The preceding three cases (Juan de Velasco’s Kingdom of Quito, Cochasqui, the enchaquira-dos) reflect different moments of political articulation in which the past is essential in presenting particular national, racial, and sexual legitimizations of the Ecuadorian nationstate. Far from exceptions these three cases capture the myriad of daily examples in which the past is not only alive and well but an essential element in contemporary popular identity production. The archaeological past may be reified in academic terms but it is far from non-existent in the day-to-day interactions that allow Ecuadorians, as well as all South Americans, to know their history, and then be able to use that history to define who they are and what kind of informed choices they will make about their existence in a highly competitive and globalized world.
Juan de Velasco’s mythical history of a primordial Quito nation that pre-shadowed the contemporary Ecuadorian one is far from an obsolete history. Despite the wealth (or absence) of archaeological evidence to the contrary, the mythical Quito nation is used by official Ecuadorian textbooks and historians to provide historical legitimization to a nationstate that is traversed by enormous insecurities about its colonial foundation and present-day existence. It is not so much that archaeologists have been absent in this debate as that they have suffered the same effects as local historians at the site of Cochasqui: that is, in this regard, the mythical Kngdom of Quito has a hegemonic hold on the contextual need for its existence, which in most other places has been given up to the normalizing discourse of archaeological scientific investigations.
Therefore, Cochasqui is almost the contrary in methodological terms, even when the final outcome is not necessarily so. The archaeological discourses at the site ultimately elaborate on gender equality and racial harmony to elevate the status of the Ecuadorian nation, precisely because Ecuador has never exhibited one or the other. Far from it, Ecuador is a highly racist and hierarchical nation-state that, like all other South American ones, has based its existence on differing types of social discriminations that have a long-standing history in the pre-Columbian and colonial record. Therefore in this scenario it is archaeological investigations that provide images of a triumphant Indian past, which can be normalized into a panhistorical racial and sexual imaginary that otherwise would speak of bloodshed, conquest and ultimate domestic betrayal—all local representations far too close for the nation’s comfort.
It is this same normalizing racial and sexual discourse that has made the enchaquira-dos invisible not only in the official archaeological recovery of the past but to generations of Guayaquileans over the last two centuries. The pre-Columbian Indian past has been recovered by the coastal city of Guayaquil in a sanitized manner to support the civilizing and heterosexist notions inherited from its dominant Spanish ancestors. This does not mean that the enchaquirados have been erased, but rather they have been adapted to the changing racial and sexual needs of the Ecuadorian nation-state.
A mere scratch on the ethnohistoric and archaeological surfaces reveals differing reflections of all three archaeological elements—a Quito nation, Cochasqui, the enchaquirados—which in one way or another are counter or hegemonically adapted to the officializing Ecuadorian national discourse. The mistake is to ever claim any of those variations as historical truth without considering the always problematic articulation of their reproduction within the myriad productions and discourses of the present. And in this regard Ecuador is no different from other South American nation-states that utilize a rich and diverse past to struggle in an unequal climate of globalization needs and political resources (Hodder 2000).
World History
