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Portraits TOC ANDEAN MESTIZOS: GROWING UP FEMALE AND MALE Lauris A. McKee cuador, an ecologically and ethnically diverse country, is named for the equator, which crosses it a few miles north of Ethe capital city of Quito (splendidly sited at 9,200 feet). The nation is one of the smallest in South America; its population is cur- rently estimated at over eleven million and its land area is roughly comparable in size to the U.S. state of Colorado.1 It borders the Pacific Ocean, and is divided into three major ecological zones by a double chain of mountains, the Andes, which run north to south. In the 1980s the ethnic composition of the country was approximately forty to forty-five percent mestizos (Spanish-speak- ing persons of mixed Spanish and Native American descent), forty percent Indians (Quíchua-speakers, hereafter referred to properly as runa), ten to fifteen percent blancos (“whites,” who claim exclu- sively Spanish descent) and five to ten percent negros (“blacks”).2 Today, the runa population is declining due to acculturation and absorption into the mestizoized, Spanish-speaking majority.3 Identification as a runa or a mestizo (which are social, not racial categories) depends on the language people speak in the home, the clothing they wear, and their community of residence.4 Changing one’s ethnic identity often is motivated by migration to urban areas to find work. The economic and social pressures to acculturate are encouraging the emergence of a mestizo majority. Ecuador’s major ecological zones are called the Costa (the Pacific coastal plains), the Sierra (the mountain highlands) and the Oriente (the eastern Andean foothills and the flat riverine basins of the upper Amazon region). The Sierra, the focus of this chapter, rises high above the tropical Costa and Oriente. The verticality of the landscape gives the country its special character, for the valleys of the inter-montane Andean region boast a climate of “eternal spring.” The mountain chains are punctuated by nine massive snow-capped volcanoes, including the imposing Chimborazo (20,560 feet) Cotopaxi (19,642 feet) and Tungurahua (16,456 feet). The cold of their heights distinguishes Ecuador as the only country in the world where one encounters snow and frost at the equator.5 FIELDSITES The people I worked with live in four different communities in the valleys of the Sierra. There is considerable ecological variation among the sites. Patate lies in a lush, irrigated valley at an alti- tude of 7,400 feet. Patateños cultivate avocados, garden vegeta- 3 4PORTRAITS OF CULTURE bles, vine and tree fruits, alfalfa, corn, and barley. Tumbaviro, sit- uated at 6,888 feet, is the smallest of the communities. In its warm climate, sugar cane and corn are major crops and tropical fruits such as cheremoyas and guavas grow. In the mountains, descent or ascent of a few hundred feet make a difference in average daily temperatures and Mira (whose name evokes its panoramic view) at 7,708 feet is too cold to grow the tangerines that flourish in Patate, though it is famous for its beans and corn. Guaranda, above eight thousand feet, is colder yet, and the staple crops are potatoes, barley, wheat, corn, and broad beans (habas). Potatoes are grown in all sites, but assume more economic importance at higher altitudes. The populations in these towns and villages are predominantly mestizo, though, with the exception of Mira, each community also includes a runa constituency. Guaranda, the capital of Bolívar Province, is a large town and a market center. The Saturday market attracts Coastal fish- mongers, vendors of tropical fruits, pottery-makers from Cotopaxi Province, women herbalists from the Oriente selling medicinal plants, tree bark, and seeds, and local runas and mesti- zas marketing garlic, onions, chickens, eggs, potatoes, and “grains” (Ecuadorians class lentils, peas, chochos, and beans as grains along with wheat, barley, and oats). Manufactured cloth- ing, plastic goods, pots and pans, tennis shoes, and rubber boots fill stalls along thronged streets, and women sell fried fish, grilled plantains, and fried or roasted pork to hungry shoppers. There are a few permanent stores in Guaranda, and the Provincial gov- ernment, the schools and the hospital are major employers. The villages of Patate and Tumbaviro and the town of Mira, are located (respectively) in the Provinces of Tungurahua, Imbabura, and El Carchi. In these communities, food production, for subsistence or for the market, is the major occupation, and almost everyone is involved in some capacity in agriculture. There are several small shops and a small weekly market. Most houses in Patate, Mira, and Tumbaviro have small huertas (gar- dens) in back, but unlike U.S. farmers, who generally live on their land, farm families live in the nucleated communities and walk out to their fields. Except for the few haciendas which remain in these areas, small landholdings, (minifundio) prevail over large farms (latifun- dio). Rather than owning one large farm, the ideal in the moun- tainous environment is to own several small fields at different altitudes. The wisdom behind this strategy is expressed in English in the old adage that warns “don’t put all your eggs in ANDEAN MESTIZOS 5 one basket;" for if crops on the south side of a mountain are hit by a battering hailstorm or a flood in an exceptionally hard rain, the crops on the mountain’s north side may be spared. Both location and altitude are important, for most plant varieties thrive only in specific latitudinal niches. Food-crops produced for family con- sumption or for the market would be unduly limited if one plant- ed in a single altitudinal niche.6 WORK The heaviest agricultural work is usually given over to men, but the whole family cooperates in sowing and harvesting. Tractors are virtually useless on precipitous Andean slopes, so preparing plots for planting entails arduous labor. The earth is broken with wide-bladed hoes or plowed by oxen if a family can afford to rent them and the terrain permits it. Sowing and harvesting are done by hand. In some steeply inclined fields near Patate and Guaranda, men harvesting grain with a hand scythe tie them- selves to stakes pounded into the ground to secure their footing. Landless men sell their labor as peones (agricultural workers hired by the day), or if they have some capital, may rent or share- crop plots owned by absentee landlords. In the poorest families, both sexes engage in agricultural wage-work. The wage structure, however, is asymmetrical, with men’s pay being higher (some- times nearly double) that of women. Men also dominate the high- er-paid jobs of fruit-tree pruning and pesticide spraying. The higher wage for spraying is offset by the health risk, for laborers are insufficiently protected and their skin and lungs absorb the poisons they apply. The father of a family I worked with in Mira coughed up purple phlegm after each day of spraying pesticides on potato crops. In a return visit two years later I found him dying in the hospital and his family unable to pay his bills. Higher status “white-collar” jobs are available to both sexes, depending on their social class and education, though the most prestigious and best-paid jobs mainly are reserved for men. There are governmental and administrative offices in all communities, and secular as well as church-operated schools. Among the field sites, only Tumbaviro lacks a secondary school. Women teachers are well represented in the educational institutions, and some ele- 6PORTRAITS OF CULTURE mentary classrooms are segregated by sex; in Patate, men teach the boys and women teach the girls. In the home, women perform the hundreds of tasks requiring hand labor that are needed to maintain rural households in an unmechanized, pre-industrial country. They process and prepare food, make clothing, care for their children, tend animals, gather feed for guinea pigs and rabbits, shell corn for the chickens, and wash clothing and bedding in water so icy cold that within a minute or two their hands are aching. Shopping for food, processing it and cooking it is generally dominated by women. People say that men do not “know” how to cook, which really means that if a man does cook, he is ridiculed. The activity of food preparation is assigned by gender as are many other tasks, and the resulting division of labor cre- ates mutual economic dependency between the genders. Men, prohibited from cooking, must marry, or failing that, live with their mothers, sisters, or other female relatives who will provide this service. In all but the wealthiest families (usually those of hacienda owners) women engage in a number of cash-producing enterpris- es. They keep small tiendas (“stores”) in the front rooms of their houses. They raise animals to sell their meat or their products, they may sew, cook, clean, or wash clothing for other families, or prepare food for public sale during fiestas or market days. In Mira, women earn money by knitting sweaters and caps. These are contracted to be sold in Quito, Europe, or the United States at twenty times the price paid the knitters. Diversification is a major survival strategy for rural Ecuadorians. People diversify their investments in land, labor, and capital. They diversify and inter-crop the varieties of plants they cultivate and thus reduce the risk of failure incurred by monocropping. They also diversify their social ties and commitments through compadrazgo (“ritual coparenthood”). Ties are created with others of similar status, (which strengthens an already warm relation- ship) or with people of higher status to instantiate a friendly rela- tionship. In either case, they extend both their social network, and their obligations, for compadres have mutual expectations of social and economic support.

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