Ritual Encounters: Otavalan Modern and Mythic Community

This book examines ritual practices and public festivals in the Otavalo and Cotacachi areas of northern Andean Ecuador's Imbabura province. Otavaleños are a unique group in that they maintain their traditional identity but also cultivate a cosmopolitanism through frequent international travel. Rituals have persisted among this ethnic community as important processes for symbolically capturing and critically assessing cultural changes in the face of modern influences. Ritual Encounters thus offers an appreciation of the modern and mythic community as a single and emergent condition.