Calderón (Ecuador)
Calderón is a place in Ecuador with about 105,000 inhabitants (2005). Administratively it is a rural parish in the canton of Quito in the province of Pichincha . He is known for his colorful figures made from bread dough ( guaguas de pan ).
Geography and climate
Calderón is located 10 km northeast of the capital Quito and 20 km south of the equator on the Panamericana in the Ecuadorian Andean Sierra . The Parroquia area borders directly on the urban area of Quitos in the southwest, Pomasqui in the northwest , San Antonio de Pichincha in the north, Guayllabamba in the northeast, Tababela and Puembo in the southeast and Zámbiza and Llano Chico in the south . Calderón is the seat of the Calderón zonal administration of the canton of Quito, which also includes the much smaller parish of Llano Chico.
The climate is moderately dry, the soils are sandy.
history
In pre-Columbian times, Calderón was a center of the Cara culture , to which the earlier Kichwa name Carapungu ("gateway to the land of the Cara") goes back. In 1897 Carapungu was under the liberal President Eloy Alfaro (1895-1901 and 1906-1911) as a Calderón to its own Parroquia ( parish , political administrative district below a canton). The name goes back to the Ecuadorian freedom hero Abdón Calderón , who fell against the Spaniards in the Battle of Pichincha in 1822 .
Culture and sights
Memorial of the dead
On All Souls' Day on November 2nd ( Día de los difuntos ), many of the mostly indigenous residents of Calderón go to the village cemetery to commemorate the dead. It is customary to ask unrelated people to pray for their own deceased. They are thanked for this with food, which includes colada morada and guaguas de pan . In the imagination of the living, the food is sacrificed to the dead.
In the second week of November there is a traditional night pilgrimage from Calderón , which ends at sunrise at the church of Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Quinche .
Guaguas de pan
Guagua means "little child" or "baby" in Quechua . The guaguas de pan ("bread babies") are traditionally formed from cornmeal and water, as they must be edible in order to be sacrificed to the deceased. In order to be able to sell the figures as painted art objects, they are made from a mixture of corn starch, water and rubber. It is said that a doll's facial expression reflects the customer's state of mind, and a doll with a happy face also makes the customer happy.
Economy and Infrastructure
Only a few of the female producers shape their products by hand today; most of the figures are machine-made and exported abroad. Occasional motifs in the form of wedding couples or traditional costumes as well as trees, animals or nativity scenes are also produced. There are regular sales exhibitions in the village.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Proyección poblacional de la Administración Zonal Calderón por quinqueños según parroquias ( Memento of the original of April 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the homepage of the city and canton of Quito.
- ↑ See map of the parishes of the Distrito Metropolitano de Quito ( Memento of the original of August 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the homepage of the same.
Coordinates: 0 ° 6 ′ S , 78 ° 25 ′ W