"Taita Chimborazo and Mama Tungurahua": A Quichua Song, a Fieldwork Story

Abstract

When a friend in Chimborazo Province, central Ecuador, took me to his home village in 1995, he introduced me there as the gringo who sang the "Taita Chimborazo, Mama Tungurahua," a song broadcast from time to time on the morning Quichua radio program. The song is built on the story of "Amo Badillo," a landowner who died in the middle of this century. After his death Amo Badillo is supposed to have gone to Mt. Tungurahua—locally identified with purgatory or hell—to suffer there for his cruel treatment of the indigenous laborers on his estate. In 1991, when I was living in the house of Aurelio S., a farmer, village catechist, parish political leader, and occasional songwriter, I suggested that this story would make a good basis for a song for an upcoming music competition. Taita Aurelio quickly composed the song, framing the local story of Amo Badillo within more widespread oral traditions concerning Mt. Chimborazo and Mt. Tungurahua and making the story speak to contemporary ethnic politics. When the village music group Shepherds of Caparina Bajo presented the song at a Quichua music festival sponsored and taped by a Riobamba radio station, Taita Aurelio's words won us second prize. This essay discusses what the song—its creation, performance, and reception —can tell us about both the nature of fieldwork and contemporary indigenous identity and politics in Ecuador.