Culture of Ecuador

Ecuador is a multicultural and multiethnic nation, with the majority of its population is descended from a mixture of both European and Amerindian ancestry.

The other 10% of Ecuador's population originate east of the Atlantic Ocean, predominantly from Spain, Italy, Lebanon, France and Germany.

[1] Ecuador can be split up into four geographically distinct areas; the Costa (coast), the Sierra (highlands), El Oriente (the east; which includes the Amazonic region) and the Galápagos Islands.

There is tension and general dislike between the residents of the highlands Quito and the coast Guayaquil the two largest cities of the country.

These messengers passed each other records of the empire's status, which are sometimes thought to have been encoded in a system of knots called quipu.

Remarkably, the Cañari, Quitus, and Caras were able to hold back Tupac-Yupanqui for years, though they proved less successful against his son, Huayna Capac.

The Cañaris were the strongest, and fiercest group in Ecuador to fall, and after their collapse and subsequent assimilation, the conquest of lands north became easier.

Francisco Pizarro landed in Ecuador in 1532, accompanied by 180 fully armed men, his mission was to find gold.

Several years earlier, Pizarro had made a peaceful visit to the coast, where he heard rumors in Colombia of El Dorado of inland cities which had incredible amounts of gold.

Independence was won in 1822, when the famed South American liberator Simón Bolívar joined Sucre and defeated a Spanish army at the Battle of Pichincha.

Godparents or "padrinos" have an important role in Ecuador, where they are often expected to provide both financial and psychological support to their godchildren.

Women are generally responsible for the upbringing and care of children, and of husbands in Ecuador, and traditionally, men have taken a completely inactive role in this area.

This has begun to change, due to the fact that more and more women are joining the workforce, which has resulted in men doing housework and becoming involved in the care of their children.

This change was greatly influenced by Eloy Alfaro's liberal revolution in 1906, in which Ecuadorian women were granted the right to work.

Entre Marx y una Mujer Desnuda (Between Marx and a Nude Woman, 1995), by Ecuadorian Camilo Luzuriaga, provides a window into the life of young Ecuadorian leftists living in a country, plagued by the remnants of feudal systems and coups d'état.

Some general examples of Ecuadorian cuisine include patacones (unripe plantains fried in oil, mashed up, then refried), llapingachos (a pan seared potato ball), seco de chivo (a type of stew made from goat), and fanesca (a type of soup made from beans, lentils, and corn), traditionally served on Easter.

Costeños tend to speak more quickly and louder than serranos'", with strong linguistic similarities to Canarian Spanish.

Several such terms are derived in consequence of their rapid speech, and they also employ intricate linguistic humor and jokes that are difficult to translate or even understand in the other regions.

The Kichwa people of Tigua, located in the central Sierra region, are world-renowned for their traditional paintings on sheepskin canvases.

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, novelist and poet Horacio Hidrovo Velásquez, from early century's Manabí, whose works have inspired films.

There are also different kinds of traditional music like albazo, pasacalle, fox incaico, tonada, diablada pillareña, capishca, Bomba (highly established in afro-Ecuadorian society in cities such as Esmeraldas), and so on.

According to the Ecuadorian musicologist Segundo Luis Moreno, Sanjuanito was danced by indigenous people during San Juan Bautista's birthday.