Santo Domingo (Ecuador)
Santo Domingo on the map of Ecuador
Santo Domingo de los Colorados is a town in Ecuador. She has officially (1 January 2005 ) 238 325 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in the country. She is since 1967 the capital of the canton of Santo Domingo, since 1997 the seat of the Catholic diocese Diocesis Coloratensis and since 2007 the capital of the new province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.
Geography and urbanization
Santo Domingo de los Colorados is located at 600 m above sea level at the foot of the western Andes. In its surroundings there are tropical rain forest and numerous plantations of tropical products. The climate is characterized with average daily temperatures of about 25 ° C by high humidity and rainfall, the Santo Domingo have led to the nickname " city of eternal mist ". Hundreds of tropical bird and butterfly species live in the rain forests and nature reserves around.
Santo Domingo is located 79 km west of Quito in the provinces of Pichincha, Cotopaxi (southeast), Los Ríos ( southwest), Manabí and Esmeraldas bordering province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, founded from the canton of Santo Domingo in the west of the province of Pichincha in 2007 been. Since the completion of the 130 km long road to Quito (1947 ), which overcomes a difference in altitude of over 2,200 meters, Santo Domingo is a transportation hub, through which you can reach the coastal provinces of Esmeraldas, Manabí and Guayas from the northern Sierra of Ecuador.
This road is also responsible for the tremendous growth of Santo Domingo since the 1940s, when she had brought an influx of settlers and the creation of an official, but also uncontrolled and poor of developed settlements ( Invasiones ) with it and still brings, among which sometimes the nature and the indigenous people of the area who have Colorados / Tsáchilas, suffered greatly. Probably more than 80 % of the inhabitants of the city are not from the province Pichicha but from other parts of the country ( provinces of Manabí, Loja, Bolivar, Tungurahua, Chimborazo ) and the south of Colombia.
According to estimates, the population is well above the officially stated 300000-500000 people.
History
City and Canton
Santo Domingo de los Colorados is a "melting pot" that attracted by the construction and the traffic of roads leading from Quito to the coast and ramify in Santo Domingo and large flows of migrants only since the 1930s and 1940s, has become the city.
In colonial times, the few populated region belonged to the present Santo Domingo to Provincia de Yumbos, later to Governación de las Esmeraldas the Real Audiencia de Quito. The name Santo Domingo for the area was probably around 1660 in the wake of missionary efforts of the Dominicans. On the 1750 printed map of Pedro Vicente Maldonado there is the region or tribal name Colorados de S. Domingo. 1861 was established as an administrative unit, the rural parish ( parroquia rural) Santo Domingo. Under the government of the dictator Gabriel García Moreno began in 1871 the construction of a transport path by Manabí, which led over Santo Domingo and the first wave of immigrants brought with him, which consisted mainly of day laborers, Gummizapfern and workers for road construction and haciendas. As a founding date of Santo Domingo May 29, 1883 is sometimes called, to which the parish of the canton of Quito about moving to the sovereignty of the newly established Canton Mejía.
In 1899, the Pueblo de Santo Domingo de los Colorados, and thus founded the first official settler colony. During the first decades of the 20th century, however, this had no more than 500 inhabitants.
In the 1930s and 1940s, one operated since 1919 another road project came to a conclusion: in 1947 the road from Quito was completed on Aloag to Santo Domingo, which in Esmeraldas reached the coast in 1949.
Since the 1950s, the city also grew, as all government pursued the settlement deprived of their livelihood there farmers in the area of Santo Domingo after a period of drought in the southern Andean region. Thus, a comprehensive land reform in the Sierra could be circumvented.
Santo Domingo quickly developed into a center of local land and plantation economy, which mainly benefited from the worldwide increase in the 1960s, demand for bananas and palm oil.
On 3 June 1967, the Canton of Santo Domingo was established on an area of 3857 km ² as an administrative unit of the province of Pichincha.
In 1987, in Santo Domingo established an Apostolic Prefecture by the Roman Catholic Church, which was raised in 1996 to the diocese. The first bishop was the (now retired ) German from the district of Sigmaringen derived Emil Stehle.
On 26 November 2006 spoke in a referendum, 83.6% of voters in the canton would prefer that whether the present canton of Santo Domingo de los Colorados is to be charged to the province (6.5% voted no, the other ballots cast were empty or invalid). The " Provinzialisierungskomitee " then initiated a corresponding political process, but must agree to the Ecuadorian President and the National Congress. The situation manifested itself in October 2007, and the province of Santo Domingo was established together with the new Province of Santa Elena.
The Colorado / Tsáchilas
The name component de los Colorados derives from the indigenous community of Tsáchilas (Ger. "true / real people "), which are called by Spanish-speaking Ecuadorians Colorado. The name Colorado (Spanish for " Colored " / " Colorful " ) 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 Tsáchiles speak their own language, Tsafiki, which is related to the cha'palaachi the neighboring Chachi and is expected by some researchers to the ( controversial ) language family of the Chibcha. Tsafiki / Colorado has the language code according to ISO 639-2 and sai COF SIL. The Tsáchilas are one of the few pre-Inca cultures that still exist. The spread of Santo Domingo and adaptation to city life by many members of their culture but is threatened with 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, however. 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.
Economy and infrastructure
Santo Domingo de los Colorados is especially hub of the local plantation economy before their products are transported to the big cities of the country and abroad. Main crops are the same banana, oil palm, sugar cane, coffee, and also fruits such as pineapple, papaya, passion fruit and tropical flowers. From palm trees such as banana palm and bananas oil is extracted.
Even the livestock and dairy industry has experienced a significant upswing in recent decades and today occupies more than 50 % of the area of the Canton of Santo Domingo to complete.
Santo Domingo is still the fastest growing city in Ecuador, showing the views of the rapid urbanization of cities in developing countries: the settlement is often uncontrolled and illegal, is connected with the destruction of nature and leads to areas with no or only very basic infrastructure. Unemployment or underemployment is high, so that a considerable part of the population is dedicated to the streets and retail.
In the city is since 1986 a campus of the Universidad Tecnológica Equinoccial (Quito ). There, especially agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, forestry, electrical engineering and business administration are taught.
Attractions
Santo Domingo itself has rather the appearance of a messy, unattractive, fast-growing frontier city and is therefore of little interest to tourists.
Tourism is primarily environmental in nature: In a suitably equipped haciendas and in nature reserves in the area particularly bird and butterfly watching and fishing are popular activities.
Personalities
- Emilio Lorenzo Stehle, retired bishop of Santo Domingo de los Colorados
- Ivo Schaible, Father and artists