Ecuadorian Americans

Recent Immigrants

Ecuadorian Americans come from many backgrounds, including the aforementioned groups, Lebanese Ecuadorians, Italian Ecuadorians, Chinese Ecuadorians, and Japanese Ecuadorians. There are 696,500 Ecuadorian Americans and an unknown number of undocumented immigrants. [Page 751]As with many American groups of South American descent, one reason for the diverse heritage of these immigrants is that most of them have arrived relatively recently, having immigrated from a country that itself had become its own melting pot of diverse ethnic heritages. Not that this diversity is always egalitarian; even in the 21st century, the indigenous population is predominantly poor, and in most of rural Ecuador, indigenous Ecuadorians are expected to defer to whites and mestizos, their social superiors. However, racial identity is in some ways more social than biological; Ecuadorian Indians typically still wear their traditional clothing, and abandoning that clothing in favor of modern garb and acquiring sufficient Spanish fluency is enough to present oneself as mestizo and rise in the social ranks.

Sustained Ecuadorian immigration in significant numbers did not begin until the 1960s, in response to both the liberalization of American immigration restrictions and the 1964 Ecuador Land Reform, Idle Lands, and Settlement Act, which redistributed land in a belated effort to dismantle the feudal system that had been outmoded even at the nation's birth. Though the reforms gave ownership of the land to the peasantry who had worked it, these new landowners lacked the experience to know how to manage a farm, rather than simply do farm work, and in most cases had no credit with which to pay for expenses. Without the ability to earn revenue from the land, many of them were forced to sell it, and in doing so put themselves out of work. While some simply took jobs working on other farms, others took their sudden access to cash— a rarity for a farming family—and used it as an opportunity to relocate. Some moved to Ecuadorian cities; others immigrated to the United States, Canada, and Venezuela. Many of those who left Ecuador continued to support their families back home through remittances. Others sent for their families to join them.

Some of the Ecuadorians living in the United States, and a group that rarely naturalizes, are Otavaleños, an indigenous group in northern Ecuador. The Otavaleños were textile weavers whose forced labor was ended by the 1960s reforms, and as they took control of their own businesses, they sent itinerant sales forces abroad to sell their clothes and blankets. At any given time there are several hundred Otavaleño sellers in New York City and a scattering in other parts of the country, working as street vendors of their traditional clothing. The Otavaleño community has gradually become prosperous, its young men and women more likely with each decade to attend and complete college, and to enter into a professional career.

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