In class we’ve been talking about identity and who we all are. The majority of the visits we do and places we go, my professor has asked us collectively, what are the identities here in this area, where can you find the different identities and how are they shown? All are questions that honestly dangled over my head for a couple of days in the museums and also the first day of class when we discussed it. I was really just lost, until we discussed it in more dept. When we talked about identity being either avowed versus ascribed; where something avowed is when you are basically awarded a privilege or merit. Where are being ascribed, it’s your born into something; you have no control over it.
When we discussed being avowed something, it reminded me about a class on took on equity, and who we are as individuals in a particular place. And I thought well, if someone asks me “who I am” I would instantly say what nationality I was. Thus when presented with a question, “who are you?” many ideas come to mind. In class we listed traits that describe ourselves, for example, sister, daughter, female, care-taker. After making this connection I could see how that my host family has many of the same identities as well. I’v got a family made up of different identities: my host mother is a mom, daughter, provided, and grandmother as well. Making these connections helped me realize how many stereotypical categories the class as a whole had about the Ecuadorian culture and people here. They may look different, but they are just like me and you, inside and out.
Along with the pre-determined attributes we had towards the Cuencanos, you could tell we diffidently could see the marginalization within the indigenous groups. The indigenous people aren’t even considered part of the dominant group. They make up so much of the population, the government doesn’t even recognize them. You could see a good representation of this when we went to visit the Mindala Workshop, he told us that many of these artifacts are found off of his streets and that are handed down from his father to him now. You could tell they were scared to even be sharing what their beautiful indigenous group has to offer. Because if they ever get caught, all of their artifacts could be taken aware and send to the Quito Museum.
It’s really terrible that all these indigenous groups want to share their traditions and culture and if they express themselves too much they can be punished by simply loosing everything they stand for.
