The Ecuador Reader

The Ecuador Reader

History, Culture, Politics

  • Author: de la Torre, Carlos; Striffler, Steve; Kirk, Robin; Starn, Orin
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • Serie: The Latin America Readers
  • ISBN: 9780822343523
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822390114
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2009
  • Month: January
  • Pages: 448
  • DDC: 986.6
  • Language: English
Encompassing Amazonian rainforests, Andean peaks, coastal lowlands, and the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador’s geography is notably diverse. So too are its history, culture, and politics, all of which are examined from many perspectives in The Ecuador Reader. Spanning the years before the arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s to the present, this rich anthology addresses colonialism, independence, the nation’s integration into the world economy, and its tumultuous twentieth century. Interspersed among forty-eight written selections are more than three dozen images.

The voices and creations of Ecuadorian politicians, writers, artists, scholars, activists, and journalists fill the Reader, from José María Velasco Ibarra, the nation’s ultimate populist and five-time president, to Pancho Jaime, a political satirist; from Julio Jaramillo, a popular twentieth-century singer, to anonymous indigenous women artists who produced ceramics in the 1500s; and from the poems of Afro-Ecuadorians, to the fiction of the vanguardist Pablo Palacio, to a recipe for traditional Quiteño-style shrimp. The Reader includes an interview with Nina Pacari, the first indigenous woman elected to Ecuador’s national assembly, and a reflection on how to balance tourism with the protection of the Galápagos Islands’ magnificent ecosystem. Complementing selections by Ecuadorians, many never published in English, are samples of some of the best writing on Ecuador by outsiders, including an account of how an indigenous group with non-Inca origins came to see themselves as definitively Incan, an exploration of the fascination with the Andes from the 1700s to the present, chronicles of the less-than-exemplary behavior of U.S. corporations in Ecuador, an examination of Ecuadorians’ overseas migration, and a look at the controversy surrounding the selection of the first black Miss Ecuador.

  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • I. Conquest and Colonial Rule
    • Ecuador’s Pre-Columbian Past
    • Ancestors, Grave Robbers, and the Possible Antecedents of Cañari “Inca-ism”
    • Building a Life in Colonial Quito: José Jaime Ortiz, Architect and Entrepreneur
    • Finding Freedom: Slavery in Colonial Ecuador
    • A Battle of Wills: Inventing Chiefly Legitimacy in the Colonial North Andes
    • Manuela Sáenz: Americana or Quiteña?
    • The State, Missionaries, and Native Consciousness in the Upper Amazon, 1767–1896
  • II. A New Nation
    • The Construction of a Ventriloquist’s Image: Liberal Discourse and the “Miserable Indian Race” in the Late Nineteenth Century
    • Four Years among the Ecuadorians
    • Selection from Juan Montalvo (1832–1889)
    • Railway and Nation in Liberal Ecuador
    • Guayaquil and Coastal Ecuador during the Cacao Era
    • Mountaineering on the Equator: A Historical Perspective
  • III. The Rise of the Popular
    • Portrait of a People
    • You Are Not My President
    • The Wonderland
    • Patrón and Peon on an Andean Hacienda
    • The Man Who Was Kicked to Death
    • The Indian’s Cabin
    • “Heroic Pueblo of Guayaquil”
  • IV. Global Currents
    • Two Experiments in Education for Democracy
    • The Origins of the Ecuadorian Left
    • The Progressive Catholic Church and the Indigenous Movement in Ecuador
    • Man of Ashes
    • Men of the Rails and of the Sea
    • Creolization and African Diaspora Cultures: The Case of the Afro-Esmeraldian Décimas
    • Julio Jaramillo and Music as Identity
    • The United Fruit Company’s Legacy in Ecuador
    • The Panama Hat Trail
    • Deforestation in Ecuador
    • Civilization and Barbarism
    • Deinstitutionalized Democracy
  • V. Domination and Struggle
    • Nina Pacari, an Interview
    • Women’s Movements in Twentieth-Century Ecuador
    • The Galápagos: Environmental Pressures and Social Opportunities
    • Emerald Freedom: “With Pride in the Face of the Sun”
    • Suing Chevron Texaco
    • Arts of Amazonian and Andean Women
  • VI. Cultures and Identities Redefined
    • National Identity and the First Black Miss Ecuador (1995–96)
    • Ecuadorian International Migration
    • Cities of Women
    • Traditional Foods of Ecuador
    • Globalization from Below and The Political Turn among Otavalo’s Merchant Artisans
    • Pancho Jaime
    • Big Angel, My Love
    • Nature and Humanity through Poetry
    • “Simple People”
    • The Writings of Iván Oñate
  • Suggestions for Further Reading
  • Acknowledgment of Copyrights
  • Index

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