The Chonta Festivals and Styles of Traditional Dress in Ecuador

I have an excuse for not writing in over a month and that reason is....My computer is on sick leave.  Our sweet little kitties decided to knock my computer off its perch and now we are dealing with some serious screen and hard drive damage...No worries it's recuperating and should be in ship shape in the next week.

That being said....On with the post!

So the fiestas the last week in April were the Fiestas of Archidona and the Chonta Fiesta.  If you guys remember from my last post I talked a bit about chonta.  Just a refresher its a big staple point in the Kichwa diet and the main (well only) ingredient in making chicha.  It's really only available around the end of March until June or July so April is the time to celebrate the first harvests of the Chonta!

 

Main street in Archidona during the parade

This was a perfect time for me to take photos of traditional out fits worn not only here in the jungle but also on the Coast and the Andes!  

Here we have several styles of Kichwa dress some of which are still worn today:

The outfit worn by the little girl is an outfit that I still see in communities.  Usually worn by the older

Kichwa women; usually consisting of a light checkered colored shirt (pink, yellow, or blue) and a navy skirt.

 The photos to the right and below are styles of dress before they used their traditional navy coloured clothes.  Mostly made from animal skins and plant fibers.  The men to the right play their instruments while the women below dance and act out hunting techniques.  The spears are covered in feathers from parrots, toucans, and other colorful amazonian birds.

These styles of dress are seen more during parades, festivals, celebrations, etc:

 Typical style of dress for women with artesanal jewelry and seeds from the amazon.  In her hand she holds a 'cuya' a type of gourd that is hollowed out and dried and used as a serving dish for guayusa or chicha.

A typical style of dress for men.  Cloth navy pants and shirt also with artesanal jewelry, seeds and of course his spear for hunting!

This is one of my favorite photos from the parade.  You can really see the beautiful colors and seeds used in their traditional dress.

Well that does it for the amazonian 'traje tipico' and now on to the Andes!:

I feel like typical andean style clothing has always been so striking and COLOURFUL!

I really only took a few photos of the coastal traditional wear:

These outfits are traditional to the Esmeraldas province with lots of Afro-Ecuadorian and caribbean 

influences.

Well there is a small introduction into traditional garments worn way-back-when here in Ecuador.  People today do not wear these out on the streets with the exception of the Sierran Quichua.  They still hold firmly to their traditional attire and I wish it was something that was done more here because in the Amazon there is an increasingly noticeable disappearance of traditional amazonian Kichwa culture as they move more and more into westernized society.

Next week let's talk about GUAYUSA!!