Ecuador The People

The ethnic makeup of Ecuador’s people has resulted from a process of continuous biological and cultural infusion, beginning with the arrival of the first inhabitants of the country’s coastal regions over 12,000 years ago. No invasions by other peoples are known until the time of the Quichua-speaking Incas, who conquered and assimilated the natives just decades before the Spanish. Other ethnic groups have also been mixed into the picture—African slaves came to work plantations on the coast. Also, small communities of Chinese and Lebanese have immigrated here.

The majority of today’s diverse population of 13.5 million lives in the Highlands and coastal regions. And though the urban centers of Quito and Guayaquil each hold 2-2.5 million, more and more people are moving to the sparsely populated Oriente. Issues of race and ethnicity are closely intertwined; an individual’s identity as white, black, mestizo (mixed white and indigenous), or indígena (indigenous) is a combination of genetic and social factors, making it impossible to know how the population breaks down racially. The current estimate is 5% black, 15% white, 40% mestizo, and 40% indígena.

The small black population lives mostly in the northern coastal province of Esmeraldas and in the Chota Valley of the northwest. Descendants of slaves who arrived in Ecuador during the 17th and 18th centuries, black Ecuadorians maintain a distinct culture and ethnicity today. The country’s white population is predominantly made up of descendants of Spanish conquistadors and colonists. Like their ancestors, they make up the majority of the country’s elite and are concentrated in urban centers. Mestizos or cholos make up the bulk of Ecuador’s urban population and also inhabit rural areas that sometimes overlap with indigenous communities, though Ecuador’s mestizos are far from a culturally homogenous group.

The ancestors of the indigenous peoples lived on the land that became Ecuador when the Spaniards arrived. The largest indigenous group (numbering over two million) are the highland Quichua, who have many regional distinctions. They derive their name from their dialect of Peruvian Quichua. Some of the better known groups are the Otavaleños, who live in and around the town of Otavalo, the Salasaca, who live south of Ambato, and the Saraguros, who live north of Loja in southern Ecuador. In the coastal Lowlands, only a few small groups remain: the Awa, the Cayapas, and the Colorados. The Amazon also has its share of indigenous groups. The largest of these are the Quichua, who live in the central and southern Oriente and number over 60,000. Of the Jívaro ethnicity are the Achuar and the Shuar. Other smaller Oriente groups—some living in relative isolation—are the Cofán, the Siona, and the Siecoya in the Northern Oriente and the Huaoriani in and around Yasuní National Park.