Ecuadorians

Ecuadorians are people identified with the South American country of Ecuador. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Ecuadorians, several of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Ecuadorian.
Numerous indigenous cultures inhabited what is now Ecuadorian territory for several millennia before the expansion of the Inca Empire in the fifteenth century. The Las Vegas culture of coastal Ecuador is one of the oldest cultures in the Americas. The Valdivia culture is another well-known early Ecuadorian culture. Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century, as did sub-Saharan Africans who were enslaved and transported across the Atlantic by Spaniards and other Europeans. The modern Ecuadorian population is principally descended from these three ancestral groups.
As of the 2022 census, 85.17% of the population identified as Mestizo, a mix of Spanish and Indigenous American ancestry, up from 71.9% in 2000. The percentage of the population which identifies as European Ecuadorian was 2.2%, which fell from 6.1% in 2010 and 10.5% in 2000. Indigenous Ecuadorians account for 7.7% of the population and 4.8% of the population consists of Afro-Ecuadorians. Genetic research indicates that the ancestry of Ecuadorian Mestizos is on average 53.8% Amerindian ancestry, 38.3% European ancestry and 7.4% African ancestry.

Ethnic groups

There are five major ethnic groups in Ecuador: Mestizo, European Ecuadorian, Afro-Ecuadorian, Indigenous, and Montubio. The 2022 census reported Mestizos constitute more than 77.5% of the population, 7.7% Indigenous American, 7.7% Montubio, 4.8% Afro-Ecuadorian and 2.2% European Ecuadorian.
Ecuador's population primarily descends from Spanish immigrants and South American Indigenous peoples, admixed with descendants of enslaved sub-Saharan Africans who arrived to work on coastal plantations in the sixteenth century. The mix of these groups is described as Mestizo or Cholo.
According to Kluck, writing in 1989, ethnic groups in Ecuador have had a traditional hierarchy of European Ecuadorian, Mestizo, Afro-Ecuadorians, and then others. Her review depicts this hierarchy as a consequence of colonial attitudes and of the terminology of colonial legal distinctions. Spanish-born persons residing in the New World were at the top of the social hierarchy, followed by criollos, born of two Spanish parents in the colonies. The 19th century usage of Mestizo was to denote a person of mixed heritage, with one parent of European descent and one parent of Indigenous American descent; a Cholo had one Indigenous American parent and one Mestizo parent. By the 20th century, Mestizo and Cholo were frequently used interchangeably. Kluck suggested that societal relationships, occupation, manners, and clothing all derived from ethnic affiliation.

Mestizo	European Ecuadorian	Indigenous	Montubio	Afro-Ecuadorian	other
77.5	2.2	7.7	7.7	4.8	0.1

Nonetheless, according to Kluck, individuals could potentially switch ethnic affiliation if they had culturally adapted to the recipient group; such switches were made without resort to subterfuge. Moreover, the precise criteria for defining ethnic groups varies considerably. The vocabulary that more prosperous Mestizos and European Ecuadorians used in describing ethnic groups mixes social and biological characteristics. Ethnic affiliation thus is dynamic; Indigenous Ecuadorians often become Mestizos, and prosperous Mestizos seek to improve their status sufficiently to be considered European Ecuadorian. Ethnic identity reflects numerous characteristics, only one of which is physical appearance; others include dress, language, community membership, and self-identification.
A geography of ethnicity remained well-defined until the surge in migration that began in the 1950s. European Ecuadorians resided primarily in larger cities. Mestizos lived in small towns scattered throughout the countryside. Indigenous peoples formed the bulk of the Sierra rural populace, although Mestizos filled this role in the areas with few Indigenous peoples. Most Afro-Ecuadorians lived in Esmeraldas Province, with small enclaves found in the Carchi and Imbabura provinces. Pressure on Sierra land resources and the dissolution of the traditional hacienda, however, increased the numbers of Indigenous peoples migrating to the Costa, the Oriente, and the cities. By the 1980s, Sierra Indigenous people—or Indigenous peoples in the process of switching their ethnic identity to that of Mestizos—lived on Costa plantations, in Quito, Guayaquil, and other cities, and in colonization areas in the Oriente and the Costa. Indeed, Sierra Indigenous peoples residing in the coastal region substantially outnumbered the remaining original Costa inhabitants, the Chachi and Tsáchila Indigenous people. In the late 1980s, analysts estimated that there were only about 4,000 Chachi and Tsáchila Indigenous peoples. Some Afro-Ecuadorians had migrated from the remote region of the Ecuadorian-Colombian border to the towns and cities of Esmeraldas.

Afro-Ecuadorian

Afro-Ecuadorians are an ethnic group in Ecuador who are descendants of enslaved sub-Saharan Africans brought by the Spanish. The first group arrived in 1553 when a slave ship wrecked, allowing them to escape and form maroon settlements in Esmeraldas, which became a refuge. Over time, they dispersed throughout Ecuador. Despite the abolition of slavery in 1851, Afro-Ecuadorians have faced significant discrimination and marginalization from mestizo and criollo populations, leading to higher rates of poverty due to a lack of government funding and limited social mobility. While concentrated in the northwest coastal region, particularly Esmeraldas and Valle del Chota, they also have notable populations in cities like Guayaquil and Ibarra. Afro-Ecuadorians have made significant contributions, especially in sports, with many national football team members originating from Valle del Chota.
Ecuador has a population of about 1,120,000 descendants from sub-Saharan African people. They make up from 3% to 5% of Ecuador's population. The Afro-Ecuadorian culture is found primarily in the country's northwest coastal region. Afro-Ecuadorians form a majority in the province of Esmeraldas and also have an important concentration in the Valle del Chota in the Imbabura Province. They can be also found in significant numbers in Quito and Guayaquil.

Indigenous

Sierra Indigenous

Sierra Indigenous people had an estimated population of 1.5 to 2 million in the early 1980s and live in the intermontane valleys of the Andes. Prolonged contact with Hispanic culture, which dates back to the conquest, has had a homogenizing effect, reducing the variation among the indigenous Sierra tribes.
The Indigenous people of the Sierra are separated from European Ecuadorians and Mestizos by a caste-like gulf. They are marked as a disadvantaged group; to be an Indigenous person in Ecuador is to be stigmatized. Poverty rates are higher and literacy rates are lower among Indigenous than the general population. They enjoy limited participation in national institutions and are often excluded from social and economic opportunities available to more privileged groups. However, some groups of Indigenous people, such as the Otavalo people, have increased their socioeconomic status to extent that they enjoy a higher standard of living than many other Indigenous groups in Ecuador and many Mestizos of their area.
Visible markers of ethnic affiliation, especially hairstyle, dress, and language, separate Indigenous Ecuadorians from the rest of the populace. Indigenous Ecuadorians wore more manufactured items by the late 1970s than previously; their clothing, nonetheless, was distinct from that of other rural inhabitants. Indigenous Ecuadorians in communities relying extensively on wage labor sometimes assumed Western-style dress while still maintaining their Indigenous identity. Indigenous Ecuadorians speak Spanish and, Quichua—a Quechua dialect—although most are bilingual, speaking Spanish as a second language with varying degrees of facility. By the late 1980s, some younger Indigenous Ecuadorians no longer learned Quichua.

Oriente Indigenous

Although the Indigenous people of the Oriente first came into contact with Europeans in the 16th century, the encounters were more sporadic than those of most of the country's indigenous population. Until the 19th century, most non-Indigenous Americans entering the region were either traders or missionaries. Beginning in the 1950s, however, the government built roads and encouraged settlers from the Sierra to colonize the Amazon River Basin. Virtually all remaining Indigenous Ecuadorians were brought into increasing contact with national society. The interaction between Indigenous Americans and foreigners had a profound impact on the indigenous way of life.
In the late 1970s, roughly 30,000 Quichua speakers and 15,000 Shuar and Achuar peoples lived in Oriente Indigenous communities. Quichua speakers grew out of the detribalization of members of many different groups after the Spanish conquest. Subject to the influence of Quichua-speaking missionaries and traders, various elements of the Yumbo people adopted the language as a lingua franca and gradually lost their previous languages and tribal origins. Yumbo people were scattered throughout the Oriente, whereas the Shuar and the Achuar peoples were concentrated in southeastern Ecuador. Some also lived in northeastern Peru. Traditionally, both groups relied on migration to resolve intracommunity conflict and to limit the ecological damage to the tropical forest caused by slash-and-burn agriculture.
The Yumbo, Shuar and Achuar peoples depended on agriculture as their primary means of subsistence. Manioc, the main staple, was grown in conjunction with a wide variety of other fruits and vegetables. Yumbo men also resorted to wage labor to obtain cash for the few purchases deemed necessary. By the mid-1970s, increasing numbers of Quichua speakers settled around some of the towns and missions of the Oriente. Indigenous Ecuadorians themselves had begun to make a distinction between Christian and jungle Indigenous people. The former engaged in trade with townspeople. The Shuar and Achuar peoples, in contrast to the Christian Quichua speakers, lived in more remote areas. Their mode of horticulture was similar to that of the non-Christian Yumbo people, although they supplemented crop production with hunting and some livestock raising.
Shamans played a pivotal role in social relations in both groups. As the main leaders and the focus of local conflicts, shamans were believed to both cure and kill through magical means. In the 1980s group conflicts between rival shamans still erupted into full-scale feuds with loss of life.
The Oriente Indigenous population dropped precipitously during the initial period of intensive contact with outsiders. The destruction of their crops by Mestizos laying claim to indigenous lands, the rapid exposure to diseases to which Indians lacked immunity, and the extreme social disorganization all contributed to increased mortality and decreased birth rates. One study of the Shuar people in the 1950s found that the group between ten and nineteen years of age was smaller than expected. This was the group that had been youngest and most vulnerable during the initial contact with national society. Normal population growth rates began to reestablish themselves after approximately the first decade of such contact.