Culture of Ecuador

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The majority of the Ecuadorian population is mestizo, a mixture of both European and Amerindian ancestry, and much like their ancestry, the national culture is also a blend of these two sources, along with influences from slaves from Africa. 95% of Ecuadorians are Roman Catholic, although their christian beliefs are mixed with ancient indigenous customs.

Ecuador can be split up into three parts, geographically; the Costa (coast), the Sierra (Highlands) and El Oriente (the east; which includes the Amazonic region). The Galapagos islands, or Archipiélago de Colón also belong to Ecuador.

There is tension and dislike between the residents of Quito and Guayaquil. Additionally, there is centralism in these two cities, so people from other provinces also tend to dislike its residents. Furthermore, due to the at times extreme cultural difference between the Coast and the Sierra, there is a general dislike between those two regions that traces back to prehispanic times.

El Oriente is characterised by rainforest, the sierra by the snow-capped Andes, and the costa by lowlands that are highly fertile and used for agriculture, and for its beaches.

1 Family
2 Women
3 Sports and Entertainment
4 Cuisine
5 Language
6 Art and Literature
7 See also

[edit] Family

Ecuadorians place great importance on the family, both nuclear and extended. Unlike in much of the West, where the elderly are often placed in care facilities geared towards people of advanced age, the elderly Ecuadorian will often live with their youngest son and his wife.

Godparents are also far more important in Ecuador than in the West, and they are expected to provide both financial and psychological support to their godchildren, for example, Ecuadorians with marital troubles will often ask their godparents for advice. Choosing a godparent is also of special importance, since it determines the man or woman's compadre, which plays a very important role in ecuadorean culture. Being asked to be somebody's compadre is considered a great honor.

Families are formed in at least one of the following three ways: Civil Marriage (which is the legal form of officialising a bond between a man and a woman and which all married couples are required to undergo), the Religious Marriage (which, Ecuador being a predominantly Catholic country, usually means a marriage ceremony sanctified by the Catholic Church) and the Free Union (or Unión Libre, where a man and a woman decide to form a family without undergoing any official ceremony). The Ecuadorian Constitution accords the members of a Free Union family the same rights and duties as in any other legally constituted family.

[edit] Women

Women are generally responsible for the upbringing and care of children in Ecuador, and traditionally, men have taken a less active role in this area, though recently, this has begun to change, with many men doing housework and caring for children when women work away from home. Since 1906 with Eloy Alfaro's liberal revolution, ecuadorian women gained the right to vote and work.

Traditionally, girls must ask for permission before dating a boy alone, and tend to be more overprotected by their parents. At 15, girls often have a quinceañera party, featuring a Catholic ceremony and food, drinks and dancing.

[edit] Sports and Entertainment

As with almost all of Latin America, Ecuadorians are ardent fútbol fans, and the national team has shown some successes in international tournaments of the sport in the last few years - for the first time in history it won a place in the World Cup Tournament (the 2002 event hosted by Japan and South Korea). Ecuador achieved a historic feat in Germany 2006 by reaching the knock out stages for the very first time. However, they lost to England on a famous Beckham free kick that put Ecuador out of the tournament. Nevertheless, ecuadorians are prideful of their soccer team and highly celebrate its victories regardless of how small these are.

Alongside soccer, volleyball is also common, though it is played differently to Western volleyball. The ball is much heavier and there are only three players per team. Volleyball is mostly informally played by both young students and middle aged people alike.

Bullfighting, a legacy of Spanish colonisation, is held annually at a large festival in Quito, but it's not popular nation-wide. During December, the inhabitants of Quito celebrate its Foundation Day, which includes a grand celebration lasting for days, called Las fiestas de Quito. The high point of the fiestas is the Corrida de Toros, in which internationally renowned bull fighters are invited to show off their prowess in the arena.

In athletics, Jefferson Pérez gave Ecuador its first ever Olympic gold medal in 1996 in speed walking.

Other forms of entertainment popular worldwide are found in Ecuador also, including darts and a variety of card games for adults and marbles, hopscotch and skipping ropes are popular pastimes for children. Carnivals and festivals are also varied through the country and highly expected by the population, usually featuring many traditional games and fun. Some parts celebrate mask carnivals, while others have no official customs, yet all of them are related to a mixture of amerindian and catholic beliefs.

Fishing, especially for the enormous bagre catfish, which is found at the bottom of rivers and can weigh up to 100kg, is very popular. Bull sharks are often caught in rivers also.

[edit] Cuisine

An Ecuadorian's day, at least as far as his or her diet is concerned, is centred around lunch, rather than dinner as in Western cultures. Sometimes it is the only main dish in their diet.

There is no one food that is especially Ecuadorian, as cuisine varies from region to region of the country. For example, costeños (people from the coast) prefer fish, beans and plantains (unripened banana like fruits), while serranos from the mountainous regions prefer meat, rices and potatoes.

Some examples of Ecuadorian cuisine in general include patacones, unripe plantains fried in oil, mashed up and then refried, llapingachos, a sort of potato tortillas, and seco de chivo, a type of stew made from goat. More regionalized examples include ceviches from the Coast, which are different from other ceviches and traditionally is served unprepared, as well as almidon breads, plantains served with crushed peanuts or salprieta, and encebollado, the most popular dish in the Coast, that contains a marinade with large chucks of fish, onions and various regional seasonings.

One food Ecuador has given the world is beef jerky, the name of which comes from a Quechua word, charqui.

[edit] Language

Most Ecuadorians speak Spanish, though many speak Amerindian languages such as Kichwa, the Ecuadorian dialect of Quechua. Other Amerindian languages spoken in Ecuador include Awapit (spoken by the Awá), A'ingae (spoken by the Cofan), Shuar Chicham (spoken by the Shuar), Achuar-Shiwiar (spoken by the Achuar and the Shiwiar), Cha'palaachi (spoken by the Chachi), Tsa'fiki (spoken by the Tsa'chila), Paicoca (spoken by the Siona and Secoya) and Wao Tededo (spoken by the Waorani).

Though most features of Ecuadorian Spanish are universal in the Spanish-speaking world, there are several idiosyncrasies.

Costeños tend to speak more quickly and louder than serranos, and most of them do so in a very informal way. A common term costeños use to call each other is mijo, a portmanteau of sorts for "my son" (mi hijo). Several such terms originate from their fast speech, and they have intrincate language humor and jokes, difficult to translate or even understand in other regions. Also, each coastal province has a different variety of accent with specific different terms.

Serranos ususally speak softly, and very respectfully. Traditionally they are seen as more conservative, and use a number of Kichwa-originated terms in their everyday speech, often puzzling to other regions. A widely known example is the word güagüa, which means child in Kichwa. Their speech comes from their Incan amerindian roots and can be seen as a variation of other Andean accents.

Whistling, yelling or yawning to get someone's attention is considered rude, yet informally done.

Many gestures are used in Ecuador, including the lifting of the chin to indicate "up the street" when giving directions, and lowering of the chin to indicate "down the street". Thus, body language is a common and often integral part of everyday speech which can be hard to understand to foreigns. As a general rule, Ecuadorians tend to be much more physically close than other cultures; most greetings are informal and tend to involve a lot of body contact.

[edit] Art and Literature

List of Master Ecuadorian painters

Graffiti is integral to the urban culture of Quito. Nearly every wall of the city is covered in it, leading to the rise of the saying "No wall is blank in Quito". Graffiti has spreaded to other provinces, and is usually artistic or political, and often poetic. There is so much graffiti, that politicians often quote what is written on Quito's walls.

Music is very important in Ecuador, with differences between Coast and Highlands. Generally, pan pipes, flutes of bamboo, violins, drums and charangos all played often, but with different purposes. For instance, in the Sierra popular tunes played at fiestas include "Rosa Maria" and "El Condor Pasa", with sanjuanito being an easily recognizable genre. In the Costa, the instruments are played mostly for cumbia, salsa, and pasillos. Costeños have to kinds of purposes for music, the rythm-filled one which is played in most places, be it in public like in the bus or in parties, and the slow, moarnful pasillos and rocolas, which are exclusive to old bars. The slow tunes are humoristically known as cortavenísticos ("vein-cutting") because of their overall sadness.

Ambato, a city in central Ecuador, is known as the "City of the three Juanes", with Juan Montalvo (a novelist and essayist), Juan León Mera (author of the words to Ecuador's national anthem, "Salve, Oh Patria") and Juan Benigo Vela (another novelist and essayist) all sharing it as a place of birth. Other important writers include Eugenio Espejo, from colonial Quito, whose works inspired the fight for freedom from Spain in Ecuador and touched a number of topics, and novelist and poet Horacio Hidrovo Velásquez, from early century's Manabí, whose works have inspired films.