Ethnic Groups in Ecuador - Sierra Indians

Sierra Indians

Sierra Indians had an estimated population of 1.5 to 2 million in the early 1980s and live in the intermontane valleys of the Andes. Prolonged contact with Hispanic culture, which dates back to the conquest, has had a homogenizing effect, reducing the variation among the indigenous Sierra tribes.

The Indians of the Sierra are separated from whites and mestizos by a castelike gulf. They are marked as a disadvantaged group; to be an Indian or indígena in Ecuador is to be stigmatized. Indians are usually poor and frequently illiterate, they enjoy limited participation in national institutions, and they command access to few of the social and economic opportunities available to more privileged groups.

Visible markers of ethnic affiliation, especially hairstyle, dress, and language, separate Indians from the rest of the populace. Indians wore more manufactured items by the late 1970s than previously; their clothing, nonetheless, was distinct from that of other rural inhabitants. Indians in communities relying extensively on wage labor sometimes assumed Western-style dress while still maintaining their Indian identity. Indians speak Quichua—a Quechua dialect—although most are bilingual, speaking Spanish as a second language with varying degrees of facility. By the late 1980s, some younger Indians no longer learned Quichua.

Most whites and mestizos view Indians as inherently inferior. Some regard indígenas as little better than a subspecies. A more benign perspective condescendingly considers the Indian as an intellectual inferior, an emotional child in need of direction. Such views underlie the elaborate public etiquette required in Indian-white/mestizo interactions. Common practice allows whites and mestizos to use first names and familiar verb and pronoun forms in addressing Indians.

Although public deference to other ethnic groups supports stereotypes of Indians as intellectually inferior, Indians view deference as a survival strategy. Deference establishes that an individual Indian was properly humble and deserving of the white's or mestizo's aid and intercession. Given the relative powerlessness of Indians, such an approach softens the rules governing interethnic exchanges.

The tenor of such exchanges differs in cases of limited hacienda dominance. The Otavalos of northern Ecuador, the Saraguros, and the Salaacas in the central Sierra resisted hacienda intrusion and domination by whites and mestizos. These Indians are thus less inclined to be subservient and adopt instead an attitude of aloofness or distance in dealing with whites and mestizos.

Most Indians, however, can improve their situation only by changing their ethnic affiliation. Such a switch in allegiances is fraught with risk, since individuals thereby lose the security offered by their small community of family and neighbors. Many reject such an extreme move and instead make a series of accommodations such as changing their dress and hairstyle while working for brief periods away from home and gradually increasing the length of their absences.

By the early 1980s, changes in Indian ethnic consciousness could be identified in some communities. An increasing number of educated Indians returned to work in their native communities instead of assuming a mestizo identity and moving away. They remained Indian in their loyalty and their ethnic allegiance. The numbers of Indian primary school teachers of Quichua increased, and literacy programs expanded; both trends reinforced Indian identity.

Although these developments were most prominent among prosperous groups such as the Otavalos and the Saraguros, the number of Indians in general moving into "mestizo jobs" increased during the oil expansion. New opportunities gave Indians the option of improving their economic status without sacrificing their ethnic identity. Observers also noted a general growth in ethnic pride coupled with negative reactions toward those Indians who chose to abandon their roots and become mestizos.