The word “manabita” (or resident of Manabí province) is the only geographical adjective throughout Ecuador that identifies not a city, but a province; a province that is more like an entire country, as we will see in these pages. If we follow stereotypes, we’ll see that manabitas show up everywhere; they hold no grudge on people from other regions of Ecuador (a common trait throughout the country). They are proud and feisty; but open, inviting, and the most adaptable of all Ecuadorians. The cultural identity is that of ancient lineage, their cooking skills are unparalleled; their poetry, inspired; their craftmanship, world-renowned; some would say that their influence is crucial to the country’s identity, a prime ingredient that distinguishes Ecuador from its neighboring countries, with their history, their legends and their truths.
One of the cruelest Conquistadors in South American history, Pedro de Alvarado, swept through Manabí – or, as it was known then, the pre-Colombian Manteño-Huancavilca conglomerate – torturing and killing anyone who refused to reveal where gold or emeralds could be found. By 1534 the civilization was reduced to nothing. De Alvarado allegedly chained thousands of natives and forced them to follow him up the Andes to Quito, with most dying along the way and hundreds more perishing from disease. The near-mythical town of Jocay (today’s Manta), which registered a population of 20,000 when first encountered by the Spanish, had been reduced to some 50 people when Italian chronicler Girolamo Benzoni visited in 1546 (only a decade later!).
What remains today of what some call the State of Manteño? Where can we find the ruins of this conglomerate never conquered by the powerful Incas? Like the Mayas in Mexico, there is an air of mystery that accompanies many historic sites in Manabí. What were these tiny towns… some over 5,000 years old? Today their people conduct humble, peaceful, simple lives, quietly dedicated to fishing activities and craftwork.
Whistle at the Archaeological Museum of Salango.
The sea has been a constant thread running through our work this issue. Manabí is all about the sea that surrounds it and the province’s populations have ebbed and flowed, like waves, through the centuries. Portoviejo, the capital, at the time of its colonial foundation became the Spanish council (cabildo) as it promised emeralds and gold; a reason enough at that time to make it a major city. But this was never the case; gold and emeralds were never found, inhabitants fled, and production potential was hurt by hostile periods of drought. The city of Manta, today so modern and large, wasn’t any more promising: in the latter years of colonial rule, Manta comprised a simple dock with a single street, escorted by a dozen wooden houses.
The production of tobacco, cocoa and sisal in the late colonial period helped repopulate the area, and during the first years of the republic, the province began to enjoy sustained growth. But regular demographic declines took their toll on Manabí. Since the 1960s, for example, Manabí has recorded more migration than any other coastal province in Ecuador. Its people vanished, spreading their cultural sap throughout the country, leaving their own land to enrich, with their unique customs and talent, places like Guayaquil, which in the 1960s started to become the megacity we know today.
According to Carmen Dueñas, a passionate Manabí historian, this migration may have had something to do with an ancient trend. Known to be great merchants and even greater navigators, these coastal inhabitants were used to setting sail to trade products in other regions of the Americas (from Mexico to Chile, and beyond). Also influencing human movement was the ‘bipolar’ ecosystem (very wet and then very, very dry), which caused many an exodus.
No matter how many Manabitas moved from their homeland, never did they leave their roots behind: a very special sense of territory follows them like a shadow. They carry their land and identity with them wherever they go
Manabí was always deemed peripheral within the political context of the Spanish American colonies. In the early colonial years, the founding of the Spanish city of Portoviejo was doomed to failure. Meanwhile another major Manabí town, Jipijapa, was misunderstood. Described by 18th-century chroniclers as “a land of rich people,” Jipijapa’s indigenous people had always run the show. Such was the importance these “Indians of Jipijapa” lent themselves, they did not permit outsiders to stay in their communes overnight. The people from this region were considered ‘insolent’ and disrespectful: to govern Guayaquil one had to be appointed and certified. One story tells of leaders forging the signature of the King in order to go over local authorities, who had to journey repeatedly to the Viceroyalty of Santa Fe, and even to Madrid, to resolve their political problems directly with the higher levels of colonial rule. Few colonial governments wanted to serve these “unruly people. Tensions with Guayaquil even led the authorities of this city to besiege Portoviejo for three months! This prompted an unprecedented collaboration between the three ethnic groups of Manabí – indigenous, mestizos and whites – to put an end to the attack.
Even then, Manabitas knew to leave the petty colonial hierarchies behind, and take the world in their hands. And they often did this via the province’s most accessible route to the outside world: the sea. This autonomy and isolation is central to understanding the personality of Manabitas today: masters of their own fate.
Ceiba trees lose their leaves when the dry season comes around.
Toward the end of the colonial era, Manabí was one of two regions in America that refused to pay taxes. And later, when independence hero Simon Bolívar asked the Portoviejo community to offer its vacant lands to a rich investor of the Independence Wars, an exemplary sense of local unity between rich, middle and poor commoners allowed the Manabitas to buy the entire territory, so that the “vacant” lots could continue being communal. today, there is an unspoken rule that anyone born in Manabí is entitled to land here and whoever leaves Manabí must offer his land to the community. The practice and concept is still important in rural quarters of the province and that mindset is a major cultural feature of the Montuvio community.
In Manabí, land has always played a very unique (and essential) role, especially compared to what most Ecuadorians have been taught to understand about land ownership since colonial times. In that province by the sea there is still a sense of communal living that, although countered by the current legal system’s sense of possession, is at the root of why this province in particular is so culturally autonomous. The land continues to be protected by a conglomerate of people, regardless of ethnicity, race or class (boundaries that were evaded thanks to the lack of a colonial foothold in the area), representing historic collaboration, unparalleled in Ecuador, and perhaps, most of the Americas. Manabitas keep their Manabí safe within them, however far they may find themselves from their homeland. And this vitality and sense of identity is found in every corner of the country; Manabitas embody their freedom, pride (and, of course, good food!) wherever they are.
