Ecuador, por favor
At eighteen I took my first flight and crossed the ocean to live with a family of campesinos in the Andes. I was studying Rural Development at university, convinced that lived experience was essential to understanding what I was reading. The pueblo, small and still largely absent from maps, offered far more than I had anticipated. After many journeys elsewhere, those months remain among the most formative of my personal and professional life.
The photographs were taken with the compact film camera I used to carry on school trips.
[2000]
At six every evening, fog climbed the mountains and embraced the community in a fairy-like atmosphere. Daniel was playing on the grass, the skin of his belly is rough to the touch.
Margarita, our host, one late afternoon invited me to harvest sandía for dinner from her finca. We walked a long way through the fog, until what looked like a chaotic patchwork of overlapping fields slowly resolved under her steps. She stopped without hesitation and, with a single cut of her machete, took what we needed. The day that I fell ill, she filled a teaspoon with aguardiente, a homemade alcoholic drink distilled from sugarcane, warmed it over the flame, and massaged my stomach with the lukewarm liquid. Shortly after she gave me a ring, which I still wear every day.
Campesino homes scattered across the hills.
Child mothers were not uncommon in the community.
Walking down to the main village takes a three-hour walk, off-track, along dusty roads.
The market in the main village was the only opportunity for campesinos to sell food beyond subsistence agriculture.
Landscape on the way back to Quito.
A view of the community from above, with the central square on the right corner. Houses are scattered across the hills, among fields of maiz, frijoles, and caña.
Margarita’s children: Nathalie, Aleix-Santiago, Max. They were playing in the backyard with la pelota: a bundle of rags wrapped in brown tape, their ball.
Orfelina and her kids posing in front of their house.
The big sister is holding the hand of the little one, while carrying the baby brother on her back.
Children from the local school during a break. The school had a single classroom, with children of mixed ages.
The market in the main village, selling meat not kept refrigerated. I was struck then, unaware I would encounter many more markets like this in my life.
I remember taking the picture of this girl because she reminded me my younger self. There are traces of each of us all over the world.
15 images | slideshow
