Online Exhibition

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

In Llin Llin Pucará a wedding is a community festivity. It is a three-day activity to celebrate the bride (centre of the picture, in pink bayeta*), the groom, the family, and the community. They are all invited to share food, prayers, and songs in a ritual that blends old and new traditions and practices.

This picture shows the chapu, a local preparation made with ground barley, panela (raw brown sugar preparation), cooking oil, cheese, and sometimes pieces of meat. In the same table, the organizers shared soda, bottle juices, cakes, bread, banana, rice, and soup (with farfalle noodles). Some of these elements were slowly introduced to the community over the last decades and have become part of one of their most cherished festivities.

The use of technology is also central to this picture. In a community with no cell phone connections, no land line, no access to internet (despite a small ‘cyber’ near the local high school), smartphones are an important part of the celebration to capture moments, and later on, in the city, shared through social media or by message with family and friends.

*Traditional cloth that covers a woman torso.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

What does silence mean to you?

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

The warmness and joy shown in this picture is the perfect representation of Charito. A woman who offered me a home when doing fieldwork in Llin Llin. None of these pictures would be possible if it was not for her time, patience, and care.

This pictures aim to represent gender roles within an indigenous community and culture. The woman is going uphill, further into the mountain, to feed and milk the family cows. Climbing a steep unmarked path is part of her everyday chores. She will milk the cows and deliver the product to the community ‘quesería’, in a three-hour daily journey, repeated twice a day. In the community, she is the one most likely to stay and take care of the family and animals. Men are more likely to move, to generate connections beyond their community. Considered the head of the family, they will try to find a paying job in a nearby town or city. They will not have the same responsibilities of care within the household.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

This pictures aim to represent gender roles within an indigenous community and culture. The woman is going uphill, further into the mountain, to feed and milk the family cows. Climbing a steep unmarked path is part of her everyday chores. She will milk the cows and deliver the product to the community ‘quesería’, in a three-hour daily journey, repeated twice a day. In the community, she is the one most likely to stay and take care of the family and animals. Men are more likely to move, to generate connections beyond their community. Considered the head of the family, they will try to find a paying job in a nearby town or city. They will not have the same responsibilities of care within the household.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

The kitchen is still a woman’s place. When planning the 2017 Regional Football Tournament, the women in the community of Llin Llin Pucará were assigned with the task of cooking and managing two bars to sell food to the players and the people interested in watching the matches. Despite some complains about the activity being too demanding, two groups of women accepted the job.

Cooking and selling are activities that involve a lot of responsibility because the food sales are expected to generate income for the community. One of the most requested treats were the deep-fried flour tortillas with sprinkled sugar, sold at 25p. Flour and sugar, as pasta and cooking oil are some of the industrialised products most used in the community. These products have facilitated women’s cooking options, helping them to spend less time in the kitchen, but they have also profoundly changed their eating habits.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

Sharing food is an important part of living in a community. In Mesa Compartida several women cooperated to build a common table and share cooked potatoes, cheese with a spicy sauce and colada de naranjilla*.

*Also known as lulo - a fruit characteristic from South America.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

Sharing food is an important part of living in a community. During a chorus competition in Riobamba, at lunch-time, the women improvised and used their bayetas** as tablecloth to avoid the provide a clean surface to present the food.

** Traditional cloth that covers a woman torso.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

Charito (centre, blue bayeta*) was the treasurer of the rodeo organized by Llin Llin Pucará in 2017. She had to deal with the competitors who wanted to pay for the inscription to the event. She was also in-charge of going to the market to show for the major prize.

* Traditional cloth that covers a woman torso.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

Once a week, the town of Guamote holds a large open market with a great variety of goods including vegetables, livestock, clothing and prepared food. The market is a place of exchange, struggle and confrontation for women. For example, if a woman wants to buy a cow and starts bargaining about the price with a man, she will have to confront men’s insults like ‘Mamita, es que usted no sabe’ or ‘Ay María, pero qué es que quiere’. Those phrases imply ignorance and are aimed to categorize the woman as incapable to negotiate or even find a good quality product. Women selling cattle, like the one in the picture, tend to be firm and look angry when talking to clients to avoid any teasing.

However, not everything is a confrontation. The market is also a place to meet people and exchange information. In the case of Guamote, as the market is open only once a week, people are almost certain that they will find friends from other communities. Also, it is a place to exchange information about future political meetings, opinions about recent events or gossip about town’s news.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

This selection of pictures shows the intergenerational relation with one event. The rodeo. All the pictures were taken the same day, before the start of the activities. You can see children playing in the fences with their daily cloth. Young people wandering around what will be the ‘main arena’. And men, fully dressed in their ‘traditional’ cowboy outfits.

The lack of women in the pictures is intended. While men and children are moving around waiting for the show to start, women are inside the community kitchen cooking or helping to install the places were the food is going to be serve. They are not the focus of the entertainment, they are the invisible helping hand.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

This selection of pictures shows the intergenerational relation with one event. The rodeo. All the pictures were taken the same day, before the start of the activities. You can see children playing in the fences with their daily cloth. Young people wandering around what will be the ‘main arena’. And men, fully dressed in their ‘traditional’ cowboy outfits.

The lack of women in the pictures is intended. While men and children are moving around waiting for the show to start, women are inside the community kitchen cooking or helping to install the places were the food is going to be serve. They are not the focus of the entertainment, they are the invisible helping hand.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

This selection of pictures shows the intergenerational relation with one event. The rodeo. All the pictures were taken the same day, before the start of the activities. You can see children playing in the fences with their daily cloth. Young people wandering around what will be the ‘main arena’. And men, fully dressed in their ‘traditional’ cowboy outfits.

The lack of women in the pictures is intended. While men and children are moving around waiting for the show to start, women are inside the community kitchen cooking or helping to install the places were the food is going to be serve. They are not the focus of the entertainment, they are the invisible helping hand.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

The rodeo welcome more than 30 teams of cattle enthusiasts from around the community. The teams have to inscribe and pay a fee to get the opportunity to win a young ox valued around 250 and 300 dollars. The main event was team roping. The activity focuses on capturing and restraining a full-grown steer. One horse and rider lassos a running steer's horns, while the other horse and rider, ropes the steer's two hind legs. Once the animal is captured, a third person will tie the steer with a particular type of knot. These techniques originated from methods of capture and restraint used on ranches in the nineteen and early twentieth century.

In an indigenous community, this activity was ‘inherited’ from a time when land was owned by rich white or mestizo families who exploited the indigenous people for labour. The Hacienda Dávalos, in Colta, was famous for their variety of cattle. Currently, the community still raises cattle but mainly for dairy production. The community owns a ‘quesería’ that produce and distribute a small amount of cheese to a nearby town.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

Religion is core to Llin Llin Pucará’s community identity. The bible will be cited in an indigenous justice* and in a traditional wedding. In Llin Llin, the church is located in the centre of the community, surrounded by the state day-care centre (closed for years), the Casa Comunal (community centre), and the computer room (a place with one desktop owned by the community).

*A form of customary law that allows people to resolve their problems within the community, without the intervention of the police or any other state institution.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

The image Tres Pastores was taken during a wedding. Three Evangelist priests give the final blessing to the young couple. The whole community, about … people, is invited to the ceremony.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

Women are perceived as reproducers of culture. They embody culture and are most likely to perform culture and ‘tradition’. In this picture they also perform the beauty of hybridisation. ‘Listas para cantar’ shows the Llin Llin Pucara chorus getting ready to sing in a local Evangelist chorus competition. They are dressed in indigenous clothing especially picked for the event; they all aimed to look as homogeneous and ‘traditional’ as possible because they have a lot of competition. Despite all the indigenous props, the actual songs prepared were based on the bible, an element that could be considered 'foreign', or imported. This type of performance is exciting and cherished by women as they get to express themselves and get to be the focus of attention.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

These three girls clean the classroom before the class starts, their male classmates are playing football outside. While some teachers ask for the cooperation of boys and girls for doing the daily cleaning, girls are more likely to offer to do the labour, and they are more likely to be called upon to do it. These girls did not mind; they started doing it by themselves because they wanted a clean classroom, for them that role was normal. The gender differentiation is already invisible at an early age.

Colta, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

Children are doing a traditional dance where they tangled colourful ribbon in a pole. They are performing for the school Mother's Day event -an imported celebration.

Alausí, Chimborazo. Ecuador, 2017

Dance performed on a tourist resting point at the last stop of a touristic railroad path called the Devil's Nose, in Alausí.