The native populations of the American continent are alive; more alive than many modern societies. The term "original peoples" or "aborigines" refers to the original communities of the Americas, human groups descended from pre-Columbian cultures that have maintained their cultural and social characteristics, including their own language. There are millions of them. According to recent surveys, from Patagonia to the north of Mexico there are currently about 700 different native peoples: almost forty million people. But let us try to look at these peoples without a superficial view, without consumerist folklore, but rather with respect. They are millions of original inhabitants of the American land who are among the most vulnerable part of the population, deprived of basic rights such as water, food, health and education, even though they were the first inhabitants of this continent. History passed over them without mercy. But they are still alive, and even today they struggle to be recognized, to be integrated with dignity into society. Even to obtain a recognition of their territories so often snatched and plundered without any consideration. But there is something else to say about them: their culture, traditions and conception of life and nature are of great wealth for the rest of humanity, at a time when the planet itself seems to be crying out for a human and ecological change to avoid the self-extermination of the human race. In the spiritual vision of most of these peoples, life is not conceived from a mercantilist point of view, but as a common good, whose laws of respect and love cannot be violated. The purpose of this photographic work referring to the native peoples of Ecuador is a first step to call attention to the daily life of the native American inhabitants. It is one more attempt to help free them from their exclusion; to favor their integration, and the emergence of a fruitful dialogue between all members of our societies. Through documentary photographs, we try to put the existence and essence of these representatives of valuable native cultures in black and white. We want to show the faces of the original inhabitants of our America, whose culture still enlightens us today in many aspects, and whose ancestral blood, also, runs through our veins by the work of miscegenation. We sincerely believe that it is worth getting to know him.
© Enrique Recabarren | Argentinean Journalist & Collaborator