Berkley Center

In choosing to study abroad in Ecuador, I expected that like in any Latin American country, la religión y la familia were going to be central aspects of life for the average person. After actually arriving to Quito and meeting my host family when they picked me up from the airport, I found that my expectations seemed to be true.

One of the first things my host family was curious to know was whether I was Catholic or not. I answered that though I have attended Catholic schools my whole life and received the sacrament of confirmation, I haven’t found myself continuing to practice Catholicism on my own at Georgetown. They seemed to be relieved that at least I was Catholic, though they admitted that nowadays they attend Mass only once in a while.

As we continued to my new home, I soon found that their church was only a few blocks and staircases down the street from their home. In fact, as I began to learn my daily route to school, I realized that I would be passing this church twice each day. For about three months now, I’ve begun my morning by quickly descending the stairs next to it, and then ending my day by slowly ascending those 100-plus stairs, all the while staring up at its tall steeple against the sky as if I were staring up at Jesus himself.

Although the looming presence of this holy edifice may be an obvious indication of the importance of religion here, Ecuadorian faith seemed subtler to me than I had anticipated it to be. It was not the overt type of religious devotion that one may picture when thinking about a Latin American country—in fact, I haven’t seen any public displays of religious activism. There are no preachers in the street shouting out Bible verses and urging people to be saved, nor do there seem to be other types of religious demonstrations of different denominations such as there often are in the United States.

Gradually, I realized that there is a logical explanation for this phenomenon. Ninety-five percent of the Ecuadorian population identifies as Catholic, while the remaining 5 percent is mainly Protestant. They probably see no need to convert the faithless since the majority of the population are already believers. Or perhaps religion is viewed as more of a personal choice and private matter, not something that needs to be imposed on others.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there is more religious freedom here. More likely it means that it is assumed one already identifies as a Christian. While I have seen many a priest and nun throughout Quito, I have yet to see a woman wearing a burqa or a Hare Krishna draped in orange cloth.

Many of the buses I take to school have stickers with religious slogans plastered on the walls inside, my favorite being a window-sized portrait of Jesus with “Jesús es Amigo por Siempre” (“Jesus is Always Your Friend”). Though this type of religious imagery abounds throughout Quito, including my host family’s home with its several religious paintings and crucifixes, this didn’t seem to stop a man from robbing my friend at knife-point on one of these buses.

I guess that like any aspect of culture, religion in Ecuador is interwoven so seamlessly into life that it simply becomes a constant presence that fades into the background. As an outsider, it seems as though religion, and particularly Catholicism, is a living relic of the colonial past, something that has been integrated so thoroughly into their traditions and culture that it comes along naturally with living here. It has even infiltrated into my life in a way.

After passing this church for three months, I finally set foot in it this past Sunday to experience an Ecuadorian Mass. In all actuality, it felt no different from the Masses I attended throughout my childhood, save for the Spanish language and music, which was beautifully somber and hopeful at the same time. The music was my favorite part of the service, as I felt myself transported to an earlier time in the people's history with every strum of the traditional Spanish acoustic guitar.

Finally experiencing an Ecuadorian mass inside the church that I've been passing everyday brought faith alive for me. Although it was a serious worship ceremony, I saw the community, the unity that religion creates here for all Ecuadorians, as subtle as it may be. So whether religious homogeneity is good or bad, religion—or, really, Catholicism—is an inextricable piece of the complex and ever-changing puzzle that is Ecuadorian identity.