Unveiling the Colonial Legacy in the Chota Valley, Ecuador: The 20th Century Mascarilla Sugar Mill

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Landscapes in Dispute, Territorial Futures: Restitution and Reparation in the Face of Enclosure, Industrialization, and Extractivism", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Sugar mills epitomize a system rooted in oppression through forced labor, revealing dynamics of negotiation and resistance against colonial power (Mintz 1995). Situated in the Ancestral Territory of the Afro-Ecuadorian population of the Chota Valley, this collaborative research examines sugar production in Mascarilla in the early 20th century, seeking to elucidate its history within the exploitative huasipungo (debt-peonage) system. This region, initially shaped by the colonial hacienda formation under the Jesuit order's enterprise, laid the foundations for sugar production in the Andes of Ecuador (Coronel 1991), which the historical context of Ecuadorian industrial development in the 20th century aimed to modernize. Archival and historical research reveals how coercion and resistance shaped life and labor under hacienda rule, while tracing the plantation economy's legacies in communal memory and spatial practices today, shedding light on marginalized narratives and prompting reflection on the past's impact on the present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025   •
• Landscapes in Dispute, Territorial Futures: Restitution and Reparation in the Face of Enclosure, Industrialization, and Extractivism

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow