The fabric of Ecuador

Author: By Alison Arnett, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, February 22, 1998

Page: M1

Section: Travel

Suddenly, the fog disappears as the road descends, and sun bathes emerald mountain fields of corn, amaranth, and wheat. Dotted across the steep landscape are the brightest colors imaginable -- fiery red, deep pink, hot orange -- each triangle of color a skirt worn by Indian women working in the fields.

Two oxen pull a plow down a slope below us. Hawks circle slowly above and goats scamper down the hills.

The scene resembles a beautiful embroidery I'd bought days earlier at a hacienda north of Quito, and crystallizes the vague notion that's settled in my mind: Ecuador is in the details, imprinting itself in the most haunting images, ones full of color and nuances, memories to be treasured.

The map of South America shows Ecuador as a little chunk on the Pacific Coast. Like much of South America, the indigenous peoples were conquered by the Incas and then brutally submerged into the Spanish empire in the 1500s. After the Spanish were defeated in the wars of independence across the continent, Ecuador became an independent nation in 1830. The country's modern history, blending all three cultures, has been stormy, with many changes of government. However, military control tended to be less draconian than in other South American countries, the government is a democracy, and Ecuador is one of the more stable countries in the region.

Although the country is only the size of Colorado, it's amazingly diverse in its landscape, its animals and plantlife, and in its people, even in the shapes of headgear worn by the many Indian tribes who live there. The sierra, or high country along the spine of the Andes, boasts springlike daytime temperatures and cool nights; the coastal beaches and jungles, steamy tropical weather. And about 800 miles off the coast lie the Galapagos Islands, home to some of the most unusual species of animals in the world.

Family ties have brought me, my husband, and son to Ecuador to visit my sister Denise, and her Ecuadorian husband and family. They live near Quito in an aerie of a handcrafted home, where on clear mornings, three volcanoes -- Cotopaxi, Corazon, and Chimborazo -- loom white-topped and majestic above the surrounding mountains. The Ecuador my sister longs to show us has less to do with historical monuments and cathedrals and more to do with cultural life, with Ecuador's incredible array of crafts and artwork and the people who make them. In a small country bisected by the Andes, all travel is time-consuming and sometimes difficult, so what we see is only a fraction of Ecuador. I find myself constantly second-guessing choices: Should we have concentrated on the environment, the jungle? Should we have sprung for the expense of a Galapagos trip?

What we finally absorb in 10 days of travel across the country is only a nibble. Yet the images are indelible.

We're off to the market town of Otavalo, a two-hour drive over twisting and rough roads northeast of Quito. As we near the town, regal-looking Otavalo Indian women wearing distinctive folded dark blue head cloths, white embroidered blouses, and rows and rows of gold beads rising from collarbone to chin walk up and down paths scratched in the dusty hills; men with long black braids, white shirts, and short, wide-legged pants sometimes accompany them, and lining the roads are children begging for coins to mark the upcoming New Year. When a car approaches, they run to the edge, pressing their fingers together in supplication, then tumble back to play in the grass.

There has been a market for about 4,000 years in Otavalo, and it's obvious the town has the Saturday routine down cold. Stretched over blocks and blocks in the center of town are stands selling sweaters and wool ponchos, brightly patterned hammocks, pottery, embroidery, weavings, thousands of Panama hats, rugs, jewelry, chicken, and much, much more. Soon we're carrying a sampling of the Otavalenos's skill at making, gathering, and selling. A gray poncho, thick pure wool woven as tightly as cloth, is about $10; my son chooses a bright red patterned hammock for about $25; my husband and nephew soon sport straw Panama hats for under $10.

The scene is as fascinating as the bargains. As the market day winds down midafternoon, women begin packing up their wares, wrapping huge mounds of merchandise into their shawls, and then stacking enormous bundles atop the folded cloth on their heads, which serves as a cushion. The women, who usually wore flimsy, flat sandals tied with strings around the ankles, often also had babies wound into another shawl on their backs. They would stand erect and quickly trudge up mountain paths without a moment's wavering, looking even more regal than on first sight.

Quito is big and busy, full of intense activity and the contrasts of modernity -- a gleaming shopping center that could have been in any urban center next to dejected poverty, with whole families begging in the streets. The magnificent Monastery of San Francisco and the Cathedral seem to be under endless renovation, matching the prevailing architecture of the city, the unfinished building; the precarious-looking construction causes gasps from tourists. Over it all floats billowing clouds of exhaust from cars, taxis, and buses.

We escape to Cuenca, the third-largest city in Ecuador that is sometimes called its cultural capital. Cuenca, built on four rivers, has a rich history that winds down from the Canari Indians, who once farmed the area, through the Incas, who conquered them, to the Spanish who tricked and then defeated the Indians and then rebuilt their city in the colonial style in the mid 1500s. Although it's a large city of 350,000, the sense of graciousness immediately soothes nerves: wandering Cuenca's cobblestoned streets gives glimpses of whitewashed churches, overflowing flower markets, shops selling intriguing jewelry and clothing.

One of the best museums is, oddly enough, in a bank, the Museo del Banco Central (the country's central bank is known for supporting historical preservation efforts). Along with religious art including a large altarpiece in hammered silver, an exhaustive display of crucifixes painted in the very realistic and quite gruesome Spanish manner, creches, and paintings of the Blessed Virgin Mary and other religious figures are fascinating lifesize depictions of the various indigenous peoples, their customs, and surroundings.

Monasterio de las Conceptas Museum reveals another fascinating sliver of Cuenca lore. The museum is the front part of a still-existing convent of cloistered nuns, a stately whitewashed stucco building with display rooms lining an inner courtyard. A teen-aged guide with a lilting voice showed my sister and me around, dutifully pointing out the valuable paintings of saints, the porcelain Virgins dressed in real silk gowns, the fantastical Christmas retable, or creche, that contains much silverwork and hundreds of figurines.

But what stirred her enthusiasm and, infectiously, ours were the tales of the nuns still living on the other side of locked doors. Photographs depicted their simple lives of pastry making, prayer, and making handicrafts. We saw a turntable window through which they received supplies, never talking or seeing the merchant delivering the goods, and the little cubicles where they used to keep cuys, the guinea pigs prized as food here. Several rooms displayed the things they'd given up when they'd entered the convent, some as young as 12. Dolls, pottery figures representing pet dogs and cats, trunks that had contained their worldly possessions -- we became as intent as she seemed to be, trying to imagine a life of silence closed behind the walls.

Imagine almost waist-high burlap bags of rice, of wheat, of three kinds of corn, of five kinds of dried beans in as many colors. And then there are the potatoes -- potatoes the chefs of Boston or New York City would die for. Mounds of golf-ball-sized red potatoes, each one exactly the same size and shape as the next. Bags of small, white potatoes like Yukon gold; a mountain of rosy-gold potatoes with flaky skin. Tiny bananas, and large bananas, strawberries, raspberries, black raspberries prized for juice; whole stands of nothing but various kinds of rice; a stand of dozens of medicinal flowers and herbs where an Indian woman consulted with customers.

This is the Gualaceo market, a large open square almost completely devoted to agricultural products in the center of a dusty little town in the mountains east of Cuenca. Two Indian women, wearing bright skirts, several layered one atop another, and dark, narrow-brimmed Panama hats, smile at us briefly. Then, in the way of every farmer in the world, they turn back to important matters, weighing their potatoes in their hands, comparing size, probably discussing soil conditions and weather.

Other images remain from a day trip into these mountains: Indian women knitting complicated patterned sweaters as they walked swiftly down uneven mountain roads, their fingers never pausing as they stopped to let our car pass. Little shops filled with beautiful, rough-hewn pottery in pale yellows and greens. The town of Chordeleg, where store after store, joyerias, displays gold and silver jewelry. But the prevailing memories are still those burlap bags of potatoes, earthy and humble, but so perfectly shaped, so lovingly presented, in the market of Gualaceo.

I put one foot on each side of the yellow line, watching others doing the same as they chat in Spanish, German, Japanese. On our last day in Ecuador, we're at Mitad del Mundo, the center of the world (longitudinally at least), with a foot in both hemispheres. The monument here, a tall obelisk topped with a five-ton metal ball, is fronted with a long row of 13 stone busts of the men from many parts of the globe who helped measure the shape and size of the Earth in the Geodesic Mission (1733-'44).

Although we might think of the equator as dividing the Earth, Ecuadoreans, with their ingrained sense of conciliation, believe the imaginary line joins the Earth. It's a mental image I choose to carry away from Ecuador -- a tiny country with amazing diversity, holding the world together.