pWith support from the city council in 2017, the entire mural of a six-storey building in Guayaquil's financial district has been unaware of and anger for over a year in Ecuador's most populous city. Ta.
picture Two men showed they were working on money: Perfect for the skin and skin wearing suits, ties, shoes. Other shirtless shorts, flip-flops and stocking masks. He had light skin.
For black activists, the artwork message left no doubt. It hints at robbery and reinforced racist stereotypes, smearing the minority portrayed by Ecuadorian Afro, which is the worst. unemployment and Gender-based violence.
“It was a crime for black people in Guayaquil,” said Guillermo Leon Pacheco, 62, of the Pueblo Black Organization, who was one of the key figures in the campaign against the murals.
That pressure ultimately led to the removal of work and creation in 2020. Six new murals depicting black resistance.
One of them is in the southwest of the city. It features eight black historical figuresinclude María Chiquinquirá DíazA woman who was enslaved in the 18th century who sued her owner in the Queen's royal family for freedom. The outcome of the case is unknown, but Diaz has become an icon of Afroe Cuadorian resistance.
Pacheco, one of the groups of activists and artists fighting to maintain black culture in Ecuador's largest city, said:
Founded in 1535, Guayaquil was the main port during Spanish colonization. This continued after independence, becoming Ecuador's business and financial capital.
Before its abolishment in 1845, Guayaquil was also a major center of the slave trade, supplying cocoa and tobacco plantations around the country. The city had a significant black population, both slaves and free, including the hundreds of people who worked at the port.
Today, Afro Guayaquileños lives primarily in the poor belt of the city. They make up 6.9% of the city's 2.746 billion residents. That's a higher percentage than the national average of 4.8%, but to authorities it's “invisible” to black rights activist Carlos Valencia Lastra says.
“Society borrows historical debt from us and lets us see us because we know that it takes many opportunities,” he said, one of Guayaquil's poorest and poorest black neighborhoods. said Lastra, who coordinates Nigeria community centres. “They made us believe that our culture, customs and traditions are the worst.”
For this reason, he began a project to teach marimba to young black people. The word comes from the Bantu family and refers not only to wooden instruments found in afloratin cultures in countries such as Mexico and Guatemala, but also to rhythm, dance and culture itself.
“Listen to Marimba will heal your soul and heart. It empowers black people and helps you to despise your thoughts,” Lastra said.
Last month, he and the other Marim Belos performed during Chiguaro, a funeral ritual for the coastal Ecuador and Colombian Afro population, in honor of four black boys killed after being detained in the military. I sang.
Black movement activists are one of the main victims of the numerous human rights abuses committed during the “drug war” that Afro-Ecuadorians have been imposed by President Daniel Novore in response to the surge in crime. He claims that
“We need to protect ourselves from the oppression and discrimination we face,” says Maria Nazareno (36), who also attends Chiguaro, teaching black children another Afroe Cuadorian genre of music. said. The head when they dance.
“We cannot lose this historical memory,” she said.
However, artists fear that some of the culture in Afro-Ecuador is at risk of losing it.
“This is our biggest concern,” says Aurin Montaño, 48, a professor of traditional Afro-Ecuadorian music at Las Art University, and the few remaining in the country. I am one of the marimba makers.
It takes about 15 days to build an instrument traditionally made from palm trees. However, young people have lost interest in continuing their traditions, he said. “We have a strong interest in music from overseas, especially from the US, but not so much with ours,” he said. It also lamented the lack of financial support from the government.
“If the nation is truly interested in fighting racism, it starts with education and reminds everyone that it has the same rights and obligations as other Ecuadorians. White or Mestizo Children are not racist. It's society that makes them racist,” Montaño said.
