Ask a group of Ecuadorians where they're from and watch how specific they get. Not just Ecuador — Quito, Cuenca, Guayaquil, Loja, the coast, the sierra, the Amazon. Ecuadorians carry their regional identity inside their national identity, and they carry both with fierce, specific pride. When they leave, they don't go quietly. They bring everything with them.
What Is Ecuatoriano Pride?
Ecuatoriano pride is the specific cultural confidence of Ecuadorians and their descendants — the pride in a country that sits on the equator, straddles the Andes, touches the Amazon, faces the Pacific, and contains the Galápagos Islands. It's pride in one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth, in a cuisine that varies dramatically by altitude, in a music tradition that runs from the highland pasillo and sanjuanito to the coastal pasacalle and albazo. It's the pride of a community that has built something remarkable in the United States largely without the recognition that other Latin communities have received — and done it anyway.
The Ecuadorian Diaspora in America
The Ecuadorian-American community is centered primarily in New York City — particularly in Queens (the Jackson Heights and Corona neighborhoods), where Ecuadorians have built one of the largest and most cohesive Latin American immigrant communities in the country. According to the US Census Bureau, there are over 800,000 people of Ecuadorian origin in the United States, with major communities also in New Jersey, Illinois, California, and Florida. The concentration in New York is remarkable — the city has Ecuadorian restaurants, Ecuadorian bakeries, Ecuadorian social clubs, and Ecuadorian parades that rival those of any other Latin American community.
What Ecuadorian Culture Brings
Ecuadorian food in the diaspora is a point of tremendous pride — and one of the great underrecognized Latin American cuisines. Seco de pollo (slow-cooked chicken stew), llapingachos (potato patties with cheese), ceviche de camarón (coastal shrimp ceviche with popcorn and chifles), encebollado (tuna soup that serves the same Sunday-morning function as menudo in Mexican culture), and hornado (slow-roasted pork from the highlands) are staples that Ecuadorian families carry north and reproduce as accurately as possible in American kitchens.
The Otavalo indigenous market tradition — artisan textiles, wool products, and craftsmanship from the Imbabura highlands — has also traveled with the diaspora, and Otavaleños selling handmade goods at markets can be found across the United States and Europe.
Ecuatoriano Identity in the Second Generation
For second-generation Ecuadorian-Americans — many of whom grew up as the children of immigrants in New York or New Jersey — identity is a negotiation that includes being American, being Latino, and being specifically Ecuatoriano. The specificity matters. "Latin" or "Hispanic" doesn't carry the Andes or the coast or the Amazon. It doesn't carry the particular food or the particular Spanish or the particular knowledge of a country most of your classmates couldn't find on a map. Ecuatoriano pride is, in part, the insistence that the specificity be seen.
Keep reading:
Colombiana Identity: What It Means to Be Colombian in America
Salvadoreño Identity: What It Means to Be El Salvadoran in America
What Does Latina Mean? The Identity Question Behind the Label