Chota Valley Afro-Ecuadorian Foodways

Community

The CHOTA-MIRA VALLEY, a hot dry canyon between Imbabura and Carchi in the northern highlands, holds an Afro-Ecuadorian population descended from people enslaved on Jesuit SUGAR estates from the seventeenth century — an African-descended community living not on the coast but at altitude, and eating accordingly. Sugarcane, beans, maize, the local FRÉJOL, guandul, yuca and the fruit of an irrigated desert valley. ⚠ THE COMMUNITY IS ALSO KNOWN INTERNATIONALLY FOR FOOTBALL AND FOR THE BOMBA MUSIC TRADITION, and its food record is thinner than either — a gap, not an absence.