page_title: Saraguro people
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Saraguro people / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: A Saraguro woman wearing most of ther traditonal dress. Some of them also wear a traditional hat made of sheep wool and a bayeta (a black wool shawl ) while others do not.Photo taken by Isis Patino and shared through facebook with Urkumanta to be upload on Wikipedia
context_page_description: The Saraguro is a people of the Kichwa nation most of whom live in Saraguro Canton in the Loja Province of Ecuador. Although most now speak Spanish, Runashimi or Kichwa, a Quechua dialect, is also spoken and language revitalization efforts are being implemented. Likewise, the Saraguro have retained much of their land, customs and traditional dress. According to the INEC's 2010 population census, the total population of Saraguro canton is 30,183, but that total includes both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous people living in Saraguro.
  The Saraguro may be the descendants of people re-settled from distant regions in the Inca Empire in the 15th and early 16th century.
context_section_description: In the 1460s the Inca empire conquered the Saraguro area.  The pre-Inca people may have been the barely-known Palta or the Cañari. The ancestors of the modern-day Saraguro people, according to oral traditions, were moved to Saraguro by the Incas from other areas, possibly the Colla or other people from the Lake Titicaca and Cuzco regions. The Incas had a policy of forcibly moving people from one region of the empire to another, thereby diversifying the population and dispersing possible opposition to their rule.  The resettlement policy was called mitma. The numbers resettled were large, estimated to be up to 80 percent of the population of some provinces.
  One Spanish document says that the ancestors of present-day Saraguros were elite soldiers in the Inca army.  This statement is bolstered by the fact that the Saraguros live along the Inca road or Kapak Ñan that stretched from Cuzco to Tumebamba (the northern capital of the Incas), and onward to Quito  and thus occupied an important link for Inca communications and control of the empire. The town of Saraguro, however, seems to have been founded by the Spanish rather than the Incas although a number of Inca ruins are in the nearby area.
  Whatever the facts about their origins. Saraguro in the 20th century celebrate their Inca heritage.  In a debunked theory (many of these authors have superior credentials. Where is your evidence for this sweeping statement?), some authors ascribe the black clothing typical of the Saraguro as a sign of mourning for the death of the Inca Emperor Atahualpa.  Schools have been named after Inca emperors, Inca customs recreated, Inca architecture copied, and efforts made to preserve the Kichwa language. Historical records and oral traditions also attribute the traditional black and white colors of their clothing to ceremony and nobility, which were the meanings given by the Incas according to chronicler Cieza de León and recounted by the Saraguro. Being descendants of the elite soldiers of the Inca army, they retained that symbolism as well as the male population retained their long-braided hair, which was another marker of nobility among the Incas. Black as a sign of mourning is not part of the Inca symbolism nor among the Saraguros but has been adopted, especially by the young generations. Likewise, they attribute the symbolic concepts of their clothing to a representation of the Curiquingue (carunculated caracara), which has black and white feathers and was a symbolic bird of the Inca royalty. The Curiquingue inhabits the Saraguro parish and páramos and its symbols represented in costumes continue to be present in the Kapak Raymi (the Great Celebration) celebrations in Saraguro.
  The Saraguros have retained control over their lands more successfully than many of the Andean subjects of Spanish colonization and contemporary colonialism  of the independent country of Ecuador. Part of this may be due to their initial hostility to the Spanish and the Indigenous people who collaborated with them. More importantly, however, the Saraguros were required by the Spanish to maintain an important tambo (inn or way-station) along a major communication route.  They successfully argued that the operation and maintenance of the tambo required that they retain their land and its resources. They continued to manage the tambo until the 1940s when a motor road reached the area.
caption: A Saraguro woman wearing a  traditional dress.
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