Costume and History in Highland Ecuador

Introduction (Ann Pollard Rowe)

Introduction ann pollard rowe Although Ecuador is only about the size of Oregon, it has wide variations in ecological zones, since it is bisected north to south by the Andes Mountains (see Map 1). It is, as its name suggests, right on the equator, which is just north of the capital, Quito, so the lowland areas along the Pacific coast and in the Amazonian areas to the east are hot, and the highland areas are more temperate than the higher and more southerly Peruvian Andes. The Humboldt Current that brings cool temperatures and desert ecology to the Peruvian coast turns out to sea before it gets to Ecuador, so textile preservation here is poor in contrast to the richness found in Peru. More detailed information on Ecuador’s geography is provided at the beginning of Chapter 1. Individual costumes and costume changes are always determined by the political and social context in which they are found.To identify these contexts to the extent that is possible, the book includes introductory texts providing this background, hence the title, Costume and History in Highland Ecuador. By including the pre-Hispanic past, we are admittedly stretching the true meaning of the word “history,” which literally refers only to written information . But there is no other concise term in English that includes both written and object-based sources, and in any case, works dealing with “history of costume” frequently rely heavily on visual as well as textual sources. Likewise, the title refers specifically to highland Ecuador, since that is where most of the historic evidence of indigenous costume applies, but for the pre-Hispanic period, there is more evidence for coastal costume, which has therefore also been included. Chapters 1–3 describe the history and costume of what is now Ecuador in chronological order, from the pre-Inca period, with the Inca conquest starting sometime after 1463, through the period of the Inca Empire until about 1534, to the period of the Spanish Empire until 1822. Chapter 4 provides historical 2 Costume and History in Highland Ecuador background on the time after independence, but since costume evidence is so abundant for this period, it is described separately for each geographic area in Chapters 5–11, beginning in the north and proceeding southward. The most information is available for Pichincha Province, in which Quito is located, so Chapter 7 contains the most detailed discussion of costume changes. Ecuador’s small size and the admittedly incomplete costume evidence make it possible to discuss its overall chronology within the confines of a single volume.The available evidence is nevertheless diverse. For pre-Hispanic costume, the best source is representations in ceramic sculpture, since conditions for textile preservation are so poor. For the colonial period, the principal sources are Spanish legal documents such as the governor’s reports, taxation lists, and wills. No pictorial sources are available until the eighteenth century, but the number of such sources increases significantly in the nineteenth century . The increase is due to the larger number of foreign travelers to Ecuador, which in turn was due to the weakening and collapse of the Spanish Empire , which had put restrictions on foreign travel within its borders. There are travel accounts in various languages, paintings and engravings of local costume types, and early photographic images. The travelers include naval officers , ambassadors, naturalists, adventurers, and artists. These sources focus primarily on Quito but also include some information on people from other areas. Not until the twentieth century are there actual costumes to draw on. Yet, when all this evidence is assembled, a more or less coherent picture does emerge. Costume and Ethnicity Costume has been and still is a major visible or public determinant of indigenous and other ethnic identity in highland Ecuador. As Lynn Meisch (A. Rowe ed. 1998: 11) indicates, Ethnicity in Ecuador is complex and subtle. In the country as a whole as well as over time there are differences between how people identify themselves and how they are identified by others, having more to do with social class than with physical characteristics (phenotype) . . . The term mestizo (meaning mixed European and indigenous ancestry) is sometimes used by people to identify themselves or others . . . There are many Ecuadorians of mixed descent, some of whom consider themselves white, others of whom consider themselves indigenous. These distinctions are not racial, but social. Many people who consider themselves whites or Introduction 3 mestizos have darker...