Welcome to Mascarilla
Trip Start
Aug 29, 2008
1
9
Trip End
May 29, 2009
Quito, Ecuador,
Ecuador
Saturday, February 28, 2009
The Chota Valley is also known as El Valle de Dolor y La Muerte (The Valley of Pain and Death) for the atrocities committed against African descendents in the region. In 1551, the Chota Valley saw its first black slaves imported from what are now the countries of Guinea, Congo and Angola. Most were traded in Cartagena de Indias, Columbia, which was, during its time, the largest slave market in the region. In 1627, Jesuit missionaries began purchasing slaves to use on sugar plantations throughout the Chota Valley. The expansion of this enterprise is the reason there are so many black communities in this part of Ecuador. Slavery was officially abolished in 1852, but physical and mental abuse, torture, rape, murder and working for little to no payment continued well into the 20th century.
In its present day a majority of men work in agriculture or agricultural production, harvesting avocado, sugar cane, beans, or working in the near-by sugar-processing plant. Women, with some exceptions, work in the home, cooking, cleaning and raising children. Another significant portion of workers are migrants and commuters who work in Ibarra, Quito or Tulcan, because of lack of fruitful employment in and around Mascarilla.
Mascarilla itself is about the size of 2 city blocks. Apart from residential units, Mascarilla has four small corner stores (all of which are just rooms in people´s houses that are converted into a convenient store, selling condiments, sodas, candies, flour, rice and other groceries from their front window), a gym used for playing soccer and volleyball, a health center, an elementary school (75 students, 2nd through 7th grade), a day care center, a small church, a discoteca and GAEN's artisan store and hostel, which has two rooms open for incoming tourists.
GAEN, Grupo Areisenal de Esperanza Negra (Artisan Group for Black Hope), is a non-profit community organization that serves multiple functions in Mascarilla. Their principle project is turning their community into a center of "turismo comunitario" (community tourism). By welcoming incoming tourists they have customers to whom they can sell their hand-made clay masks, each of which is completely original and thoughtfully produced. They also have an opportunity to share their story, their history and their culture.
Turismo Comunitario is part of a larger idea of Cultural Revitalization. Being a self-identified diasporic community, one whose roots have experienced the damage of diaspora, GAEN is eager to bring new creativity and vitality to an otherwise fractured framework. Bringing in tourists and volunteers they have the opportunity to exchange thoughts, ideas and mediums of expression.
Cultural Revitalization, as I understand it, is a process that weaves threads of past, present and future: The past involves the recuperation of ancestral values, sharing of tradition and knowledge. Notable examples are: The Bomba, a genre of music and dance that originates from The Chota Valley, it is an amazing mix of Latin American melody and lyricism with rhythmic traditions that derive from the African continent; Peinados, the way in which they fashion, braid and bead their hair in gorgeous arrays and patterns; and holidays, festivals, even funerals, where they preserve the tradition of coming together as a community, not only as Mascarilla, but as Afro-Ecuadorians, to celebrate or to mourn in union.
The present is GAEN's creative process of encouraging volunteers and tourists to come and visit Mascarilla. It is the process of sharing knowledge, wisdom and learning from one another, and it is also how they create new sources of income for families who are involved in their artisan projects.
And there is the future, which is how grains of other cultures, mediums of expression and ways of life add to Mascarilla's process of cultural revitalization. The idea to make masks did not come from GAEN´s members, it was rather a Belgian volunteer who offered workshops to a group of women on harvesting and working with clay. In their own words, "The project began with a dream that awoke within our hearts. We discovered inside ourselves a hidden capacity to create, that permitted us to express our feelings and our character by means of our hands, molding ceramics, giving form to thousands of faces, different images, all diverse, unique, some incomprehensible. Our character has been recompiled from the wisdom of our ancestors and the livelihoods of our pueblo... we began to realize our greater dream of exploring and celebrating our Black identity and our African roots." New perspectives give them new mediums by which they can express themselves and discover, expand and create their unique cultural identity.
Since their formation several branches and functions have grown of GAEN's trunk. Rather than mention them all I will describe here the organization with which I work most closely and the reason I came here in the first place: the Youth Group.
GAEN's youth group was formed 3 years ago as a way for youth in the community to connect with each other, identify themselves as youth and think about how they can help their community. A year later a significant private donation was made by an Italian family, one who had connections to Mascarilla and GAEN, to build a youth center in honour of their son who had recently passed away. In the following months, the youth center was built. It has been sitting, since then, virtually unused. The youth group ages 16-23, with about 45 members (though many live in other larger cities), has lacked the time, connections and energy to facilitate the process of getting it up and running.
As many of you know, I have been involved with the Northfield Union of Youth for a good portion of my young life. I served on the board for 4 years, one of those years I served as president. Besides that, I have done youth planning and organizing at university in Canada with a program called Seeds for Justice, organizing workshops and events for young people in the Peterborough community. And last summer I did similar work with youth in East-Side St. Paul as group leader for Junior Kidventure. Pardon the resumé, my point comes here: it felt as if I would have something that I could tangibly offer this community, using the knowledge I have gained from my experience to help facilitate a process that would end with them having their very own youth center.
Now, since the youth are very busy, some study, work, others study and work, others study and work and work inside the home, they have not had time to have meetings 9-5, 5 days each week. So, on Mondays and Tuesdays I work in the Day Care Center playing with little kids, and on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays I teach English to grades 2 through 7 in the elementary school. Plus I teach breakdance lessons about once a week...just something that's gotta happen.
So between working, doing research to try to pump out a 45 page report by the end of the month and meeting people and making friends in the community I am keeping fairly busy.
...I suppose I'll stop there. Much of the information provided here is based on research I have done for my final report, some academic sources, other information comes from interviews and meetings that I have attended. For further details, see my final report! (I´ll have it done April 22nd)
