Alli puncha! ¡Buenos días con todos! Good morning!
Today's journal will focus on indigenous life and culture in Ecuador. A quick disclaimer--this information is based on my conversations with people during my time in Ecuador, visits to museums and personal research and is true to the best of my knowledge, but I am by no means an expert!
What is the history behind Ecuador's indigenous populations?
Before the arrival of the Incas in 1463, Ecuador was populated by numerous indigenous groups, diverse in both language and culture. The Incas did not conquer the entirety of modern-day Ecuador's indigenous groups and sometimes treated the people they controlled with cruelty. The Spanish first arrived in the territory in the early 1500s, and their mistreatment of local populations and the new diseases they introduced to the South American continent caused extreme harm to indigenous populations. Here in the mountains, the conquistadors imposed a hacienda system in which the Spaniards forced indigenous people to work in an exploitative arrangement similar to sharecropping. The Ecuadorian hacienda was only officially dismantled in 1964.
