Image

Transito Amaguaña

 

 

 

video

                      Transito Amaguaña

Founder of the Ecuadorian Federation of Indians

Founder of the Ecuadorian Federation of Indians

Tránsito Amaguaña was born in Pesillo, in the province of Pichincha, in 1909 and throughout his life he fought for the defense of indigenous rights.

He participated in the creation of the first agricultural unions in the country and, together with other human rights defenders, founded the Ecuadorian Federation of Indians in 1944.

Later he promoted and formed the agrarian cooperative as one of the mechanisms of social and political pressure to demand from the State the delivery of land for the Indians.

On his own initiative and without support from the Government, in 1945 he started peasant schools, founding, in the Cayambe area, four bilingual schools (Quichua-Spanish), remembers Ecuadorimediato.

When she returned from the Soviet Union in 1963, where she traveled to attend a Congress, she was arrested and imprisoned accused of receiving money and Russian weapons to promote the revolution in the country, something she denied.

Cecilia Miño Grijalva, author of the biography 'Tránsito Amaguaña, indigenous heroine', refers to her as "an indigenous woman, illiterate, mistreated and immersed in poverty".

"Amaguaña, belligerent agitator, tireless fighter, persistent activist, gave herself to the cause despite constant persecution," he adds.

feeling and emotions

feeling and emotions

She is a strong and fierce woman with her proposals to fulfill her biggest feeling is to see that all indigesnas nostrate well not only because they are indigenas they are going to attack us, I fight against the agrarian oligarchy and for the recovery of lands, for intercultural education bilingual, to recover the dignity and rebellion of the indigenous movement ".

Personal description

Personal description

She was an indigenous leader who fought for dignity and land since her landlords took land from them, as she was the Founder of the Ecuadorian Federation of the Indians.

fights

Tránsito Amaguaña fought for land and for dignity

In the agricultural strike of 1931, his activity ended with his home and he had to live clandestinely. In 1946, together with other leaders, he founded the Ecuadorian Federation of Indians, a forerunner of the Conaie. In 1950 he promoted the creation of bilingual schools. Eleven years later, she spent 4 months in prison, accused of arms trafficking. In 1962 he represented the Ecuadorian indigenous people in meetings in the Soviet Union and Cuba. Their struggle allowed the Indians to recover large tracts of land that had been taken from them. She received the Manuela Espejo Prize from the Municipality of Quito in 1997 and the Eugenio Espejo National Prize in 2003. (I)

BIOGRAFIA

Rosa Elena Tránsito Amaguaña  her fight

Was born on August 10, 1909 in the town of Pasillo, Pichincha. His father was the indigenous huasipungueros Venancio Amaguaña and Mercedes Alba. He grew up in a farm in Cayambe, at 7 years of age he began to work, his studies were carried out in a local school for a short time where he only learned to read and write.

Mercedes Alba, mother of Tránsito, was the leader of the indigenous movement, a path her daughter would follow years later. Tránsito Amaguaña was married at 14 years of age and had four children, after a few years she separated from her husband who was an alcoholic and mistreated her.

He began to carry out community activism in organizations related to the Ecuadorian Socialist Party and then participated in indigenous marches, the most important one in Quito in 1930, where land and labor rights were claimed.

He joined the Communist Party of Ecuador where he fought to implement a cooperative system in the countryside. He founded the Ecuadorian Federation of Indio in 1946 together with other peasant leaders. In 1950, I promoted the foundation of bilingual schools, in Spanish and Quechua, together with Dolores Cacuango.