Saraguro people

Last updated

Saraguro
Town and Kichwa people
Ecuador location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Saraguro
Location in Ecuador
Coordinates: 3°37′20″S79°14′23″W / 3.62222°S 79.23972°W / -3.62222; -79.23972
Elevation
2,518 m (8,261 ft)
Time zone UTC-
Climate Cfb
Saraguro people
Indigenous and non-Indigenous Saraguro youth and their professor..jpg
Total population
c.30 thousand
Regions with significant populations
Flag of Ecuador.svg  Ecuador   30,183 (2010) [1]
diaspora: 
Flag of the United States.svg  United States ?
Flag of Spain.svg  Spain ?
Languages
Kichwa, Spanish
Religion
Andean Kichwa Cosmovision
Christianity

The Saraguro is a people of the Kichwa nation most of whom live in Saraguro Canton in the Loja Province of Ecuador. Although most now speak Spanish, Runashimi or Kichwa, a Quechua dialect, is also spoken and language revitalization efforts are being implemented. [2] [3] Likewise, the Saraguro have retained much of their land, customs and traditional dress. According to the INEC's 2010 population census, the total population of Saraguro canton is 30,183, [4] but that total includes both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous people living in Saraguro.

Contents

The Saraguro may be the descendants of people re-settled from distant regions in the Inca Empire in the 15th and early 16th century.

Origins

A Saraguro woman wearing a traditional dress. Saraguro woman.jpg
A Saraguro woman wearing a traditional dress.

In the 1460s the Inca empire conquered the Saraguro area. The pre-Inca people may have been the barely-known Palta or the Cañari. The ancestors of the modern-day Saraguro people, according to oral traditions, were moved to Saraguro by the Incas from other areas, possibly the Colla or other people from the Lake Titicaca and Cuzco regions. The Incas had a policy of forcibly moving people from one region of the empire to another, thereby diversifying the population and dispersing possible opposition to their rule. The resettlement policy was called mitma. The numbers resettled were large, estimated to be up to 80 percent of the population of some provinces. [5] One Spanish document says that the ancestors of present-day Saraguros were elite soldiers in the Inca army. This statement is bolstered by the fact that the Saraguros live along the Inca road or Kapak Ñan that stretched from Cuzco to Tumebamba (the northern capital of the Incas), and onward to Quito and thus occupied an important link for Inca communications and control of the empire. The town of Saraguro, however, seems to have been founded by the Spanish rather than the Incas although a number of Inca ruins are in the nearby area. [6]

Whatever the facts about their origins. Saraguro in the 20th century celebrate their Inca heritage. In a debunked theory, some authors ascribe the black clothing typical of the Saraguro as a sign of mourning for the death of the Inca Emperor Atahualpa. Schools have been named after Inca emperors, Inca customs recreated, Inca architecture copied, and efforts made to preserve the Kichwa language. [7] Historical records and oral traditions also attribute the traditional black and white colors of their clothing to ceremony and nobility, which were the meanings given by the Incas according to chronicler Cieza de León and recounted by the Saraguro. Being descendants of the elite soldiers of the Inca army, they retained that symbolism as well as the male population retained their long-braided hair, which was another marker of nobility among the Incas. Black as a sign of mourning is not part of the Inca symbolism nor among the Saraguros but has been adopted, especially by the young generations. Likewise, they attribute the symbolic concepts of their clothing to a representation of the Curiquingue (carunculated caracara), which has black and white feathers and was a symbolic bird of the Inca royalty. The Curiquingue inhabits the Saraguro parish and páramos and its symbols represented in costumes continue to be present in the Kapak Raymi (the Great Celebration) celebrations in Saraguro. [8]

Carunculated Caracara Carunculated Caracara.jpg
Carunculated Caracara

The Saraguros have retained control over their lands more successfully than many of the Andean subjects of Spanish colonization and contemporary colonialism [9] [10] of the independent country of Ecuador. Part of this may be due to their initial hostility to the Spanish and the Indigenous people who collaborated with them. More importantly, however, the Saraguros were required by the Spanish to maintain an important tambo (inn or way-station) along a major communication route. They successfully argued that the operation and maintenance of the tambo required that they retain their land and its resources. They continued to manage the tambo until the 1940s when a motor road reached the area. [11]

Clothing of the saraguros

For women:

For men

Contemporary Saraguros

Most of the Saraguros live at intermediate elevations in the Andes between 1,800 metres (5,900 ft) and 2,800 metres (9,200 ft). Traditionally they are farmers and livestock herders. A shortage of land in their homeland has led many to migrate eastward into the Zamora-Chinchipe Province of Ecuador. [12] Others have migrated to Europe and the United States. Many contemporary Saraguros are doctors, architects, engineers, musicians, photographers, construction workers, artisans, farmers, entrepreneurs, politicians, teachers, lawyers, cooks, activists. And others continue to do agro-pastoralist activities while holding professional careers or combine more than one occupation. While having a distinctive identity, they are engaged in the consumer society and technology as much as most of the Ecuadorian society is. Issues such as teenage pregnancy, environmental degradation, deforestation, discrimination, racism, discontinuation of traditions are also present across the Saraguro territory. [13] [14]

Saraguro girl taking a selfie with the Wikis during a Kapak Raymi celebration in December 2017 Selfie with the Wikis.jpg
Saraguro girl taking a selfie with the Wikis during a Kapak Raymi celebration in December 2017

Contemporary Activism

Saraguro activists and intellectuals are fighting for food sovereignty, decolonization, water protection, against polluting mining, Indigenous resurgence, legal pluralism, Indigenous Justice and autonomy from the Ecuadorian State. [14] [15]

500 Years of Resistance 500 Years of Resistance.jpg
500 Years of Resistance

Saraguro Political Leaders and Intellectuals

Luis Macas

Macas has honorary university degrees in anthropology, linguistics and jurisprudence. He was one of the founders of the CONAIE and of the Pachakutik Movement, and was member of the National Congress of Ecuador.

Sisa Pacari Bacacela Gualan [16]

She has served as Secretary for Bilingual Education in the Unión Nacional Educadores del Ecuador. She has authored several books, among them:

Ecuador Chinchasuyupi Quichuacunapac Ñaupa Rimai = Literatura Indígena En Los Andes Del Sur Del Ecuador (Indigenous Literature in the Southern Andes of Ecuador)

Cultura espiritual:Una resistencia de los Saraguros en la actualidad: Las Ofrendas Florales (Spiritual Culture: A Contemporary Saraguro Resistance: The Flowers Offering)

El Quinto Gobernador de los Saraguros: Historia Social y Organizativa (The Fifth Governor of the Saraguros: Social and Organizational History)

Article in English:

Bilingual and Intercultural Education, Perspectives and Current Reality [15]

Inti Cartuche Vacacela

He is a sociologist and has written several academic articles on interculturality and plurinationality. [17]

Luis Fernando Sarango Macas

Lawyer at Republic of Ecuador's Courts and Tribunals, Universidad Nacional de Loja. Diploma in Intercultural Research, Universidad Central del Ecuador. Master in University Teaching, Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaraguense URACCAN, Nicaragua. PhD in Jurisprudence, Universidad Nacional de Loja. He belongs to the Kichwa Saraguro Indigenous People, Province of Loja - Ecuador. Leader of Education at the Coordination of Organizations of the Kichwa Saraguro People CORPUKIS - ECUARUNARI - CONAIE. Pushak / Rector of the Pluriversity "Amawtay Wasi", academic space of education of the Peoples and Nationalities of Ecuador. Rector of Universidad Comunitaria Intercultural de las Nacionalidades y Pueblos Indigenas "Amawtay Wasi", 2013 - 2015. First Coordinator of the Network of Indigenous, Intercultural and Community Universities of Abya Yala RUIICAY, 2008–2010. President of the Academic Council of the Universidad Indigena Intercultural UII-FILAC in La Paz, Bolivia. Author of the book: "The Education Paradigm of Abya Yala." [18]

Carmen Lozano

Carmen is a member of the Saraguro People. She has been a leader of his people and also of important Indigenous, national and international organizations. She has organized peaceful marches for the defense of water and territories threatened by resources exploitation in southern Ecuador. She has promoted the exercise of Indigenous justice to harmonize the balance of life within the community. [19]

“As ancestral peoples with their own autonomy, we do not accept anyone, that no government or company takes away our right to life” [20]

Salvador Quishpe

Salvador Quishpe Lozano (Zamora, March 15, 1971), is an Ecuadorian politician, a Pachakutik militant and current prefect of Zamora Chinchipe; during his tenure he has become a figure of the Indigenous movement for his strong opposition to the policies of the presidency of Rafael Correa, becoming a pre-candidate of his party for the presidential election in 2017.

Abel Sarango

He is the current Mayor of Saraguro canton and is the first Indigenous person occupying that position despite Saraguro being a district with the highest Indigenous population in the Southern region of Ecuador. [21]

Music

Young Saraguro musicians break from tradition not only to index their aspirations to do something with their lives other than what tradition and stereotypes dictate for them, but also to index their real opportunities to do so as Saraguros. With greater participation in formal education and increased occupational diversity and mobility, young, cosmopolitan Saraguro musicians in the southern highlands of Ecuador are working to reconstitute their Saraguro Kichwa identity in a creative and selective process by which they discard, amplify, and reinvent the aspects of what they perceive to be authentic Saraguro musical culture. [22] They also have found other ways of expressing themselves that are compatible with their self-identification as Indigenous and do not strictly rely on ties to an Inkaic past, or even to a particular expression of Indigeneity. Rather, the tastes and ambitions of many Saraguro youth point to an alternative conceptualization of Saraguro identity that is both firmly rooted in the "modern" and respectful of a long tradition of Indigeneity. A large number of (primarily male) Saraguro youth affiliate themselves with a subculture of heavy metal music. They listen to nation and international metal bands. Some of them play in local bands and organize local concerts. [14]

Saraguro metal band Saraguro metal band.jpg
Saraguro metal band

Film

The film Saraguro: Historia Escrita con Sangre Inka (2010) (Saraguro: A History Written with Inka Blood) traces the roots of the origins of the Saraguro people by combining anthropological data with Inkan cosmovision in consultation with the Saraguro people. [23]

External Sources

These are external sources about the Saraguro people and geography as well as institutions where Saraguro intellectuals are or have contributed with their knowledge:

Amawtay Wasi Pluriversity (Pluriversidad Amawtay Wasi)

I.C.C.I (Instituto Científico de Culturas Indígenas--Scientific Institute of Indigenous Cultures)

Saraguro.org

Behind scenes--Saraguro: Historia Escrita con Sangre Inka

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Demographics of Ecuador</span> Citizens of Ecuador

Demographic features of the population of Ecuador include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quechuan languages</span> Language family of the Andes in South America

Quechua, usually called Runasimi in Quechuan languages, is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes. Derived from a common ancestral language, it is the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with an estimated 8–10 million speakers as of 2004. Approximately 25% of Peruvians speak a Quechuan language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Huayna Capac</span> Sapa Inca of the Inca Empire

Huayna Capac was the third Sapa Inca of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire. He was the son of and successor to Tupaq Inka Yupanki., the sixth Sapa Inca of the Hanan dynasty, and eleventh of the Inca civilization. He was born in Tumipampa and tutored to become Sapa Inca from a young age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuenca, Ecuador</span> City in Azuay, Ecuador

Santa Ana de los Cuatro Ríos de Cuenca, commonly referred to as Cuenca, is the capital and largest city of the Azuay Province of Ecuador. Cuenca is located in the highlands of Ecuador at about 2,560 metres above sea level, with an urban population of approximately 329,928 and 661,685 inhabitants in the larger metropolitan area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">El Oro Province</span> Province of Ecuador

El Oro is the southernmost of Ecuador's coastal provinces. It was named for its historically important gold production. Today it is one of the world's major exporters of bananas. The capital is Machala.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zamora-Chinchipe Province</span> Province of Ecuador

Zamora Chinchipe, Province of Zamora Chinchipe is a province of the Republic of Ecuador, located at the southeastern end of the Amazon Basin, which shares borders with the Ecuadorian provinces of Azuay and Morona Santiago to the north, Loja and Azuay to the west, and with Peru to the east and south. The province comprises an area of approximately 10,456 km² and is covered with a uniquely mountainous topography which markedly distinguishes it from the surrounding Amazonian provinces. Zamora-Chinchipe is characterized and largely identified by its mining industry; indigenous ethnic groups with a rich archaeological legacy; its biodiversity; and its niche and tourist attractions, which include a number of waterfalls well-noted for their beauty. The province takes its name from the bureaucratic fusion of the Zamora and Chinchipe cantons. The provincial capital is the city of Zamora.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quechua people</span> Ethnic group indigenous to Peru

Quechua people or Quichua people may refer to any of the indigenous peoples of South America who speak the Quechua languages, which originated among the Indigenous people of Peru. Although most Quechua speakers are native to Peru, there are some significant populations in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kichwa language</span> Quechuan language of Ecuador and Colombia

Kichwa is a Quechuan language that includes all Quechua varieties of Ecuador and Colombia (Inga), as well as extensions into Peru. It has an estimated half million speakers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media Lengua</span> Mixed Kichwa–Spanish language of Ecuador

Media Lengua, also known as Chaupi-shimiChaupi-lengua, Chaupi-Quichua, Quichuañol, Chapu-shimi or llanga-shimi, is a mixed language with Spanish vocabulary and Kichwa grammar, most conspicuously in its morphology. In terms of vocabulary, almost all lexemes (89%), including core vocabulary, are of Spanish origin and appear to conform to Kichwa phonotactics. Media Lengua is one of the few widely acknowledged examples of a "bilingual mixed language" in both the conventional and narrow linguistic sense because of its split between roots and suffixes. Such extreme and systematic borrowing is only rarely attested, and Media Lengua is not typically described as a variety of either Kichwa or Spanish. Arends et al., list two languages subsumed under the name Media Lengua: Salcedo Media Lengua and Media Lengua of Saraguro. The northern variety of Media Lengua, found in the province of Imbabura, is commonly referred to as Imbabura Media Lengua and more specifically, the dialect varieties within the province are known as Pijal Media Lengua and Angla Media Lengua.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cordillera del Cóndor</span> Mountain range in western South America, part of the Ecuador-Peru Border

The Cordillera del Cóndor is a mountain range in the eastern Andes that is shared by and part of the international border between Ecuador and Peru.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indigenous peoples in Ecuador</span> Indigenous peoples of Ecuador

Indigenous peoples in Ecuador, or Native Ecuadorians, are the groups of people who were present in what became Ecuador before the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The term also includes their descendants from the time of the Spanish conquest to the present. Their history, which encompasses the last 11,000 years, reaches into the present; 25 percent of Ecuador's population is of indigenous heritage, while another 55-65 percent are Mestizos of mixed indigenous and European heritage. Genetic analysis indicates that Ecuadorian Mestizos are of predominantly indigenous ancestry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cañari</span> Native tribe in Ecuador

The Cañari are an indigenous ethnic group traditionally inhabiting the territory of the modern provinces of Azuay and Cañar in Ecuador. They are descended from the independent pre-Columbian tribal confederation of the same name. The historic people are particularly noted for their resistance against the Inca Empire. Eventually conquered by the Inca in the early 16th century shortly before the arrival of the Spanish, the Cañari later allied with the Spanish against the Inca. Today, the population of the Cañari, who include many mestizos, numbers in the thousands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amazonian Kichwas</span> Group of people indigenous to the Ecuadorian Amazon

Amazonian Kichwas are a grouping of indigenous Kichwa peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon, with minor groups across the borders of Colombia and Peru. Amazonian Kichwas consists of different ethnic peoples, including Napo Kichwa and Canelos Kichwa. There are approximately 419 organized communities of the Amazonian Kichwas. The basic socio-political unit is the ayllu. The ayllus in turn constitute territorial clans, based on common ancestry. Unlike other subgroups, the Napo Kichwa maintain less ethnic duality of acculturated natives or Christians.

ECUARUNARI, also known as Confederation of Peoples of Kichwa Nationality is the organization of indigenous peoples of Kichwa nationality in the Ecuadorian central mountain region, founded in 1972.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nina Pacari</span> Kichwa politician, lawyer and indigenous leader

Nina Pacari, born as María Estela Vega Conejo is a Kichwa politician, lawyer and indigenous leader from Ecuador.

Cañar or Cañari is a poorly attested extinct language of the Marañón River basin in Ecuador which is difficult to classify, apart from being apparently related to Puruhá, though it may have been Chimuan or Barbacoan. It was the original language of the Cañari people before its replacement by Kichwa and later Spanish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cojitambo</span>

Cojitambo is an Inca and pre-Inca archaeological ruin, a popular rock climbing site, and a small village west of Azogues, capital of Canar province of Ecuador.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saraguro</span> Capital of Saraguro Canton in Loja Province, Ecuador

Saraguro is the capital of Saraguro Canton in Loja Province, Ecuador. Saraguro parish has an area of 74.14 square kilometres (74,140,000 m2). The population of the parish increased from 7,346 in 2001 to 9,045 in 2010. Saraguro town had a population of 3,124 in 2001 and 4,031 in 2010 and has an elevation of 2,719 metres (8,921 ft).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blanca Chancoso</span> Ecuadorian indigenous leader (born 1955)

María Blanca Chancoso Sánchez is an Ecuadorian educator and indigenous leader of the Otavalo people.

Eduardo Mendúa Vargas was an Ecuadorian indigenous leader, environmentalist, and land rights activist from the indigenous Cofán community who campaigned against oil drilling in Dureno, a Cofán village in Sucumbíos Province within the Amazon basin. On 26 February 2023, Mendúa was shot dead outside his home.

References

  1. "Fasículo Provincial Loja" (PDF). INEC. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
  2. King, Kendall (2001). Language revitalization processes and prospects: Quichua in the Ecuadorian Andes. Clevedon, UK;Buffalo, N.Y: Multilingual Matters LTD. pp. 185–190. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  3. Martinez, M; Paladines, F; Yaguache, J (2008). "Relación medio-comunidad a través del estudio del programa kawsaypura yachanakushun en el cantón Saraguro". Palabra Clave. 11 (1): 49–50. Retrieved 16 March 2018.
  4. "Fasículo Provincial Loja" (PDF). INEC. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
  5. Ogburn, Dennis J. (nd), "Incas Past and Present: Archaeology and the Indigenous Saraguros of Southern Ecuador", Stanford Journal of Archaeology, https://web.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/journal/07Ogburn.pdf, accessed 24 Mar 2017
  6. Belote, Jim and Belote, Linda (2004), "The Incas in the Saraguro Region", http://www.saraguro.org/archinka.htm, accessed 24 Mar 2017; Ogburn (nd), pp. 141-143
  7. Ogburn (nd), pp. 142-149
  8. Bacacela Gualán, Sisa Pacari (2010). La Cultura espiritual: una resistencia de los Saraguros en la actualidad. Las ofrendas florales (1 ed.). Ecuador: Cuenca: Grafisum Cia. Ltda. pp. 30–33.
  9. Oviedo Freire, Atawallpa (27 August 2014). "El colonialismo sigue intacto". La Linea de Fuego. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
  10. Martinez, Carmen (2016). "Academic freedom and Indigenous peoples in Ecuador" (PDF). LasaForum. 47 (2): 37–40. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
  11. Belote, Jim and Belote, Linda S. (1999), "The Saraguros, 1962-1997: A Very Brief Overview", http://www.saraguro.org/overview.htm, accessed 24 Mar 2017
  12. Belote and Belote (1999)
  13. Syring, David (2014). "The Blended Life in a Transnational World". With the Saraguros: The blended life in a transnational world. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 37–65. doi:10.7560/760936. ISBN   9780292760936. JSTOR   10.7560/760936.
  14. 1 2 3 Stanger, James (2011). Comuneros: Community and Indigeneity in Saraguro, Ecuador. pp. 84–113. ProQuest   926963127.
  15. 1 2 Bacacela Gualan, Sisa Pacari (2013). "Bilingual and Intercultural Education, Perspectives and Current Reality". Intercambio. 4.
  16. Bacacela, Sisa (15 May 2022). "Mi historia es un proceso que no tiene principio ni fin…". spacari.blogspot.ca (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 10 August 2019. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
  17. "Inti Cartuche Vacacela". Google Scholar. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
  18. "Luis Fernando Sarango" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 13 March 2018. Retrieved 13 June 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  19. Caron, Mona (13 March 2018). "las Mujeres/The Women". MONA.
  20. Lozano, Carmen. "Carmen Lozano del pueblo Kichwa, Saraguro, Ecuador". Alianza MILPA. Retrieved 17 March 2018.
  21. La Hora, Diario. "Abel Sarango, el primer alcalde indígena en Saraguro". La Hora. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  22. Volinsky, N (2003). "Standing up: Violin performance technique and ethnic resurgence in Saraguro, Ecuador". Visual Anthropology. 16 (2–3): 315–340. doi:10.1080/08949460310020. S2CID   143842389.
  23. El Mercurio, AGN. "Saraguro: historia con sangre Inka". Diario el Mercurio. Retrieved 12 March 2018.