Religion

Quito, Otavalo, Baños, and Cuenca are well known cities with larger populations than the other places I have traveled to, Intag and Yasuní. All of the larger cities or towns have multiple parks, churches, and statues. The Catholic religion is widespread through Ecuador. Many popular cities have a large virgin angel watching over it, as seen above (in Quito). One of the most beautiful things that I have seen this far, is "La Compañía" which was a Catholic church in Quito who's interior was completely plated in gold leaves. The extravagance of the church was used to draw interest from the indigenous to join the religion.

 The spread of European religions is arguably the first form of globalization, and has historically been extremely influencial in many cultures. In Ecuador, many rights such as those to housing and voting were stripped from those who did not claim themselves as Catholic.  Today in Cuenca, 80% of the population is Catholic. To emphasize the prominence of the religion,  I can think of 4 different churches within a five minute walk from my school (two are pictured below). Furthermore, Cuenca has 52 churches, one for every week of the year.

Many streets in the city of Cuenca are named after a saint, and there are many statues of saints around the city. Although the Catholic church wanted indigenous members, they discriminated against them even if they joined the religion. The white church, pictured above on the right, has a large area outside of the front door; this was an area dedicated for the indigenous to worship, as they were not aloud to go inside. It is especially interesting to me to learn the history of the spread of religion. The history of converting indigenous Ecuadorians to the Catholic religion reminds me of our own history of converting American slaves to Christianity. I realize this is a touchy subject, so all I want to say is that each of these groups of people were pulled from their way of life into the "White Man's" civilization and given an entirely new outlook on the world and our relation to it.  

Catholicism has even spread to remote places of Ecuador. For example, Junin is small village in the cloud forest which we visited. It was about a three hour bus ride through the mountains from Quito. The last hour of travel was on a dirt road which was pretty sketchy at some points to say the least. The village is so small and underdeveloped that it doesn't even have streets, but smack dab in the middle of it is a Catholic church. Although I don't necessarily agree with Euro-centrism changing the core beliefs of ancient culture, I believe the unification of religion can be a good thing because it unifies the country.