U.S country studies resolve the issue of Ecuadorians Inferiority Complex and Identity Crisis

Whites constituted the most privileged ethnic group and occupied the top of Ecuador's social pyramid. Despite their own realization that there was an admixture of Indian genes in their heritage, whites placed considerable emphasis on their purported purity of blood and Spanish ancestry. Although whites shared a common cultural background...

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Nos otros the mestizos

Any person of mixed blood. In Central and South America it denotes a person of combined Indian and European extraction. In some countries—e.g., Ecuador—it has acquired social and cultural connotations; a pure-blooded Indian who has adopted European dress and customs is called a mestizo (or cholo). In Mexico the description has been found so variable in meaning that it has been abandoned in census reports. In the Philippines “mestizo” denotes a person of mixed foreign (e.g., Chinese) and native ancestry.

Mestizo children, the issue of Spanish and Indian parents, were often abandoned; thus, special institutions appeared to collect and educate them—for example, the Girls’ School and the School of San Juan de Letrán, founded by Viceroy Mendoza in New Spain, and the Bethlehemite schools of Guatemala and Mexico...

Groups of Ecuador include a number of Indian-language-speaking populations (often referred to as indigenous peoples or Amerindians) and highland and lowland Spanish-speaking mestizos (people of mixed Indian and European descent). Ethnicity in Ecuador is often a matter of self-identification. Most Ecuadorans consider themselves mestizo and tend to identify with their...

...Quito was a colonial centre of wood carving and painting, and artisans still produce replicas of the masterpieces of the Quito school. Certain mestizo and indigenous communities have specialized in particular crafts, such as agave-fibre bags near Riobamba and Salcedo; wood carving at Ibarra; leatherwork at Cotacachi; woolen tapestries at...

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