladis: two females, one of whom lived close by, had bewitched her. She told us that the individual in question was filled with envy and worked with a companion to create Gladis’s distress. My diagnosis was of a less serious nature and only required a simple cleansing to rid me of an impediment from the past. The flames flickered and bounced as she said this. We shivered, imagining and feeling the spirits surreptitiously gliding around. Then Mamá Rosario brought the bottle of liquor to her lips, took several swallows, and passed it on. “Go on,” she said, “it will give you strength and protect you.” She explained that many of Gladis’s health problems stemmed from the negative energy these two women were sending her way. Further, she could “see” in the flames that one of her adversaries had left ground up fingernails and burnt hair around Gladis’s house, a wicked curse. The bottle was passed around again and more cigarettes were lit. Gladis recounted that when she went to empty the trash in the ravine near her house, she often came away feeling dizzy. Hearing this, Mamá Rosario stood and announced that she would have to cleanse the house and yard. Would her husband mind? Did he know where she was at that moment? Gladis said that she had his blessing. Another round of liquor and more cigarettes loosened our tongues, warmed and primed us to receive the treatment. Then, with arms raised, Mamá Rosario beckoned the mountain spirits, puffing on the cigarettes, inhaling and exhaling to attract the invisible powers, blowing on the stones. She took a step in each of the four cardinal directions while murmuring a chant and spraying liquor and blowing smoke. Then she fell silent. Only the rain that had begun to fall punctuated the silence. It sounded like tinkling music, a sharp contrast to the heavy atmosphere in the room. Next, the curing began. Gladis stripped from the waist up and stood several feet from the altar. Mamá Rosario approached with a candle in one

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hand and the bottles of liquor and cologne in the other. The tiny shaman’s enormous shadow covered Gladis. She took a swallow of liquor and blew it through the flame. Light cascaded into a dark corner of the room. She repeated the process, but this time with the cologne, as sudden fireworks burst through and danced across the darkness. Then she stood next to Gladis and began to extract the malign forces. She went at the task with great energy and seriousness, sucking the patient’s neck, back, and eyes, to remove the malign spirits out of Gladis’s body. Several times she stopped and spat out a black substance, which she called to our attention.21 After Mamá Rosario extracted all the noxious matter, she held it up as evidence and promptly left the room. She returned with a plastic bag to deposit the damaging filth. Then she sprayed liquor and cologne all over Gladis’s body. Finally, the yachac mamá raised the branches and swung them at her patient, shouting for the evil spirits to leave, telling them that they no longer had a place there. She swept them away with force. Time, which seemed to be suspended during the cure, resumed its course. Gladis drank another sip of liquor as she sat down and dressed. We puffed on another cigarette, filling the room with more smoke that mingled with the smell of cheap cologne and liquor. Mamá Rosario disassembled the altar and gave Gladis back her scarf and one of the carnations to eat. She told her not to bathe or have sex for at least twenty-four hours, and also to refrain from eating chili pepper and garlic during that time. Mamá Rosario’s daughter appeared and carried away the polluted substances. She held it at arm’s length to deposit in a faraway ravine where, Mamá Rosario assured us, it would be buried and lose its power. We left in the darkness and pouring rain, feeling revitalized.

Mamá Rosa’s Hybrid Approach to Well-Being: Transculturation, Power, and Religion The Otavaleña matriarch was eighty-six years old in 1993 when she again let me know about the important role she had played in the transformation of her village: “The history of Peguche is the history of how I have made it important.” Then she paused and, sitting on the wooden bench on the porch of her Peguche home, surrounded by children and adults doing odd jobs in the late afternoon, she thumbed through a copy of Parsons’s book. Parsons repeatedly remarked upon Mamá Rosa’s confidence, foreshadowing the fame that followed the publication of Peguche, which exponentially enhanced Lema’s status. There’s no doubt that Mamá Rosa felt

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empowered by retelling her personal history, and as people listened over the decades she contributed to the reconfiguration of social borders in and out of communities. Mamá Rosa’s (re)interpretation of history and culture reflects what Arturo Escobar describes as an emphasis on “becoming rather than being, positioning rather than essence, and discontinuity as well as continuities at the cultural level” (1998:66). Foremost, she wielded her tremendous social capital to get things done in flexible and sometimes unorthodox ways, including sealing business deals and engaging with outsiders as an equal. She easily borrowed traits from the dominant culture and translated them into her own. In 1940 Parsons gives us a picture of the rotation of the Catholic saint San Antonio through a network of thirty households in Peguche. She had been surprised to arrive at Rosita’s house to find little Lucila going out to purchase a candle: . . . Rosita opens the door to the bedroom, closed today but generally left open. On a table in the middle of the room sits the saint, a small painted plaster image in a glass case, with a slot in front for coins. A small white candle stands lit on the table, nothing else, no flowers. I was so surprised by the unexpected presence that I forgot to make the sign of the cross. (1945:164) Mamá Rosa was part of a social network that was open to Catholic ideas. Parsons was keen in her analysis that “[t]hese novenas were introduced only fifteen years ago on the arrival of the Franciscans, but they are evidence of how the Church makes use of Indian social organization and enriches it—as well as itself” (165). Within these changing contexts, how did she attend to her own wellbeing and health in the final decade of the century? Below Mamá Rosa reflects on changing power relations late in her long life: They used to treat us Indians however they wanted, but I protested. So I stopped him [the police officer] and said, “Why? . . . You’ll see, señor policeman . . . You’ll see, one day my heart and spirit will mature. Then you will come and beg me.”

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Now, no one, not a single person, dares bother me. Now everything has changed because of me, yes Señor. God is with me. They can’t strike or speak rudely to me. They respect me . . . No one, no one is cruel, everyone is good to me. All is ready in my heart. The Mormon Church is good for hearing what they say in the Old Testament.22 My heart is with God. I went and brought tourists. (Interview 1991) This is a story of liberation, where she equates well-being with dignity and respect. Her testimony refers to the maturation of her heart and spirit within a historical context as the means to claim her (and by proxy, others’) rights. She is very personal speaking about her beliefs and sense of peace, and is proud of what she accomplished with her life. Her comments reveal an indefatigable ego combined with a heartfelt and hybrid religiosity that brings together seemingly disparate parts. She implies that being on the right side of Christianity was the moral compass that helped her transform social inequities. It also provided her with important relationships with outsiders. Mamá Rosa highlights her own individual agency: she was not timid in challenging the status quo with regard to power relations in Otavalo. Her capable sense of self, seasoned with beliefs and values, link her to both Otavalo culture and the outside world. In this narrative, she recognizes both disparities in power and the restructuring of social relations in Otavalo. Moreover, her narrative demonstrates an analytical approach where spiritual and social spheres extend in a dialectical relationship, opening a space whereby structure and practice inform and transform each other. Mamá Rosa’s story is an example of how religion or ideas about spirituality react, adjust, and accommodate change, and become a transcultural force in that she selected certain elements and recombined them in new ways. She uses symbols to negotiate and cross cultures effectively. In the Otavalo valley, religion is and has been a powerful force and a force of the powerful: it is linked to certain privileges and to access to knowledge, economic opportunity, and travel opportunities. Mamá Rosa’s astuteness in understanding the machinations of authority allowed her to reconfigure religion to suit her own purposes. For her, the overlapping ideas do not necessarily represent doctrines that clash and are at odds with each other. Rather, her belief is a discursive space where local and global forces compete. She chooses according to the situation at hand. In this case her

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preference is reading the Mormon Bible, and as evidenced in the following account of her adherence to Catholic and animistic doctrines, her allegiance and commitments are broad enough to hold several convictions at once. Such a hybrid approach exemplifies cultural borrowing, as she juggles systems by combining and interpreting difference to effectively negotiate her way in a plural society. She reveals a religiosity where one belief system is not exclusive, but resides on a (sometimes) utilitarian shelf to be shuffled around, mixed, and taken out as needed. This approach also involves dealing with a wide web of individuals through horizontal ties, an interculturalism that broadens one’s scope and possibilities. In the following account Mamá Rosa conveys the infusion of Western religious beliefs into the animistic spiritual life of Otavaleños. Before people didn’t have religion. [They believed that] God, the Sun, comes out. Even now people still believe [that]. They didn’t know about religion, about the New Testament. But they have told me, because I was someone important: “Señor Jesus, you help me, you do all that is good for me.” Instead of this, some people still pray: “Mount Snow [Cotacachi], Moon, help me.” Mamá Rosa paused for a long time, and then she added, Imbabura [the male mountain/deity] said they [indigenous people] all have to be my children . . . and I must ask God a big favor for my children so tomorrow he might divide up the inheritance. (1991) Layers of religious syncretism are evident in this story that emphasizes (yet again) Mamá Rosa’s role as a cultural interlocutor. She juxtaposes the spiritual forces of the Sun, Moon, and Mt. Cotacachi with the God and Jesus of Christian traditions. She credits much of her success to her openness to Christianity and the social world it opened to her. By deploying new ideas with ease as she traversed and became comfortable in different realities, she showed how transculturalism operates. Additionally, the fact that she did not allow herself to feel or be intimidated and insisted on equitable interactions, also presents a telling example of interculturalism. Through these processes, Otavaleño traditions also endured. In the 1990s Mamá Rosa’s Western religious beliefs came from two sources: she considered herself a Catholic, but generally attended Mormon

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services every week at a temple where her wealthy son-in-law was an elder. Her last remark, where she conflates Mt. Imbabura and God into one who has a direct line of influence to the individuals who inhabit the valley, is filled with ambiguity. For Mamá Rosa, various religious orientations are not contradictions; they are opportunities for improvisation where ideas creatively complement each other. This allows for the successful management of spiritual, social, and material resources. Parsons offers ethnographic snapshots of curing which are not unlike scenes I observed in the 1990s. For example, Rosita “suffered pains” two days after Matilde’s birth and Rosita’s mother arranged a “cure by egg, caused by aire.” Parsons explored shaman treatments with José María Romerez, who also offered treatments for patients in Quito, and Misías Terán, whose father was white. Both practitioners were reputed to be hard drinkers. José María divined about a missing ring, which was lost and not stolen (for a second time), and offered Parsons a ceremony so she would not lose things. With Misías, the cure is a ritual cleansing to rid her of the negative energies from a (supposed) suitor she had rejected. He goes toward the door, turning his back on us. From there he asks impatiently if not angrily if I still want him to take out the gusanos (worms)? “Yes, of course,” Coming back, he stands over me, growls and snorts violently23 and bestially,24 pounces and sucks25 one side of my neck, strongly but not painfully, and then from his mouth he takes out a dark-brown cylindrical quid about two inches long and puts it on the piece of paper near the candle. “Now you see it, you see it!” he exclaims excitedly. (emphasis in original) Above, Parsons portrays Misías as a cultural performer (not unlike Mamá Rosario on pages 95–98), who offered Parsons “twelve treatments to be rid of all the destructive ‘animals’ inside my [her] head.” Parsons was unsettled by the fact that Misías hardly made an altar. “All brujos have stones which they are given in the mountains by spirits (duendes) who accompany them [according to] (Rosita),” (emphasis in original) (77). In the early 1990s Mamá Rosa continued to have an eclectic approach to well-being that built on traditional and Western beliefs. She is representative of many Otavaleña women who have at hand a deep and diverse reservoir of possibilities to draw upon. In Mamá Rosa’s case, by far the

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most significant approach involved cultivating and maintaining an extensive social network, nested with actual and ritual kin at the core, and rippling out in circles to more distant, less familial relationships. As illustrated earlier in this chapter, relational circles include local topography, especially Imbabura, the mountain on whose flanks Mamá Rosa read the history of her people and which connected her with her predecessors. Her social web was painstakingly constructed over a very long life and was made up of local, regional, national, and international alliances. According to her own reckonings, she had raised scores of local children and had a large following.26 She summed up her strategy for opening doors to networks of reciprocity thus: “You always have to smile and greet people if you want them to acknowledge you.” Mamá Rosa continued to manage intracultural and intercultural borderlands to her advantage as she aged during the 1990s. She remained active even after celebrating her ninetieth birthday and was energetic in pursuing social, political, business, and farm tasks. She had social and business ties to many handicraft producers in the region, as well as to foreign researchers and exporters. In Parsons’s terms, her character still evinced “an openness to new ideas, but through a filter which re-invents” (1945:307). She lived in Peguche rather simply, with regard to the kinds of material accoutrements that surrounded her and in comparison to the lifestyles of other successful businesspersons with their SUVs and ostentatious multistoried homes. However, her life was not circumscribed solely from within Peguche, and she could always count on assistance from her well-to-do offspring in Otavalo, Quito, and beyond for furloughs from village life if she became ill or melancholy. It was not uncommon for her to spend days, weeks, or even months with her offspring to offset boredom or if she became bedridden and needed medical attention. Her children begged her, as the years went by, to leave Peguche and to stay with them, and she did from time to time, but always longed to return to her home on the flanks of Imbabura. There she had a magnificent view of the valley and of Cotacachi in the distance. This was where she felt most comfortable and the site from which she continued to cultivate her web of reciprocal relationships that she counted as her greatest source of wealth. However, with increasing age, her aches and pains multiplied, and there were also family crises, including a burglary at her daughter’s home. The future seemed more precarious with increased migration, travel, and

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tourism. For physical ailments, Mamá Rosa went frequently to see her blanco-mestizo physician, who had doctored her for a half century. She recounted how she had even assisted the doctor’s son while he studied in Quito. She swore that she didn’t believe in shamanism; nevertheless, she visited a diviner on occasion, though not as frequently as her doctor. In 1998 she sold a small parcel of land and by the summer of 1999 she was complaining that the seven million sucres she received in payment had been spent on medicines.27 Still, the maladies of old age continued. Her denials notwithstanding, for certain situations Mamá Rosa relied on non-Western strategies to interpret and remedy her ills. In the spring of 1991, what had once been a local issue for her family turned more individualized and global, namely, the choice of a grandson’s spouse. The grandson, a handsome Otavaleño in his early twenties and a talented musician and handicraft vendor, had lived in Italy on and off for some years and was returning home with his Italian girlfriend. Mamá Rosa was anxious. Would they marry? Her own marriage had been arranged when she was only sixteen, and members of the next generation had all married known individuals from nearby communities. She was unsettled and curious about her grandson’s relationship. To resolve the problem, Mamá Rosa decided to visit a spiritualist. She invited me to come along. The diviner’s name was Don Rafael. He was a middle-aged mestizo man who lived in Natabuela, an interethnic community about twenty kilometers north of Peguche. He greeted us at his home office and then went into the next room to prepare to receive Mamá Rosa. We waited over a quarter of an hour. In the meantime, we studied his business card, which read as follows: HERE YOU FIND THE CELEBRATED MAGICIAN WHO WILL HELP YOU RESOLVE SUCH PROBLEMS AS: THEFT, LOSS, LOVE, ORGANIC, NERVOUS, AND MENTAL ILLNESSES thanks to his self-hypnosis, medicine, spiritualism, and the aid of his famous medium. Mamá Rosa’s session took place in a special room in Don Rafael’s house. On three windowless walls hung black velvet posters of painted landscapes featuring mountains and on a fourth, also sans windows, hung a black velvet cape with red satin lining. The room’s furniture was upholstered in deep crimson velvet, and as we entered, we stepped upon a carpet of the

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same color. Don Rafael emerged with intense deliberation, slowly, from an adjoining room. His posture was commanding as he strode toward a small table covered with a purple mantle behind which he sat. Mamá Rosa knew the man because her daughter Matilde invited him to her home in Quito oftentimes when she was sick. Unfortunately, Matilde had been besieged with ill health throughout her twenty-year marriage and subsequent divorce, during which time she underwent eight operations. That day I learned that Don Rafael had made many house calls in Quito, sometimes staying at the home of the patient for days, until physical and emotional balance was restored. Among the questions at hand was her daughter’s health. However, as Don Rafael arranged the large tarot cards on the table before us, he focused on the grandson’s romance and the unsolved burglary. He began with a short speech while studying the cards: Spiritualism is the most profound of sciences. I can see and cure things about whose existence medical doctors have no idea, though these [invisible phenomena] are the cause of many disorders . . . I can even see burglaries by hypnotizing a medium. Name a physician who can do that. As he looked up, he explained that the romance would be temporary and that he needed physical evidence from the burglary in order to “see” the complete picture, including the thief. Mamá Rosa’s anxiety was appeased or at least suspended by his prognosis and we left. Mamá Rosa’s approach to health and well-being draws upon a plural medical system. On the one hand, she adhered to a biomedical model and frequented a blanco-mestizo physician in town. She also used folk medicine by growing herbs in her kitchen garden for home remedies and traditional medicine in the form of a diviner. Such medical pluralism produces interethnic discourses that juxtapose and combine Western medicine with tradition. In her choice of physician and spiritualist, Mamá Rosa opted for specialists outside the community whom she deemed to be authorities with therapeutic powers that could relieve her physical and psychological pains. She wholeheartedly believed in Western biomedicine since Parsons’s work with her in 1940, when she discredited local shamans. Interestingly, from that time on she elected biomedicine as her preference, which coincidently developed her ease in advantageously aligning herself with the political

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and economic powers in Otavalo. As she exercised agency in her pursuit of well-being, she revealed a comfort with medical hybridization and crossing ethnic and class boundaries.

Interpreting Performances and the Values They Embody María’s, Marta’s, Gladis’s, and Mamá Rosa’s approaches to well-being are complex responses to ill-health, tensions, and uncertainties in their lives. Their actions, in combination with Mamá Rosario’s in Gladis’s case, resolved real problems and enacted cultural principles to reestablish wellbeing. María discovered how to appease the evil spirit affecting her husband through contact with a formidable mountain spirit. Marta gets right with the rainbow by providing an offering and the respect due to it. Gladis, with the aid of Mamá Rosario, entered the world of mountain spirits to be cleansed of maladies associated with her transnational family. Mamá Rosa consulted a diviner to answer social uncertainties. Furthermore, when juxtaposed with Parsons’s accounts, these scenes depict practices that have endured alongside Otavaleñas’ openness toward difference. These ethnographic vignettes show interculturalism in practice, where women harnessed spiritual and curative powers to resolve ill health or misfortune. In spite of differences in the circumstances of these women, the ceremonies alleviated many of their physical, psychological, and spiritual ills. The healing rituals drew upon stylized elements, many of which Parsons documented, to effect change and, ultimately, to put María, Marta, Gladis, and Mamá Rosa in greater control of their lives. In the cases discussed, the first three women skillfully operated within a cultural ethos that integrates physical and spiritual worlds through sensory experience. The rocks, herbs, candles, food, liquor, cologne, smoke, and movements aroused all the senses and linked participants to deep cultural memory. The items are charged with symbolic meaning through common lore, a dream, and direct shamanistic cleansing, all of which connected Otavalans to the restorative qualities of the mountains. María pulled her healing power from a female mountain spirit who alerted her through a dream how to cure her husband and restore balance in her family. Marta drew upon her knowledge of the rainbow to rid herself of an irritating rash. She also suggested the importance of channeling powerful creative forces nestled deep within the ravine for (lucky) native musicians who were alert to the voice and songs of the earth. Mamá Rosario

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accurately diagnosed social discord in Gladis’s life and extracted the associated nastiness (both literally and metaphorically), which finally empowered Gladis to see and resolve the situation in her household. Ironically, by choosing plastic yellow soldiers as part of her arsenal to draw out spirits to her altar, Mamá Rosario demonstrated how toys from the developed world are globalized and take on new and hybrid meanings, thereby becoming weapons for traditional spiritual and physical health. On the other hand, over a long life Mamá Rosa turned mostly to outsiders for remedies, comfort, restoration of health, and peace of mind, in the forms of San Antonio, Western medicine, and a spiritualist. The healings had consequences on another level for María and Gladis. After years of marital problems and domestic violence, María managed to turn her husband’s illness into an opportunity to work sweeping changes in their relationship. Out of the depths of a dream, she pulled a cure that saved his life. Subsequently, and perhaps because of respect gained from her talents, she was able to refashion family relations in a non-abusive manner. As for Gladis, two significant events occurred after her session with the yachac mamá. First, she confronted her brother-in-law’s wife, insisting upon paying rent. It was an awkward demand, adding a monetary element to the relationship between the brothers. But it assuaged the sister-in-law’s anger and resentment. Then, one afternoon as she was putting away clean clothes, she came across a bundle of letters at the back of her husband’s drawer. They were from a French woman with whom he had had an affair on one of his trips abroad. It was evident from the letters that the woman was hopeful that the relationship would continue. Gladis’s reaction was swift. That evening when he returned, she pulled at his braid, beat him over the head with a shoe, and told him to get out and never come back. She later told me that Marco cried and promised to never see or write to the woman again, begging for forgiveness. She did forgive him, eventually. In the meantime, having taken the initiative in terms of both sister-in-law and husband, she regained self-respect and felt confident of the power of her own agency. As happened in the case of Mamá Rosa’s grandson, living transnationally had unexpected consequences. Anya Royce includes healing as a kind of performing art in her discussion of aesthetics. She recognizes “that the role of the healer in cultures . . . represents the choice of individuals to live highly crafted, dedicated, aesthetic lives” (2004:5). Her assessment is instructive in the cases described here: Marta, María, Mamá Rosario, and Don Rafael used

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highly stylized and deliberate techniques taken from a shared cultural repertoire. These healers drew upon and embodied particular forms of specialized knowledge. In the particular sets of circumstances, they crafted resources within the guidelines of a deep cultural ethos that allowed for new elements to blend within the existing structure. These vantage points put them on the frontline of tradition and change where the dramatic tensions of social discord and illness must be resolved. Through their actions, everyday life was put back into balance with a tilt toward the future. Within a larger context their actions reveal how women orchestrate well-being in the private spheres of their homes. They demonstrate nimble and far-reaching capacities to affect positive change. In these cases they were gatekeepers on the threshold of health: they negotiated wellness by mediating traditional socioecological realms within transcultural uncertainties, finessing the requisite symbols in innovative ways.

CHAPTER FIVE

Otavaleño Foodways Cultivating Social and Spiritual Networks Through Cuisine, Agriculture, and Ritual

(((

We are friends if you eat; we are not friends if you do not eat. —Rosa Lema in field notes, 1940, ECP manuscripts, APS archives

Another day I bring with me to the house a banana for Lucila. Alberto and his little uncle, Segundo, are there and Rosita says in an undertone to Lucila, “Divide!” Lucila breaks the banana in two and gives half to Alberto, and the other half she divides again and gives this half to Segundo. Dividing by three is too difficult but not the injunction to share. —Parsons 1945:155 \ as m am á rosa so succinctly put it to Parsons, food is vital in establishing relationships. At the same time, Parsons’s story of gifting Lucila with a banana shows ways that the importance of sharing food had already been inculcated into the behavior of little Lucila and her brother and uncle. It was also an appropriate gift. Food is a complicated symbol: it transmits flavors and values and gives people physical strength, while cementing social bonds, and providing cultural and spiritual nourishment. 109

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As Paul Stoller notes, people literally taste kinship when they eat and share (1989). Moreover, as described in the following cases, kitchens are generally spaces controlled by women who set the mood with the dishes served. They also set the style of discourse accompanied by idiosyncratic table manners, peculiar to each household, and communicate stories undergirded by cultural values. Furthermore, natural and cultural histories of the region are imprinted in Otavaleño foodways. These ways with food express distinctive knowledge sets that derive from a holistic perspective: ways of remembering involve ecological, nutritional, social, and cosmological knowledge(s) that overlap and are mutually supportive. Notable is the underlying fact that all these branches of knowledge are rooted to the land. This integrated worldview informs values and behavior, and has proven to be flexible and enduring even within the many incarnations of globalization in Peguche. During the early 1990s, many Otavaleños’ foodscapes included daily cuisine that was connected to the agricultural panorama and also featured prominently in rituals. This chapter sketches a broad array of scenarios that have to do with foodways. Globalizing phenomena reinform the palate with new foods and tastes in every generation. Changing eating habits affect intimate selves, associated with home, family, and cultural identity. Because foodways involve the basis for survival, it is oftentimes the most conservative, or last to change, within a cultural system. The following narratives illustrate ways meals mediated cultural life and together offer a foodscape that included eating, agriculture, and ritual. These ethnographic descriptions draw a “pragmatic philosophy that seeks a practical solidarity in a living community” (Stoller 1989:141). Indeed, foodways embody cultural values held most dear and around which people come together three times a day. The foodscapes below map out specific events and places, with the intent to conjure up a sense of home and Otavalan identity through smells, sights, and tastes. The Otavalan culinary repertoire, including native and nonnative crops, outline geographical, ecological, and agricultural constraints and possibilities that contribute to dietary patterns. Parsons’s discussion of agricultural production in Peguche in 1940 offers a baseline to measure change. Mamá Rosa appraised food as a source of distinctive power and way of knowing. Some Otavalans yearned for favorite foods while they were far from home. Finally, this chapter highlights the role of food in the ritual process. Notwithstanding the changes in Peguche since the 1940s,

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the annual cycle continues to be punctuated not only by life crises, but also by the rhythms of agriculture and the ritual calendar. For festive and momentous events, many Otavalan women still pull out all the stops to prepare appropriate feasts, fitting even for the dead. Particularly on such occasions, foods are important symbols that, as Weismantel comments, embody “material things that evoke a wealth of condensed, ambiguous meanings” (1989:142). In this respect, when my friend Paula and her family made bread for the Day of the Dead, they rekindled feelings of sorrow and joy, socialized children in activiOtavaleña supplementing family ties that involved all the senses, income by offering cooked delicacies and secured the transmission of from her home. cultural knowledge through tactile and sensory experience. In this way, the annual pilgrimage to the cemetery adds to the ethnographic picture about the centrality of foodways in culture, by showing how reciprocal relations and respect are extended through the ritualization of cultural symbols across generations, and among the living and departed.

Geography, Native and Nonnative Cultigens, Diet, and Ethnicity Geographically, the region of Otavalo lies in an inter-Andean valley dotted with lakes. It extends from the valley floor, at about 2,800 meters, to three volcanic peaks that rise above 4,300 meters. In close proximity are subtropical zones, located on the far sides of either mountain range at lower elevations. With regard to agriculture, Andean topography stands out for its varying altitudes, soil types, and orientations, which vary the

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amount of sunlight on slopes depending on exposure. These factors contribute to a mosaic of microclimates, which etch out unique econiches suitable for growing different crops. Since pre-Hispanic times, Andean farmers have used their ecoagricultural knowledge to cultivate a wide variety of plants adapted to specific microecosystems. For centuries, agriculturalists have deliberately accessed different microzones in order to produce and exchange products that provide a varied and nutritious diet (Murra 1972; Brush 1977). In pre-Columbian times Otavalo emerged as a commercial center where agricultural and textile trade took place. Farmers today still sow their highest fields, where corn cannot grow, with myriad native roots, tubers, potatoes, and legumes. Barley and wheat, cultigens brought from Europe, were adopted soon after the Conquest and are cultivated on steep mountain flanks as well as in valleys. Andean farmers plant corn, the food ubiquitous to Otavalan daily cuisine and also most sacred because it is central to most rituals, at intermediate latitudes where human populations are concentrated. They sow in tandem corn, beans, and squash, the original American “three sisters” that complement each other for sustained and enduring soil fertility, because beans fix nitrogen in the soil, while corn exhausts it. Also, the corn provides a stalk for the beans to climb up.1 At the same time, squash grows on extended vines that provide shade with its enormous leaves that help soil retain moisture. Squash seeds are highly nutritious and accent meals in special sauces. Coincidentally, the combined

Otavaleñas shucking corn in Peguche, 1990.

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amino acids in corn and legumes form a source of quality vegetable protein for human nutrition. Farmers intercrop native quinoa and chochos (lupines) throughout the plots to repel harmful insects and add these nutritious powerhouses to their harvest. According to Otavalan scholar Mercedes Cotacachi: Corn is a divine being. It is a symbol of fertility and abundance. Since ancient times, they dressed [ears of corn] like dolls and worshipped them. Women slept with them to assure fertility . . . For Kichwas, corn, like everything found in nature, has human qualities: it cries, speaks, and feels pain. Corn does not reproduce itself; it needs man. For Andeans, agriculture is the heart of life. (Mercedes Cotacachi et al. 1986:14–15) Cotacachi goes on to describe the corn plant with anthropomorphic features, including the stem as its body, the leaves as its arms, the roots as its feet, the flower its head, and new shoots as its heart. Milpa (the entire corn plant)2 is spoken of affectionately as a distant relative that requires attention and love and that, with proper care, will give back. This familial relationship with corn underscores both the genuine affection and responsibility involved in raising the next crop. Such engagement outlines an ethos of reciprocity that links Otavalans with each other, their landscape, other species, and the cosmos. It is a code to live by. Corn and its associative practices create sensual memories that include tastes, smells, and sounds of field and home. Parched corn is present at most meals, and special varieties punctuate ritual occasions. The aroma, pop, flavor, and texture blend into scrumptious morsels. Through repetitive actions in kitchens and fields across generations, physical and emotional sustenance are blended into a core feature of ethnicity, a taste that is important even as Otavalans may live transnational lives far from home. Otavaleño poet Ariruma Kowii writes of maize: Nos dicen también Que cuando en el suelo encontremos botado un granito de maíz un muyo

They also tell us that when we find thrown on the ground a grain of corn a seed

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nos postremos ante él that we should bow down con reverencia with reverence lo tomemos con devoción and take it with devotion como un padre o una madre like a father or a mother a un hijo towards a child y que luego lo sembraremos and later we will sow it para que crezca, madure so it may grow, mature y se multiplique and multiply itself que dejar morir un muyu to let die a seed es dejar que muera un runa. is to let die a runa [indigenous person]. (in Ramon 1993:17) The muyo, or Kichwa term for seed, in Kowii’s poem embodies a shared genealogy that links human generations across time and space to each other, to germinating corn, and to the earth. Within this worldview, a runa, or indigenous person, has a reverent responsibility in the agricultural and cosmic cycle to cultivate and nurture future generations, where boundaries between runa and corn are blurred. This cycle involves a complex network of social relations and specialized knowledge to sow, cultivate, harvest, and ultimately, prepare and share cultural nourishment around the hearth in village kitchens. For Kichwas like Cotacachi, Kowii, and others, farming is an interaction with the divine, at the heart of life. Corn is animate and needs man to come to fruition. Labor in the field puts food on tables and energizes the sacred. It requires wisdom that includes sensitivity to the seasons and the moods of nature, along with a lot of hard work and a modicum of good luck. Although foodways and home cooking are recognized as one of the most central and integrative elements of cultural systems, in fact external forces strongly affect what people eat. The globalization of food production and consumption influence what people grow, buy, and eat.3 Conquest, colonization, and economic and climate conditions impact the intermingling of cultures, which shape nutrition, health, access to food, the social role of cuisine, and local identities. The kitchen is a kind of laboratory for creative expression and a platform for change where tensions and conflict are played out through food choices and their meanings. Transcultural processes are readily discernable in new recipes, as inventive cooks adapt new ingredients to their cooking repertoire. Change in foodways reflects differential capacities to reformulate ideas and practices about the basic

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staff of life. Traditional foodways are increasingly challenged to respond to international political economies, which have flooded local markets with subsidized farm commodities from abroad, while commercials in the mass media entice local consumers with processed foods. Traditional Ecuadorian cuisine reflects a rich diversity of cultures, geography, and history, including indigenous cuisines of pre-Columbian South America merged, to varying degrees and at various times, with imported cuisines from Europe, Africa, and Asia. While the Spanish conquistadors introduced their own culinary traditions to the native peoples of South America, indigenous ingredients also crossed the Atlantic and changed the cuisines of the Old World—try to picture Italy without the tomato or Ireland without the potato.4 New World crops include scores of varieties of potatoes and other tubers, corn, beans, squash, as well as cacao, hot peppers (called ají in Ecuador), guavas, sweet potatoes, manioc (cassava), tomatoes, avocados, walnuts, quinine, vanilla, and papayas, and native livestock, including turkeys, guinea pigs, and llamas. It’s hard to imagine the rest of the world without these products, just as it’s difficult to picture an Andean kitchen without barley, wheat, bananas (Ecuadorian bananas represent 25 percent of global production), sugar, rice, and other products. Certain dishes that are emblematic of a particular cuisine also represent transcultural processes par excellence. Consider in the northern Andes máchica, a toasted and finely ground barley treat frequently served in indigenous households. Barley is an Old World crop that can be traced to the very beginning of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. Because it grows well in cool environs and at high altitudes, barley quickly took hold as an important staple in the Andes after its imposition by Spanish conquerors eager to cultivate tastes of home and open new markets. However, native Andeans created new recipes and ways to process and consume barley. Currently for example, máchica is a comfort food for many Kichwas. It is commonly served for breakfast or as a snack, is easy to transport, and does not spoil readily. It can also be made into a thick gruel when added to boiled water, with panela (raw brown sugar), and on occasion seasonal fruits. Through barley’s long cultural history and the complex political economy mediated by conquest and colonization, its taste became relocalized in the Andes and took on new meanings as a comfort food. Máchica succinctly and very usefully embodies the imaginative results of transcultural forces. According to Mary Weismantel, it is also how natives in Zumbagua (a highland community in the province of Latacunga, south

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of Quito), self-identify—“we who eat máchica”—in contrast to blancomestizo society. Moreover, for Zumbaguans who live at an altitude mostly above the ecological limits for maize cultivation, the consumption of the barley products they grow represents hospitality and cultural continuity— “a core cultural symbol that warms you up” (1988:161). Máchica is key to their cultural identity and to daily nutrition, even though its origins are in the Old World. With regard to foodways in Peguche in 1940, Parsons comments: November is the principal time of sowing. In this month are sown maize, beans, quinoa, gourds, wheat, and barley, of which the latter, on the small Indian holdings, is a more favored crop than wheat. Potatoes are seeded in July or August and according to locality at various other times. A large potato field adjacent to José Lema’s land was seeded in February. Barley is the first crop to mature; the second is quinoa, both in March, and potatoes begin to appear in the market. The gourds ripen. In April a large flat bean (habas) and sweet corn 5 come in, and maize leaves (sara-panga) are gathered for fodder. The small beans, of which there are many different colors, ripen in June, and at this time there is a second crop of quinoa. The big harvest of maize (white, yellow, red, black, speckled) and morocho (duro, fuerte), a hard white maize (two varieties), is in August, and in August, too, wheat is harvested. (1945:18–19) Throughout my residence in Peguche during the 1990s, farmers purposefully redesigned the landscape with each season, not dissimilar to what Parsons described. The patchwork effect blanketing the steep slopes was stunning and included the rotation of fields sown with corn, potatoes, fava beans, quinoa, wheat, peas, lupines, and barley. Each rotation signaled specific actions related to work and multiple other variables including land holdings, social responsibilities, the ritual calendar, potential harvest, food preferences, commodity values, and income. To a large extent, the village of Peguche’s subsistence base was still largely farming, and on the surface the village seemed similar to Parsons’s description, a “trading, weaving, and farming community,” although during my tenure there it weighted toward the former (1945:32). Farming, weaving, and trading are

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Mt. Imbabura flanked by fields of barley in Peguche.

key activities people continue to juggle to make ends meet, and as a part of that strategy, many families have at least one member who migrates on a temporary or permanent basis. The addition of electricity, schools, and other basic infrastructure since Parsons’s time continues to transform the village. Additionally, the access to global media, more financial resources, travel, tourism, and demographic change—from the 122 households of Parsons’s day to the 390 in 19936 —have wrought vast transformations and put pressure on land management. Peguche displays many of the accoutrements of a consumer society, including buses, trucks, and SUVs, TVs, DVDs, computers, designer clothes, hotels, and two- and three-story concrete buildings in which homes, stores, and workshops are housed. However, far from all Pegucheños share high standards of living, and many toil long hours in someone else’s workshop or field. According to some of my Otavalan friends, las cosa finas, or “the fine things,” are traditional foods that define the basics of a sumptuous table. Laura and her sisters identified tostado (toasted corn), moté (hominy),

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chochos (lupine beans), potatoes, and ají (chili) as the consummate Otavalo meal. These tasty elements determine the “fineness” of a meal, although I was told that for example arveas (peas) or habas (fava beans) could be substituted for chochos. These same women were also quick to point out that it was unusual for all these foods to be prepared in the contemporary household. Although tostado and potatoes are ubiquitous in midday meals, moté and chochos are very laborious to prepare and are prepared only for special occasions (although they are sold by vendors at the market or on the street). Las cosas finas represent a nutritional powerhouse, where grains are complemented by legumes and form a complete non-animal protein. They also represent a “fine” table of comfort foods, some of the foods Otavalans yearn for when far from home—they soothe the soul as well as nourish the body. Moreover, these foods are cultural symbols of tradition.

The Power of Food According to Mamá Rosa, and Change in Peguche The memory of the Indio is stronger than the memory of blancomestizos—due to the food we eat. We eat grains directly from the earth: morocho con sambo (corn with squash), cracked barley, chili, chochos, broad beans, fresh or dried peas—all food good for the brain, for the head. My mother knew how to cook good Ecuadorian food. My father didn’t let me cook. I was smart, and he taught me everything. When I was a child, just eight years old, we sat to eat at a small table. My mother served us all from a big clay pot. We ate lots of cabbage. But most of all we ate parched corn—morning, noon, and night. We didn’t eat anything that came out of cans or boxes. In my youth there wasn’t school. It was the food that helped us and made us smart. Later, the Commissioner, the best lawyer in Otavalo, came to ask me advice. I didn’t know how to read, but I counseled him on legal matters. (Interview with Mamá Rosa, summer 1993) Mamá Rosa’s recollections from her childhood of being in the field and kitchen are vivid and sensual. She attributes her pragmatic way of knowing “good [indigenous] food,” which was also a source of clarity and intelligence.7 She recognizes that what she ate as a child enhanced her

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capacities, which she developed and were sought out by powerful outsiders. The rich medley of foods she describes still nourishes and keeps many Otavalans in tune with their social and physical surroundings. Food continues to convey meanings, nourishes bodies, and, in traditional terms, is a principle design for organizing life. Such a culinary heritage is predicated on agricultural practices. And according to Mamá Rosa, grains harvested directly from the fields give Otavalans an edge. She outlines how her worldview is mediated by foods, emotion, and the work of (mostly) subsistence farmers. They help each other out during times of intense labor through mingas, the mutual networks of cooperation in traditional Andean social life. Moreover, with whom one shares food and what one eats revolve largely around those reciprocal relations. Putting food on the table brings people together and reinforces values and relationships long after the food is digested. Parsons illustrates this in her description of tasty presents Mamá Rosa received after the birth of her third child, several days after Parsons’s 1940 arrival in Peguche. Now another visitor arrives, Antuka Cotacachi . . . , the aunt who lives in Quinchuquí. It is her formal visit after the birth of Matilde,8 and she is bringing Rosita, her sister’s daughter, a little gift of buns and of barley, a large basketful. (1945:162) Even in old age, Mamá Rosa was full of vigor and insights with regard to village life. She helped her grown children and grandchildren organize business deals at the production end in Peguche and neighboring communities, kept up with local politics, and carried on with her beloved farming projects. Her primary place of residence was the same mud-walled residence that Parsons frequented in 1940 and 1941, which Mamá Rosa preferred over the comparatively luxurious homes of her children in Otavalo and Quito. While she enjoyed village life and assisted when needed in her children’s and grandchildren’s businesses, it was the land and her farm animals that seemed to provide her greatest pleasure. Mamá Rosa could always organize work parties at a moment’s notice, which is a testimony to the staying power of her networking skills. Her home was not fancy. A single spigot brought water beginning in the mid-1990s. Inside the corridor, corncobs hung from the rafters for future meals. Two dusty looms sat unused in the corner (almost as monuments to an illustrious past). In the outdoor hallway, daily chores were

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performed, including the winnowing and cleaning of quinoa; the classification of harvests by separating corncobs into piles for seed, human consumption, commerce, and animal fodder; the shucking of that corn; the feeding of various domestic animals; and the preparation of a meal (among other things). Whatever the season, her requisite kitchen garden was sown with cabbages, onions, and herbs across the courtyard at the side of the pigpen and the coop for chickens and turkeys. Mamá Rosa depended upon the help of her adopted son and his family and vice versa. Gregorio Panama was from a family with few material assets in Peguche, and Mamá Rosa took him in as a child. He was married with three children. They assisted and lived with Mamá Rosa. She told me that he was her son, and she treated him like a needy relative. “I have taken in so many children,” she told me, “everyone knows how good I am and that is why they love me.” Her relationships were cast like a large net and touched many different levels of society, and always used to her advantage. She never was wanting for a team to assist her in plowing, sowing, harvesting, and processing crops. She could also make handicraft orders

Corridor of Rosa Lema’s home.

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The main street in Peguche.

with business associates upon demand from relatives in Otavalo, Quito, the United States, Europe, and Canada. Traditional elements common during Parsons’s visit, such as the straw roofs that once covered virtually all dwellings, have all but disappeared.9 Nevertheless, the crops Parsons described in 1940 are still planted today, albeit in plots that shrink as the population grows and land is divided up among family members. Indeed, the land hunger experienced at the beginning of the twentieth century (Salomon 1981:441) is even more acute today, due to population pressures and availability of more cash assets. The results of a survey directed by David Kyle in 1993 indicate that 95 percent of the population of Peguche had less than one hectare (2.47 acres) of land. Most of that was used for food production for family consumption: 35 percent of the households surveyed owned land outside the community and 92 percent wanted more land to cultivate. What’s more, while 61 percent cited lack of capital as an impediment to procuring more land, 21 percent viewed scarcity as a major obstacle to acquiring more. All families believed it was their duty to leave some land to their offspring—at

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least that was the ideal in traditional terms. Finally, as a result of scarcity and the influx of foreign-earned capital, land prices skyrocketed. Families counted on multiple economic endeavors to make ends meet, and many operated diversified economic strategies using the flow of local and foreign cash to run households. This meant that the foodscape increasingly included trips to the market for prepared and specialty items, meat, or other groceries, as incomes rose and tastes expanded. On several occasions I heard about family members returning from abroad who called leaving details concerning their arrival, and then urgently requested that certain dishes be prepared to welcome them. In this regard when Mamá Rosa’s grandson called home just before returning from a stay in Europe in 1992, he instructed his mother to prepare squash, cabbage, and new potatoes from the farm in Peguche for his first meal. In contrast, Otavaleño migrants in New York boasted to me that they could find really “good” food in Queens, where the freshly cooked moté (hominy) was worth a long subway trip. They commented that on special occasions they even could sit down in Queens for a meal of roasted guinea pig and relive vivid tastes of celebration and home. Just as Otavalans yearn for tasty morsels upon their return, it is customary when they send family members off at the airport to bring delicacies wrapped in cloth to leave a “good flavor” on their palates that will conjure up positive memories of home while they travel. Otavaleños who live transnationally and include familiar foods from home in their diets make migration more palatable, literally and figuratively, and being away from home easier to bear.

Peguche, 1940s–1964: Luz’s Life History Luz’s life history gives insights about what it was like for a girl to come of age and marry at the time of the 1964 land reforms. Her story is also special, in that her spiritual prescience was instrumental in her family’s purchase of land. Although unique, Luz’s life follows contours common to many Otavalans’ lives in the second half of the twentieth century and thereby offers a gendered picture of the interim period between Parsons’s research and mine. It provides insights into the Peguche foodscape with regard to land, agriculture, kinship, gender roles, and the power of syncretic religion. Luz, less than five feet tall with a slim build, was one of the strongest, hardest working people I ever met. Whenever I visited her, we never

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sat idle; we either husked corn, sorted it, fed animals, classified potatoes, fetched water, or did something in the fields or kitchen. From her I learned that “sitting and talking” is a cultural construct outside of the realm of most working people in Peguche. I was careful to reciprocate her time with a treat such as bringing fresh fruit or providing the service of scribe for the years one of her daughters lived in the United States. We became close friends over the years, in part because my son was the same age as one of her grandsons, and they enjoyed playing together. I learned early in our friendship that she held an unwavering devotion to the Virgin Mary, who was a key force throughout her life. The following account patches together events from Luz’s life. The narrative is based on field notes and memories of activities we engaged in together and combines anecdotes Luz shared and moments I observed over nearly a decade. She lived up the road from us and had a deep well that afforded a continual supply of clean water when all else failed. I was fortunate to have access to water in that well in times of need, with the help of a twenty-meter rope, bucket, and muscles. As neighbors, we could depend upon each other for friendship, small favors, and knowledge about points of interest. Thus, over hundreds of hours of conversations and doing things together, I became privy to some of the fascinating details of her life, which also happen to illustrate the rhythms of rural life marked by globalizing forces in the second half of the twentieth century. Luz woke up every morning at five when the blush of dawn only hinted a new day. She dressed in the dark; putting on the wool sweater her daughter sent from the United States, belting her skirts and then protecting herself from the morning chill with a shawl and a headscarf. Generally, her grandson still slept as she groped her way out of the bedroom. Next she pushed open the wooden door in the patio that led into the kitchen and was welcomed by the squeaks of the guinea pigs as they scrambled into the dark corners under the counter. She routinely rekindled the kitchen fire and put the teakettle on. Then she swept up the guinea pig droppings from under the hay in the corner and took them out to the adjacent field, adding the rich manure to the unsown patch. Under the nippiness of the sky at dawn, Cotacachi Mountain outlined the horizon with a new cap of snow tinged in pink for a few brief moments.10 Almost always, if she was well, Luz walked over to the irrigation stream and cut the grass growing alongside, bundled it on her back, and returned to the kitchen where she put it on the floor in the corner for her guinea pigs to eat as they squealed with

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delight. Her tea bubbled on what was left of the fire. The spicy scent of cinnamon filled the air. She poured a cup, adding heaping spoons of sugar. Then she swallowed quickly and munched on some toasted corn leftover from the previous day. She could hear the first bus rattling down the hill toward town, and this made her hurry. She never missed the 6:30 a.m. Mass, particularly since the death of her husband ten years before. By now her grandson was up and dressed, and he raced to his parents’ house several blocks away as she got on the bus. The church was quiet when she entered. Each day she lit a candle to the Virgin, and on holy days Luz took food to her husband’s grave in the cemetery and consulted with him. She said this kept him alive in her heart. She recounted to me that many times as she sat on the wooden pew and waited for Mass to begin, feelings and memories from the past were conjured up in her mind. She described the déjà vu she repeatedly felt sitting there, remembering when she was a child and the tasks of each day seemed endless. Luz had spent most of her childhood in a near trance produced by the repetitive motions of spinning wool into yarn. Day after day, most of her childhood was spent in a corridor made of earthen walls, which exhaled a dampness that reached into her very bones. She related to me that the pungent odor of the fuzzy carded fleece brought to mind her grandmother’s stories of vibrant meadows hidden inside the mountain where sheep and llamas spoke Kichwa alongside native deities and personages of high repute. Luz spent most of her waking hours spinning and never attended the school. Rather, her early youth was consumed by back and forth motions, pulling and letting up on the thread, over and over, while her uncle stomped the pedals and changed the warp on the large Spanish loom in the adjacent corner. Clack, clack, stomp, stomp, stomp, went the loom. Her father’s workshop specialized in the production of dark blue cloth used to make indigenous skirts and ponchos. The textiles were highly prized, and the workshop had more orders than could be filled. Luz’s father, Taita Manual, traveled once a year to Venezuela to sell fabric, maintain commercial relations, and earn some extra cash. He was generally absent during the month they were obliged to harvest for the hacienda owner in exchange for permission to live on the land. Luz told me how she looked forward to harvest month, until it began. She welcomed the change in the monotony of spinning all day, but the joy of being outside and socializing with other villagers was quickly obliterated by the volume and intensity of the work. It was the only time the

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owner came in his fancy clothes and car from Quito. His managers were under extra pressure to please him, and he did not hesitate to abuse them. Their forced obligation was to get the crops in and not displease the hacendado (hacienda owner). All the corn and fodder had to be harvested, cut, and stored. Managers yelled and threatened eviction and whippings to push the villagers to their limits. Luz related that even as a young girl she found respite from the tribulations of daily life in her devotion to the Virgin and in the weekly trips to Otavalo to attend Mass. It was a festive outing to see things and be seen. Inside the church, the Virgin’s gown and her sweet, serene face reminded Luz of the spirits who lived in the foothills that her grandmother had told her about and whom she daydreamed about as she spun. The Latin words of the priest were incomprehensible to Luz, who at that time spoke only Kichwa, but the music, gestures, candles, and incense fed her imagination and nurtured her devotion. Luz explained how Sundays broke the monotony of daily life. She rose at five as usual, but rather than going to work, she took her younger siblings to bathe in the nearby deep irrigation ditch. In the kitchen, Sundays brought festive sounds and smells, including the popping of parched corn. Luz described how she sat on a tiny hand-hewn wooden bench by the fire, just inches off the dirt floor. There she stirred the toasting corn while her hair, which reached to the back of her knees, dried in the heat of the fire. Then she arranged her sister’s thick black hair in a tight ponytail wrapped in a belt and braided her older brother’s hair. On Sundays the entire family put on their finest clothes, clean and pressed. Luz wore a ruffled, embroidered blouse and long skirts tied at the waist with a colorful belt. Around her neck, she wore ten strands of golden beads and on her wrists the many-stranded coral bracelets that had been her grandmother’s. (She pointed out that she still wore those same bracelets decades later.) The outer garments worn by women and girls consisted of dark shawls and scarves, while men wore ponchos and dark felt hats. Luz and her family were a handsome, proud group as they left the village, walking the railroad tracks toward town. The walk, though five kilometers long, was not a problem, she commented. It was the confrontation with the keeper of the Neptune pools that held them up some weeks. On at least one Sunday per month, she said, the same scene was reenacted at the edge of town, where a giant cross was built into the mountainside and rose high above. There, to the left of the railroad tracks where they walked was a shrine to the Virgin of Monserrat,

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a magnificent statue set in a cave that was also the source of abundant bubbling water.11 The spring filled the adjacent swimming pools, which were off-limits to indigenous people. The problem was that the pools needed to be heated, and the pool keeper devised a way that got it done with no work on his part. Luz’s voice had traces of pain and anger when she told me how he waited in the shadows with a pack of vicious dogs. Her voice recoiled as she remembered the many times he stank of alcohol and came after her parents with his cane. He knocked the fedora off Luz’s father’s head and the scarf off her mother’s and then refused to let them retrieve the items until they chopped wood and swept. On those occasions, he would not let them pass with their belongings until a pile of wood was chopped and the patio swept. It generally took a half hour before they retrieved hat and scarf and the family, although humiliated, was intact as they continued on their way to church. Luz said it was always a relief to finally be in church and sheltered from the brilliant equatorial sun. As a child she was fascinated by the carved Virgin in her regal gowns in the niche to the left of the main altar. If they got there early enough, Luz sat on the hard wooden pew wedged between her siblings, and on the cold marble floor if they were late. She took in the scents of incense and perfumed beeswax candles wafting from the magnificent golden altar, alongside the familiar odors of babies nursing and parched corn wrapped in cloths for snacks. Luz told me that the Virgin’s face had been like that of a mother and best friend to her, and that the Virgin repeatedly came to Luz in dreams. Indeed, she recalled how the Virgin had been a portent of things to come in her life. For example, when Luz was an adolescent, the Virgin appeared to her in the spinning corridor and announced that she would marry. Luz delighted in telling me about her wedding party, a five-day celebration. This was the only time in her life when she had not had to work. Friends and relatives brought hundred-pound bags of corn and potatoes that were piled in giant heaps in the corridor. In addition, her parents received gifts of chickens and guinea pigs. With the help of family and friends they prepared a feast that lasted nearly a week. They also slaughtered a pig for the party and did their utmost to ensure that all guests were content, as they were grateful not to be alone on this special occasion. The aroma of meat wafted for days from the kitchen, and everyone ate large portions with every meal. In addition, the feast included mountains of steaming hominy, potatoes, rice served with peanut, pumpkin seed, and chili sauces prepared

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to spicy perfection. Luz exclaimed that after godparents, musicians, and elders blessed the bride and groom, everyone was served. Luz recounted with pride that the highlight of the wedding was the dancing and music, performed on violin and harp. Her foot tapped as she described the beat of sanjuanitos 12 that pulsated through their dancing. Remembering the exuberant melodies brought glee to her smile. She spoke about the violin that shrilled with its high pitch that was heard over the buzz of conversation, while the harpist stroked the melody and marked the rhythms by tapping the hollow sides like a drum. At dawn of the third day of the wedding, Luz and Miguel went with selected guests to the village spring in the forest. There, in the early morning light, the musicians scrubbed the feet, hands, arms, and faces of the bride, groom, and their wedding godparents, with a mixture of spring water and pink and red petals laced with stinging nettles. The sensations—sweet and soft, bitter and scratchy—suggested what would come in their marriage. The elders

Otavaleñas serving chicha at San Pedro celebration in Peguche, 1990.

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made jokes about conjugal life as the couple crossed the threshold into adulthood.13 Miguel was ten years Luz’s senior when she moved in with him at his parents’ home. She felt fortunate that she got along so well with his mother and sisters. With the birth of Pablito, her childhood activities became a distant memory. She had not spun once since she left home. Almost overnight, she became a farmer. Through the drudgery of spinning in her father’s house, she had acquired the discipline necessary to do almost anything. Working in a farming family, she said, was much more agreeable to Luz than her former life in that dank corridor of her father’s workshop. Luz enjoyed being outside through the seasons, especially when, during her pregnancies, she walked daily through newly sown fields that helped assure germination of the seeds. She related how being in the presence of mountains, sky, and fields was like living one of her childhood dreams. Luz and Miguel worked hard and their fields produced well. They sold the surplus crops, saved money, and were even able to take a trip, a pilgrimage to the Virgin of the Cisne (Swan) in Colombia. It was there as they slept on a mat in a convent that the Virgin appeared again in Luz’s dream. She told Luz to return home quickly because the landowner from whom they had been trying to buy land for years, ever since passage of the Land Reform,14 would be there the next day. When Luz got home, she learned that the landowner had finally agreed to the sale of a plot of land. She attributed such good fortune to the Virgin’s intervention. Although their pilgrimage to her shrine in southern Colombia in 1966 had been a sacrifice—the couple traveled on a rickety bus, was away from their family and fields for two days, carried their own food and stayed at the convent where they slept on mats on the floor—it was there that the Virgin had communicated directly with Luz. Thanks to the Virgin’s message the couple would be able to pass on to their children the most important inheritance possible—land. Unfortunately, however, Luz’s second child was born sickly. Members of the community murmured that the baby had been bewitched, that Miguel and Luz had just been too lucky. Rumors circulated that perhaps someone had sent a spell on the little girl. Disregarding these murmurings, Miguel and Luz purchased even more land. Although most villagers recognized the couple’s industriousness, some were envious and others said that that was reason for their little girl’s premature death.

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Years later, after Miguel’s untimely death, Luz divided the landholdings among her three grown children. Each had substantial possibilities. Luz farmed alongside her unmarried daughter, and labored with her other daughter’s family as well. Although her material possessions were few, she was not poor in terms of the hectares she owned and had in production or in her specialized knowledge of handling her natural resources for agriculture. Luz’s life history conveys cadences of daily life over time in Peguche. The endeavors she engaged in with her family shed light on pillars central to Otavaleños’ lives: family, weaving, agriculture, trade, and social relations. Her experiences provide a picture of an individual through time: as a girl in action at the spinning wheel, in the kitchen, crossing into Otavalo, and withstanding discrimination—as a wife and mother, as a religious devotee, and as a farmer. What emerge are patterns of interconnectedness—to the family, to the community, to land, with spiritual beliefs, and to those in power. Her story offers clues to important symbols embedded in the senses—the repetitive motions at the spinning wheel entwined with the texture and smell of raw sheep’s wool, the kitchen aromas of cinnamon tea and parched corn over the fire, squeals of guinea pigs, the perfume of beeswax candles in the church wafting through the unintelligible words in Latin of the priest and intertwining with the smells of the crowd all under the view of the iconic statue of the Virgin, the bright sun and open panorama in the fields, the nasty odor of the Neptune pool keeper, and the hard floor at the convent next to the Virgin of the Swan. These are sensual memories that go beyond the intellect. Her recollections show routines of everyday and ritual life; values were put into action through a gendered and cultural template that opened her path toward a meaningful life. Her adoration of the Virgin offers a set of spiritual beliefs that afforded a feminine vision of unconditional love and peace that ultimately, through the aid of a dream, gave stunning and pragmatic results. This intervention is reminiscent of the female spirit in María’s life (chapter four), although in Luz’s case the Christian Virgin appeared rather than a mountain deity. Both however, hold powerful sway over their devotees and the capacity for transformation—bold models for Otavaleñas.

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Peguche Post-Harvest, July 1990: The Parva Performance and the Importance of Social Relations With the advent of the dry season every June, Otavalan farmers begin to gather, dry, and store the corn they’ve harvested. Then they cut and stack the cornstalks, forming parvas, or organic silos. Parvas are part of an economy of efficiency practiced by small-scale farmers who, unlike hacienda owners, do not have barns. Instead, they store the grains they consume in an extra room or, in the case of corn, hung over rafters. The parva requires raw material, energy, know-how, and intergenerational cooperation to get the job done. That last requirement generally takes the form of a minga or cooperative work party. On July 3, 1990, Luz, with the help of her two grown daughters and their families, held a minga to make Luz’s parva to feed her two cows15 until the rainy season commenced again in November. In all, there were seven women ranging in age from approximately twenty to nearly eighty, three middle-aged husbands, and six children. Besides helping carry the fodder, the older children kept the little ones occupied so that the adults could work.

Peguche house surrounded by fields with parva in center.

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Most of those at Luz’s minga were actual and ritual kin.16 A few neighbors, of precarious economic standing, also helped. Absent were Luz’s son and his family. His marriage to “la evangélica” (an Evangelical protestant) in the 1970s created rifts in the family. Tasks were organized in accordance with gender and age. The women spread out across the field. They gathered and tied bundles of stalks. Then they hoisted the bundles on their back and, barely visible under their loads, carried them to the construction site. There, the men worked on building up the tip of the huge corn stack, standing on ladders as it grew. The parva was shaped in the form of a conical cylParva in Peguche field. inder like an organic silo. Work went on nonstop under the blazing sun, except for an occasional chicha17 break when the participants quenched their thirst and joked. Women lifted their heavy bundles to the men who, from their ladders leaning against the stack, arranged the new material in a spiral. As the parva grew, the men put a large stick in the center to balance the weight. The top was shaped into a point to ward off wind and keep the structure intact as the cattle consumed it throughout the year from the bottom. The structure of a parva is both an engineering feat—the stack descends as the animals feed—and an icon of indigenous identity standing like a mountain, rooted in the land, and connected to the sky. The minga ended with a tasty meal provided by Luz consisting of generous servings of homegrown potatoes, beans, parched corn, and purchased white rice with a spicy chili condiment, along with many cups of home-brewed chicha and cola. Compare with Parsons’s description in 1940 as reported by Segundo Félix Maldonado:

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For wheat or barley harvest (as for house-building or wallbuilding), the mingueros on their arrival are given a gourd of chicha or guarango, fermented agave fruit. After two hours’ work a lunch of whole potatoes with peppers (ají) or cooked and seasoned beans is supplied and after that a little chicha. . . . The minga is to provide for a reciprocity of services. (1945:187–88) Although guarnago was not available at Luz’s minga, chicha preparation was important and involved selection of one of two kinds of corn, either la jora, which is selected and germinated before it is ground and combined with panela (brown sugar) or fruit or both; or chulpi, which is a very sweet rich corn that makes the chicha look like it has animal fat or cream on it. Whichever corn is used, its actual processing and fermentation is laborious and takes at least three days: chicha is the ultimate beverage that punctuates tradition. In this case, after the parva was complete, the participants merrily ate, drank, and then took home large baskets of dried corn from the recent harvest in thanks for their services. There was an unspoken agreement that the hosts were obliged to reciprocate in kind when their work was needed. This minga illustrates the importance of cultivating relationships, and specifically ways in which gender, kinship, and fictive kinship worked to accomplish the task.

Peguche, November 1993: Ritual Cuisine and Feeding the Dead Bread figurines are baked for Finados in Otavalo, as elsewhere in Ecuador, and given to godchildren, White or Indian, by their White godmothers. These lambs or little horses of the dead, borreguito, caballito de finados, are of wheat bread trimmed in sugar colored red or green. (1945:111) . . . as Rosita had been showing me the bread figurines Alberto [her eldest son] was given at All Souls by his godmother I suggest that he give me one of them. Alberto kept them in a little pail with other small treasures. All but one had been nibbled by the mice. Without a word of protest or any hesitation, Alberto picks out one and offers it to me. It is the sound unnibbled one. (155)

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The Day of the Dead is a national holiday in Ecuador. On November 2, Paula, a woman in her late thirties in the 1990s, always remembers her second child who died shortly before completing his first birthday. This short vignette relates how she planned on bringing bread figures, champus (a sweet corn porridge spiced with orange leaves, cinnamon, and blackberries), and other food to share with him and other departed loved ones at the cemetery in 1991.

Otavaleñas selling bread babies at 24 de Mayo market in Otavalo, 1990.

That year Paula’s extended family rallied their efforts to make bread in a big way. The previous day, fifty-kilo sacks of corn and wheat from their harvest were milled into flour. The courtyard had been transformed into a bakery, and a special holiday was in the air as children of all ages ran around gleefully. Some of the older women stoked the fire in the beehive-shaped

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clay oven, and the flames soon produced the bed of coals necessary for baking. Then Paula, her mother, and sister-in-law distributed pieces of dough to scores of hands around the long makeshift table. All the family, including cousins, nieces, nephews, and ritual kin, gathered to shape the dough into human, animal, and geometric figures. The metal trays covering the kitchen and courtyard were quickly filled with hundreds of handsized rolls ready for baking. The aroma of fresh bread soon permeated the air, and neighbors came by to lend a hand and taste the product. The next morning Paula made a twenty-liter pot of champus to share with each other and the dead at the gravesites. By nine in the morning, the extended family assembled to go to the cemetery. The women wrapped in their shawls and carried on their backs pots of food, oranges, flowers, bread, or small children. The streets were festooned with flowers as we rode along in the back of a pickup truck to the cemetery. The scene was a cacophony of sounds and sights as hundreds poured past vendors into the cemetery to honor the dead. The atmosphere was both solemn and festive. It was time to open painful memories of those passed, symbolically nourish them, and in that way, revitalize the living. This threshold was met as families spread picnics across the narrow graves and sat around reminiscing and eating with loved ones, past and present. Prayer specialists roamed the cemetery and offered to lead invocations. The very poor also offered prayers in exchange for food. Families cleaned the gravesites where multiple generations lay. The prayers, along with the food and the companionship, fed the living and the dead. Rituals are a kind of hyperreality that speaks to humans’ need to make meaning out of their lives. In this case, the feast for the dead reminds participants of the precarious invisible line that separates life and death, while linking time and space across generations through their senses. Also, by giving to relations and the less fortunate, it enhances webs of connectedness that might be called upon outside the cemetery. Through the ritual process, Paula and her family stepped out of everyday activities and prepared bread and champus, symbols of communion among the living and those passed. They ventured to the cemetery, within which they created a liminal space to break bread with the living and dead. Later, they returned to their daily lives with a greater sense of solidarity and humility. Within the agricultural cycle, the Day of the Dead coincides with the onset of planting corn. It suggests rebirth and regeneration of alimentary forces through the willful awakening and feeding of the ancestors

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Otavalo families feeding the dead at the cemetery, November 1990.

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who reside within the earth. In this case, completed ritual obligations between the livingpresent with the deadpast demonstrate reciprocal relations that have consequences for the future with regard to physical, social, and spiritual sustenance. The fact that Andean ancestors rest in the earth alongside mountain deities reminds people that the landscape is repository of spirits that interact and influence the living, not only through concrete actions such as agriculture, but also through dreams and prayers. From these roots entangled in earth and memory grow new crops and Otavaleño performing music for departed ultimately new generaloved ones, November 1990. tions. Through this ritual of cooperation and mutual aid, a sense of community is replenished among the living, the ancestors, and various spirits. For each generation to produce harvests that are transformed into meals, integrated knowledge is needed. The alimentary results are seared into memory and self. Collectively, this sensory extravaganza is embodied within a particular foodscape that regenerates the cultural imagination each November 2 by reenacting cohesive values and behavior.

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Flavors of Identity and Change Foodways punctuate many of Otavaleños’ experiences, as they relate to the natural world, each other, and other sentient beings. Because alimentary practices incite all the senses, they trigger emotional responses that link cultural memories to the present and are points of negotiation and change. Food is a symbol with multiple meanings that at household levels can incite conflicts as consumerism seeps into kitchens, and caregivers have less time to cultivate and prepare the old favorites. Indeed, as Otavalans increasingly migrate out of villages and families live transnationally, and in response to neoliberal reforms, new food habits emerge. Sometimes the adoption of a new food is not unlike the adoption of barley half a millennium ago, when native Andeans came up with a totally new method of barley preparation in the form of the finely ground, toasted portable treat—máchica. Foodscapes touch deep cultural chords, and sometimes emerge from exchanges and with new flavors and meanings. In the cases

Otaveleña teen selling produce at the family business at 24 de Mayo market before emigrating to Belgium in 1993.

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already described, cuisine was the most subtle form of interculturalism, where traditional ways were most salient, significant, and enduring. Mamá Rosa’s, Luz’s, and Paula’s actions help illuminate a native epistemology based on a foodscape that informs and permeates Otavalan perceptual fields related to time, place, and identity. In the 1990s food still constituted the basic underpinning of most household economies and bridged pragmatic and conceptual boundaries. Foodways linked values to behavior and were where social norms, symbolic concepts, and home economics became encoded in everyday life. In many households, traditional knowledge systems revolved around complex chains of food production, processing, preparation, and consumption. Otavaleños’ recollections of food add to, and are seasoned with, layers of history and cosmology. Foodways are visceral and contribute to the fluid parameters of a cultural community. This orientation articulates cultural values and behaviors through the ethos of a socioecological reciprocity where farmers respect and give back to Pachamama—the cosmic force of the universe manifest in the living earth in terms of both time and space. Otavalan farmers were not only aware of lunar cycles, seasonal changes, and other natural forces, but envisioned themselves as integral agents in that complex system. These kinds of traditional agroecological and culinary knowledges connected them to the landscape, and vice versa, particularly through ritual. Thus, in traditional terms, food not only provided human sustenance, but also served as the medium through which Otavaleños (re)created solidarity, social linkages, relations of power, and personal and historical memories. Mamá Rosa, Luz, and Paula cultivated social and spiritual networks over time through agriculture, ritual, and food. Their experiences illustrate ways in which quotidian and ritual activities are organized by cultural principles related to foodscapes, while being customized by individuals and families. In these cases, food consumption was directly connected to fields where the crops were produced and to the kitchen where exquisite and everyday flavors and aromas were created. Their fields and kitchens are points of contact with a globalized economy where new ideas and technologies percolate into daily activities. For Mamá Rosa this meant establishing relationships and gaining cultural wisdom though food. Luz built her consummate skills over time and was open to the message in her dream from the Virgin of the Swan to take advantage of the 1964 land reforms. Paula adjusted to and accepted the absence of her teenage son

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who pursued transnational commerce, while reviving bread-making traditions. Their hands-on strategies through face-to-face interactions represent a gendered approach within the context of a cultural logic that links people to their pasts, each other, and spiritual realms. They reenacted foodways on a daily basis throughout the annual cycle, and as rituals: these actions embellished memories with sensuous and lasting details of who they were and will be in future generations. Mamá Rosa, Luz, Paula, and others sustained a reservoir of traditional knowledge that kept them and their families replenishing tasty ties to their culture, history, environment, and one another. These vignettes illustrate, within the ebb and flow of the twentieth century, ways that family herstories were etched in the senses. Such cultural moorings, whether anchored in the landscape, healing, farming, or the kitchen, are in turn the foundations from which communities build strategies to respond to change and allow tradition to take a new direction. By cultivating relationships with family and others through food, work, and spirits, women hold a cultural baton and orchestrate a sense of belonging even for those far from home. Foodscapes and the quest for well-being bind people together and link extended families across generations and also across continents.

CHAPTER SIX

Designing Transcultural Identities in Local and Global Marketplaces Peguche, Otavalo, and Beyond

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The Otavalo Saturday market (or, rather, markets) consists of a magnified version of general daily market, the textile and pottery market in a great clearing on the north side of town, the cattle market of the east side . . . In the general market Indian and White women sit on the ground alongside one another in specialized groups selling embroidered chemise tops or sandals or vegetables. In all the markets, wares, not race, are the principle of classification; in usual Spanish-American market style all vendors of the same line of wares groups together. Also, any division of labor holds in merchandizing, at least by Indians. The textile-potter market is especially interesting alike for the occasional tourist-purchaser from Quito and the anthropological observer. Along the southern wall stand the Indian weavers, a line of two hundred men, their cloth piled neatly in front on cotton sheets, a gay and picturesque show. —Parsons 1945:30–31 140

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La Feria \ the otavalo market, known locally as La Feria (the Fair), persists as a “picturesque show” with textiles as the centerpiece. However, sixty-some years after Parsons’s description, it has grown exponentially with myriad colorful products. It is like a huge happening with many different levels of meaning and purpose. On the one hand, the experience bombards the senses and has far-reaching socioeconomic impacts. Moreover, it’s a place to see and be seen, not only with regard to social connections, but also in terms of textile design and innovation. Particularly on Saturdays, it is a sensory overload as people from around the globe navigate the carnivalesque atmosphere on the Plaza de Ponchos and surrounding streets. A vibrant array of handicrafts, food, household items, and people fan out, and First World and other travelers connect with Ecuadorian artisans and vendors. Ethnic tourism and commercial transactions are at the center of the confluence of currencies, languages, people, and ideas. The stunning Andean mountains serve as the 360-degree backdrop for the scene where local realities are brought together with global and regional visitors for brief interludes. This life-stage in the round is the nexus where worlds converge, creative forces interact, identities are performed, and commercial links are forged. The cadence of the week follows preparations that welcome travelers into the Otavalo valley. Tour books and agencies help guide a wide range of visitors to meet their very different needs, desires, and expectations. For example, many luxury Galapágos travelers include a side excursion to Otavalo on the mainland in their vacation package. In this regard, an ad in Natural History Magazine, June 1992 announced: GALÁPAGOS Join a biologist from a major U.S. university for a visit to these renowned islands far removed from civilization. Must be able to walk 2 miles on trails. 3 days in Andes Mtns. & Quito area. 7 days on Galapágos. Otavalo Indians, giant tortoises, sea lions, bluefooted boobies and more! (71) This advertisement describes some of the natural wonders of the enchanted isles located six hundred miles off the South American mainland and lists “Otavalo Indians” as another worthy marvel, only located in the Andes. I

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(above) Overview of Plaza de Ponchos with Mt. Imbabura in the distance. (left) Otavaleño at kiosk on the Plaza de Ponchos.

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include it here because it encapsulates the romanticized image of an indigenous other, in this case as a natural wonder or exotica on par with “giant tortoises, sea lions, blue-footed boobies and more!” Many visitors from industrialized societies yearn for such a fantasy; an imagined time which offers escape from their harried lives. In spite of the fact that Otavaleños live complex lives and many are astute businesspeople who engage in successful commercial dealings around the globe, the ad suggests that tourists journey to Otavalo on a kind of natural history safari. Such images are laden with hegemonic notions that objectify “Otavalo Indians” as passive scenery or relics of a bygone era when life was simpler. They are portrayed as a people without history and at the same time as objects of desire. The aim of this chapter is to debunk this myth of the romanticized other, frozen out of time. By providing ethnographic details of Otavaleños as they actively engage in commercial activities at home and abroad, I show some of the ways they are skilled in shaping traditional and transcultural resources into sophisticated business strategies, which sometimes unapologetically capitalize on their ethnicity. Take for example my friend Juan who has a weaving workshop that caters to visits by upscale tourists. He told me that he frequently scolds his teenage daughter with regard to her choice of dress: “If visitors come to our home workshop they expect to see you in your anacus [traditional dress], not jeans and a tee shirt.” Juan knows that attracting buyers involves drawing an audience and requires not only stellar goods, but also a stellar performance enhanced by traditional dress. He understands that commerce is more than a financial transaction for many foreign tourists; in this case it’s an exotic experience to enter an indigenous home and workshop, and part of the package involves the manipulation needed to ultimately satisfy their desires. For the Saturday Feria, tourists begin descending into the valley Thursday night. They stream in to full capacity by Friday evening when Otavalo seems to bulge out of its seams. Travelers from all over Ecuador and the world come to see and be a part of one of the largest native markets in South America. Some come as entrepreneurs in search of products to sell back home for a profit. Others are looking for individual bargains and engage in fierce haggling to get cheap prices. In such cases, it becomes like a competitive sport to get a low price. Others might come in search of adventure, relaxation, museum quality artifacts, or possible romance.1 Some momentarily step out of the banality of their daily lives to explore Indianness to get an exotic taste (in their view) of the naturalized other.

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Cottage industries vary from small-scale single household production to capital-intensive and multiple-employee workshops.2 Class differences and positioning for the best deal continue to play out in home workshops not too differently than as in 1940 at Mamá Rosa and José Ruis’s home workshop: The next caller is on business, too, but she lingers to talk after drinking the proffered soup. She has brought a skein of brown yarn given her by Rosita to card and spin, also the carders that were loaned her. Rosita and José farm out a good many little weaving jobs to their less-well-to-do neighbors. (159) Rosita is a close, indeed, a sharp, trader. This afternoon as she sits in the corridor making a rag doll for Lucila a young man and a lad come down from Agato to sell a skein of purple wool. It is Friday, and the hillman may think he can get a better price from Rosita than in the next day’s market. For one hour he and Rosita haggle over the price, he is asking thirty-five sucres and she is willing to give only twenty-five. At times the argument is quite lively, but there are interludes of general conversation, and throughout both parties address each other as tío and tía and wear a smile. Am I related to the Evangelistas asks the Agato man. Reassured, he says he doesn’t like those people. (161) Both of Parsons’s examples stress the importance of social relations for conducting commerce, wherein both parties address each other as tío (Spanish for uncle) and tía (Spanish for aunt), used by Kichwa speakers as signs of affectionate respect. Although not much yarn was carded and spun in Peguche in the final part of the century, other piecemeal tasks were farmed out to workers, many of whom were (or were seen as) extended family relations. Most importantly, as portrayed by Parsons, they were offered respect and food. Regardless of business scale, Otavalans generate revenues that are commonly reinvested in materials, education, putting people to work, and, when possible, land or consumer goods. Products range from inexpensive items such as knotted bracelets for the price-conscious consumer, to museum-quality weavings for the upscale connoisseur. The inputs with regard to requisite materials, technology, labor, and specialized knowledge

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differ greatly, as well as the products offered at the fair. The immediate commercial transactions that take place on the Plaza de Ponchos also spur the development of business relationships for export or travel. Notably, commerce on the Plaza de Ponchos serves as a kind of stage for launching commercial networks beyond Otavalo. These relationships might start with an invitation to the village workshop or to a family celebration for the foreign or outside visitor. Or, on the other hand, Otavaleños are sometimes invited to participate in local fairs in Europe or North America. This kind of networking casts wide social nets that make possible their specialized niche within global commerce, while building intercultural aptitudes. For most tourists in the 1990s, “Otavalo” became synonymous with the Saturday Fair. For vendors and handicraft producers, market day on Saturday brings the week to full crescendo.3 The Fair can be viewed as a glitzy five-star interactive performance where all the stops are pulled out and the audience is bedazzled. The staged production means different things to different people. For those who labor behind the scenes each week, it might mean a job that provides wages to make ends meet, a chance to be one’s own boss in the workshop or the fields, an outlet for creative energies, a chance for economic mobility, the

Calle Sucre in Otavalo connects Parque Bolivar to the Plaza de Ponchos.

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opportunity to meet visitors, or any combination of these or other intentionalities. For visitors, the Fair is a chance to interact on the stage with authentic indigenous vendors in pursuit of extraordinary handicrafts, kitsch, or a bargain. My interest in the first part of this chapter is to describe some of the nitty-gritty efforts of Otavaleñas who contribute to the construction of the stage, a stage that has become the signature platform for the renowned “Otavalo Indians” sited in Natural History Magazine. In particular, I look at the role of two women and their families contributing to the scenes that make Otavalo a global marketplace. They are at the same time normal and remarkable characters whose designs cast an array of common and uncommon idiosyncrasies. In particular, Marta’s and Ana’s activities in fields, gardens, workshops, and commercial dealings help provide the infrastructure that directly or tangentially help make the complex ensemble of local and global markets work. Those activities connected them with

Beadwork and Andean instruments on display for sale at the Plaza de Ponchos.

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me and others and undergird the living stage that keeps the Fair going. Women are bona fide coproducers of the cultural image and the products, a staying-power quite attractive to outsiders. They are also active agents who are making their lives into narratives of their own designs, whether locally or abroad. These mini-profiles sketch women while engaged in productive activities that contribute to their families’ incomes as they invent new roles for themselves. They creatively deployed resources, with the benefits, or not, of class and marital status. To some extent, such variables structured women’s lives and helped shape their responses to the challenges they faced with pragmatic ingenuity. By tracing their strategies, these profiles dispel the notion of Third World women as passive victims. Rather, these vignettes demonstrate Otavaleñas’ abilities as thinkers, managers, and creators of worlds. Their stories reveal how social, cultural, and economic phenomena overlap. Moreover, details from their lives uncover shifting social and cultural boundaries whereby they took advantage of globalizing forces and added inventive contours to local communities. Sometimes inadvertently, but most often deliberately, these women have grown to appreciate the importance of their economic independence. The following song written by a Kichwa woman and recorded by Regina Harrison in 1989 accentuates the tone for this chapter: nukapish nuka Even I, I yuyaymi kusakumi have my ideas, husband. nukapish nuka Even I, I kulkiwan kawsashami will get by with money of my own. nukapis nuka I also, I yuyaywan kawsashami will live by my ideas. kantapish manalla From you never will I beg, roashachu kusa husband. cantapish manalla From you never rogashachu runawill I beg, man. (Harrison 1989:134–35) Although Harrison did not record this song in the Otavalo region, it represents the importance given to women’s financial and intellectual independence. The singer asserts her voice, and affirms her self-worth as a thinker and earner. It is a statement in song of empowerment that is based on actions not dissimilar to the ones discussed in the following pages.4

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Shifting History with Herstories: The Indigenous Fair Awakens the Otavalo Valley How did Buitrón and Collier’s “awakening valley” metaphor, created by the publication of their book in 1949, turn into an official plan adopted by the provincial government to promote cultural tourism and handicraft production for regional development?5 The government of Ecuador instituted Agrarian Reforms in 1964 and 1973 (the latter after significant deposits of crude oil had been discovered in the Ecuadorian Amazon) as a means to address the “Indian problem” and “modernize” Ecuador. The period of military rule in Ecuador 1972–1979 consolidated political power by exerting control over petroleum resources and at the same time outlining a nationalist agenda with reforms. Concurrently, import substitute industrialization (ISI) programs improved quality of life and helped to expand the middle class (Weaver 2000:130). Otavalo was increasingly marketed as a tourist destination at a time that coincided with global economic growth. During this period, the United States designed political-economic strategies for the Western hemisphere to halt the spread of communism in the Americas during the Cold War.6 Under the Alliance for Progress, the U.S. government sent advisors to tutor the Ecuadorian administration in ways to address poverty, in part as a response to the Cuban Revolution, so that the masses of indigenous and peasant people would not rise up. These advisors suggested policies that would make it possible for increasing numbers of Indians to become laborers through trade liberalization and also pushed for land redistribution. This included internal migration from the Andes to the Orient and coast, especially from Chimborazo and Azuay provinces. Additionally, in Otavalo Peace Corps volunteers advised weavers on foreign preferences, marketing, and quality-control and introduced Escher and Navajo designs to the Otavalo textile stock. At the same time, revenues generated from the oil boom in the mid- to late-1970s continued to be invested in public infrastructure, including schools and health care. The paving of the Pan American Highway made travel from Quito to Otavalo a relatively easy two-hour drive and put the international airport within reach. Additionally, the Dutch government provided economic assistance for the construction of Plaza de Ponchos, which turned out to be the centerpiece of Otavalo development. This era framed and heralded the arrival of bona fide ethnic tourism industry in Otavalo. Residencias, hotels, and restaurants opened to provide services for the thousands of tourists attracted to Otavalan culture and the colorful handicraft market within the stunning Andean landscape.

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Civilian rule began in Ecuador with the 1978 constitutional referendum and the election of Jaime Roldós in 1979. Much of his support in the Sierra came from rural areas. In acknowledgement of his indigenous supporters, Roldós pronounced a portion of his inaugural address in Kichwa. This was a significant official recognition, unprecedented in Ecuadorian history. Osvaldo Hurtado succeeded Roldós, after his sudden death in a plane accident. Hurtado’s government (1979–1984) continued to support intercultural dialogue. It instituted an adult bilingual literacy campaign. This turned out to have far-reaching consequences that contributed to the formation of indigenous intellectuals and the ideology of interculturalism. In 1986 the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) was formed and rapidly began to change the political landscape in Ecuador. Hurtado’s successor was León Febres Cordero (1984–1988), whose right-wing regime embraced neoliberal reforms. These policies affected the poor and middle classes by eliminating and privatizing public services. The regime also facilitated foreign investment through deregulation. Rodrigo Borja’s administration (1988–1992) encouraged democratic openings by recognizing that Ecuador was a plural society. 7 At this time, the Ministry of Education and Culture created the National Directorate of Bilingual Intercultural Education (DINEIB) to create and oversee bilingual schools throughout Ecuador. Indigenous people had held this as a primary political demand. However, funding for DINEIB was inadequate. In part because of unfulfilled expectations, indigenous leaders voiced concerns about lack of social equity and political tensions increased. CONAIE organized a nationwide uprising in 1990 that paralyzed the country for a week and shocked the nation. As a consequence the political landscape would never be the same, and indigenous rights could no longer be ignored (Moreno and Figoroa 1994; Selverton-Scher 2001).8 Not surprisingly, many native Otavaleños emerged as local, regional, and national leaders. However this did not mean that all supported the strikes. I repeatedly heard how the uprising and highway closures were bad for business. According to the World Tourism Organization,9 tourism continued to increase in Ecuador throughout the 1990s. In addition, 1992 was a banner year for marking the quincentennial of Columbus’s arrival to the Americas. The United Nations named 1992 as the Year of Indigenous People, and promoted multilateral conferences. Native Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú received the Nobel Peace Prize. In Ecuador and across the hemisphere

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native peoples marked the occasion with 500 Years of Resistance celebratory campaigns to underscore the fact of cultural resilience and survival in the face of genocidal policies. This is also when the political tides in Ecuador turned a bit toward more inclusivity and participation as women and natives opened political space.

Peguche, 1992–1997: Marta’s Flowers When I left home mid-morning on Saturdays, market day for various tourists, consumers, and merchants, my intention was to chat with friends at the Plaza de Ponchos Handicraft Fair, see what was new, and do weekly shopping. I quickly learned that by buying something, other social avenues sometimes opened. On my way to the Fair from Peguche, I often saw a woman who walked along the side of the road with a young girl who carried a large bouquet trailing behind. I first identified her as the “flower lady” because she was almost invisible bent under a huge bundle of flowers tied to her back. On the Plaza one morning, I met the tiny woman as she emerged from under her mountain of flowers. I greeted her and asked if the flowers were for sale. She agreed to sell me flowers, and eventually, after several additional meetings, she also invited me to her home at the edge of Peguche to see her garden. There I could choose flowers and purchase directly. Thus began my friendship with Marta.10 During my residence in Peguche, it was not customary for Otavaleños to have cut flowers in their homes except on the family altar during San Juan festivities. Nevertheless, women did commonly plant flowers in their kitchen gardens, which added bright colors and beauty to their courtyards. Marta used her generous talents to grow a magnificent flower garden and parlayed her green thumb into the cash economy by delivering flowers to tourist restaurants in Otavalo every Saturday. She catered to the finer establishments, she told me, because “the owners pay in cash.” She also supported herself and her daughter by making flower wreaths to order for indigenous funerals and for the Day of the Dead celebrations. The first time I went to her home on the southern edge of Peguche, just above the Jatunyacu (Big River), she seemed to shed decades in spite of the missing teeth that created hollows in her cheeks. She lived there with her young daughter and her aged father. I learned, in fact, that she was in her thirties. She wore traditional attire that was well worn. Her home, the oldest of four residences in the multigenerational compound, was a

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series of packed earth buildings with tile roofs and a separate thatchedroof kitchen with a dirt floor. The hearth generally had a clay pot bubbling with corn and potato porridge, occasionally seasoned with meat. Her dwelling was unlike the modern structure at the entrance to the lot: its walls were crumbling and the corridors were cluttered with broken spinning wheels and old looms that hinted at a more prosperous time. There was also a storage building with corn hanging from the rafters and chickens scratching the ground in search of a kernel. Marta’s husband had left before her daughter Estella’s birth, but she said that things had worked out just fine there in her childhood home where she cared for her ailing father. Her lack of material possessions had not limited her imagination nor embittered her temperament. Our friendship developed over the weeks, months, and years, as I became a steady client. Her lilies, spikenards, periwinkle Cleopatra irises, gigantic fuchsia dahlias, brightly speckled astramelias, and many other flower species were spectacular. She prided herself in showing me the newest blossoms each week. We often chatted over the wide assortment that grew in flowerbeds scattered among the cobblestone livestock corrals, the pigpen, the chicken coop, and next to her living quarters. There I learned of another of Marta’s vocations; she was proud that she was one of the few remaining Otavaleña women who still knew how to fashion funeral wreaths out of fresh flowers. She explained the cultural significance of placing a flower wreath over the entrance to a home. She said it was a death announcement, “the color of the flowers indicate the age of the departed: white for babies; pink, yellow, and white for youths; and purple and red for adults.” She also said that the flowers had to be fresh, as their perfume nourished the departed: “Now, the dead don’t eat food like we, the living, do; it’s the smell of the flowers that nourishes them.” She suggested that without such nourishment, a spirit might be tempted to linger, and thus be disposed to bother the living. However, if properly nourished the spirit departed and left those still alive in peace. She went on to say that sometimes the flowers also nourished her spirit, “when I am sad, I like to stand among the blossoms and breathe in their perfume. Then I feel better.” For Marta, floral fragrances help to map the cultural landscape, establish colorful routes between the world of the living and that of the dead, and provide a path toward economic independence. Marta produced flowers in bifurcated markets—for sale in the tourist economy and to honor the departed—which were sometimes in

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competition. On November 1, 1995, Marta was making four wreaths ordered by a neighbor for the celebration of the Day of the Dead. The garlands were to commemorate loved ones resting in their graves. Marta explained how her sister had taught her the craft before dying in childbirth nine years earlier. She was pleased that community members purchased her wreaths, not so much for the money she earned, but because she viewed her role as significant. With me at her side watching, she pointed out how she did not skimp on the flowers and took care to attach them firmly to the straw base. “Even if the person holding the wreath is drunk,11 and stumbles or falls, the wreath will stay lovely and intact,” she said as she finished the first of the four wreaths while the sun began to set. She pondered Flower wreath hung over door aloud that hopefully her restaurant in Peguche announcing recent clients in town wouldn’t be too disdeath, 1991. appointed that there would be no flowers for their tables the next day. Her priorities were clear: though the sale of wreaths was not as lucrative as that of flowers to restaurants, cultural obligations took precedence over decorating the tables at which tourists dined.12

Peguche, 1989–1990s: Ana Ascending in Business and at Home Theirs had been a childhood romance that led to marriage. Ana ended her formal education at fifteen when Raúl graduated from high school. Both families owned land, operated prosperous handicraft workshops, and were pleased with the marriage. Raúl’s father also had a gift for music that his son seemed to have inherited. Ana and Raúl built a house with the help of their families in the compound next to his sister’s on the other side of a small cornfield. He had several promising career options: weaving,

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Otavaleña making funeral wreath in Peguche, 1993.

With the rise of the export flower industry in the late 1990s, funeral wreathes become commercial items in 24 de Mayo market, 2009.

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farming, and music. As a high school graduate he was also able to pursue special training to become a bilingual elementary teacher. Ana did the housework, cared for their son, and assisted both sides of the family at harvest time or when an extra hand was needed in the workshops. She was talented at machine embroidery and eventually started a business that would flourish. The couple’s greatest asset was their web of connections to prominent handicraft-producing families and musicians in the region. When Ana was twenty and the mother of a four-year-old, she was surprised when Raúl quit his teaching job. By then he played music regularly and his late-night engagements made getting up early for class difficult. Besides, performing at tourist clubs was more lucrative than teaching forty-five second-graders at a school forty minutes away after a very crowded bus ride every morning at six. He met all kinds of people at the clubs and foreign women flocked to him. Sometimes he took them to the family shop, telling them that Ana was his sister and Taqui his nephew. Then he decided to travel abroad. He returned from jaunts only to pick up more merchandise, until the day in 1994 when he was deported from the United States for selling CDs without a license. Rather than fight the charge, Raúl forfeited his visa, a move that would haunt him for years to come. Back in Peguche, he was restless and unhappy: Weaving didn’t compare to the adventure and profits from being a traveling musician. In the meantime, even as Ana’s embroidery business grew, she always made time to assist family members in their farming and handicraft endeavors. Ana rarely spoke about Raúl’s travels. She once asked that I call Canada to try to track him down through English-speakers he knew. On another occasion, she asked me to hide car keys so that he couldn’t drive after a drinking bout. By the time their second child was three and Taqui eight, Ana was twenty-four and owned several sewing machines with embroidery accessories. She employed several part-time assistants. Her blouses were reputed to be some of the finest in the region. She had scores of special orders and a shop in Otavalo for retail sales. The distinctive blouses were signs of female indigenous identity. They consisted of intricate flower patterns machineembroidered below the ruffled lace at the scooped neckline and above the elbow framing the flared sleeves. The blouses were a must for Otavaleñas living in Ecuador and abroad, and Ana’s designs were especially coveted. Ana’s business grew alongside other cottage industries in Peguche, but the way her products were sold abroad provides an interesting contrast to corporate globalization. Otavaleña women living overseas ordered

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blouses by phone through relatives and picked them up when they visited or had them delivered by other travelers. Whereas Otavaleño expatriates could buy fabric to make the rectangular anacus (skirts), and the woven belts rarely wore out, the delicate blouses didn’t withstand washing in automatic machines, nor could they be purchased at Macy’s, El Corte Inglés, or anywhere else. As my friend Cecilia remarked in New York, “Without my traje, it’s hard to show who I am.” Literally, wearing ethnic dress is to perform identity. With her sewing, design, and business talents, Ana opened a successful commercial niche. Her financial wherewithal gave her power to go where she wanted to go. So in 1997, she not only financed Raúl’s next trip to Chile and Peru—she traveled with him. The children stayed with extended family and the nanny she had hired. Afterward they told me that she and her husband even dreamed of retiring in Cuzco someday. Ana transformed from child to wife and mother, from artisan to manager, and then to respected businesswoman and decision maker, a woman with money in the bank. Over the decade I witnessed how Ana caught a wave of change that began in the early 1990s that carried many young men, including her husband, into foreign lands. However, she caught it on her own terms and in her own time. These snapshots of Marta and Ana show how individuals confront, comprehend, and make the most out of local and transcultural resources available to them in the Andean village of Peguche. The narratives are shaped by Marta and Ana’s biographies, as they created social strategies and commercial routes for success. The scenes focus attention on local particularities combined with imaginative skills of women who skillfully managed the resources at their disposal. Both Marta and Ana uniquely pursued paths toward financial independence, and found personal satisfaction and meaning in their lives in different ways. Not all women were so fortunate. But these two were culturally equipped with expectations that supported innovative expressions and trade. Their activities promoted cultural continuity, by connecting with tradition at funerals or traditional presentation of self through ethnic dress. Their pursuits also advanced cultural change as Marta found new markets for flowers in restaurants and Ana opened new markets for blouses for migrants abroad. By sketching a small portion of the ebb and flow of ideas, people, and commerce in the early 1990s, these instances show how Marta and Ana’s gendered ethnicity contributed to permeable boundaries at the local level that adjusted and

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Otavaleña dress displayed in multiple stores in Otavalo, 2010.

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took advantage of a globalized economy. Their stories and experiences weave individual narratives of tradition and change from the inside-out to new markets. Following, I describe transnational experiences, where Otavaleños were adept at re-weaving their identities from resources in the Andes to abroad and back again. Both strategies create new master narratives of possibilities for Otavalans, but not without multiple frictions, readjustments, and sometimes failures. Their actions show how culture is a continual work in progress, where individuals manipulate symbols within changing local and global structures.

Barcelona, Spain, June 2001: A Transcultural Encounter with Isabel Alongside an Anti-Globalization Protest Helicopters hovered above Passeig de Gracia and the Plaça Catalunya, where the Gothic meets the Modernist Exemple in Barcelona, Spain. But the city was still quiet on that spectacular Sunday morning, June 24, 2001, and in stark contrast to the army of police officers standing around vans and motorcycles at major intersections and stationed in front of La Bolsa de Madrid (the Spanish Stock Exchange). They were readying themselves in anticipation for antiglobalization protesters expected to gather later that day. The demonstrators assembled to call attention to World Bank policies, whose representatives had come to the city for one of their regular meetings to make decisions about global economic and monetary policies, which at the time adversely impacted the world’s poorest countries. By midday, a breeze blew in from the Mediterranean as protesters gathered under the hot midday sun. They crowded the boulevard, carrying banners and signs proclaiming the rights of workers vis-à-vis those of transnational corporations, calling for an end to the death penalty, demanding an end to global warming, pleading for an end to Plan Colombia,13 insisting that space be demilitarized, and demanding debt relief for poor countries. Many of the thirty-five thousand, young and old, held olive branches and walked side-by-side with union members: they were brought together by their desire for greater justice in a world increasingly divided between rich and poor. By noon the mass of demonstrators flooded into the Plaça Catalunya in the heart of Barcelona. The choppers continued buzzing overhead as the peaceful protest advanced. I was sitting with others on a bench in

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front of an upscale boutique when a man approached rapidly and suggested we move because someone was going to start throwing rocks. That seemed an odd thing to say about a march that had been utterly peaceful for more than forty-five minutes. Then I spotted the black blocs: masked anarchists with rocks and battering rams. Within a matter of minutes, the plate glass windows of Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts, and other stores and restaurants lay in shards on the pavement. At the same time, a small group of individuals dressed all in white, wove in and out of the crowd, painting human silhouettes in white on the sidewalk, with the words stamped inside: Stop Plan Colombia. Then they lit candles and left them on the hearts of the figures, leaving memorials to the conflict a hemisphere away. The fast-moving contingent of black blocs taunted the police on the Plaça Catalunya, and chaos broke loose. The crowd disappeared as tear gas canisters flew. After calm was restored, police in riot gear took up positions surrounding and within the Plaça. Evening fell. Street cleaners swept up the broken glass. The police remained at their stations. I went to the Plaça to see Isabel. We had met several nights before when she approached me in that city of four-and-a-half million people and asked: “Don’t you remember me? I was your neighbor in Peguche, [Ecuador].” I had hoped to speak with individual Otavaleños in Barcelona, but the happenstance meeting with a young woman I saw grow up in Peguche made this transnational encounter a more personal matter. I couldn’t help but feel the privilege of my circumstances in front of her somewhat uncertain migratory status. But we did feel camaraderie as we shared memories of people and a sense of place on the other side of the world. Our former lives in Peguche drew us together for a few days in Barcelona that summer.

Barcelona, Spain, 2001: Isabel and the Macroeconomic Forces that Brought Her There The day before I met Isabel on the Plaça Catalunya in June 2001, I had been to the ethnographic museum on Montjuïc, the hill overlooking the port and city. It displayed an exhibit in which photos of landscapes unwittingly revealed the paradox of globalization as confronted by Isabel and millions of other Ecuadorians. The exhibit, entitled Ecuador, Una Mirada de Niños (Ecuador, A Look at Children), featured photos of indigenous children standing in front of spectacular geophysical features. One caption explained that the inter-Andean valley is so rich and fertile that crops can be harvested there three times a year. But the children in the pictures

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contradicted the captions as they communicated want and impoverishment. Another caption read: “The presence of Ecuador in Barcelona has tripled in the last six months.” Therein lies the paradox: Ecuador, a country of rich natural and human resources, lost approximately 5 percent of its population between 1999 and 2001.14 Isabel was just one of the estimated three million Ecuadorians who lived overseas, mostly in the United States, Spain, and Italy. They were largely casualties of neoliberal policies in Ecuador that opened markets while increasing poverty for all but a few. The last decade of the twentieth century provoked the largest migratory flow around the globe in human history. In this regard, Maxine L. Margolis’s analysis of Brazilian emigrants is instructive: The traditional “push-pull” explanations of international migrations have proven inadequate in accounting for a worldwide phenomenon of such magnitude. Push-pull theorists assert that the catalyst for international migration is the imbalance in labor supply and labor demand in migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries. But they tend to ignore macro-structural factors that enmesh these global movements, such as rising expectations in sending countries brought on by increased levels of education and media exposure to consumer patterns in advanced industrial states. Such macro-structural factors help explain why, as in the case of Brazil, international migrants are not generally from the most impoverished countries or from the poorest sections of sending nations, as push-pull theories would predict. (1993:xv–xvi) In the case of Ecuador, some reasons for the 1990s exodus are obvious, while others are not. Although Ecuador has oil resources and rich agricultural areas, distribution of wealth is very unequal.15 World market prices fluctuate greatly and values for local farm products were undercut by cheap imports due to farm subsidies in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Some of the most productive lands in Ecuador were cultivated by transnational agribusinesses exclusively for export and the profits often exited Ecuador, oftentimes depleting and polluting natural resources. Thus, Ecuadorians end up paying for those externalized costs in replenishing the damaged environment or living with compromised health and social fragmentation and paying the debt. In addition, because the banking infrastructure was weak, it was difficult, if not impossible, to get

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low-interest loans in the business and agricultural sectors. Unfortunately, the neoliberal mantra of trickle-down economics had yet to reach smallscale farmers, workers, and indigenous people as they struggle to receive fair prices for their products and labor.16 In the 1980s the Febres Cordero government instituted neoliberal economic reforms that actively promoted foreign investment, limited public spending, and eased environmental and other regulations. During the 1990s world financial institutions pressured the government to prioritize paying the service on the debt, which proved detrimental to social institutions and their capacity to provide much-needed services. These facts, in addition to structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund in response to the debt crisis, have directly impacted the household economies of a majority of the population. The crisis was compounded by natural catastrophes, including El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and the depressed oil market in 1997 and 1998. These factors drove Ecuador’s economy into free-fall in 1999. In response, the government imposed austerity measures, which kept salaries low, reduced public sector jobs, and ended some subsidies on basic goods and services, while foisting user fees on education and health care. The effects on the middle and lower classes were devastating. Then in 1999 the banking sector collapsed, and many families lost their life savings. This precipitated default on foreign loan payments later that year. By the year 2000, unemployment had reached 19 percent and underemployment was at 60 percent. Together, these phenomena, along with a pervasive political culture of corruption, contributed to more popular uprisings, which, in part, led to further capital flight and a virtual freeze on investments.17 The final blow to the middle and lower classes was dollarization in September 2000, which buried the Ecuadorian currency, the sucre, and replaced it with U.S. dollars. Advisors at the IMF insisted this strategy would reduce currency speculation and inflation, and make the economy stable enough for foreign investment. However, this also meant that the fiscal policy of Ecuador was determined by policies in Washington rather than Quito. These policies represent real consequences for real people. Isabel, for example, faced a dilemma when she finished college at twenty-three years of age in the spring of 1999. While the details of her story are unique, the broad outlines are those faced by many other Ecuadorians in the late 1990s and the first years of this new century. Isabel attended the best private high school in Otavalo. With much hard work and many sacrifices on

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the part of herself and her parents, she graduated from a private university in the provincial capital of Ibarra, with a major in microbiology. In light of her superior education and relative privilege, why did she leave for Spain after graduation? Simply put, there were no jobs back home, certainly not in her native village of Peguche and not in the entire region. Even her father, a bilingual (Kichwa and Spanish) teacher for twenty-five years and a former county supervisor of bilingual schools, couldn’t find her a job.18 She also had a sense of adventure. The family owned two homes in Peguche. What’s more, both parents worked their larger-than-average landholdings. Partially due to her father’s connections with foreign academics, Isabel’s two brothers obtained scholarships to study at a private university in Quito. Through a quirky twist of fate, after a young Spaniard who visited Ecuador in the late 1990s had his papers and money stolen, Isabel’s family provided a home for him for more than two years. During that time he worked in a factory, satisfying a desire to experience life in an indigenous village. Ecuadorians didn’t need a visa when Isabel decided to go to Spain in late 1999. She was fortunate because she arrived at the house of the Spaniard who had lived with her family and stayed with his mother in Barcelona. The two of them helped Isabel obtain the necessary papers so that she could work legally and receive health and other benefits.19 When Isabel and I met in June 2001, she expected that her permits would be ready in a few months, and hoped that as a European Union resident, she would be able to get a visa for the United States. She said that her older brother, an ecology graduate from San Francisco University in Quito, had managed to get the coveted five-year multiple entry visa to the United States and made two brief but lucrative trips to New York as a musician. For the time being, Isabel took care of an elderly Catalan woman. She earned about US$500 a month and her employer provided most of her meals. She sent a large part of her pay home. Isabel had been in Barcelona for nearly two years. She returned to Peguche for a brief visit the previous November and had been tempted to stay. “Life is very hard so far from home and family,” she said with tears in her eyes. But her father told her, “Daughter, you can do what you want, but please help me out. You earn more than twice what I do, and your brother has one more year of college.” Her sense of duty and the continuing economic crisis brought her back to Barcelona.

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Nested Identities in Transcultural Spaces When Isabel showed up that June night in 2001 at the Plaça Catalunya, she brought her roommate. What did they think of the protests? I asked them. Both said that they didn’t really understand what the entire ruckus was about: “All we want to do is live and work here in peace.” They met through an informal network of Ecuadorians in Barcelona and shared a room in a flat to reduce expenses and for emotional support. In Ecuador, their paths probably would never have crossed.20 Mariana, a working class mestiza from Quito, was thirty-six. She had left her three children with her husband who was a civilian employee with the military. Mariana was a proud working woman; she had had a job as a gas station attendant in Quito until becoming pregnant with her third child. She quit to avoid the toxic fumes while expecting. After the birth of her daughter, however, family finances became extremely tight. She lamented that it was impossible to live and send her two older sons to secondary school on her husband’s modest salary; the family could not both eat and keep the boys

On the main Plaza in Peguche with telephone and Internet services, 2010.

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in school. She related that her decision to go to Spain had been a painful one, but the sacrifice would be worth it if her sons finished high school and maybe even went on to college. Her residency in Barcelona already spanned several months. As a domestic servant and nanny for a professional couple, she was able to send home more than twice what her husband earned. She confessed that she especially missed her four-year-old daughter and was worried about one of her sons. He hadn’t adjusted to her leaving and was not doing well in school. The helicopters still wove through the evening sky occasionally, and the police had yet to leave the Plaça Catalunya. We decided to go for ice cream after it became clear that the street musicians wouldn’t be performing that night. “Don’t all these policemen in riot gear frighten you?” I asked Isabel. “I’m not afraid of anything anymore,” she said. “All I want to do is make enough money so I can go home and start a business.” On ordinary evenings, Andean musicians took over the southeast corner of the Plaça Catalunya. At five o’clock, they drove up in their vans and unloaded amplifiers, generators, microphones, and other equipment, as well as a wide array of Andean instruments and boxes of CDs for sale. With their long black hair, ponchos, ethnic vests, panpipes, and charangos, they turned their ethnic identity into an economic advantage. Their corner was a strategic one. Hundreds of Catalans, Spaniards, and international tourists passed by on their way to La Rambla, the famous promenade that leads to the sea. Tourists were attracted by the ethnic music and delighted in the festive atmosphere: they filmed the spectacle, had their photos taken with musicians, and bought compact discs. Different groups rotated performance nights. I was told that they had an agreement with the police to begin after six and end at ten. The concerts included Ecuadorian favorites, in addition to folk music from Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, and Colombia. The musicians drew sizeable crowds, some of whom stayed the entire evening. The Latin Americans stood out because they lingered and danced. Among those were Ecuadorians, many of them Otavaleños. “This music is wild, it’s just like Ecuador, where we’re from,” the lead singer said to the audience in Spanish, as many danced. “Buy a tape or CD. We’re from South America, from Ecuador on the equator, high in the Andes.” The band managed to create a sense of belonging, even if momentarily. Sales were brisk among vacationing Europeans and North Americans, many of whom joined in the dancing and shared the sense of solidarity for a fleeting moment on that busy corner.

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Isabel later remarked that all she really liked in Barcelona was going to the Plaça Catalunya to listen to the music: “It makes me feel like I’m back home.” It was only on weekends, when she went to the Plaça to relax after a hard week at work, that she donned her traditional clothes. For Latin Americans like Isabel, this was a place where identities converged in a sea of changing contexts and where they were joined in their otherness, united by their origins in nations south of the Rio Grande and their status as economic refugees. This convergence concurs with Nestor García Canclini’s characterization of identity. He says, “Identity today, even among broad sectors of the popular classes, is polyglot, multiethnic, migrant, made from elements that cut across various cultures” (2001:91). As individuals from different cultures and nationalities came together as Latin Americans, they shared rhythms, tunes, and space with one another. However fleeting, their collective identity overcame class and cultural differences, and created an intercultural space that reaffirmed in new ways many of their contested histories and aesthetic preferences. On the corner of Carrer de Peloi and Carrer Ana, someone like Isabel could imagine her identity within a broader cultural landscape filled with possibilities and limitations. Global restructuring brought the polyglot crowd together at the east end of La Rambla, the avenue where past and avant-garde present come together at the edge of the Mediterranean. It included different frames of reference, both in terms of ideologies and place—in this case ranging from Barcelona, other European cities, the United States, and Peguche. For Isabel and others involved, this interaction cross-pollinated their understandings and created a hybrid space or a microcosm of the world in transformation. Indeed, those who met on this transnational stage embodied nested communities of various scopes, where local, regional, national, and international contexts overlapped.

New York, New York, 1997–1999: Ricardo, Juana, and Others The open-air market, reminiscent of so many in the developing world, seemed out of place in the shadow of the Chrysler building, an icon of midtown Manhattan. In the canyon formed by skyscrapers, the aromatic smells of foods from the far corners of the globe wafted from brightly colored kiosks, where the traditional was juxtaposed with the modern. I was a regular visitor to the New York City Street Fair from fall 1997 through summer 2000. The fair was located at different sites each weekend during

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the warm seasons, and attracted New Yorkers in addition to national and international tourists visiting the Big Apple. These ethnic street fairs closed central thoroughfares for ten blocks, rotating from Madison Avenue to Third Avenue, Washington Square to Broadway, and in other sectors of the city.21 The fair was a vibrant manifestation of New York’s hybridization, where village economics came together with a sophisticated urban and cosmopolitan landscape. It was also a place to get great bargains. New York is an obvious destination for enterprising Otavaleños who constantly are in search of new markets. The New York City Street Fairs showcased their handicrafts in competition with those of immigrant entrepreneurs from other parts of the world. Some of the same kinds of globalizing forces that reached villages in Northern Ecuador also reached communities in West Africa, South and East Asia, and the Middle East, who also had a presence at the fairs. These Otavalo vendors handily rode the early waves of transnational migration in part because of contacts made with tourists on the Plaza de Ponchos or because of pioneers in the family. The 1990s was a period of economic growth in the West.22 As thousands of First World tourists flocked to Otavalo each week, some sowed commercial and personal seeds that would later germinate in other parts of the world. For their part, Otavaleños reasserted their role as traveling merchants as they created new markets, extended those already in place, and capitalized on the indigenous renaissance that blossomed with the fifth centenary of Columbus’s arrival to the western hemisphere. The decision to migrate and the choice of destination were based on contacts and cultural factors. An Otavaleño gentleman I met in 1998 had a booth at Columbus Circle (before the construction of  Trump Tower) and a shop in the subway. He said that he decided to settle in New York after years of travel in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Brussels, “because here we feel comfortable in the company of Latinos and among so many people who speak Spanish.” In addition, a young man who sold at a fair close to Washington Square in the Village told me, “You know, in Ecuador many Hispanics are racist toward Indians, but here people from Quito, Cuenca, or Loja are delighted to see us as fellow Ecuadorians. Here we are not alone!” Indeed, as diverse groups of Ecuadorians created spaces for social interaction beyond local and national contexts, their estimations of one another sometimes changed. In some cases (as for Mamá Rosa a half-century before but now with expanded technology and information networks), these social

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interactions outside of Ecuador helped to create political openings back home. However, Ricardo was not inclined toward politics. He opted for migration as his route to social mobility. He was twenty years old when he arrived in New York for the first time, a month before I met him in 1998. His father and sister had been traveling to the city during the previous fifteen years. Ricardo was awestruck by life in the United States. At a booth he manned on Lexington Avenue selling hand-knit sweaters he said, “If you look around at the fair, you see that almost all the vendors are foreign-born. With a lot of hard work, anything is possible here! Why would I go back there [Ecuador] when people with professional degrees might earn less than a hundred dollars a month? Even with very bad days, I can bring in at least ten times that in the course of a month, and if sales are good, more than fifty times that amount,” he added. “Of course there are lots of expenses and we work very hard. My family in Ecuador manages production of sweaters and shirts and ships them to us. It’s not an easy life for our family to be spread out across the globe. However, those pioneers who first came and learned about how customs work at Kennedy and Newark Airports have paved the way for us all.” No one knows how many Otavaleños settle abroad or migrate temporarily, but according to the survey conducted in 1993 by

Otavalans offering Ecuadorian hand-knit sweaters for sale at street fair in New York, fall 1999.

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David Kyle, 24 percent of the families in Peguche already had at least one family member who had traveled abroad at least once. By the year 2000, with the deepening economic crisis, that percentage had no doubt increased considerably. In fact, it is now difficult to find a family not affected by emigration in some way.23 In late 1999 Juana talked to me about recent travels and her attempts to maintain relationships back home in spite of long periods of separation. Although she had been traveling to New York for nine years, the previous spring she had married in Ecuador. Juana lamented the fact that her husband was denied a visa, which kept them apart for nine months of the year. She lived with her younger brother in Queens, and they frequented craft fairs and flea markets within a four-hundred-mile radius of New York in her old van. On various occasions I visited her at the Wednesday flea market in rural Leesport, Pennsylvania. However, on Third Avenue in the East Village that spring morning she was distraught because she had learned from her mother that her husband in Otavalo was playing around. This news gnawed at her, an attitude uncharacteristic of this capable young woman who managed her transnational life quite well within the informal economies of the United States. She was a buyer and saleswoman, always on top of the latest styles and colors. But she had not counted on marital problems. She commented that she would not tolerate her husband’s apparent infidelities and added that one day she hoped to have a child. How did she imagine the life of that child? I asked. “I would like the child to be born here, so that he wouldn’t have problems with immigration. I think it would be best if he went to elementary school in Ecuador, to learn our values of hard work and family.” Juana went on to say that then she would have her child go to high school in the United States, “to learn English really well in order to get a good scholarship for college. I think the most important thing is to teach him how to work hard and to speak Kichwa, like my parents taught me. During high school I’d keep a close watch on him.” Then she added, “Our values of hard work, and connecting with both worlds, that’s what will preserve our identity as Otavaleños for future generations. It’s not an easy life, but we get to travel and meet all kinds of people, while we keep many people back home working.” Because it was cold, Juana wore sweat pants with an Otavalan sweater and her hair plaited with a hand-woven tie. On that occasion she excused her appearance, “I always wear my anacus except when it gets cold and when I have to move heavy

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things around.” She was anxious for the Christmas season to be over so she could go home. She looked forward to sleeping for a week and eating her mother’s cooking. She also needed to find out what was going on with her husband. In the early spring of 2001 at a street fair on Third Avenue in the East Village, I came upon Ricardo again, upbeat as ever, but frantic, too. “Do you know anyone who would marry me? I would ask you if you were younger, but maybe your daughter has some friends, or maybe one of your students.” He was interested in finding a spouse because a one-time limited amnesty law provided legal status to those who married a United States citizen prior to April 30. Ricardo was determined to make the American Dream come true, one of many in search of that goal.24 He had entered the country with a tourist visa, expired now, and was stuck in limbo until and unless he found a wife during this brief window that offered immunity to get his immigration situation in order. The alternative was to return to Ecuador with no hope of ever getting back to run the business he had developed over three years. I half-heartedly suggested that he put up a sign at his booth, but he nixed that idea: the immigration authorities might find out about his undocumented status, he said.

Granada, Spain, 2001: Lourdes, Luciana, Marta, and Pacarina Corpus Christi is a holiday in Granada, Spain. During June 2001 many businesses closed as Andalucian traditions were reenacted on the streets. There were religious parades, music, and dance. Granadan women and girls seemed to float by in brightly colored flamenco outfits. I asked Lourdes, a young Otavaleña, what she thought of all the pomp and ceremony as another sea of ruffles came along. “I love it, it’s as though this is when they get to be who they really are.” As an Otavaleña, she clearly recognized the link between dress and identity. I met Lourdes at one of the street fairs on a major boulevard in front of the Corte Inglés, the flagship Spanish department store. It was during the long summer evenings, a much-welcomed reprieve from the heat of midday, that people poured onto the streets, and vendors (even those without permits) worked the crowds. A festive air permeated the long avenue shaded by trees and lined with park benches, as tradition and community drew people out into the cool evening to relax and be seen. Granadans fanned out from the narrow one-way cross streets onto the

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grand esplanade where West and North Africans arranged sunglasses or belts or CDs with the care of museum curators putting precious items on display. The Chinese offered scarves, shawls, and toys. Roma sold clothing, jewelry, and offered to tell the future. And Otavaleños were there with items made in China, Ecuador, Peru, and Indonesia. Finally, at the far end by the baroque fountain, there was a ceramic festival underway, with gorgeous items from all over the region. Among the vendors, Spaniards and others strolled and shopped. The sidewalk merchants were part of an informal transnational network with membership from cultures across the globe. They made economic survival possible for themselves and their loved ones back home. Lourdes acknowledged this when she took them all in with a gesture and asserted, “The blacks and gypsies [Roma] are good people. We take turns watching each others’ merchandise.” Luciana had also made friends with Chinese restaurateurs who brought her tasty rice dishes. Prior to her European sojourn, Lourdes had sewn bags from dawn to dusk in the small Andean village of San Roque, earning a bit over two dollars a day. Then her sister, in Lucerne, Switzerland, with her family at the time, sent Lourdes a ticket. Once there, working with her sister no longer seemed like such a good idea. Lourdes said she felt exploited. It had taken her a year to pay off the fourteen hundred dollars the ticket cost.

Otavaleña selling sweaters and handicrafts in Leesport, Pennsylvania, November 1999.

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Then they all moved to Spain, where the police didn’t harass those selling without a permit as much as they did in Switzerland. Lourdes tried to send money on a regular basis to her three daughters who lived with her father and brother in Ecuador, but it was difficult. She depended on her sister and brother-in-law who ran a thriving business with several vans, a large inventory, and eight employees. Her sister mistreated her, she said, not only paying meager wages, but also threatening to abandon her on the highway without documents if she didn’t agree to her demands. Lourdes couldn’t accumulate the capital required to start her own operation. “But it could be worse,” she said, and went on to explain how some financially secure Otavalans return to Ecuador to recruit workers in remote and poor villages. “These rich people, they come in fancy cars and offer parents a couple hundred dollars per year for their child’s labor and pay all the expenses to get them to Spain. This is a lot of money for a poor family, an offer they can’t refuse. Then they bring the kids to Spain and confiscate their passports and papers. They work the teenagers from dawn to dusk and even later, and many times don’t pay them at all. If they complain, they threaten to turn them in to the authorities. It’s a new kind of slavery.” Marta and Pacarina, Otavalan sisters twenty and eighteen years of age, wore their traditional attire. They displayed an array of inexpensive beaded jewelry and hair clips attractively on a large orange cloth spread on the sidewalk. The sisters were friendly and talkative. They said they’d been in Granada for only six months, but had three brothers who had been there for eight years. They described how difficult the decision to come had been. Both had worked at an upscale hotel in Otavalo, one for eight years and the other for six, ever since graduating from primary school. They chose to work rather than continue their studies because their employers treated them well, even providing English and accounting classes. The economic downturn, political instability, and volcanic eruptions in 1999 and 2000 devastated the tourist industry, and business at the hotel plummeted. So when their brothers offered plane tickets, they accepted. The siblings and a sister-in-law with a new baby worked as an economic unit in Spain. They shared a fairly large apartment and had two vans for travel to craft and holiday fairs. In addition, they had good contacts in Madrid, where they bought all their merchandise, including “Indian” bows and arrows made in Indonesia and many additional items made in China. They told me that it was cheaper to purchase from a central distributor than to bring the items from Ecuador. However, in the winter they did sell a lot

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of Ecuadorian sweaters to skiers. But even with their relatively good living and working situation, they missed home and their father and little brother. “We work as much as we can so we don’t have time to think about home,” noted one of the sisters. They entrusted with me an envelope to give to their father in Ecuador later that summer. The young women teased and chatted with African and Chinese vendors on either side, except when a potential customer stooped to examine their merchandise. Marta said she also worked as a domestic for a woman who had agreed to sponsor her when she applied for residency. She was saving the money required for those fees. Her sister was also trying to save two hundred euros to get the resident visa. They both appreciated the importance of that particular document even more since the birth of their sister-in-law’s baby. She had gone into labor early, while her husband was in Ecuador, and because of her resident status and the health card that went with it, she easily checked into a hospital and received full medical care for the baby’s healthy delivery. Both sisters were excited about traveling through Spain. “Some Spaniards we meet tell us that we know their country better than they do,” they exclaimed, but their glee also had hints of sadness. They studied the listings of fairs and festivals, and crisscrossed the country in the vans filled with merchandize. It was not an easy life, but they always met up with other Otavaleños and were determined to make the most out of their situation. A mestizo vendor from Ecuador had been listening to our conversation. He teased Marta, saying that she would probably marry soon. She snapped back, “My father hasn’t given me permission to marry, and in our culture we take the advice of our parents seriously.” Evidently, identities that expand on global stages are quick to contract when it comes to certain basic values. Or at least she had good skill for setting boundaries. Marta summed up her situation this way: “I have my sister, my brothers, a decent place to live, good transportation, and I can call home often while I’m getting to know Spain. Sure, it’s hard sometimes, but so is life.” Another mestizo, a woman this time, complained, “This is a dog’s life.” She was in her mid-thirties and wore inexpensive polyester clothes. She missed her daughters in Ecuador, she said. “If only I were on the same continent, it wouldn’t be so bad. But we’re oceans apart. I’ve heard that in Chile there’s work picking grapes. There at least when the harvest is over, it’s not so far away and I could go home with a few cents in my pocket. But here it’s just work, work, work, every day the same, just to be able to send a

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few cents home from time to time so my children can eat. This is no life,” she lamented bitterly. .

Back to the Future: Living History in Reverse Through Song Tucked away off La Rambla, on one of the jagged medieval streets in Barcelona that leads to the cathedral, is a handicraft store owned by the Otavalan music group Charijayac. This new age Andean folk group first captured the public’s imagination when I lived in Otavalo in 1989. They were heralded as folk heroes, because they had “made it” in Spain as Otavaleños. Their homecoming tour that year was preceded by their hit song “Otavalo y Punto” (Otavalo, Period), which in many ways foreshadowed the next decade with regard to ethnic revitalization, indigenous reclamation of rights and political empowerment. The lyrics illuminate how popular culture can be spiced with biting social commentary and vivacity that incited historical memory. Otavalo y Punto Si Otavalo me dijera vuelve . . . Dime, dime la verdad De acuerdo siempre con la carne, Satisfecho de cantar La confianza de la tierra al hombre, El sueño de la paz a Amazonas Se convierte en salvación. El agua acariciando canta De mi pueblo de amanecer. La luna influyendo con gatos El sol—imaginación Construyendo el parque Rumiñahui. Mis amigos no me dicen nada El parque con nombre equivocado Rumiñahui me recuerda algo, Yo vagando la plaza del arte, Mis amigos no me dicen nada Otavalo cantaré He vuelto a mi trabajo ¡A Otavalo volveré!

Otavalo, Period. If Otavalo were to tell me to return . . . Tell me, tell me the truth [And] always faithful to the flesh Satisfied with singing [about] Earth’s trust and bond with man, The dream of peace to the Amazon Become my salvation. The water caresses, sings Of my people from the awakening valley. The moon’s effect on cats The sun’s imagination Building Rumiñahui Park. My friends can’t tell me a thing . . . About the misnamed park. Rumiñahui reminds me of something, I wander the plaza of arts, My friends can’t tell me a thing Otavalo, I will sing I’ve gone back to my work Otavalo, I will return!

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Members of the band wrote the song to celebrate their homecoming and residence in Barcelona, Spain. Although they were “deterritorialized” and lived abroad, the allure of Otavalo still shaped their art and identity and helped to create the burgeoning political movement. The song alerts the listener that the central park in Otavalo was misnamed, and pronounces its “real” name— Rumiñahui Park—a struggle I will elaborate on in the following pages. By reclaiming the political and spiritual center of Otavalo, the lyrics declare a reconquest of the heretofore white-mestizo ruled town. (Otavalans were already reshaping economic power at the other end of town on the Plaza de Ponchos.) The native musicians chose to write the song in Spanish rather than in Kichwa (and what would have been a more exclusively indigenous audience), and thereby overtly challenged the status quo and power structure. The colorful melody of the song, played over and over on the radio and tapes at the time, is seductive and the mood triumphant. Symbols of the sun and felines hark back to a cosmological time before the Spanish invasion and remind people of their resplendent roots. The musicians artistically stroke memories to illustrate a glorious past as a blueprint for the future on their own terms. Adding to the 500 Years of Resistance campaign to mark the 1992 quincentennial, the subtext of Charijayac’s song boldly declares the park and Otavalo to be theirs. It proclaims that they are in charge of their awakening valley on their own terms. “Otavalo y Punto” reveals how the reinterpretation of the past can revitalize the present and future: history is not a relic to be forgotten, but involves contested time and space. This is an example of how Otavaleños were poised to seize new technologies and media to make their voices heard as they reconceptualized their places in plural society. Specifically, their song awakens ethnic memories. The melody hails back to pre-Columbian heroes and events that occurred in 1533.25 In this case, Otavaleño identity is informed by a collective historical consciousness not only mirrored by topographical features—recall that Mamá Rosa’s historical narrative brought to the fore Atahualpa and Rumiñahui as indigenous heroes at the beginning of chapter four—but also by cultural forces, including music and poetic lyrics. Therefore, the arts served to circumscribe a resilient identity, while opening venues for political expression and economic empowerment. In 1998 Rumiñahui resurfaced to challenge the political structure in Otavalo, Ecuador. The story began in 1956 when non-indigenous civic leaders paid homage to the Ecuadorian military by placing a three-meter bust of Rumiñahui at the symbolic political and spiritual center of Otavalo’s

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municipal plaza (in front of the governmental palace and main Catholic church). By adopting Rumiñahui as the embodiment of valor and courage, they were (re)defining him as a true Ecuadorian. By exalting him as a national hero, they opened doors to promote national integration. Rumiñahui was offered as the model Indian on the path toward modern development. Statues, even very large ones, don’t talk back. In this case, however, after decades of his placement in the park, he became relevant as a cultural symbol of resistance. First, Charijayac added to Rumiñahui’s cultural cachet by reminding listeners of a pre-Columbian glory and a resistance to European hegemony, which no doubt added to the indigenous renaissance that came to flourish in the 1990s. Thus, in 1998 a different kind of stage was set when the giant bust became the center of a civic conflict. According to an article that appeared on September 1, 1998, in Hoy, a Quito daily, the blanco-mestizo mayor of Otavalo, Fabián Villarreal, intended to replace the bust with a statue of Simón Bolívar. Bolívar was a Venezuelan of Spanish ancestry who spearheaded the nineteenth century

Statue of Rumiñahui in the center of Parque Bolívar, Otavalo.

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independence struggles in the northern regions of South America and called for a united Andean state. Otavalo’s central park is officially named for him. The subsequent confrontation between native and nonnative residents of the town and surrounding communities brought to fore tensions that had been simmering below the surface for decades, if not centuries. Still fresh in the indigenous collective memory was the humiliating fact that up until the 1960s indigenous people were not permitted in the park except on Sundays. In recent decades, however, many indigenous Otavaleños amassed unprecedented wealth, became professionals, and gained political power in what many see as a metaphorical and real cultural and economic reconquest of the region. The struggle to replace Rumiñahui with Bolívar was unsuccessful and the bust of the indigenous hero remains at the heart of the central park. It marks the symbolic and political reoccupation of Otavalan ground on their terms. By revisioning the historical frame, including Spanish conquest, colonialism, and modernization, Otavaleño discourse offers a competing vision for political legitimacy and citizenry in contemporary civil society. “Otavalo y Punto” underscores collective values and activates a shared historical consciousness that helped to circumscribe shared cultural identity within the cultural renaissance of the 1990s. It is somewhat ironic that, with a twist of fate after nearly five hundred years, this vibrant cultural renaissance was partially fueled by economic power gained from the same political centers that had subjugated them. The renaissance was partially sparked by Charijayac and other Otavalans, who brought new perspectives back to Otavalo after their sojourns abroad. These perspectives were infused with confidence, skills, and knowledge, and were not unlike Mamá Rosa’s pioneering trip half a century earlier, all of which contributed to a major cultural-economic shift in northern Ecuador.

Gendered Ethnicity Across Time and Continents I have made our province [Imbabura] worth something . . . I wove double-faced ponchos . . . and I knew how to do it all. (Rosa Lema, April 1993) King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel sponsored Columbus’s voyages to America from Granada in 1492. Their tombs are in the cathedral of this multicultural city that was renowned prior to the reconquest in 1492 for convivencia. This is when the Umayyad caliphate from Syria created

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an intellectual climate that promoted interreligious interactions. This opened political space that went oftentimes beyond tolerance and valued Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish perspectives. Beginning in 783, when Abd alRanhman founded al-Andalus, contradictory belief systems coexisted and sometimes flourished side by side, as did what Menocal and other scholars consider a flowering of human expression that preceded the Renaissance in the West (Menocal 2002). Indigenous groups in the Americas created their own Renaissance in the 1990s when music, arts, business, and political thought flourished in new ways by selectively valuing and appropriating from diverse knowledge sets, in a convivencia somewhat reminiscent of medieval Andalusian Spain.26 Paradoxically, the consequences of neoliberal economic policies in places around the globe have washed up on Spanish, U.S., and other First World shores in the form of a wave of economic refugees. They create polyglot and transnational worlds. Market activities bookend this chapter and make visible a wide range of possibilities that Otavaleños developed that created intracultural and intercultural relations and transactions. Many traveled back and forth across continents, gaining new kinds of knowledge and technologies, while living complex lives with multiple realities and varying success. This kaleidescope of experiences relates to a whole range of ongoing social processes that were in part pre-figured by the intercultural connections of Rosa Lema and Elsie Clews Parsons in Peguche. Interestingly, these innovative methodologies in the 1940s began a shift in the social sciences, where in the final decade of the century women’s and indigenous voices contributed to an alternative and more equitable discourse, embodied in feminism and the indigenous ideology of interculturalism, not unlike a modern convivencia. The vignettes in this chapter illustrate Otavaleños working in local and global venues as they (re)created the cadences of their lives from the inside-out in the cases of Marta and Ana, from the outside-in for Isabel and Juana, and back and forth and back again for Charijayac and others. I described endeavors of individuals based on artistic and commercial strategies that connect local markets and identity to global events: through their actions they make change and change some of the parameters of what it means to participate in Otavalo society. Within the first two instances, Marta and Ana step into new roles of their own creation to make financial ends meet. By reworking traditional resources in innovative ways, they shape their economic independence

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and status within their families and village life. At the same time that their entrepreneurial activities are rooted in Peguche, their products are linked to transnational audiences and markets in quirky ways through tourist restaurants and Otavalans abroad. Their cultural ingenuity seamlessly reinvents ways to be engaged in local economies, while being at ease with their own identities. On the local level we see Marta breaking into new markets for her flowers, while she still prioritizes the crafting of funeral wreathes, cultural symbols that announce and aid the departed. Ana worked within some of the prescribed aesthetic boundaries of what it means to be an Otavalan woman by embroidering gorgeous blouses. As she crafted ethnic dress, she produced overt cultural symbols of solidarity and difference. At the same time she accumulated capital, created employment for other women, and offered coveted blouses to Otavalans in villages and in niche markets abroad. Both instances show how Marta and Ana shaped identity practices and life choices in specific ways, as they were shaped by the cultural mileau of the 1990s in Peguche. The cases in Spain and the United States offer a picture of somewhat harsher realities as Otavalans live transnationally and contend with all the contingencies of making places for themselves on foreign shores. Isabel and the other Otavalan emigrants in Spain and the United States responded directly to macroeconomic forces seemingly outside of their control. Their odysseys represent dreams, expectations, and courageous spirits that coincidently bring aspects of Otavalo culture into the global economy. We see them at fairs, street corners, and other labor markets of the global north after sometimes cashing in on relationships developed on the Plaza de Ponchos. The individuals I describe have various talents, ages, and education levels, but all display ways that culture matters in how they get things done and interpret the world. In some circumstances they selfconsciously recognize outsiders’ fetishization of their indigenousness and use it as a value added to their wares and unapologetically commodify it for outside consumption. For example, in manipulating the dialectic of desire on the Plaza de Ponchos in Otavalo or at street fairs in the United States and Spain, we witness ways that culture is an integral piece in commercial interaction as Otavalans sometimes unabashedly flaunt their ethnicity to their advantage. In addition, Andean folk music was very popular on United States and European stages during the 1990s and helped fuel the cultural, economic, and political renaissance back home. What’s evident in these instances is that Otavalans, to some extent, determined when and

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how to offer their identity as they astutely assuaged some of the alienation that comes with living in postindustrial societies. However, as economic times became more difficult, the rise of haves and have nots within Otavaleño society have become more pronounced and the exploitation of workers is cause for concern. We see some of the consequences of globalization as it seduces women and men out of their village to live sometimes even more precariously in cities far from home. They emigrate in an attempt to live their dreams in new lands and may meet fleeting emotional triumphs, but many stumble as they confront some of the dark undersides of globalization. An important question for further research has to do with what temporary and permanent migration means for those left behind (especially children and the elderly) and for those who remain settled far from the northern Andes. So far, rather than witnessing cultural homogenization, these scenes offer intercultural trends that built upon the precedent Mamá Rosa forged with Parsons and others in the 1940s and were compounded through deliberate policies of economic integration, first supported by Galo Plaza’s government in 1949. Otavaleños turned Plaza’s rhetoric of modernization and democracy to their advantage through intercultural and commercial savvy, which slowly opened political spaces. Thus, these vignettes correspond to alternatives for Otavaleños and are modeled after the hard and imaginative work of Rosa Lema and so many other Otavalans. Whether keeping things together on the home front in communities like Peguche, or making new domiciles across the globe, Otavaleños are intrepid as they respond to and affect globalization forces. Their actions resonate with some of the same agile cultural features that have allowed Otavalans to persevere, cross-pollinate, and thrive in contact zones over the centuries. As when Elsie Clews Parsons wrote in her field notes October 3, 1940, “I went to Peguchi several times last week, Rosita and her husband are making samples of woolen mufflers for a possible export business” (APS), Otavalans are now more integrated than ever before in the global economy. That the points of contact are now in Spain, the United States, and other countries, rather than solely in the periphery, or villages like Peguche, is the result of Otavaleños imaginative quest for cultural and economic survival.

(above) Hand-beaded jewelry made by Saraguro Kichwas and displayed on Plaza de Ponchos, April 2010. courtesy of author. (following two pages) Otavalo Valley. drawn by peonia vázquez-d’amico.

mt. c

lak

otac achi

e cu i co c h a

otava l o

m l a k e o ja n d a

i lu m á n

h quinc uquí

p eg u c h e

lak

e sa n pa b l o

. imbabur a mt

(above) Ikat shawl from Gualaceo, Azuay. Sold on Plaza de Ponchos, December 1989. courtesy of author. (below) Kiosk of assorted textiles, Plaza de Ponchos, March 2011. courtesy of author.

Epilogue August 12, 2002

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\ it’s apt th at i end this book with my last encounter with Mamá Rosa. As is the case in most Augusts, Peguche in 2002 was dry and dusty as the chilly winds from Patagonia swept across the landscape. The cobblestone road leading up to the main plaza was yet again dug up. This time the telephone company was installing high-speed underground lines. As I walked up that main road, I dodged a miniature twister of dust. I felt exhilarated to be surrounded by familiar mountains and in anticipation of seeing close friends. Peas and fava beans colored the otherwise parched swatches of agriculture that had further been encroached upon by several new homes. I picked up my speed as I turned at the railroad tracks and neared Mamá Rosa’s house. Up to that point the street was empty. As I turned onto Mamá Rosa’s land, I received the standard greeting from her scruffy dog. An old woman came out of the dark, windowless kitchen to inform me, as she dried her hands on her apron that Mamá Rosa was with the crowd on the corner. I thanked her and crossed the field, past the pigpen, the scurrying chicks, and the now-dozing canine,

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and went out the gate at the railroad tracks, which had stopped carrying trains between Ibarra and Quito decades earlier. What was out of the ordinary that day was the fact that a large crowd, mostly indigenous people, had congregated farther down the railroad tracks. They evidently had just stepped out of their homes and workshops, because most wore their work-a-day attire. A crowd of young and old gathered in front of the magistrate’s office. The strong wind blew from the south, further chilling the air as it picked up dirt and debris. I neared the magistrate’s office and saw people from all socioeconomic groups, their status apparent in the quality of their dress and accessories. The crowd grew as more people approached to see what the commotion was about. I bumped into one of my daughter’s former classmates. She was with her aunt. After exchanging pleasantries, she told me that she now travels on a regular basis to Chile on business and that she was planning to marry in the fall. We were cut short when Adela ran up and hugged me. She was a fifteen-year-old who I had watched grow up in Mamá Rosa’s household. “Come, come,” she shouted with glee. “Mamita is over there!” It was an emotional reunion. Mamá Rosa, ninety-five, recognized me immediately as we both shed a few tears of joy. “Lindita, are you done with the book?” she asked. “Soon, soon,” I promised. Her wrinkles were deeper and her frame a bit more bent, but she was still solid and commanded respect. As always, she was in the thick of things, with her circle of attendants, moving through the crowd. A police car with its lights flashing arrived from Otavalo. A pair of uniformed officers went into the magistrate’s office. Mamá Rosa explained what was going on. Three thieves had been arrested in Otavalo as they tried to sell stereos and TVs stolen from homes in Peguche. The suspects were two mestizos who had paid an indigenous man to stake out likely houses. In Peguche, village justice complemented that provided, or not, by the state. The handcuffed thieves were escorted to the police car and the crowd followed some distance behind as the vehicle made its way to the soccer field adjacent to the elementary school. There, residents gathered around an open stage where the indigenous magistrate addressed the first thief in Spanish, publicly reprimanding him for his criminal behavior. When the speech was over, a policeman helped him out of his shirt. An older mestizo, the thief’s father, picked up a bunch of stinging nettles and began beating him. The guilty party didn’t flinch. This angered his father,

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Mamá Rosa.

who then picked up what looked like an electric cord and beat him some more. The crowd scrutinized the culprit’s face, looking for signs of contrition. Finally, he was taken to the police car, his head bent. The second thief entered the arena and received similar treatment. But it was the third thief who aroused the most attention. Here was an indigenous youth, a member of the community, who had engaged in a reprehensible act that reflected badly on the entire community. The magistrate chastised him in Kichwa, as his young wife stood to the side crying and his sister screamed abuse at him—his entire family suffering his shame. Then his father removed the young man’s shirt and beat him repeatedly with the stinging nettles. At several points the young man seemed to be laughing. Was this an embarrassed reaction to public humiliation? Young and old alike studied the man, looking for signs that he understood the message clear to all: Ama llulla, Ama shua, Ama quilla (Do not lie, Do not steal, Do not be lazy). During the unfolding village drama I stood with Mamá Rosa. We were interrupted several times by villagers who paused to address her. She too paused to speak with them about what was going on and how shameful

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it was that an indígena from Peguche was involved. Everyone seemed to agree that it was totally unacceptable that an indigenous man would betray his own people. With this, I end this ethnography for two reasons. First, because this incident describes as well as any might how in this age of globalization and transnational identities, communities united by a cultural ethos continue to survive. Here was a case of indigenous justice overlapping and coexisting with the state system, an example of how interculturalism works within plural legal structures.1 Second, because this is how I like to remember Mamá Rosa, in the thick of it all, even at age ninety-five.

Postscript, March 2010

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\ elsie clews parsons would barely recognize Peguche and Otavalo today. Mario Conejo, the municipal mayor of Otavalo was reelected for the third time in 2009 and resides in his family home in Peguche.1 Every month, traditional adobe buildings are replaced with cement block buildings. There are so many private vehicles in Otavalo and Peguche that traffic jams are not uncommon. Since 2000, in Otavalo many more banks, exchange houses to receive remittances from abroad, and cooperative credit unions have sprung up.2 The Plaza de Ponchos continues to showcase new textile designs and products. Peguche has a new church, the plaza is tiled, and handicraft shops proliferate. Running water, telephone, and Internet services are relatively constant. Trade diasporas continue to be important strategies for community and family survival: relatives create commercial and employment options across the globe, and the flow of human and financial resources is vital for the local and regional economies. This book was skewed with views that focused on my interests, needs, and circumstances. Gender was central as I drew pictures of strong women as idiosyncratic agents who made intercultural connections with outsiders 183

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and Pachamama. This ethnographic record centered on ways Otavaleñas curried and offered favors through ritual and everyday opportunities, incorporating tradition and innovations at the same time. Fortuitously, these strategies enhanced possibilities for expressive culture to flourish, which in turn propagated an unlikely outcome of globalization where gender and indigenousness were at the heart of a new narrative. Indeed, I have argued that as a result of the 1940 meeting of two women ahead of their time, to some extent, this story remains open-ended, where the idioms of ethnic and gender rights are no longer uncommon. Intercultural transmissions currently extend well beyond Peguche and Otavalo and are part of a pan-indigenist movement that triumphed with passage of the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples on September 13, 2007, which put indigenous issues front and center on the global stage. The Declaration, approved by Ecuador and another 142 member states,3 is the outcome of more than two decades of debate and outlines the rights of the world’s estimated 370 million indigenous people. In Ecuador, since 1992, as a foundation of this movement, the Department of Bilingual and Intercultural Education not only trains and employs a cadre of intellectuals and professionals, it disseminates the doctrine of interculturalism to students, parents, and the public at large. Bilingual-intercultural education 4 continues to be central to the political agenda because language inherently communicates spiritual and everyday values and is crucial for productive cultural exchanges. In 2010 the discourse of interculturalism was incorporated in public service announcements, which openly discussed ways to tackle social discrimination. After convening a national assembly to rewrite the constitution in Monticristi, Manabi, President Rafael Correa incorporated intercultural strategies, using his rhetorical gift to rally the electorate for his landslide victory in a populist campaign.5 During the period of this ethnography, indigenous leaders and their collaborators built a collective interculturalism, or what might be construed as the dawning of a new awakening valley or convivencia, a model that goes beyond tolerance and actually encourages participation of indigenous and women’s groups. This has opened many political, cultural, and economic spaces. That’s not to say that individual interests have not been sometimes at odds, or that the quincentennary benefited some more than others. In general, the Indigenous Renaissance, rooted in part by Otavalo leaders, did create a cultural political economy with broader spaces for civic

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engagement. Rosa Lema was at the forefront of this undertaking alongside many others who through individual gestures produced collective change. The florescence of new ideas helped create utopian aspirations. In retrospect, the Indigenous Renaissance of the 1990s proved to be prescient with regard to the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution of Monticristi, internationally hailed for including the Right to Sumak Kawsay (Buen Vivir, Well-Being). Sumak Kawsay is a Kichwa philosophy or vision of the cosmos within which human populations are mere parts of Pachamama: realms of social life are not separate from natural and spiritual worlds. Food and water security and effective communication are identified among the imperatives of Sumak Kawsay as a judicial-ecological prerogative to protect nature as well as people. The rights of Pachamama, Nature, are equal to the rights of humans. In this era of climate change and other crises, Samak Kawsay is a vision based on traditional values that goes back to the future.

Final Postscript, December 2010 During my most recent trip to Ecuador, I realized that you can go home again. At the beginning of December 2010, I stayed in Otavalo on my way into and out of the Intag cloud forests, where I spent my sabbatical and have been visiting for more than twenty years. The market and shops are as vibrant as ever, brimming with new designs and colors. As I walked across the Plaza de Ponchos, I ran into some neighbors from Peguche who have a kiosk. Juana is now in her thirties and runs the business with her father. Her brother, my son’s age, is settled for the time being in Spain, where they send him merchandise on a regular basis. I also bumped into my goddaughter on the sidewalk by my favorite sandwich shop and agreed to meet her in her office. She’s working in the municipal government, coordinating artisan input in community tourism and county development plans. Later, I climbed aboard an Otavalo bus headed toward Ibarra and got off at the side of the Pan American Highway in Peguche. Like old times, I carried a cake in a big box as I retraced my footsteps up the main street past where I used to live. As I approached the plaza, I recognized the walk of my comadre, as she returned home. She was a bit startled when I called out her name, but immediately turned around and laughed and gave me a hug as we entered her house. We had lots of catching up to do. She told

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me that she jogs most mornings to keep her cholesterol down and have more energy. Later, her husband and daughters joined us in the kitchen for herbal tea and cake, until they were called away by their sibling and his one-year-old daughter in the United States. Skype makes living transnationally a lot easier. Ethnographies are a way of sharing the diversity of the world and its history. Stories illuminate cultural nutrients that help people live their lives. I recorded pathways for navigating the world, across and within cultures in the 1990s. After finishing this book and returning to Ecuador, I find that the process of highlighting gendered ethnicity continues to transform me, as I live in multiple locations within a rich network of friends and relations. I look forward to continuing my work and lifelong learning while hearing and collecting more stories.

Notes (((

Introduction 1. My study is based on more than eight years of residence with my daughter and son in Ecuador, including one year in Otavalo and over seven in the village of Peguche, Otavalo (1989–1997), plus summer visits to Ecuador (1988, 1998–2009), in addition to extended visits to field sites in New York City, rural Pennsylvania (1997–2000), and summer visits to Barcelona and Granada, Spain (2001, 2002).

Chapter One 1. Gringo (gringa) is a word used specifically for U.S. Americans and sometimes for all Westerners. 2. This brings to mind Parsons’s description of Otavalan dress from a paper read at the 1940 American Anthropological Association meetings, “These Indians, like most Andean Indians, speak Quechua. Women wear the wrapped and belted skirt; men wear a poncho and a cotton shirt belted over pants reaching a little below the calf. Men wear their hair long, in a complicated set

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of five braids; women have three braids clubbing the hair back” (APS, ECP archives). 3. Over the years, Mamá Rosa repeatedly told me of her visit to the Truman White House; however, I could find no record of her visit at the Library of Congress, or at the Truman Library. I did find various reports of her visit to the United Nations, City Hall, and other places in New York City, in The New York Times and other newspapers. 4. Matilde, the baby born several days after Parsons began her fieldwork in 1940, is a successful businesswoman who in the 1990s lived in a luxurious residence in Quito one block from the United Nations building and the Catholic University. She designed embroidered cotton clothing and her workshop produced for national and international markets. One of her daughters married an Ecuadorian-Canadian and resides in Vancouver, Canada, where the family has a thriving handicraft business. 5. I refer to indigenous Kichwas (also known as Quichuas prior to linguistic unification in the late 1990s) from the Otavalo region interchangeably as Otavalans, Otavaleño/as (Otavaleño is masculine, Otavaleña is feminine, and the s indicates plural), or Otavalos, as cited in various texts. Meisch (2002) and Kyle (1999) estimate the population of Otavaleños in and out of Ecuador at seventy thousand. 6. Political-geographical units in Ecuador are organized within provinces, municipalities that include cantones or counties, which are divided into parishes or townships. For example, Otavalo is the name of the county, municipality, and the county seat. It is also the largest town in the county. Likewise, Cotacachi is the name of the adjacent municipality/county and county seat directly northwest of Otavalo. 7. Interculturalidad is a long-standing political demand by indigenous peoples for the government to recognize Ecuador as a pluriethnic nation. The political struggle has meant reversing homogenizing policies that presupposed hegemonic ways to think and get things done. In practical terms, it meant remaking basic institutions. This led to deliberate plans for cultural revitalization, enshrined in the Ecuadorian Constitution, Article 69, which outlines, “The state shall guarantee the system of bilingual and intercultural education through which the principle language of the respective culture will be utilized with Spanish as the language for intercultural relations.” Those plans were codified with the establishment of the Department of Bilingual and Intercultural Education as a separate Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture in 1992. This official recognition by the Ecuadorian state of the distinct native nationalities is significant in a country where the

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ruling class had spent five hundred years attempting to extirpate indigenous ideologies and cultures. 8. The Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path movement in Peru during the 1980s and the military response caused great civil turmoil and over seventy thousand deaths. See Stern 1995 for more. According to Wibbelsman, “since 1985 Colombia’s armed conflict has displaced more than 2 million people, many of whom have crossed the border into Ecuador in search of safety” (2003:386). Recently, March 1, 2008, the government of Colombia bombed a FARC camp in northern Ecuador, precipitating an international crisis resolved after much negotiation by the OAS. 9. The topography ranges from the naturally dry but intensely cultivated and irrigated coast, which includes flatlands and the foothills of the Andes. The inter-Andean valleys are outlined by an avenue of snow-capped volcanoes that stretch down the backbone of Ecuador from north to south. These peaks are located between the Oriente, or the tropical forests of the upper Amazon basin to the east, and the cloud forests to the west, where more endemic species than perhaps any place on earth are found (Wilson 1981). 10. The November 2001 census conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) asked for the first time how Ecuadorian citizens selfidentified with regard to their ethnic identity. Results indicate 6.85 percent Indian; 2.23 percent black; 77.42 percent mestizo; 2.74 percent mulatto; 10.46 percent white; and 0.32 percent other (Vázquez and Saltos 2007:185). These outcomes indicate that being Indian in Ecuador is still considered by many citizens problematic within the context of the official census. These data call for further research as to why the indigenous population self-reports as so low; however, these figures suggest the malleability of indigenousness and the general lack of status associated with it in “official” milieus. 11. The nationalities in the Amazon region also include Shuar, Achuar, Secoya, Siona, Huaorani, and Cofán. Indigenous communities on the coast include the Tsachila, Chachi, Épera, and Awá (CONAIE 1989:283). In addition, AfroEcuadorians contribute to the rich social and cultural diversity in Ecuador. They live primarily in the northern Andean province of Imbabura and in the coastal provinces of Guayas and Esmeraldas. Vázquez and Saltos also include Manta-Wancavilva-Puná on the coast, Zápara and Shuar-Achuar (rather than Achuar), and Siwiar (rather than Shuar) and Andoas in the Amazonia (2007). 12. This was in sharp contrast to the perspective of many colleagues, friends, and family members who thought taking my two children to South America was ill-conceived and crazy.

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13. See Stoller 1989, pp. 84–98, for his analysis of what it meant for the Songhay to call him the “son” of French ethnographer Jean Rouch; there is an inherent irony in how the “other” classifies “us.” 14. In June 1989 I moved to Otavalo, and after a year moved again, this time to Peguche, where I lived from 1990 to 1997, completing my dissertation (1993) and then working for various international agencies and local NGOs. I also carried out fieldwork in the summers of 1998–2009 and for sabbatical 2009–2010, when most of my research took place in Intag. Rosa Lema died in February 2003 at the age of ninety-five. 15. I build upon W. E. B. Dubois’s notion of double consciousness much in the same way as anthropologist Joanne Rappaport discusses with regard to native Colombian intellectuals (2005). She substantiates their use of insider-outsider perspectives as strategies for negotiation in indigenous and national contexts and in all the grey areas in between. In my case, it seems at times I juggled triple consciousness—not only did I consider my own cultural perspective as a first generation United States citizen, who lived nearly a decade in Mexico, but those from across different class, ethnic, and gender orientations. 16. I am grateful for Kathleen Fine’s comment. 17. This is when my daughter entered college at The Cooper Union in the East Village in Manhattan. Acquaintances constantly marveled that she was able to go from an indigenous village in Northern Andean Ecuador to New York City, where she lives to this day. However, she was very grateful that she was transplanted into cosmopolitan New York, where she was surrounded by so many different kinds of people. My son attended West Chester East High School and was recruited his senior year to attend Interlochen Arts Academy because of the musical foundations and interests laid in Ecuador. He later graduated from Yale College.

Chapter Two 1. All translations of Spanish/Kichwa texts are my own unless otherwise noted. 2. This suggests that her father’s social network was more extensive than earlier suggested. 3. Dolores Cacuango from Cayambe is a notable exception and was, according to Marc Becker, “one of the primary symbols of Indigenous resistance in Ecuador” from 1931 until her death in 2009 (1999:550). Also see Martha Bulnes’s testimonials of Dolores and other indigenous women (1990).

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4. Most Latin American women struggle for equitable participation in society through everyday experiences. In general, their efforts are mired in myriad practices for survival and all the diverse and creative approaches therein. Their modus operandi originates in praxis and is in contrast to theory-based approaches in academia that generally define feminism in the North. 5. I have adopted pseudonyms for all my collaborators, with the exception of Rosa Lema and members of her immediate family. 6. Parsons observed with regard to Juanti and Andrea: For four years Rosita and José have kept two servants, a married couple who came “from a distance,” says Rosita, gente de cerro, “people of the mountain.” They receive no wages, only their clothes and food. Juanti’s working pants, shirt, and poncho are dilapidated, but he has a good festive poncho; Andrea’s clothes are in good condition; she is short merely on jewelry. Rosita directs their work, and they sleep in the kitchen apart from the family, but they share in the family meals, and from our point of view they are treated more like “poor relations” than as servants. Rosita addresses them as compadre and comadre—Cumpa Junití and Cuma Andrea. She in turn is addressed as cumare, also by Andrea as madám. Madám Rosita will delouse, cut, and dress Andrea’s hair. (162–63) 7. See Parsons’s letters and papers at the American Philosophical Society (APS). 8. Parsons funded Steward’s 1928 Hopi fieldwork (Deacon 1998:372). 9. Throughout the ethnography she compares Peguche to some of her earlier studies in Mexico and the Southwest. She also puts data side by side, including historical sources for the Inca in Peru (Garcilaso), the Maya in the Yucatán (Landa), and the Cuna in Panama (Stout), alongside Karsten’s work with the Shuar in the Oriente. In addition, she uses data compiled by Gorrel in Cayambe for comparison. 10. As Regna Darnell points out, “Both Parsons and Rosa Lema are subaltern in some interesting senses. Maybe this is why so many women have done well in anthropology. They may still be marginalized, but there is a role on the edge that this gives them” (personal communication 2001). 11. Parsons 1945:1. This comment is also central to my argument, and is why I repeat it from page 33. 12. Greenwich Settlement House, on the Lower East Side of New York City, was a socially progressive refuge to assist struggling (poor) immigrants. It opened to improve living in the most congested part of New York City, Greenwich

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Village, and to assist newcomers in adjusting to the United States and to improve their quality of life. 13. Katharine Dexter McCormick was a close friend from Elsie’s childhood. Her brother Sam Dexter, who Elsie had been extremely fond of, had died suddenly soon after college. Katharine went on to study biology at MIT and devoted much of her professional energies and wealth into support for research into the oral contraceptive pill for women finally developed in 1960. She was also involved in the women’s suffrage movement (Deacon 1997). 14. After her father’s death in 1923, Parsons received an inheritance, which made her financially independent (Deacon 1997:281). 15. Regna Darnell points out that much of Parsons’s work foreshadows Margaret Mead, though Parsons rarely gets credit (personal communication 2006). 16. The Pan American Highway was paved in the mid-1970s with monies from the petroleum boom and redirected to the east side of Peguche. 17. In a footnote she refers to page 25, where in another footnote she explains that the son-in-law of Hacienda Cusin owner, F. A. Uribe, received a beautifully woven poncho when he married in 1917. The poncho, woven by José Cajas, inspired Uribe to supply him with a Spanish loom, samples of casimir/tweed, and a market in Quito, which made replicating tweed worthwhile. 18. Minga is the Kichwa term for a cooperative work party. Mingas support public and private projects in the community, such as assistance in public irrigation or water works, and family agricultural or roof-raising tasks. Mingas symbolize and operationalize the Andean value of mutual assistance, cooperation, and reciprocity. 19. See pages 80–81 in this volume for Parsons’s description.

Chapter Three 1. He was the first president in twenty-eight years to complete his four-year term in 1952. 2. In neighboring Peru, the mid-1800s represented the “Guano Era,” which brought global economic integration through the export of tons of the fertilizer collected from bird droppings. This boom “harvest” was shipped to cotton plantations in the U.S. South to boost production on depleted plantation soils. With regard to Ecuador, an article from the October 22, 1855, New York Times outlines the “speculating mania” of U.S. investors “that on the faith of representations made by on DeBrissot, of New Orleans to the effect that these islands contained large quantities of valuable guano

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deposits, Mr. Benjamin and Philo White, our Minister at Quito, negotiatied a treaty for some sort of Protectorate of the Gallapagos [sic] and the interests (of course,) of the Americans who proposed to work this supposed mine of wealth.” They were disappointed “that the guano stories were unfounded.” A U.S. general spent four months examining Gallapogos [sic] and some fifty other rock islands and didn’t find enough guano “to fill a cart” (Genovese 1967). However, these actions demonstrate the flurry toward integrated global markets in the mid-nineteenth century and the exploitation of primary resources from the periphery to benefit particularly elites in the core. 3. The “Liberal Revolution,” 1895–1912, was ushered in by Eloy Alfaro. Principle accomplishments included changes in customs laws, the secularization of the state, the construction of a railroad to integrate the highlands with the coast, and the building of roads, telegraphs, and public education (Ayala Mora 1983:121–66). 4. The U.S. World’s Fairs—Chicago in 1893 and St. Louis in 1904—followed the same kind of voyeuristic exoticism. For details, see Bolotin et al. 2002; Mattie 1998; Rydell 1987. 5. Numerous times during my nearly nine-year residence, taxi drivers in Quito asked me where I lived and what I was doing in Ecuador. Generally, they were surprised that I lived in the indigenous village of Peguche, but their expressed disdain as to why a white woman would lower herself was usually softened by comments such as “at least Otavalans are clean Indians.” 6. I put “modern” and “underdevelopment” within quotation marks to call attention to the relativity of those value-laden terms, which connote the power of those doing the naming or proscribing of a homogeneous (and positivist model) that coincidentally keeps the social hierarchy in place. 7. Parsons identifies the first tweed producers as Otavalans from Quinchuquí. 8. See Ecuadorian novelist Jorge Icaza’s novel Huasipungo, a work published in 1937 that depicts the brutality of hacienda life in the Ecuadorian highlands during the first decades of the twentieth century. Or Michael Taussig’s Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man (1987) for an ethnography that very cogently narrates some of these complexities in a Colombian context. 9. On the coast, banana plantations replaced cacao after the blight and near eradication of (monoculture species) Gros Michel production in Central America. In Ecuador, “yellow gold” Cavendish were the next boom and currently coastal plantations produce 25 percent of the world’s bananas (Vázquez and Saltos 2008). 10. Mercedes Prieto points out that with the rise of the Soviet Union, Roosevelt developed the “Good Neighbor” policy in Latin America and was intent upon

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integrating Indians into the state. In Pátzcuaro, Roosevelt sent representatives who called for the participation of Indians to counter European facism. Social scientist Moises Sáenz warned that if Indians were forgotten by their governments, they could easily be transformed into pawns by totalitarian leaders (Prieto 2008:161). 11. For a detailed discussion of Collier’s impact see Vine Deloria Jr.’s overview in The Nations Within (1984). According to Deloria, Collier advocated radical revision of Indian affairs in the United States. “Compared with any other legislation that the Indian committees in Congress had ever considered, the Collier proposal was overwhelming . . . the bill was divided into four titles, dealing with self-government, special education for Indians, Indian lands and a Court of Indian Affairs” (66). 12. The indigenous or pan-Indian movement at the end of the twentieth century demanded self-determination as an individual human and collective right and was based on grassroots and community organizing and coalition-building across the globe. These are two very different examples of globalizing forces and how they work: the first, official indigenismo “from above” and the second at the base “from below.” See D. Barndt (2002) for her discussion of the globalization of the tomato to grasp resistance to corporate trends in food production. 13. “Huasipungueros” is the Kichwa term for those who had their huasi, or house, on a point of the hacienda owner’s land in semi-feudal conditions through debt servitude as they generally worked his land without pay and with maltreatment. 14. Quite possibly he was the compadre of Rosa Lema (see Parsons 1945:163 or p. 45 in this text). 15. This period until the 1960s was a time of relative political stability, particularly on the coast where bananas became the nation’s primary export crop. During the 1948–1962 era of the banana boom, government policies provided subsidies for modernization in agriculture and constructed infrastructure to facilitate exports, such as roads and ports. These interventions continued to promote the economic interests of the politically powerful. At the same time, demographic pressure forced many highlanders who lacked land to the coast to work on banana plantations (Weaver 2000). 16. The 1964 Agrarian Reform Law required landowners to cultivate at least 80 percent of their farmland or face expropriation. However, given the power of landowners, it was difficult to enforce. Even when land was redistributed, the spirit of the reforms was rarely adhered to, and most haciendas only sold the steep slopes surrounding the rich valley bottomlands. The Agrarian

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Reforms were a response to geopolitics in the context of the Cold War and the Cuban Revolution. 17. The UN Statistical Abstract of Latin America indicates that social indicators in health (infant mortality, life expectancy, hospital beds, doctors, dentists per population), education (literacy and enrollments for all levels of education), and communications (telephones, newspaper circulation, and motor vehicles per person) increased by 30 percent from 1940 to 1980, generally improving their quality of life (as cited in Weaver 2000:130). 18. Zigzag is a spinning technique that involves looping two handspun strands in opposite directions around each other. The result is an extra strong thread and ultimately fabric after it is woven into cloth. 19. Rodrigo Borja was president of Ecuador from 1988 to 1992. 20. The translation of preparada infers not only preparation, but also savvy and intelligence. 21. There is no record of such a trip at the Truman Library. 22. Buitrón discusses the cultural mission in América Indígena. First he lauds the idea of the mission, but then criticizes how Rosa Lema was portrayed as an “Indian Princess” because there were no such royal titles in Ecuador. Further, he recognizes Lema as a great businesswoman and manufacturer, but points out that she did not spin, card, or weave any of the products. Additionally, he states: “it’s lovely to say they are part of a tribe who were never conquered, but it’s sad to see how they live . . . Frankly, it’s an insult that they so openly lie with such ease . . . such rhetoric actually hurts the country because foreigners will say Ecuador doesn’t need any kind of assistance” (1951:272). He goes on to point out class difference with Otavaleño society. 23. Olga Fisch was a Hungarian Jew who emigrated to Ecuador during WWII and immediately recognized the value of indigenous arts and crafts. She opened a business that promoted fine-quality products.

Chapter Four 1. The 1937 law that recognized collective ownership of agricultural lands. According to Selverston-Scher, “the comuna provides an administrative unit for the government to deal with rural communities. The leadership of a comuna is called a cabildo. These administrative units were necessary to present land claims to the Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization, IERAC. Comunas are still the fundamental political unit

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for most indigenous communities, although many have united to form production associations and most joined indigenous federations during the 1980s” (2001:8). However, Marc Becker uses case studies in Cayambe, Pichincha, that offer a different understanding of the Ley de Comunas. He observes, “[r]ather than preserving local social, cultural and economic values, the Ley de Comunas had a strong modernizing intent that sought to bury Ecuador’s Indigenous past in favor of assimilating rural communities into an emerging capitalist order . . . and proved to be a conservative force in rural society” (1999:56–57). 2. These are the names of Inca leaders in power in northern Ecuador at the time of the Spanish conquest. For more details, see below or Demerst and Conrad 1989; Hurtado 1985. 3. “Taita” is the affectionate Kichwa term for father. In this case, she is referring to Father Imbabura, the mountain on which she lives. 4. See pages 85–87 for more about folktales and the cultural imagination. 5. For other details about Andean history’s relation to land, see Abercrombie 1998; Rappaport 1991; Allen 1988; Bastein 1978. 6. “The church was built here in 1932 after the Virgin had appeared to a shepherdess at a stone (apareció en una piedra). (The rough stone reredos of the high altar represents this stone.) The story was told [to] Rosita by an Indian who was also worshiping at the altar of the Virgin who ‘helps you in any work you are doing.’ This familiar legend was borrowed from the Virgin of Las Lajas in Colombia soon after the church at Las Lajas was built, but the Imbabura church and the Indians nearby localized the legend in less than a decade. Now Rosita would carry it in an elaborate form to Peguche. All she had known before was that the Virgin was ‘born at a stone.’ Note that it is not in a cave but at a stone, just as the first Inca appeared” (1945:167). 7. See Allen 1988; Bastein 1978; Basso 1979, 1996; Witherspoon 1977, 1995; and Rival 1998, 2002 for more on other indigenous peoples’ spiritual relationship with their physical environment. 8. Parsons outlines linguistic use as follows: “Tai’ta, ‘father,’ is a term of respect very generally and widely applied: to affinal relations, to men of any distinction like prayer-makers or ‘masters’ who teach ‘the doctrine,’ to the Sun, Indi tai’ta, to Dios (God), tai’ta Yus. Mama, ‘mother,’ is similarly applied to affinal relations, to the moon, luna mama), to Eve, mama Eva” (1945:42). 9. I use the word not in the narrow sense provided by dictionaries, i.e, “trifling, often groundless rumor, usually of a personal, sensational, or intimate nature; idle talk” (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 1982), but, rather, in a broader—and non-pejorative—sense (as did Parsons), that is, the

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exchange of news and information, often intimate in nature, about individuals and events directly or indirectly related to the lives of those engaged in said exchange. In other words, the “gossip” discussed here, though often intimate and personal, is generally not sensational and is by no means trivial. Nor do I intend to reinforce the common prejudice that assigns to women the role of gossip. My social network in Peguche was made up largely of women, and given the gender roles in force there (and in most places), I was not privy to the gossip that was most certainly exchanged in male circles. (Thanks to Mary Ellen Fieweger for helping me to underscore the importance of this issue.) 10. Tales like this one have been disseminated through the publication of bilingual education texts and cultural tourism, particularly since the passage of the Constitution of 1998, with its guarantee of instruction in indigenous languages (Article 27). See also Jara 1982; Moya 1980a, 1980b; and Coatacachi 1986. 11. Parsons states in a footnote, “This detail was contributed by the maestro of Riobamba and Ibarra, who was listening to the familiar story. Have we here a reminiscence of the famous scepter of gold of the Inca emergence myth?” (Garcilasso I:64, II:236). 12. Parsons’s transcription includes this footnote: “The outlet of the Laguna de San Pablo. It flows through the hacienda of Peguche and supplies power for a cotton mill at the southwest corner of the Indian settlement” (1945:128). 13. The staff is a key symbol in traditional Andean political and religious authority. See Isbell 1978 for examples from Chusco, Peru, pp. 85, 132, 139, 148, 149, and 150. 14. Rumors had it that Rodrigo Borja Cevellos (Ecuadorian president, 1988– 1992) visited a shaman in Ilumán prior to the election for a cleansing and good luck. 15. See Sharon 1978:59 for more about sacred stones in Peru, as well as Parsons 1945, Isbell 1978, Conrad and Demarest 1983, and Allen 1988 for other Andean beliefs about spiritual powers in rocks. 16. Running water was not available in most homes in Ilumán until the late 1990s, and even then supply was at best intermittent. 17. Parsons (1945) suggests “the rainbow (cuichi ) . . . is clearly thought of as a supernatural who may frequent boulders and who sends sickness, a recipient of offerings, a malevolent being except as he may be associated with rain and even so not necessarily benevolent, since rains may damage crops as well as favor them” (91–92). She further outlines “Rainbow Maladies” and “More about Rainbow Maladies” in the appendix (197–98).

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18. “Sireno” and “sirena” are words linguistically derived from the Western mythical construction of mermaids and mermen that emerged from tales of ancient Greece. It is difficult to ascertain the original Andean name and full description of these kinds of spirits after nearly five hundred years of extirpating processes. Further research is needed to uncover the Andean name and full description of these water-mountain spirits. I thank Niamichia Fernández for pointing this out to me (2008). 19. Marta was referring to the flurry of folk musicians who performed in Otavalan communities and abroad at the time in the early 1990s. 20. Parsons, too, relates stories about water spirits: Lakes are personified. Lakes, streams, springs, and waterfalls are spirit haunts. During the fiesta of San Juan, a spring not far from the chapel is visited and bathed in: el baño del santu. Before the fiesta of San Pedro . . . Peguche and other Indians may visit the great waterfall of Imbabura called anga facha ( pacha) (the Hawk Waterfall), to bathe in it; “it gives strength.” Men who want to be strong fighters may visit this waterfall at any time, going singly or two or three together. Visitors to the waterfall make offerings of guinea pigs, food, drink, and cigarettes. They ask for strength, but they do not “pray,” says Rosita, “because they love not God but the Devil [no quieren a Dios, quieren al Diablo].” Spirits live in the waterfall, according to Rosita, who calls them kuku or duendes, “dwarfs,” . . . Like auka, they are not baptized . . . they may do you good or evil. (1945:93–94) 21. See Parsons 1945:71–72 for descriptions of two similar ceremonies she participated in. Misías Terán, a resident sorcerer in Peguche who was of mixed ethnic heritage, sucked out of Parsons’s neck brown quids . . . “stringy and fibrous-looking” and paid a person “who will carry away the animalitos to a distant gully, a dangerous task.” Parsons’s prognosis “to be rid of all the destructive ‘animals’ inside her head” would have required twelve treatments. “Rosita, who had never been cured for witchcraft or attended a cure before, said that at first she felt like laughing but that then she began to be frightened.” . . . According to Parsons, “Misías plainly welcomed the opportunity to impress Rosita. Probably, he is visited more by Whites than by Indians.” 22. On several occasions, Mamá Rosa came to my house and asked that I read the New Testament to her. She also enjoyed hearing “God’s words” at the Mormon Church where one of her sons-in-law was what she called a “deacon” and elder. 23. Parsons wrote in the footnote (1945:71):

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Described as bravura, “fierceness,” at Cayambe (Appendix p. 196). The behavior of Misías is certainly that of one possessed, although there is no verbal expression of this concept. Cf. Lowie, p. 423, for South American parallels. 24. Parsons wrote in her footnote (1945:71): Among Canelos Indians jaguar or tiger cat, the puma supay, is invoked in curing. These beasts are incarnate medicine men (Karsten 4:387). The Tapirape shaman has a jaguar familiar (Wagley I:256; also Carajá, Lipkind, p. 250). 25. Parsons wrote in her footnote (1945:71): Shimiwa shupang, “with his mouth he sucks”; shupashpami shitang (Sp[anish] mala kunata), “sucking, he casts away all evils.” 26. See Weismantal 1995 for detail about adoption in the Andes. 27. This was worth about US$1000 in the summer of 1998 and about US$700 by 1999 due to constant devaluation.

Chapter Five 1. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out. 2. In Mexico, milpa also refers to a corn patch or field, as brought to my attention by Peter Henderson. 3. Deborah Barndt (2002) and Sidney Mintz (1985) write about the globalization of tomatoes and sugar, respectively, and add to the understanding of the importance of food in political economies. Richard Wilk’s study of food in Belize demonstrates how colonialism, globalization, and consumer culture are interconnected (2006). 4. “It was only in 1535, near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru, that Europeans— the Spanish conquistadores—first reported seeing this tuber that had been domesticated by Andean Indians thousands of years before. In his Chronicle of Peru, Pedro de Cieza de León wrote perhaps the first description. “ . . . [T]he roots . . . are the size of an egg, more or less, some round some elongated; they are white and purple and yellow, floury roots of a good flavor, a delicacy to the Indians and a dainty dish even for the Spaniards” (Popenoe et al. 1989:23). 5. From Parsons’s footnote (1945:19): “Tierna [sic], a large-kernelled white ear called choclo, in distinction to maïs and morocho.” 6. Kyle survey, 1993.

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7. I recall how neighbors told me that habas or fava beans are “food for the brain” and requisite for boosting their children’s performance on exams. 8. Childbed visits were customary in Inca Peru (Garcilasso I:305). (This footnote was in Parsons’s origninal ethnography, 1945:162.) 9. See Mansfeld-Collarado 1995 for a detailed account of changes in architecture and comsumption patterns in the region. 10. Local legend recounts that when Mt. Cotacachi is dusted with a new swirl of snow, it means that her lover, Mt. Imbabura, visited her during the night. 11. See Sherbondy 1991 for more on the symbolism of water, springs, and caves in traditional Andean cultures. 12. A typical musical form particular to native Otavaleños, characterized by repetitive rhythms and melodies. The genre takes its name from Saint John whose feast day is June 24. According to archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence, the festival is rooted in pre-Columbian summer solstice rites, which are, in turn, linked to the harvest. In Otavalo today, the holiday comes at the end of the harvest and the beginning of the dry, windy summer. The San Juan celebrations, the most important of the year, activate the collective memory and reinforce ethnic cohesiveness. According to an older musician, “Sanjuanitos are like a message from our ancestors” (D’Amico 1999). 13. See ¡Ay Taquigu! (Oh, Dear Musicmaker), a visual ethnography of a traditional wedding that also examines changes in traditional music making (D’Amico and Muenala 1992) and Parsons’s description (1945:56–58). 14. According to Selverston-Scher, “The Agrarian Reform Law [of 1964] is considered by analysts a turning point in indigenous politics because it radically changed the social structure of rural Ecuador. The debt-peonage farm system (huasipungo), Ecuador’s version of indentured agriculture labor, was outlawed. However, while workers were freed from unpaid labor, they lost access to the hacienda owners’ pastures and forests. Some argue that the agrarian laborers, mostly indigenous, suffered economically because they lost access to land they had used for subsistence farming. At the same time, the reform initiated dramatic growth in indigenous organizing” (2001:36). It should be noted that the huasipungo was not, strictly speaking, a system of indentured servitude, in which a worker is bound to an employer for a specific period of time, nor were the Indians unpaid. Instead, what existed in Ecuador was a system of debt peonage, and both the Crown, during the colonial period, and the state after independence, specified a daily wage for agricultural workers, including huasipungueros. This, however, was generally inadequate to meet the needs of indigenous families who consequently were forced to rely on the hacienda owner for loans. The debts thus incurred

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were inherited by the Indians’ offspring. While land reform made some land available to families like Luz’s via purchase on the open market, the land available after the law was passed was insufficient to meet demand. Hence, many former serfs were left landless. And, as Selverston-Scher points out, even those who were able to buy land lost their rights to forests (for firewood) and pastures and also to water sources not on their individual plots. For more on land reform in Ecuador, see Barsky 1984. 15. In addition to providing milk and calves, cows most importantly serve many farmers as a “walking bank,” as many farmers are ready to cash in or sell them in times of financial need or crisis, and represent part of diversified economic strategies to make ends meet. 16. Ritual kin are not consanguineal or related by blood. Rather, they are joined ritually in a ceremony for godparentage to a child, a couple getting married, a housewarming, or other major life transition. The co-parentage or fictive kinship commonly extends to both families. 17. A lightly fermented corn beer generally served during cooperative activities and on ritual occasions.

Chapter Six 1. See Meisch’s article concerning sex tourism, “Gringas and Otavaleños,” 1995, for a detailed discussion. 2. My son recently commented to me (July 2007) that one of his former classmates from high school is now pursuing a business degree at a university in Quito and has become a major exporter. He purchases handicrafts by the ton each month and exports them in containers to New York, where he sells to other Otavalans for distribution. He commented that this is much more lucrative than selling on the street or at fairs. 3. Since the mid-1990s the Fair operates every day of the week, albeit not with the intensity of Saturday. 4. This song reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s book A Room of One’s Own, but within a Kichwa context. 5. This period, 1948–1960s, was a time of relative political stability, particularly on the coast where bananas became the nation’s primary export crop. During the 1948–1962 era of the banana boom, government policies provided subsidies for modernization in agriculture and constructed infrastructure to facilitate exports, such as roads and ports. These interventions continued to promote the economic interests of the politically powerful. At the same time,

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demographic pressure forced many highlanders who lacked land to the coast to work on banana plantations (Weaver 2000). 6. President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, a foreign policy program for Latin America, was implemented in the early 1960s. Its chief goal was to prevent the spread of Communism through programs such as the Peace Corps, import substitution, land reform, USAID projects, and incentives for foreign investment. According to Weaver, “while the entire project was laden with Cold War instrumentation and hypocrisy, the active promotion of economic reform and expanding local markets also happened to be congruent with the newly situated interests of U.S. capital in Latin America” (2000:113). 7. Borja created an institutional mechanism for dialogue and negotiation with native nationalities. Indeed, after the 1992 March for Land when thousands of indigenous men, women, and children marched from the Oriente (Amazon region) to Quito and demanded ancestral rights to lands in the Oriente, the Ecuadorian government granted communal land titles for 1,115,175 hectacres to Huaorani and Kichwa communities (Sawyer 2004:42). 8. See Selverton-Scher 2001 and Yashar 2005 for a full discussion of the rise of indigenous political consciousness and the making of a formidable movement through their empowerment as citizens in Ecuador, particularly during the final decades of the twentieth century. 9. See unwto.org for exact figures. 10. Marta is the same woman introduced at the ravine in Peguche in chapter 4. 11. Ritual drinking is customary at traditional wakes. See Parsons 1945:77–80 and 199–203 and Schechter 1992 for more details. 12. Since the mid-1990s, large flower plantations are present in Cayambe, Pinchinca, Quiroga, and Imbabura, and it is common to see more commercial flowers in the food market. In recent years, those vendors began elaborating flower weaths for sale. 13. Plan Colombia refers to the controversial U.S. legislation to curb drug production and smuggling in Colombia. Since 2000, multiple billions of dollars have been targeted as an anti-drug strategy, primarily in the form of military aid and aerial fumigation. Unfortunately, these strategies adversely affect human rights, human health, legal crops, biodiversity, and internal migration, and as a result, over two million Colombians are displaced. 14. An official at the U.S. Consulate in Quito, Ecuador, cited that figure in the summer of 2002 when I went there with friends applying for visas. 15. According to the UN Development Report 2003, Ecuador had a 43 percent Gini Index. “Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of

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income (or, in some cases, consumption expenditure) among individual or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. Zero represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 perfect inequality” (2003:247). For comparison, Sweden’s index in 2003 was 25.0 percent and the U.S. was at 40.8 percent. The United Nations’ 2010 Gini Index for Ecuador was 54.4 percent, demonstrating that the gap between rich and poor grew substantially in seven years. 16. For example, in 2002, according to a worker I met who worked six days a week at a flower plantation that exports “perfect” roses (on the equator they grow straight up) to destinations as far away as Russia, his take-home pay was less than US$80 a month. The low pay didn’t convey the emotional hardship of life far from his family, whom he visited only once a month. But they needed the money, he said. He, and others employed in the industrial agriculture sector, commented that the excessive use of pesticides made workers sick. But even so, he was grateful to have a job because few alternatives were available. His situation exemplifies the results of how macroeconomic structures affect the little guy and the bounty at the top has yet to trickle down. 17. According to economic indicators published by the United Nations, the per capita average income diminished by 33 percent (from US$1570 to $1109) between 1997 and 1999. The GDP dropped by 7.3 percent in 1999, at which point more than 50 percent of the rural population was living below the poverty line. In addition, interest rates reached 80 percent, inflation rose to 60 percent, and the minimum wage plummeted to the equivalent of US$4.00 per month (Potter 2002:120). 18. In the summer of 2002 teachers with more than twenty years of experience earned around $250 per month, while a beginning teacher received $140. 19. Due to changes in the Spanish law that went into effect in the summer of 2001, it is now much more difficult for Ecuadorians to gain visas to travel to Spain for work. Furthermore, after August 6, 2003, Ecuadorians could no longer enter Spain without a visa, and the Spanish government is now offering incentives to repatriate immigrants. I heard the story of a young man who used the European Union passport of a friend home for the holidays in Peguche, to enter Spain. Then he sent the passport back to his friend. However, this strategy is incredibly risky, particularly with increased security around the globe. 20. For an extensive overview of Ecuadorian migration, see Herrera et al. 2006. 21. I found out each week where the fairs would be on the City of New York’s official website or in Time Out New York magazine. 22. This kind of “economic growth” in terms of laissez-faire financial markets and speculation is also when many of the real costs of doing global commerce

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were externalized or not considered by policymakers and investors; the result was that local people and the planet suffered the consequences in terms of biodiversity and climate change. Consequences of neoliberal policies (and the involvement of NGOs) in Ecuador during the last decades of the twentieth century included the growing gap between rich and poor, environmental degradation, the weakening of public services, and increase in social fragmentation and emigration, alongside political instability. A case in point, sociopolitical uprisings deposed three Ecuadorian presidents within seven years (1997–2004). 23. Census data from the United States also reflects the exponential growth of worldwide immigration to the United States during the 1990s, which was numerically higher than in any previous period in the nation’s history. In 2000, 20.4 percent of New York’s population was foreign born, compared to 11.1 percent of the entire United States population. 24. See Stoller 2002, Margolis 1993, and Foner 2000 for details about other migrants to New York City. 25. Historians agree that Rumiñahui was the Inca general who led resistance to the Spanish invasion, but his blood ties to Atahualpa (the heir to the Inca throne at the time of the Conquest) are far from clear. Rumiñahui was heading to Cajamarca with ransom to free Atahualpa, when he learned of Atahualpa’s execution by Pizarro. Quickly, according to local lore, he then retreated north to Ecuador and buried the gold. At this point Pizarro, sent Benalcazár to defeat Rumiñahui and seize the gold. After a prolonged battle, Rumiñahui was overcome and killed, but he never revealed to the Spanish where the gold was buried, and his heroism is lauded to this day. For many Otavaleños, Atahualpa and Rumiñahui symbolize indigenous resistance to hegemonic European power. Further, as Joanne Rappaport points out, “Atahualpa isn’t just an indigenous construct, but an Ecuadorian nationalist construct that has been deployed primarily in opposition to Peru (and Huascar [Atahualpa’s half brother] who lived an insular life in the royal court in Cuzco). The indigenous projection resonates with and contradicts the nationalist one” (personal communication 2003). By underscoring the importance of their connection to Atahualpa and Rumiñahui, Otavaleños reify their northern Andean-Cara-Ecuadorian identity. As Rappaport indicates, Atahualpa’s image was co-opted as a nationalist symbol to rally behind during three bloody wars with Peru in 1941, 1981, and 1995. Until the peace treaty was signed in 2000, Ecuador considered that its boundary extended far into the Amazon region (as defined in 1829), equaling twice the size now recognized internationally. Ultimately as a result of three wars, Ecuador lost over a half its territory to

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Peru (Sawyer 2004:38). Within this context, Atahualpa is seen as native hero, ancestor, and as the indigenous father to the Ecuadorian state. 26. See María Rosa Menocal’s monograph, The Ornament of the World: How Mulims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, where she explains the florescence of convivencias in Andalusia during the tenth to fifteenth centuries. She recounts how Muslims, Christians, and Jews borrowed language, art, architecture, and ideas from each other through what is not dissimilar to interculturalism. She explains how cultural synergies became the catalyst for creative forms. She points to this period of al-Andalus, when Córdova had the largest library in the world, Plato and Aristotle were translated into Arabic and studied, and Jews rediscovered Hebrew. Menocal suggests that this cultural cross-pollination preceded, and in some ways influenced, the Italian Renaissance (2002).

Epilogue 1. See Colloredo-Manfeld 2002 for an extensive discussion of indigenous justice in the nearby Otavalan communities. In addition, Article 171 in the 2008 Constitution guarantees native communities their traditional judicial rights and therefore that their legal institutions, authorities, and decisions be respected. A new law was formulated with input from native leaders, legislative aids, and human rights consultants from the United Nations so that plural justice systems will coexist side by side.

Postscript 1. In the 2009 election, indigenous Mayor Conejo switched political parties and aligned himself with Rafael Correa’s #35, Allianza País. On the other hand, for the reformer from Pachacutic (the party formed by native leaders) and three-term mayor from Cotacachi County, Auki Tituaña, the 2009 elections brought defeat. His successor, Otavaleño Alberto Anrango, former leader from the powerful UNORAC, aligned himself with Alianza País and won. 2. Anecdotal evidence from various sources suggests that the building and bank booms of recent years derive from involvement with the drug trade. I’ve heard stories that certain villages specialize in different aspects of smuggling. For example, a construction worker told a friend that he had served as a human mule to transport drugs abroad. As part of the arrangement, he was

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pressured into serving as a mule five times before he left such dangerous work. Empirical data is lacking to substantiate the extent to which this is true or not in Otavalo; however, in recent years there have been increasing arrests for drug processing and trafficking, 3. Eleven states abstained, and four—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States—voted against the text. However, at the White House Tribal Nations Conference on December 15, 2010, President Obama announced that the United States will support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. 4. The Shuar, in collaboration with the Salesian Catholic Order, in 1964 began setting up bilingual education programs via radio to meet the needs of the population, who live in remote villages and hamlets in southeastern (Amazonian) Ecuador. 5. However, Correa’s Cuidadana Revolucionario (Citizen’s Revolution) and socialist rhetoric is falling short with regard to indigenous and other social groups. Resolutions of the extraordinary assembly convened by CONAIE February 25–26, 2010, called for an uprising because of  “lack of political will and lack of respect for popular and indigenous nationalities rights” (Press Bulletin). In particular, CONAIE pronounced their opposition to Correa’s policies that strengthen the neoliberal model and violate their environmental rights in regard to the new Mining and Water Laws. The Ecuadorian press has also expressed concern for the Rights to Freedom of Expression and voiced opposition to the new communications law currently that was debated by the legislature in 2010 and 2011.

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Index (((

Page numbers in italic text indicate illustrations.

Amazon region: nationalities in, 12, 189n11; Oriente in, 93, 96, 189n9, 202n7 América Indígena, 195n22 Ana, 153, 156, 157, 176–77; entrepreneurism of, 154–55; marriage of, 152, 154–55 Andalusia, interculturalism in, 175–76, 205n26 Andean topography, 111–12. See also mountains Andrea, 33, 191n6 anthropology, 48; ethnic studies and Elsie Clews Parsons, 34–38, 43, 191nn8–10; feminist and Elsie Clews Parsons, 37–38, 40–41, 43, 47–48; globalization and, 2–3; for indigenous crafts, 72; medical, 47; transculturalism of, 18; women in, 191n10. See also Parsons, Elsie Clews Apache, 79 assimilation: indigenismo for, 52, 60–62; for modernization, 61–62, 195n1; Ortiz and, 16; policies for, 52, 60

acculturation, 34–35, 43, 46 Agrarian Reforms (1964, 1973), 63–64, 128, 148, 194n16 agriculture: Andean topography for, 111– 12; bananas for, 115, 193n9, 194n15, 201n5; cacao for, 56, 59; commerce for, 112, 159; fertility, economics, and, 158–59; food and, 110–11; gender and, 29; harvest for, 124–25; huasipungo in, 56, 59, 200n14; industrial, 159, 203n16; land for, 121–22; minga in, 45–46, 119, 130–32, 192n18; modernization and, 50–51, 51, 59–60, 159, 193n9; parvas for, 130, 130–31, 131; responsibility for, 113–14; spirituality of, 113–14; yearly cycle for, 116. See also specific crops Alfaro, Eloy, 193n3 Alfredo, 87–88 Alliance for Progress, 148, 202n6

223

224

index

Atahualpa, 173, 204n25 author, 17, 20; children of, 13, 189n12, 190n17; domestic challenges for, 20, 76; domestic tasks for, 13–14; after fieldwork, 22, 190n17; integration for, 21; interculturalism for, 17, 21, 190n15; Parsons, E., for, 2–3; roles of, 14, 19–21; transformation of, 186; transnationalism for, 186 awakening valley, 62; in music, 172–73; in policies, 63–64, 148–50 The Awakening Valley (Buitrón and Collier, J., Jr.), 62–63, 148 Ayora, Isidro, 27, 190n2 bananas, 115, 193n9, 194n15, 201n5 barley (máchica), 115–16, 117 Barndt, Deborah, 199n2 Basso, Keith, 79 beans, 112–13, 116, 118, 200n7 Becker, Marc, 190n3, 195n1 Beyond Separate Spheres: The Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (Rosenberg), 36 Black Mountain (Mojanda), 86–87 blancos (blanco-mestizos): definition of, 12; lifestyle and, 35; networks of, 50; residential segregation and, 44; standard of living and, 61; tensions with, 21 Bolívar, Simón, 174–75 Bolívar Park. See Rumiñahui Park Bolivia, 22 Borja Cevellos, Rodrigo, 67, 149, 195n19, 197n14, 202n7 Bourque, Susan, 32 Brazil, 159 Buitrón, Aníbal, 62–63, 148, 194n13; criticism of, 195n22; on types of Otavaleños, 60–61 business. See entrepreneurism; marketplaces bus rides, 6 cacao, 56, 59 Cacuango, Dolores, 190n3 Cajas, José, 44, 192n17 Carpenter, Lawrence, 13 Catholic Church, 206n4; for Luz, 120, 124–26; Rosa and, 32–33, 99 census: ethnicity in, 189n10; Inca, women in, 30; indigenous population and, 11–12, 189n10; U.S. immigration in, 204n23

Charijayac, 172–73 chicha (corn beer), 131–32, 201n17 children: of author, 13, 189n12, 190n17; migration and, 167, 171; of Rosa, 8, 27, 45, 69, 100n8, 103, 105, 119–20, 188n4. See also specific children Christianity, 58; Mamá Rosa and, 100–102, 198n22; shamans and, 93. See also Catholic Church Chuso Longo (mountain spirit), 85–87, 197nn11–13 Cieza de León, Pedro de, 199n4 Citizen’s Revolution (Revolución Cuidadana), 206n5 clothing, 156; entrepreneurism and, 10, 23, 27, 59, 66–68, 142, 143, 154–55, 156, 166, 169; for ethnic identity, 154–55, 168; of servants, 191n6; on Sundays, 125; tradition of, 7, 9, 187n2 CODENPE. See Council for the Development of Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador Collier, John, Jr., 62–63, 148 Collier, John, Sr., 60, 62, 194n11 Colombia: against Ecuador, 11, 189n8; migration from, 189n8; pilgrimage to, 128; Plan, 157, 158, 202n13 Columbus, Christopher, 57–58 comadre (co-parent), 185–86, 191n6 comuna (administrative unit), 76, 195n1 CONAIE. See Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador Conejo, Mario, 9, 183, 205n1 Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE): formation of, 149; for uprising, 206n5 Connerton, Paul, 92 Constitution of Ecuador: interculturalism in, 184, 188n7, 197n10; Sumak Kawsay in, 185; traditional judicial rights in, 205n1 convivencia, 184; in Andalusia, 175–76, 205n26; modern, 176 corn, 112, 116, 130, 199n5; anthropomorphism and, 113; chicha from, 131–32, 201n17; milpa as, 113, 199n2; prominence of, 112 Corpus Christi (Granada, Spain), 168 Correa, Rafael, 184, 206n5 Cotacachi: political-geographical unit of, 9, 13, 188n6. See also Mamá Cotacachi Cotacachi, Mercedes, 113

index Council for the Development of Nationalities and Peoples of Ecuador (Consejo de Desarrollo de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos del Ecuador) (CODENPE), 11–12 cows, 130, 201n15 crafts: business of, 144–45; indigenous, anthropology for, 72; marketplace for, 10, 10, 146; Schreuder for, 72. See also specific crafts persons crime, traditional justice for, 180–82, 205n1 cultural pluralism, 21, 92–93, 100–101, 105–6, 180–82, 205n1 culture: biology related to, 73; contact zones and, 15–16, 34, 178; race and, 33, 35; Rumiñahui and, 173–75, 174, 204n25; social constructs in, 43; tradition and, 18, 21–22. See also folktales; food; interculturalism; religion; transculturalism Darnell, Regna, 34, 191n10, 192n15 Day of the Dead, 111; food for, and ritual, 133–34; Paula and, 132–34, 133, 135 Deacon, Delsey, 35–36, 39 death: drinking and ritual, 202n11; flowers and ritual, 150–52, 152, 153. See also Day of the Dead debt peonage. See huasipungo debt servitude. See huasipungo Deloria, Vine, Jr., 194n11 Department of Bilingual and Intercultural Education, 184 DINEIB. See National Directorate of Bilingual Intercultural Education diviner, 104–5 Dolores, Mamá, 81 drug trade, 202n13, 205n2 Dubois, W. E. B., 190n15 Durán Bellén, Clemente, 64–65 economics, 12; agriculture fertility compared to, 158–59; antiglobalization and, 157–58; debt crisis and, 160; income and, 202n14, 203nn17–18; indigenismo and, 61; inflation, unemployment, and poverty in, 160, 203n17; ISI for, 64, 148; migration and, 159, 202n14; neoliberal policies for, 159–60, 176, 202n13, 203n22; tourism and, 148, 165. See also entrepreneurism; marketplaces

225

Ecuador, 12, 52, 59, 150; civilian rule in, 149; CODENPE on, 11–12, 189n10; Colombia in contrast, 11, 189n8; Constitution of, 184–85, 188n7, 197n10, 205n1; distribution of wealth in, 159, 202n15; independence for, 55–58; institutionalized racism in, 13, 56; migration from, 158–59, 166–67, 202n14, 203n19; nationalities in, 11–12, 189n11; Peace Corps in, 148; socioeconomic hierarchy of, 12; topography of, 111–12, 189n9; U.S. and, 148, 157–58, 192n2, 193n10, 202n6, 202n13, 206n3. See also specific cities; specific organizations Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization (IERAC), 195n1 Ecuadorian Institute of Anthropology and Geography, 72 education: of Parsons, E., 39–40; of women, 25, 39–40, 160–61 employment: gender and, 31–32; inflation, poverty, and, 160, 203n17. See also specific individuals England, 55, 59 entrepreneurism: challenges in, 168, 169– 72; clothing and, 10, 23, 27, 59, 66–68, 142, 143, 154–55, 156, 166, 169; drug trade, 202n13, 205n2; exploitation in, 169–70; family for, 23, 25, 161, 169–70; handicraft production, 10, 10, 146, 154, 177, 188n4, 195n23, 201n2; mindalá corps for, 54. See also marketplaces; New York City ethnic street fair; specific entrepreneurs envy/evil eye, 83–84 Escobar, Arturo, 99 espanto (fright), 47, 81, 83 ethnic dress, 154–55, 156, 168; identity, 154–55, 156, 168. See also clothing ethnicity: in census, 189n10; gender related to, 32; globalization and, 1–2, 148–50, 158–61, 174, 174–75; in music, 147, 172–73, 177, 204n25; for musicians, 163; tourism and, 50, 52, 64–72, 141– 43, 148. See also indigenous population; interculturalism; New York City ethnic street fair The Family (Parsons, E.), 41 Febres Cordero, León, 149, 160 Félix Maldonado, Segundo, 131–32

226

index

feminist framework: interculturalism in, 17–18; Parsons, E., for, 37–38, 47–48 La Feria (the Fair), 142, 144, 145, 146, 147; meaning of, 145–46; Saturdays for, 141, 143, 145, 201n3 Fermin Cevallos, Pedro, 56 fieldwork: basis of, 1–4, 14–15, 187n1, 190n14; feminist and intercultural methodologies, 17–22; globalization and, 1–2. See also author Fisch, Olga, 72, 195n23 500 Years of Resistance, 149–50, 173 flowers: death and, 150–52, 152, 153; for Marta, 150–52, 202n10; plantations for, 202n12, 203n16; spirits and, 151 folktales: about big rock, 87–88; Chuso Longo, 85–87, 197nn11–13; Imbabura visits Mamá Cotacachi, 85, 197n10; shared space in, 92; about Taita Imbabura, 84–87, 196n8, 197n10, 197n13, 200n10. See also spirituality and health food, 199n2; agriculture and, 110–11; bananas, 115, 193n9, 194n15, 201n5; barley, 115–16, 117; beans, 112–13, 116, 118, 200n7; business of, 111; for Day of the Dead, 132–34, 133, 135; fava beans, 116, 200n7; fineness of, 117–18; friends and, 109; globalization and, 110, 114–15, 199n3; for intelligence, 118, 200n7; maize (corn), 113–14, 116; networks and, 138; potatoes, 115, 116, 199n4; relationships and, 119; rituals and, 138–39; Rosa and, 109, 118–20, 120, 138; sharing, 109; squash, 112–13; symbolism of, 109–11, 132–35, 133, 135, 137–38; transculturalism of, 115– 16; for travelers, 122. See also corn Foster, George, 83 García Canclini, Nestor, 164 gender, 190n16; agriculture and, 29; employment and, 31–32; ethnicity related to, 32; among Otavaleños, 29–31; Parsons, E., on, 37; public/ private spheres and, 32; roles, necessity and, 31, 191n4; social and cultural reproduction, 83–84; Spanish conquest and, 30; stereotypes and, 31–34; weaving and, 29–30

Gladis: empowerment for, 107; family difficulties of, 93–94, 107; healer for, 94; shaman for, 94–98; on spirituality and health, 93–98; symbolism for, 107–8 globalization: anthropology and, 2–3; antiglobalization, 157–58; ethnicity and, 1–2, 148–50, 158–61, 174, 174–75; exploitation and, 178; fieldwork and, 1–2; food and, 110, 114–15, 199n3; after independence, 56, 192n2; of Otavalo, 59–64, 63, 193nn7–10, 194nn11–15; protests against, 157–58; Rosa and, 23–24; tourism and, 148, 202n6; tradition related to, 113–14 “Good Neighbor” policy, 193n10 Gorrel, Juan, 35, 191n9 gossip (chisme), 84, 196n9 Greenwich Settlement House (New York City), 39–40, 191n12 gringos (gringas), 7, 187n1 Guerrero, Andrés, 54 hairstyles, 9, 187n2 Handbook of South American Indians (Steward), 34 Harrison, Regina, 147 Hassaurek, Friedrich, 55–56 healers: diviner as, 104–5; mountain spirits for, 93; Nico as, 94; performing art in, 107–8. See also shamans; specific women health: causes of illness in, 82–83; fright related to, 81, 83; hybrid medical system for, 105–6; Western concept of (biomedicine), 80. See also spirituality and health; specific individuals House of Ecuadorian Culture (Casa de la Cultura), 72 huasipungeros. See huasipungo huasipungo (debt peonage, huts), 59, 60–61; description of, 56; huasipungueros for, 194n13; racism and, 56; reforms against, 64, 200n14. See also land reforms of 1964 and 1973 human rights, 4, 185. See also indigenous population Hurtado, Osvaldo, 149 identity: Bolívar for, 174–75; clothing for, 154–55, 168; ethnic markers, 115–16, 131, 137–39, 154–55, 156, 163, 168;

index indigenismo and, 61; interculturalism and, 18–19; Rumiñahui for, 173–75, 174, 204n25; transculturalism and, 164; transnationalism and, 164, 177–78 IERAC. See Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization Ilumán. See Gladis; María Imbabura. See Taita Imbabura import substitution industrialization (ISI), 64, 148 independence (Ecuador): economic boom after, 56, 192n3; globalization after, 56, 192n2; huasipungo after, 56; Madrid Exhibition after, 56–58, 193n4; Peguche after, 55; speculation after, 192n2; trade liberalization after, 56 indigenismo (indigenism): for assimilation, 52, 60–62; economics and, 61; identity and, 61; modernism and, 60–61, 193n10, 194nn11–12; paternalism of, 61 indigenous population: Apache, 79; Atahualpa for, 173, 204n25; census and, 11–12, 189n10; colonialism and, 53–55; crime in, 180–82, 205n1; DINEIB for, 149; exploitation of, 57, 141, 143, 178, 193n4; 500 Years of Resistance from, 149–50, 173; huasipungo for, 56; land for, 44, 76–77, 148, 202n7; position of, 12; Rosa as cultural ambassador from, 52; rulers of, 76, 196n2; Rumiñahui for, 173–75, 174, 204n25; yanaperos in, 54–55 El Indio Ecuatoriano (Jaramillo Alvarado), 60 INEC. See National Institute of Statistics and Census interculturalism (interculturalidad), 1–2, 183; in Andalusia, 175–76, 205n26; for author, 17, 21, 190n15; collaborators, role of, 184–85; in colonial Otavalo, 54; in Constitution, 184, 188n7, 197n10; crime and, 180–82, 205n1; ethnic identity/ethnicity and, 18–19; in feminist framework, 17–18; as fieldwork methodology, 2–3, 17–22; indigenous ideology (pan-American), 52; language and, 25, 149, 167, 184, 188n7, 206n4; neoliberal economic policies and, 176, 178; in Peguche, 45–46; prehistoric, 52–53; Rappaport, Joanne, 190n15, 204n25; of region,

227

9–10; for Rosa, 16, 18, 45, 47–48, 65; transnationalism and, 3. See also food; spirituality and health Isabel (from Peguche), 176–77; reunion with, in Barcelona, Spain, 158; unemployment for, 160–61; work for, 161, 203n19 ISI. See import substitution industrialization Jaramillo Alvarado, Pío, 60 jatun rumi (giant rock), 87–88 Juana, 167–68 Juanti, 33, 191n6 justice: from tradition, 180–82, 205n1. See also indigenous population Karsten, Rafael, 191n9 Kichwas (Quichuas). See Otavaleños Kowii, Ariruma, 113–14 Kyle, David, 10, 121, 166–67, 188n5 land: for agriculture, 121–22; comuna for, 76, 195n1; for indigenous populations, 44, 76–77, 148, 202n7; for Luz, 128–29, 200n14; ownership of, 76–77. See also mountains; physical environment land reforms of 1964 and 1973, 63–64, 128, 148, 194n16 Lane, Kris, 53 languages: bilingualism, 25, 149, 184, 206n4; DINEIB for, 149; interculturalism and, 25, 149, 167, 184, 188n7, 206n4; power and, 173; of Rosa, 25; Spanish, 188n7 Latin America, 202n6; gender stereotypes in, 31–32; quality of life in, 64, 195n17. See also specific countries laundry day, 88–89 Lema, Rosa. See Rosa, Mamá Ley de Comunas, 76, 195n1 Liberal Revolution, 56, 193n3 Lourdes, 168; exploitation of, 169–70 Lucila, 69, 109 Luz, 138; Catholic Church for, 120, 124–26; daily routine of, 123–24; friendship with, 123; land acquisition after reforms, 128–29, 200n14; life history of, 122–32; minga for, 130–32, 201n17; symbolism for, 129; wedding of, 126–28, 200n12; work for, 122–25, 128

228

index

machismo, 31 Madrid Exhibition, 56–58, 193n4 maize (corn), 116; poem on, 113–14 Mamá Cotacachi (mountain), 63, 82, 86, 123; prayer to, 101; Taita Imbabura and, 84–85, 197n10, 200n10 Margolis, Maxine L., 159 María: sacred stone, 89–90; on spirituality, healing, and health, 88–90; symbolism for, 107 Mariana, 162–63 marianismo (stereotype of women), 31 marketplaces, 137, 140; for crafts, 10, 10, 146; La Feria, 141, 142, 143–47, 145, 146, 201n3; in Granada, Spain, 168–72; New York City ethnic street fair, 164–68, 166, 203n21; Otavaleñas in, 10, 137, 146–47, 169; Plaza de Ponchos, 10, 72, 141, 142, 145, 146, 148, 150, 177; U.S. World’s Fairs, 193n4. See also specific vendors marriage: of Ana, 152, 154–55; of grandson, 104–5; of Juana, 167; migration and, 167, 168, 171; of Rosa, 26–28; trial, 40–41 Marta, 155, 157, 176–77; flowers for, 150–52, 202n10; home of, 150–51; on spirituality and health, 90–93, 106, 197n17, 198nn18–19; symbolism for, 106 Matilde, 8, 27, 105, 119, 188n4, 200n8 McCormick, Katherine Dexter, 192n13 Mead, Margaret, 192n15 medical anthropology, 47. See also spirituality and health men, machismo for, 31 Menchú, Rigoberta, 149 Menocal, María Rosa, 176, 205n26 mermaids and mermen (sirena/sireno), 91, 198n18 mestizos, 12 Michita, Mamá, 13 migration: children and, 167, 171; from Colombia, 189n8; economics and, 159, 202n14; from Ecuador, 158–59, 166–67, 202n14, 203n19; of Mariana, 162–63; marriage and, 167, 168, 171; musicians and, 163–64, 172–73; to New York City, 165–68, 166, 204n23; perspectives from, 175; push-pull explanations for, 159; residency status and, 168, 171; to Spain, 159, 161–64, 203n20

milpa (entire corn plant), 113, 199n2 mindalá corps (exchange specialists), 54 minga (cooperative work party), 119, 132; description of, 192n18; for Luz, 130–31; Rosa and, 45–46 Mintz, Sidney, 199n2 Mitla: Town of Souls (Parsons, E.), 43 Mormon Church, 100–102, 198n22 mountains, 92; Black Mountain, 86–87; Chuso Longo for, 85–87, 197nn11–13; dream about, 89–90; jatun rumi and, 87–88; Mamá Cotacachi, 63, 82, 84–85, 86, 101, 123, 197n10, 200n10; spirits of, 93, 97; Taita Imbabura, 77, 77–78, 82, 84–87, 101–2, 196n3, 196n8, 197n10, 197n13, 200n10 Muratorio, Blanca, 56–57, 58 music, 201n4; awakening valley in, 172–73; ethnicity in, 147, 172–73, 177, 204n25; Otavalo y Punto, 172–73, 175; rituals and, 136; sanjuanitos in, 127, 200n12 musicians, 147, 154; ethnicity for, 163; migration and, 163–64, 172–73; and spirits, 91, 198n19 National Directorate of Bilingual Intercultural Education (DINEIB), 149 National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC), 189n10 The Nations Within (Deloria), 194n11 neoliberal policies: for economics, 159–60, 176, 202n13, 203n22; interculturalism and, 176, 178 networks: of blancos, 50; food and, 138; gossip for, 84, 196n9; of Otavaleñas, 14–15; Plaza de Ponchos for, 177; of Rosa, 7, 16, 24, 27, 29, 45–48, 50, 65–66, 69, 73, 82, 102–3, 119–20; as social capital, 83–84, 99; for spirituality and health, 82; for well-being, 102–3 Newson, Linda, 53 New York City: Greenwich Settlement House in, 39–40, 191n12; migration to, 165–68, 166, 204n23 New York City ethnic street fair, 164, 166, 203n21; Juana at, 167–68; Otavaleños at, 165–68; Ricardo at, 166, 168 New York City visit, 3, 8, 69, 70; arrival for, 68; articles about, 70–71, 188n3; criticism of, 195n22; honors during, 68–69; mission of, 65, 71; Plaza Lasso for, 64–65; pride about, 65–66; role

index during, 69–70; strategy of, 64; without White House, 8, 70, 188n3, 195n21 Nico, Taita, 94 North, Liisa, 64 nueva generación (new generation), 12 Obama, Barack, 206n3 obrajes (textile sweatshop), 54 On Certain Phases of Poor-Relief in the City of New York (Parsons, E.), 39 The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Menocal), 205n26 Ortiz, Fernando, 16 Otavaleñas (women), 191n5; in marketplace, 10, 137, 146–47, 169; networks of, 14–15; shared values for, 22; social transformations for, 19. See also specific women Otavaleños: clothing of, 7, 9, 125, 154–55, 168, 187n2; exploitation of, 57, 141, 143, 169–70, 178, 193n4; gender among, 29–31; hair styles of, 9, 187n2; location of, 9, 188n6; to Madrid Exhibition, 57–58, 193n4; as “model” indigenous, 57–58, 64, 71, 192n5, 195n22; as “new people,” 62–63; at New York City ethnic street fair, 165– 68; political leaders, 9; population of, 188n5; position of, 12–13; professions of, 9–10; resilience of, 11, 12–13; Sumak Kawsay from, 185; the term, 188n5; types of, 60–61, 194n13. See also specific Otavalo citizens Otavalo: book about, 62–63; colonial, 53–55; colonial reforms in, 54–55; development in, 183; geography of, 111; globalization of, 59–64, 63, 193nn7–10, 194nn11–15; Incas in, 53; political-geographical unit of, 188n6; pre-Hispanic, 52–53; racism in, 21, 126; recent trip to, 185–86; Spanish occupation of, 53–55; target of, 64; yanaperos in, 54 “Otavalo y Punto” (Otavalo, Period), 172–73, 175 Pachamama (mother of the cosmos), 15, 138; human rights and, 185 Panama, 68 Panama, Gregorio, 66, 120

229

Panama, Luz María, 66 Pan American Highway, 44, 148, 192n16 Parsons, Elsie Clews, 40, 42, 98, 191n9; for author, 2–3; background of, 34, 36–38; for birth control, 41, 192n13; Catholic Church in, 99; continuation from, 14, 190n14; education of, 39–40; ethnic studies, 34–38, 43, 191nn8–10; family of, 39; feminist framework for, 37–38, 47–48; fieldwork of, 30, 32–35, 44–46, 50, 80–82, 85–87, 99, 102, 109, 116, 119, 132, 140, 144, 178, 187n2, 191n6, 196n6, 196n8, 197n12, 197n17, 198n23, 198nn20–21, 199n5, 199nn24–25; finances of, 43, 192n14; on gender, 37; literature on, 37; Rosa compared to, 3, 36; shamans and, 102, 198n21, 198n23, 199nn24–25; templates from, 2, 15, 35, 37, 47; for trial marriage, 40–41; against Victorianism, 37–38; on water spirits, 198n20; work of, 40–44, 47–48, 73 Parsons, Herbert, 40–41, 42 parvas (organic silos), 130, 130–31, 131 Paula, 138–39; Day of the Dead and, 133–34 Paulson, Susan, 22 Peace Corps, 148 Peguche, 116–17, 117, 121, 162; bus rides in, 6; foreigners in, 29; history of, 76–77; after independence, 55; interculturalism in, 45–46; landowners in, 44; looms in, 44; obrajes in, 54; residential segregation in, 44–45; 60+ year update on, 14–15, 191nn13–14; textile factory in, 55; whites in, 44–45; women’s work in, 30. See also agriculture Peguche (Parsons, E.), 33, 36, 44, 47–48, 98, 191n9 Peru: Guano Era of, 192n2; potatoes in, 199n4; women in, 32 physical environment: agriculture, 111–12, 116, 121–22, 158–59; connectedness with, 78–79; mountains in, 77, 77–78, 82, 84–88, 196n3, 196n8; reciprocity with, 77–80, 138; for spirituality and health, 82; symbolism in, 79 Pizarro, 204n25 Plan Colombia, 202n13; protest against, 157–58 Plaza, Leonidas, 27

230

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Plaza de Ponchos, 10, 142, 145, 146; assistance for, 72, 148; description of, 141; Marta at, 150; for networks, 177 Plaza Lasso, Galo, 3, 51; for assimilation, 61–62; for Ecuador, 50–52, 51, 192n1; friendship with, 50, 67; for New York City visit, 64–65 potatoes, 115, 116, 199n4 Pratt, Mary, 15–16 preparada (preparation, savvy, intelligence), 67, 195n20 Prieto, Mercedes, 65, 72, 193n10 Pueblo Indian Religion (Parson, E.), 43 Punyaro (Rubio Orbe), 60 quality of life, 64, 195n17 race: culture and, 33, 35; ethnicity, 12, 21, 173. See also specific races racism: huasipungo and, 56; institutionalized, 13, 56; in Otavalo, 21, 126 Rafael, Don, 104–5 rainbow (cuichi), 91, 92, 197n17 Rappaport, Joanne, 190n15, 204n25 reciprocity: importance in social and spiritual networks, 46, 61, 73, 103, 114, 119; with physical environment, 77–80, 138. See also interculturalism Reichard, Gladys, 35, 43 religion: Catholic Church, 32–33, 99; Christianity, 58, 93, 100–102, 198n22; hybrid, 100–102, 198n22; Kichwa belief systems, 4, 15, 82–83, 114, 185; Mormon Church, 100–102, 198n22; spirituality and social spheres for, 99–100. See also spirituality and health Ricardo, 166, 168 Rights of Nature/Pachamama, 4, 185 Rights to Freedom of Expression, 205n5 ritual kin, 131, 201n16 rituals, 136; Day of the Dead, 132–34, 133, 135; food and, 138–39; for links, 134; mingas, 45–46, 119, 130–32, 192n18; music and, 136; of Rosario, 96–98; wedding (traditional), 26–27, 127. See also shaman rituals; specific rituals Roldós, Jaime, 148 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 60, 193n10 Rosa, Mamá (Rosa Lema, Rosita): acculturation for, 35, 46, 50; appearance of, 6–7, 8, 17; business acumen of,

144; Catholic Church and, 32–33, 99; childhood of, 23, 25–26; children of, 8, 27, 45, 69, 103, 105, 109, 119–20, 188n4, 200n8; Christianity and, 100– 102, 198n22; as cultural ambassador, 49, 52; daily routine of, 8; distinction of, 45–46; diviner for, 104–5; father of, 23, 25–27, 190n2; food and, 109, 118–20, 120, 138; globalization and, 23–24; grandson’s marriage for, 104–5; health in old age, 103–4; home of, 28, 119–20, 120; illnesses of, 46–47, 80–82, 103–4; immodesty of, 7–8, 25, 29, 49–50, 66–70, 98–100; as “Indian Princess,” 7, 70, 73; interculturalism for, 16, 18, 45, 47–48, 65; languages of, 25; last visit with, 179–82, 181; marriage of, 26–28; medicines for, 104, 199n27; meeting, 6–7; mental clarity of, 25–26, 144; minga and, 45–46; networks of, 7, 16, 24, 27, 29, 45–48, 50, 65–66, 69, 73, 82, 102–3, 119–20; parents of, 23, 25; Parsons, E., compared to, 3, 36; personal history of, 2; power of, 45–46, 69–70, 72–73, 99–100; preparada of, 67, 195n20; Princess of the Indias (in New York City), 7, 68, 70, 73, 195n22; respect for, 7, 99–100, 180; Samuel and, 32–33; shaman and, 198n21; on spirituality and health, 98–106; weaving and, 23, 66, 195n22; wedding of, 26–27; whites with, 45–46; work of, 23, 25, 27, 66–67. See also New York City visit; Parsons, Elsie Clews Rosario, Mamá: home of, 95; ritual of, 96–98; as shaman, 94–98; symbolism from, 107–8 Rosenberg, Rosalind, 36 Rosita. See Rosa, Mamá Rouch, Jean, 190n13 Royce, Anya, 107–8 Rubio Orbe, Gonzalo, 60, 72 Ruis, Daniel, 68 Rumiñahui, 173–75, 174, 204n25 Rumiñahui Park, 172–73 running water, 88, 197n16 sacred rocks, 89–90 Sáenz, Moises, 193n10 Salomon, Frank, 53 Samuel (Father), 32–33 San Félix, Álvaro, 54

index sanjuanitos (musical form), 127, 200n12 San Pedro celebration, 127, 198n20 Schrueder, Jan, 72 Selverston-Scher, Melina, 195n1, 200n14 Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path movement), 189n8 servants, 33, 191n6 shaman rituals: curing in, 97–98, 102, 198n23, 199nn24–25; diagnosis from, 97; mountain spirits in, 97; payment for, 96–97; rocks in, 96, 102; spirit removal in, 98, 198n21; symbolism in, 106–7 shamans, 88, 102, 197n14; Christianity and, 93; diviner, 104–5; for Gladis, 94–98; Parsons, E., and, 102, 198n21, 198n23, 199nn24–25; Rosa and, 198n21; Rosario as, 94–98 Shuar, 206n4 social capital, 99; in spirituality and health, 83–84 Songhay, 190n13 Spain, 168; antiglobalization protests in, 157–58; Charijayac in, 172–74; marketplace in, 168–72; migration to, 159, 161–64, 203n20 Spanish conquest, women and, 30, 190n3 spirits: Chuso Longo, 85–87, 197nn11– 13; flowers and, 151; mermaids and mermen, 91, 198n18; of mountains, 93, 97; musicians and, 91, 198n19; of rainbows, 91, 92, 197n17; in ravines, 91–92; Virgin related to, 128–29; water, 90–91, 197n17, 198nn18–20 spirituality: of agriculture, 113–14; mountain deities (importance of), 82, 85, 88; social spheres and, 99–100 spirituality and health, 120, 124–26; church and, 81–82, 196n6; for control, 106; diviner for, 104–5; dreams about, 89–90; envy/evil eye and, 83–84; espanto and, 47, 81, 83; folktales about, 84–88, 197nn10–11; Gladis on, 93–98; gossip in, 84, 196n9; interpretations on, 92–93, 106–8; María on, 88–90; Marta on, 90–93, 106, 197n17, 198nn18–19; networks for, 82; Rosa on, 98–106. See also Day of the Dead; physical environment; shamans Stein, Gertrude, 38 Stephen, Lynn, 12 Stern, Peter A., 189n8 Steward, Julian, 34, 191n8

231

Stoller, Paul, 110, 190n13 Sumak Kawsay (Well-Being), 185 symbolism: of food, 109–11, 132–35, 133, 135, 137–38; for Gladis, 107–8; for Luz, 129; for María, 107; for Marta, 106; in physical environment, 79; from Rosario, 107–8; in shaman rituals, 106–7; of staff, 197n13 Taft, William, 41 taita (tai’ta) (father), 94, 196n3 Taita Imbabura, 77, 77–78, 82, 196n3; folktales about, 84–87, 196n8, 197n10, 197n13, 200n10; God and, 101–2; Mamá Cotacachi and, 84–85, 197n10, 200n10 teachers, 161, 203n18 Terán, Misías, 102, 198n21, 198n23 textile industry, 67; in England, 55, 59; obrajes for, 54; tweeds, 59, 66, 193n7; zigzag for, 66, 195n18 topography, 111–12, 189n9. See also mountains tourism, 63, 67; cottage industries for, 65, 71, 144, 201n2; economics and, 148, 165; ethnicity and, 50, 52, 64–72, 141– 43, 148; globalism and, 148, 202n6; U.S. World’s Fairs and, 193n4. See also marketplaces; New York City ethnic street fair; New York City visit traditions, 30, 138–39; changes in, 21; of clothing, 7, 9, 187n2; culture and, 18, 21–22; globalization related to, 113–14; justice from, 180–82, 205n1; Pachamama and, 15. See also specific traditions transculturalism, 15–16; of anthropology, 18; of food, 115–16; identity and, 164. See also Isabel transnationalism: for author, 186; identity and, 164, 177–78; interculturalism and, 3; life of, 21; technology for, 186 United Nations, 52; Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, 184, 206n3 United States (U.S.): Ecuador and, 148, 157–58, 192n2, 193n10, 202n6, 202n13, 206n3; immigration in, 204n23; Plan Colombia from, 157–58, 202n13; World’s Fairs in, 193n4 Uribe, F. A., 192n17

232

index

Victorianism, 37–38 Warren, Kay B., 32 Weaver, F. S., 202n6 weaving: gender and, 29–30; obrajes for, 54; Rosa and, 23, 66, 195n22; tweeds for, 59. See also specific weavers Weismantel, Mary, 111, 115–16 whites (blanco-mestizos): in Peguche, 44–45; Rosa with, 45–46 Wibbelsman, Michelle, 189n8 Wilk, Richard, 199n2 women: in anthropology, 191n10; change agents, 35, 47, 146–47, 183–84; contributions of, 15, 17–18; cultural

and social reproduction, 14–15, 32, 35, 45, 146–47; education of, 25, 39–40, 160–61; in Inca census, 30; keepers of tradition in ritual, 89–90, 93, 95–98, 111, 133, 133–34; limitations for, 31; marianismo for, 31; Peguche work for, 30; in Peru, 32; power of, 147, 155, 157; Spanish conquest and, 30, 190n3; traditional skills for, 30. See also Otavaleñas; specific women World’s Fairs, U.S., 193n4 yanaperos (free Indians), 54–55 Zumwalt, Rosemary Levy, 34

D’Amico

Otavalan Women, Ethnicity, and Globalization

Otavalan Women, Ethnicity, and Globalization

Subject isbn 978-0-8263-4991-0

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University of New Mexico Press unmpress.com | 800.249.7737

Linda D’Amico