Just for the record, today's take of digital images from the Ministerio de Prevision Social archive was 1653. That should keep me busy for quite a while. I much pretty managed to plow through everything I wanted to get, which in a way is a nice way to finish here.

Today's signature is from Luis Chavez.

I debate rather to write another post about my life in Ecuador because it is going to be pissy and people begin to complain about my constant whining. It's not like anything really bad has happened to me here (I haven't been shot, robbed, or run over by a bus), but it is the cumulative affect of a lot of small things that just pile up after awhile. I like to think that usually I can roll with the punches, but I am just worn down to shreds by the constant drone of problems here.

On Monday some friends offered to take me to Cotopaxi. While I really should have stayed in the archives, I thought getting out of the city would do my soul good. Instead, we had car problems & spent too much time on the highway and didn't get as far as we thought we would. Oh well.

In Quito, most buses run north-south, and very few run east-west. To make matters worse, it seems like I am always traveling NW-SE or NE-SW, a direction in which NO buses go. So, either I have to take multiple buses or take my risk with taxistas (which I hate doing cuz they often want to rip me off). Yesterday I took 2 buses to get to a meeting, and neither went the way I thought they would and I ended up walking half the distance anyway. Today it was 3 buses. Every time I get on a bus I risk getting robbed. Yesterday it was my water bottle (and what's with that? it was an old, beat up, plastic bottle full of boiled water--hardly a steal).

I'm down to my last couple days and so feel very pressed for time. But I go to meetings and people show up hours late or meetings start hours late, while I get very antsy cuz I really do have other things I need to be doing than waiting for people.

And then there are the archives. Yesterday I went back to the Archivo de Funcion Legislativa where I originally planned to spend a lot of time, but they still do not have shelves after moving back into the rebuilt congressional building. Furthermore, everyone is off in Montecristi packing up after the current Constituent Assembly. So, I don't have anything from that collection.

So I go back to the Archivo Intermedio, but they are not happy to see me because by now it is an hour before they are supposed to close and obviously they could leave early if I had not shown up.

I've debated my whole month here whether to go out to the Biblioteca Auriel Espinosa Polit in Cotocollao. They have a great collection, but it is an hour from downtown. After my meeting this morning, I decide to take a taxi out there (mostly because I have no idea how to travel by bus in that SE-NW direction). I get there at noon, only to see a sign that they are closing at 12:30. I feel absolutely cursed here. So, it's an hour bus ride back into town, and back to the Archivo Intermedio, kicking myself the whole way for losing 2 more hrs out of an already overpressed time schedule.

To top everything off, I come home the last 2 nites to discover that the Internet is down (and you know what it's like being disconnected from the Borg Collective). And I bought too much food, so I dumped everything together in a pot & boiled it to pieces--so you can imagine what that tasted like.

It's not like everything is bad. Some good things have happened. Hanging out with friends here has been fun. The last 3 evenings I've gone to the UASB for a colloquium on the bicentennial of Andean independence, which has given me some nice opportunities to talk with colleagues. Betsy Hurtado at the congressional library has been very nice in helping me track down legal materials on tinterillos. And tonite just before leaving the Ministerio de Prevision Social archive I found a very thick volume of reclamos agricolas that looks like it could be a VERY rich source for my research. I thought about going back out to BAEAP tomorrow, but maybe I'll just stay at the Archivo Intermedio & fill my flash cards full of archival images. As long as I don't show up just before they leave, the staff there does treat me very nicely.

One day to go.

The rain has finally lifted over Quito, and the mornings dawn bright & beautiful. I go up to the rooftop to snap a picture of Cayambe, but apparently we are too far down in the Quito valley to see it (or our apartment building isn't high enough). Instead, I see Cotopaxi through the smog that now hangs heavy over Quito.

I'm thinking of starting to collect signatures in the archive. Here is one of Jesús Gualavisí. I should be able to do something with these.

Digital image count for today: 1549. I think that is more than yesterday, tho I was really not trying to break that record. And there is even more--my camera ran out of juice, so there's probably about 100 more on Kenny's that I need to download.

But the Ecuatorianistas meeting starts tomorrow, so I'll be out of the archives until next week.

Today I blew past yesterday's number of digital images of archival documents: 1292 in total. I just randomly snapped thru folders, really not having a clear idea of what I am getting and dreadfully afraid that I'm skipping over the most important documents. It was a race to see which would give out first: space on my flash disk or my battery. By 3:15 it was all over, and the archive was still open for an hour more. I'm wishing I had bought more flash disks--I'm terribly nervous that I'll wipe one down now for tomorrow and then my hard drive will crash & all that time I spent snapping digital images in the archive will be for nothing.

I am picking up a lot of material from 1931 after the police shut down the Indigenous congress in Cayambe. I probably could easily write a book on just 1931. But would anyone read it? Would anyone publish it? Would anyone buy it?


Best quote of the day:

He llegado al convencimiento absolute de que no existe, ni ha existido nunca, la Comunidad de Sanancajas; pues se trata únicamente de la cínica audacia del abogado de mala ley, explotador, que en asocio del tinterillo Hilario Cuzco, ha dejado en la miseria a un reducido grupo de campesinos (no son indios propiamente) ignorantes, que están envenenados con ideas de absurdo comunismo.

That pretty much sums up my research in a nutshell. You can also see how poor of images I'm getting by doing this in such a big hurry. I really wish I had a good copystand & proper lighting to get clear, steady images. I'm really going to give myself a blazing migraine working thru all these images on my computer.

At most I have 5 more archive days left, and I'm really feeling the pressure. There is so much more I should get before I leave, and there is no way I can get it all. It would take years....

Spend most of the day in the Ministerio de Prevision Social archives. Shot digital images of documents like crazy, for a total of 857 images. That should be enough to keep me busy for a while. Hard drive is becoming awfully full. Gonzalo Oleas has his finger prints all over the place in the archive.

Sundays in conservative Quito have always had a reputation for being dreadfully boring. Besides, it is cloudy & not very nice outside. So, I'm staying inside instead listening to WORT & WPR streaming on my laptop and entering everything I've collected over the last 2 wks into my bibliographic database.

How do you capture history in a picture?

On Sunday January 10, 1954, the government sent in seventy police to the Pitaná section of the Guachalá hacienda to suppress an Indigenous uprising against administrator César Troya Salazar who had failed to pay them their wages. The police intercepted the workers as they came down the hill in the foreground of this photo to attend mass at the church in the middle. Armed with machine guns, the police fired on the assembled group. They killed four people, injured eleven more, and detained twelve people.

On maps this hill is labeled Loma de Ayacucho, but today people from Pitaná who took me to visit the site of the massacre told me that they now call it Guerra Loma. Although the massacre took place more than 50 years ago, it seems to be very much alive in people's memories today.

So, I pull myself out of bed & go check on my laptop which 8 hrs later STILL warns me against turning it off because it is stuck on installing 1 of 6 updates. I force it to shut down anyway (afraid that I'll crash another hard drive), but it boots back up, installs the updates, and then shuts all the way down for the first time. What a relief.

I head out to try to find the Archivo de Ministerio de Gobierno (which has moved), but I finally track it down. Patricio Davila, the very friendly archivist, welcomes me in but promptly tells me that they don't have anything on rios. Not rios, I try to explain, tinterillos. Well, nothing on that either, or in fact anything that might be of interest to me. I try to explain that I had been in the archive several years earlier with a colleague and indeed had looked at material that was precisely on this topic of tinterillos, so I know that the archive has material that is of interest to me.

Patricio then launches into this story of how several years ago one of my compatriots had spent a month in the archive researching Lago San Pablo and how well they had treated him--given him tea to drink, space to work, made copies for him, etc. This person promised to send Patricio a card or to call him when he finished his dissertation. Patricio assumes that he finished, but he has heard nothing from him. So, so sorry, but nothing in this archive would be of interest to me.

I try to explain that Kenny might actually be here next week for the Ecuatorianistas conference, and if so I'll bring him by. I think about printing out Kenny's dissertation on Lago San Pablo and giving it to him. Patricio proceeds to launch into this long monologue about how much better things are now in Ecuador and that now this archive is completely open for whomever might want to consult material. At this point I get up to leave because I'm about ready to explode. I have to bite my tongue to keep from shouting out BUT YOU WILL NOT LET ME INTO THE ARCHIVE!

Perhaps sensing this, Patricio tells me to try the "Archivo Intermedio" at the corner of Guayaquil and Espejo because they will have what I want, but he is so sorry that they do do not have any material that would be of use to me. So, I wonder off to this archive I had never heard of before and ring the door bell. The women asks me what I want, and I explain that Patricio sent me here to look for material on tinterillos. Well, they don't have anything on that. What DO you have, I ask? Well, we have material from ministries that no longer exist, like the Ministerio de Prevision Social and... THE MINISTERIO DE PREVISION SOCIAL!? I interrupt. Yes, she says. I want to see that, I say. And she lets me in.

A bit of a back story--several years ago Valeria told me she had found the Ministerio de Prevision Social archives but wouldn't take me there unless I came to Ecuador for more than a few days. I really wanted to see this archive because a lot of my work has been based on documents from this ministry scattered in other archives, and I thought that this would be a treasure trove of material.

I start looking thru the index and quickly find that they have a bunch of material from Zumbahua. I ask for that box, and find a carpeta with 248 documents on the land struggle there. The cautious but friendly staff say I can go with the cleaning person to make photocopies of the material, but I wonder what is the point since I already published my essay on Zumbahua. So, I get out my digital camera and click away instead. And I find more and more material on Gonzalo Oleas, even having him writing letters from up in Pichincha. What is up with that guy, and why don't more people talk about him?

But nothing on tinterillos--not a thing. I'm finding all sorts of great stuff--that would have been useful for me a couple years ago, but what am I going to do with it now?

So, what is a person to do? Buy books, of course! I go back to the La Maga bookstore to pickup the copy of Ecuador Debate that I should have picked up when I was there last time, and then go to the Banco Central to get a copy of Eduardo Larrea Stacey: visionario y precursor de un nuevo Ecuador but all of their copies are buried in storage.

I probably should have given up and gone home at this point, but the PUCE library is still open for 2 and a half hours so I go there instead to look at the Diarios de Debates--but I don't find much.

I have basically nothing to show for the day. I guess I could afford wasted days when I was here for a year working on my dissertation, but on short trips it is harder to justify these endless fishing expeditions.

Ecuador: 1 Marc: wasted

Dealing with small minded people like Patricio who lord it over their small domains is one of the things that has me completely ready to quit Ecuador. I never learned how to navigate those situations, and at this point in my career (or lack thereof) I have very little reason or motivation to do so. So why do I keep buying books then? And if I quit Ecuador, do I not just further reinforce this image of gringos as people who come to Ecuador (as historians or anthropologists) to mine the country for what it is worth and then leave and never never give anything back?

Kenny, if you want to kiss & make up with Patricio, and Valeria if you want to go on your own to the archive, it is:

Patricio Davila
Archivo General del Ministerio del Gobierno
Call Venezuela N2-51 entre Bolívar y Sucre, frente al cine Atahualpa
Telf. 2752-005

It's on the second floor, above a bunch of Colombians selling pirated CDs. BTW, the 2 documents that I have from this archive that talk about tinterillos that I picked up when I was there shortly with Kenny a couple years ago are:

Letter from A. Aguilar Vázquez, Ministerio de Gobierno, to Jefe Político del Cantón Cayambe, Cayambe, July 10, 1942, Oficio no. 1005-Gb, Sección Gobierno, Varios Autoridades, Julio-Setiembre 1942, #618, Ministerio de Gobierno y Policia, Archivo General del Ministerio de Gobierno.
Forwarding letter from Cangahua inhabitants regarding water and other demands. Solicitud to remove Teniente Político. Threatens to take their complaints to the press. Teniente Política does nothing to protect water supplies. Hacienda Isacata. Blames tinterrillos for nothing getting done.

Letter from Guillermo S. Cisnteros, Subsecretario, Ministerio de Gobierno, to Mariano Nama, Yaruquies, Cantón Riobamba, September 22, 1942, Oficio no. 1390-Gb, Sección Gobierno, Varios Autoridades, Julio-Diciembre 1942, #618, Ministerio de Gobierno y Policia, Archivo General del Ministerio de Gobierno.
Quotes from governor's oficio 143, September 18, 1942, in response to oficio 315-GB, September 7, 1942. Governor (Leonardo Dávalos D.) defends Jefe Político of Yaruques who was the target of complaints by Marinao Nama and other Indigenous who is charged with being a tinterillo who is using Indians for his own personal gain. Governor lists all of the accomplishments of the Teniente Político. Admits Indigenous were forced to labor on Obras Públicas.
p. 3-4: "Desgraciadamente estos infelices indígenas guiados por un tinterillo de vedados procedimientos, víctimas de la explotación de éste, que tras un siniestro velo de mistisismo, los engaña y anida las más grandes pasiones".

A front came thru in the middle of the nite last nite, which woke me up & then my sinuses started hurting like everything. So, today was raining and my head was pounding like everything, but I pulled myself out of my apt (no sense staying here if I can't see Pichincha) and went to the Legislative Archive. The archive is in the congressional building that burned a couple yrs ago and they moved it next to the nat'l archives while they rebuilt the congressional building, and right now they are in the process of moving everything back. Just my luck--everything I would want to look at is in boxes & spread all over the place as they try to set up shop again. But the staff was super nice. But also my luck--the staff was going into a meeting, so they told me to come back in 2 hrs.

So, what to do? Well, go shopping for books, of course! Fortunately, close to the congressional building is what used to be my favorite bookstore, Autores Ecuatorianos. I liked it because they had older & off-beat books that I couldn't find elsewhere at prices that couldn't be beat. (But then I found Libreria Luz & Multilibros that sell even older used books for cheaper prices.) But I pick up an armload of books (best find: Bernard Lavallé, Al filo de la navaja: Luchas y derivas caciquiles en Latacunga, 1730-1790 published in 2002 that I had never heard of before but Valeria told me I could get in Libri Mundi but of course it is agotado but Autores Ecuatorianos of course had a copy).

I sometimes hesitate in buying stuff cuz I'm not sure whether I already own it. Yesterday I goofed, as that used book store had an old copy of Ecuador Debate that I do NOT have and would like. I guess I'll have to go back. At first I wished I had brought bigger suitcases, and then I was wondering whether I would fill up the ones I brought. But now my pile of books is growing (& my funds are being depleted).

So, I go back to the legislative archive and they have some stuff on tinterillos printed out for me. It's only noon, so I could go on to the Ministerio de Gobierno archives but my head hurts so much & I feel so out of it I'm just not up for it.

So, I play it safe & go back to the PUCE archive instead--that's easy to do. I take the cites from the legislative archive & spend the next 6 hrs following leads--which is MUCH better than diving blind thru random material. Coolest find: A court case from 1920 in which Luis F. Chaves is involved in a tinterillo case in Cayambe. That places him there almost a full decade earlier than what I previously had thought. I wonder where I can find out more of the story on that.

No images today. Everything is on paper. (and it is raining, so no pix of Pichincha)

Tomorrow I guess I'll try the Min de Gob archives and see if I can find it. And on Thurs I have another appointment with Silvia in Cayambe.

My computer continues to worry me. It takes a long time to start up and never really shuts down completely. Tonite I couldn't get the wireless network adapter to work. Great, I think. (And to make things worse, I left my USB mouse at home and only have a bluetooth mouse that won't work if the wireless network adapter does not work.) I log off and log back on--no go. So I shut down & restart, and it comes back to life. Whew. What a relief. Backups. Always keep good backups.