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Countries / South America

Ecuador

works
28
24 books · 4 films
period covered
1789–1999
language of writing
Spanish

It is the only country in the world named after a geographical abstraction. In 1830, on separating from Greater Colombia, the new republic chose to call itself Ecuador, from the name of the imaginary line that crosses it. The name comes from an expedition: between 1735 and 1744, French academicians had come to measure an arc of meridian in order to know what shape the Earth had, and they had spent nine years in those mountains. A country named itself after a measurement taken by foreigners who had come to verify a hypothesis of Newton's.

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That baptism leaves aside what the country contains. Ecuador is made of three worlds that do not resemble each other: the tropical and mixed-race coast of Guayaquil, the Andean and Quechua-speaking sierra of Quito, and the Shuar and Achuar Amazon. It has an important Afro-Ecuadorian population in the province of Esmeraldas, descended from slaves escaped from a shipwreck in the sixteenth century and long autonomous. Each of those worlds has produced its literature, with its publishers and its journals, and they read one another little.

The dominant form is the social novel, and it exploded in 1930. A group of authors from Guayaquil published that year a collective volume of short stories about the fishermen and the day labourers of the coast, with their speech transcribed as it is and their poverty unarranged, and the scandal was considerable. Jorge Icaza wrote in 1934 the servitude of the indigenous people of the sierra in a brutal novel, then in 1958 the portrait of a mixed-race man who plays at being white and detests himself. Adalberto Ortiz had given in 1943 the first great Afro-Ecuadorian novel. Cinema arrived late, with in 1990 an adaptation of a narrative of the coast.

What awaits the reader is a literature of popular speech, transcribed without correction or glossary, and a constant attention to skin colour. The novel that opens this page takes its title from Quechua, the plot of land a hacienda granted an Indian family in exchange for its labour, and it is the most famous of the indigenist novels.

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A way to begin

The Villagers

Jorge Icaza · 1934

The most famous of the indigenist novels, translated into some forty languages.

The entry See the author

Pushed by his uncle and creditor, an indebted Quito landowner has a road opened across his hacienda, whose timber an American wants to exploit, and puts the Indians to forced labour. Andrés Chiliquinga sees the road advance over the bodies of his people, and the threat grow over the huasipungos, the plots where the families live.

Timeline

  1. 1877–1904FoundationJuan León Mera, Montalvo, Luis A. Martínez. From Romanticism to realism.
  2. 1930–1934The Guayaquil GroupGallegos Lara, Aguilera Malta, Gil Gilbert, De la Cuadra.
  3. 1934–1958IndigenismIcaza describes shame of oneself; the Andean novel finds its subject.
  4. 1969–1982The modern novelAdoum, Ubidia, Alicia Yánez Cossío, Adalberto Ortiz.
  5. 1949–1999Ecuadorian cinemaSantana, then Luzuriaga's La Tigra and Ratas, ratones, rateros.

Reading keys

1Names and kinship
  • The Spanish usage of two surnames applies, and one classifies by the father's name.
  • The Quechua names of the sierra and the Shuar names of the Amazon signal a claimed belonging, while the Afro-Ecuadorian names of Esmeraldas are Spanish.
  • The word chulla designates in Quito a man without a fortune who looks after his appearance, and it gave its title to the country's great novel.
  • Compadrazgo and festival charges, with their obligatory expenditure, structure the Andean communities.
2What is said and unsaid
  • Racism and the system of colour, with its degrees named from white to black, are described with precision by the country's literature.
  • Huasipungo, debt servitude that tied indigenous people to the estates until 1964, is the subject of Ecuador's best-known novel.
  • The conflicts linked to oil in the Amazon and the lawsuits against the companies are a major contemporary subject.
  • The rivalry between Quito and Guayaquil, between the sierra and the coast, organises political life and is expressed by detour.
3Religion and the unseen
  • Catholicism is very much in the majority, with a spectacular colonial baroque in Quito and much-followed patron saints' festivals.
  • The Andean cults survive beneath the saints, with offerings to the earth and healers, the yachak, commonly consulted.
  • The Shuar and the Achuar of the Amazon have their own cosmology, with Arutam, the vision-spirit obtained through a solitary quest, and Nunkui the mother of the garden.
  • The Mama Negra of Latacunga, a festival in which a man plays a black woman on horseback, mixes indigenous, African and Spanish inheritances.
4Colours, rites, mourning, feasts
  • The wake and the rites of the eighth day organise the mourning, with a shared meal.
  • On 2 November, colada morada is eaten with breads in the shape of a swaddled child, and one goes to the cemetery with food.
  • The Inti Raymi of the sierra, in June, and the carnival of Guaranda mark the festive calendar.
  • The poncho, the hat and the hairstyle indicate precisely the community of origin in the sierra, notably at Otavalo.
5Shared references
  • Velasco's History of the Kingdom of Quito, written in 1789, preserves the pre-Inca traditions of the Cañari, including the flood and the surviving brothers.
  • The Ecuadorian popular songs collected by Juan León Mera in 1892 form the Hispanic documented corpus.
  • Arutam and Nunkui, with the Shuar rites, are an Amazonian knowledge that the texts do not translate.
  • Cantuña, the man who tricks the devil to whom he had sold his soul in order to build a forecourt, is the best-known legend of Quito.
6Misreadings to avoid
  • Ecuador is not a small Peru: it has its own languages, its own Amazonian peoples and an important population of African descent.
  • The Otavaleños, often photographed, are a prosperous trading community and not a picturesque relic.
  • The word indio is an insult in the country, and the texts that use it do so in order to quote it.
  • The coast and the sierra have two distinct literatures, two forms of speech and two imaginations, and confusing them erases the essential.

Tales and mythologies 1

  • ChronicleHistoria del Reino de QuitoJuan de Velasco · 1789not translated into EnglishThe pre-Inca kingdom of Quito and its dynasties, recounted by a Jesuit exiled in Italy and become an account of the origins of Ecuador.Literature

Available in English 8

The books from this country that can be read in English, in the original or in translation.

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