Kichwa culture is oral.
The stories and histories are
told, not written down.
Teaching is done by telling and
showing, moving around and practicing.
Not by copying or reading and
writing.
People can sit down and be quiet.
It's a skill you need to be able
to concentrate on what people are telling you.
They even have quite incredible
auditory memory skills since it is the way information has always entered.
They also usually have a
beautiful handwriting, are skilled illustrators and artists, and take care of
the presentation of their work.
Singing and dancing are other
important cultural ways of information input.
The songs tell about history,
important people and cultural events, animals, weather, environment and other
culturally pertinent facts.
They tell people how to live and
act, in the proper way, the Kichwa way.
The dancing also tells stories and
histories.
They are highly choreographed to
express cultural information with an interesting story that the people will
recognize.
It is normal to role-play
different important events in people's lives, like marriage, and the audience
lives in the story, all through it.
The humor is integral to all this
and very earthy.
Jokes, especially about
sexuality, are very much appreciated and people capable of telling good jokes
are celebrated.
As much as people able to tell a
good story, dance a good dance, sing a good song or play good music.
The games played are a practice for
cultural skills, like hunting for men or taking care of home and children for
women.
About fifty years ago, when most
of the elementary schools in the Amazon area of Ecuador were founded, they were
mostly religious Catholic schools and only in Spanish.
Why is this important?
Because schools were seen as a
vehicle to turn the Kichwas from their savage ways into Spanish speaking
Catholic Christians.
Speaking Kichwa was prohibited,
school uniforms were obligatory, cultural references were minimized and the
punishments were severe.
At the same time, the segregation
was the practice.
On one side were the colonial
children, the children of mestizos from the Andes, and on other side the Kichwa
children from the Amazon, los indios.
The colonos, the so-called white
children, ate one meal, with chicken and occasional meat.
The Kichwa children had another
meal, without any kind of meat.
The Kichwa child caught speaking
in Kichwa, his or her own language, was beaten and told never to do it again.
Worse was if you were found
following your cultures savage, pagan ways, communing with demons, as it was
called.
The children were taught a
limited, stumped Spanish and also limited and stumped reading and writing
skills, in Spanish.
And some basic math.
Then they were ready to serve
their betters.
Twenty-five years ago Kichwa
speaking school system was founded and along it the first non-Christian schools
meant for Kichwa children.
There were no University trained
Kichwa teachers.
There was no written Kichwa
language.
But there was a will to be
overcome and succeed.
First Kichwa High School graduates
were born.
Then the first Kichwa University
graduates.
But there was no work for them.
You could be a lawyer, engineer
or doctor, no one would hire you because you still were an indio.
Only way to get hired in the
Amazonic region was to work for Kichwa education system or in special community
programs for the Ecuadorian government.
Or you could go to the big cities
and towns in the Andes and pretend not to be a savage from the jungle.
That is still the image in the
Ecuadorian mind.
A naked warrior with his nose
pierced and face painted, standing with a spear in his hand and parrot feathers
in his hair.
Something other, something to be
scared of.
How can you work in an office and
tell to your coworkers that is you, or your father, brothers and uncles.
That the picture was taken in
your village and your home isn't that far away.
Amazonic Kichwa culture is in a
crisis.
So much has been forgotten in the
oppression.
So much has been thrown away
because of the shame.
And still there is pride and will
to continue the ancient ways and live like the grandparents have always lived.
It is a hard way to mix
Ecuadorian Spanish speaking culture with Amazonic Kichwa culture.
The modern technology with
ancient technologies.
The outside beliefs with the
Kichwa way and the outside languages with the Runa Shimita, People's Language.
