QUITO A student at work in the carpentry workshop of the Escuela Taller Quito, which was established in 1992 to teach traditional construction techniques to underprivileged youngsters HEART AND SOUL Quito’s World Heritage-listed colonial centre is the largest in the Americas. And thanks to municipal intervention and the eff orts of a school for disadvantaged children, the Ecuadorian capital’s historic heart is being revitalised. Dominic Hamilton reports rom the outside, the Escuela Taller Quito (Quito Workshop School) is deceiving. A two-storey mansion F set on one of the narrow streets in the Ecuadorian capital’s historic centre, it looks like a family home. Pass through its ornately carved doorway, however, and it’s another story. Pupils in blue overalls hurry between classrooms, criss-crossing the elegant patio in gaggles of three or four. A bell rings and a hush returns, although this, too, is deceptive. Enter one of the classrooms that ring the patio and you’re confronted with a hive of activity. The fi rst, adjacent to the entrance, is dedicated to carpentry. Inside, pupils are hard at work around half a dozen workbenches. Sketches and examples of completed works in marquetry and inlay decorate the walls. Sculptures at various stages of completion are scattered across the worktops, alongside tools of every size and function. There is a constant hum of knocking, carving, chipping, scraping and banging. The class is led by Maestro Carlos Vinicio Pazmiño, a tall, energetic man in his early 40s who passes from table to table surveying his pupils’ work. A room off to the right is quieter, bathed in studious silence. Here, Maestro Carlos advises a pupil on how to apply a wafer-thin sliver of gold leaf to a carved statue. Perhaps it’s the leaf’s value that makes everyone reverential, or perhaps it’s the image of the Virgin, pained by the loss of her son, that’s responsible. Armando Salazar 70 www.geographical.co.uk AUGUST 2007 AUGUST 2007 www.geographical.co.uk 71 QUITO María González is 18 and in her of the New World’ today, since few says the city’s mayor, Paco Moncayo. second year at the school. Despite modern buildings blight the skyline From the 1960s onwards, the smart the male bias in her class, she seems of spires and church towers. money began to leave the restrictive grid completely at ease as she delicately Until recently, Bolívar would have felt of streets and the centre began a slow transfers another leaf to her statue on at home in the streets of the capital; decline. Mansions were split again and the tip of a paintbrush. ‘I wasn’t doing they felt more 18th than 21st century. again into smaller and cheaper units. very well at my last school and a friend The Saturday street market teemed like ‘The streets were impassable, health told me about the Taller,’ she says. ‘Once an ant nest. Stalls clogged either side of and hygiene impossible,’ Moncayo I visited, and saw how nice a place it was the chessboard-grid of thoroughfares. continues. ‘People were banging nails and all the things I could learn here, I Their blue awnings webbed the narrow into church columns to hang their applied at once.’ streets, knitted with strings and ropes awnings from. It was terrible to watch. The Escuela Taller takes in 60 students that connived to either trip you up or So something had to be done.’ aged 16–22 from disadvantaged garrotte you. In some areas, movement Today, just 20 years since the backgrounds every year. establishment of the It teaches a wide range FONSAL (Cultural Heritage of skills, from carpentry, Preservation Fund) and stonework, painting, 13 since the ECH (Historic gold leaf, metalwork and Centre Development electrics to basic maths and Corporation) was formed, language. The pupils receive the historical heart of Quito work clothes as a uniform is virtually unrecognisable. and get two meals a day. Churches have been The school’s aim is to rescued and restored. Streets train artisans in traditional have been reorganised construction techniques, with new lamp-posts and to promote the restoration, traffic-calming measures; rehabilitation and others have been conservation of Quito’s pedestrianised. Steel heritage, and to integrate signposts point to nearby young people into the tourist attractions. labour market. It runs an The old bylaw by agency to help its graduates which all houses had to find jobs that enjoys a 97 be whitewashed and their per cent success rate. balconies painted blue has This success is due in part also been relaxed. Within to the school’s excellent months, façades had turned training, but also to the fact peppermint green and there is such a lot of work powder pink. Even shop to be done. Quito’s historic signs have come under centre is the largest in the Americas. was all but impossible. And the control. Out went neon set at right- It spans no less than 320 hectares, set noise – everyone shouting their wares: angles to the houses and precarious between rolling hills and green-sloped ‘everything must go’, ‘sale now on’, ‘un plastic bolted to balconies; in came 3,000-metre Andean volcanoes. In 1978, dólar, un dólar’, ‘cómpreme aquí’. There sober metal lettering anchored to the the city became the first to be named a were as many people selling as shopping. shop’s front. It’s far more aesthetically World Heritage site by UNESCO, along No more. A combination of municipal pleasing, but not particularly helpful with Krakow in Poland. agencies, funded by local taxes and when you’re looking for an ATM. loans from foreign donors (the largest Mansions have been restored and Street life from the Inter-American Development cultural spaces opened up. The former Quito’s historic centre is laid out on Bank), have transformed the Old Town. Naval Archives, redolent with musty files a tight grid pattern, similar to that The street stalls have been dismantled, rotting contentedly, was transformed imposed by the Spanish in cities across the vendors moved on, the cobbles into the elegant Centro Cultural the Americas, from Mexico to Tierra scrubbed and swept. The city built Metropolitano, which includes a public del Fuego. Its network of streets is various indoor markets and relocated library. The Hospital of San Juan became home to 40 churches and chapels, most of the 10,000 comerciantes there. the excellent City Museum. The Neo- 16 convents and monasteries with Although there was resistance and Classical Teatro Sucre has been restored their respective cloisters, 17 plazas, scepticism, the move was carried out to its former glory, along with its nearby 12 chapter rooms and refectories, by consensus and without violence – cousin, the Variety Theatre. Part of the and countless courtyards. which isn’t as uncommon as one might Archbishop’s Palace, on one side of the The great liberator of northern South think in Latin America. handsome Plaza de la Independencia, The Jesuits’ church, La Compañia de Jesús, America, Simón Bolívar, called Quito ‘a ‘Through a combination of factors, now boasts a posh restaurant, called, in Quito’s centre. Under construction for monastery’ when he first entered with Quito’s Old Town, despite its past with a side-order of irony, Mea Culpa. more than 160 years, it’s laden with gold leaf his triumphant troops. And Bolívar grandeur and present heritage, had Inside two of the palace’s patios are Giancarlo Ceraudo would recognise much of this ‘Florence become unworkable and unliveable,’ internet cafés, fast-food and modest 72 www.geographical.co.uk AUGUST 2007 AUGUST 2007 www.geographical.co.uk 73 QUITO WORLDWATCH Looking south over Plaza Grande (also known as Plaza de la Independencia), with the presidential palace to the right and the main cathedral ahead. Built immediately after the founding of Quito, the plaza remains the city’s spiritual heart restaurants, shops and public toilets. Metropolitana de Turismo de Quito, one concept of heritage has been hijacked, Dance and music groups perform in of a number of corporations set up by whereby the very inhabitants of the the spaces on Friday nights. Mayor Moncayo. ‘Due to the city’s centre are pushed out and the so-called With the streets navigable once more, geography in the Andes, we’re never culture of the city is projected in a way indeed, with pavements superior to going to develop heavy industry or that doesn’t challenge the status quo.’ those in the wealthier parts of the city even a great amount of manufacturing. This critique of the city’s rebirth is of 1.8 million, the next step has been to By taking advantage of the incredible understandable given its history. Soon persuade Quiteños to return to the centre heritage that we do have, and the after the founding of the city as San to live and encourage businesses to ingenuity and diversity of the people Francisco de Quito in 1534, the invest. The ECH has launched more who make up our city and our region, Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians than two dozen housing projects in the we can hope to create jobs and and Carmelites moved in quickly to fi ll centre, ranging from modest yet modern long-term development.’ their churches with imagery that would family fl ats in small-scale blocks to larger The steady growth in tourism convey Christianity to the idolatrous properties for high-end housing. So far, numbers refl ects this optimism. masses. Inside their complexes, they the take-up rate has been very positive. Although the Galápagos Islands taught practical crafts alongside the Safety has been, and continues to be, are Ecuador’s main draw, both tour catechism.