| This is a cultural ecological/cultural evolutionary study of the changing adaptive strategies of an ethnically distinct indigenous people, the Saraguros, who inhabit the parish of Saraguro, in the highlands of southern Ecuador. Unlike most indigenous Ecuadorian Andean people, Saraguros entered the 20th century with their land base reasonably intact, a condition gained in part as an exchange for their tambo-mita service (forced labor in the maintenance and running of a way-station) along a major regional transportation/communication route during colonial and early republican times.;As the 20th century progressed, Saraguros developed an important option in their dual strategy: exploitation and colonization of the tropical forest lowlands (the Oriente) to the east of their traditional homeland, for the raising of livestock. In pursuing their dual strategy they learned to deal with environments ranging vertically from sea level towns to high altitude paramos, and horizontally from the Pacific coast to the upper Amazon basin.;Development of the Ecuadorian infrastructure, especially motor road networks in the 1940s, gave added impetus to the growth of the exchange/market sector of the Saraguro economy. But by the early 1970s the land-based dual strategy of the Saraguros had reached its culmination in terms of population pressure, land availability and internal demand for externally produced goods. However, pressures for agricultural intensification were reduced by the development of alternative strategies as Saraguros began to penetrate non-indigenous educational and occupational structures at all levels (without giving up their ethnic distinctiveness).;Saraguros have had considerable success implementing their strategies, taking advantage of opportunities as they have arisen. They are, however, becoming much more dependent on a national economic/political/social system over which they have little control and which itself has become dependent for its well-being on the uncertainties of oil production and international oil prices.;With control of their land and labor resources, Saraguros built a flexible and pragmatic dual strategy involving retention of a strong subsistence economy combined with development of a supplementary exchange economy. The exchange economy was based on production of cattle. |
