In this post, I'm going to concentrate on the people who live in the region around Riobamba. This was a stronghold of Atahualpa, the great leader of the Incas. The Spaniards didn't kill them all, they just conquered and subjugated them. Hundreds of years later, they're still here. Only they're called Quichua (in other countries the term is Quechua, but in Ecuador, it's Quichua). The language they speak is very guttural and reminds me a bit of Navajo. It's a difficult language to learn.

The Quichua are a very traditional people who wear traditional clothing and cling to the time-honored ways of doing things. A majority of them work at farming the steep slopes of the Andes Mountains. The work is usually done by hand, although tractors are making their way into the region. The deep volcanic topsoil is black and rich and crops grow easily with the frequent rains. But the work is back-breaking. They frequently live in villages and walk out to their small farming plots each day.

They keep animals - sheep, cows, pigs, etc. Each day the animals are herded out to graze tethered and brought back in the evening. One of the enjoyable and photographic periods of the day is catching the animals walking through the streets with no apparent human to guide them. They know where to go!

One of the sad things about the region is that there are few young people. Schools are totally closed and going to ruin because there are no children. One of my favorite towns is San Bartolo Alto. When I first visited there decades ago, there were lots of young children, and we worked in the school. Now the school is locked up. Young people moved to the city in search of better work, leaving the elderly to work the farms. Since the pandemic, when most of the businesses closed, the young people cannot find work in the city and are slowly drifting back to the villages. But it is very slow, and having been away for so long, they do not remember all the things one must know to farm successfully.