Tsáchila people
The Tsáchilas are an indigenous people in Ecuador. They are one of the few pre-Inca cultures that still exisistieren and live in the rain forest areas on the western slopes of the Andes to Santo Domingo de los Colorados and in adjacent areas of the provinces of Pichincha and Esmeraldas. ' sáchilas ( "true / real people " ) is their own name. The Spanish-language naming Colorado (Spanish for " Red Colored " ) comes from the fact that especially the men traditionally with dyes from Achiotesamen hair dyed red. This tradition has now, lost much of its meaning and is almost maintained only by municipalities, which are regularly visited by tourists. Even the traditional clothing mixes with increasingly " western" import goods.
The culture and settlement areas of Tsáchila were and are threatened by the spread of Santo Domingo and adaptation to city life by many members of extinction. Currently, there are about 200 families who live in the rain forest more or less traditional way to approximately 8,000-10,000 hectares. For the country, they received 1978 official land titles that can be difficult to enforce by Neusiedler ( Invasiones ) in illegal land occupations but.
The Tsáchiles speak their own language, Tsafiki, which is related to the Cha'palaachi the neighboring Chachi and the extinct Caranqui of Cara and with them forms the family of southern Barbacoa languages. Tsafiki / Colorado has the language code according to ISO 639-2 and sai COF SIL.
Most Tsáchiles today are Roman Catholic, but their traditional cosmic vision knew a God who had created the sun ( Pipowa ), and a goddess, as the creator of the mountains, fields, rivers and seas on agriculture and fisheries monitored ( Mapiyan ).
The ancestors of the Tsáchilas, probably descended from the Cara and Yumbo, lived further south. Probably as a consequence of the conquest of the Incas in what is now Ecuador in the 15th and the Spaniards against the Incas in the 16th century and due to a smallpox epidemic, their ancestors moved back into the remote area around present-day Santo Domingo.
In colonial times, they were obliged to pay tribute and made their donations in kind, including wax, which was for the churches of Quito in the form of candles of great importance. 1660 asked their chief tribute to postponement as they are very suffered the consequences of an outbreak of the Pichincha volcano.
Today, those who live Tsáchilas that have not adapted to life in Santo Domingo, especially on agriculture (bananas, coffee, corn and Yuka ) and work in some cases as a guide by the species-rich forests.
In Santo Domingo, even today remember especially the names of hotels, streets and squares, and a large iron monument to the Colorado in the center of a roundabout west of downtown to the Tsáchilas.
According to a report by journalist Charlotte Hahner Johannes Rau said to have been named an honorary chief result of the German finance a bridge construction project.