The production and sale of fabrics and souvenirs made Otavalo famous well beyond Ecuador's borders, and the credit for that, he's clear, belongs to the Indigenous people who built the trade — without their work, the town's reputation simply wouldn't exist. The middle class here has profited broadly from the textile and souvenir economy that grew up around it.
Not every producer sees a fair share, though. Prices at the market, and abroad, run far above what producers actually receive for their goods. A few sell directly, but competition has intensified sharply, not least from a growing volume of goods brought in by Colombian and Peruvian sellers.
Twenty years ago, only three Indigenous families lived in Otavalo proper. Today, roughly 70 percent of the town's population is Indigenous. The vendors tourists actually meet at the market sit between producers and traders in the chain, and by his account don't charge unreasonably — his one ask of visitors is to bargain a little less aggressively than they might elsewhere.
The indigenous that tourists meet here at the market certainly don't ask absurd prices, so please try to bargain less.
The best-off, financially, are those doing business abroad or working outside Ecuador — about 20 percent — alongside the travelling musicians who make a living performing internationally. Those musicians have had an outsized influence on Otavaleño culture: travelling brings them into contact with other ways of life, which inevitably feeds back into their own. Not entirely a loss, either — alongside a bit of lost heritage, they tend to come back more open-minded, more motivated to study and work.
Most who stay in Otavalo, though, he says with some regret, have narrowed their focus mostly to money and trade, with fewer people paying attention to the culture underneath it. Families increasingly work independently of each other now, each keeping its own methods close.
Tourism itself has cooled somewhat in recent years. Visitors used to stay around three days; now most move on after just one, discouraged by how poorly maintained or promoted anything beyond the Plaza de los Ponchos tends to be. That decline stings more given how much agriculture has also shrunk amid the broader economic crisis, with prices for land and housing climbing steadily as more people earn in dollars.
One silver lining: the slowdown has pushed people to engage more actively rather than coast on the market's reputation, with renewed attention to cultural events like Inti Raymi.
“The municipality should do much more,” he says. “And tourists coming here should learn more about Otavalo before they arrive — there's so much more to see than the Plaza de los Ponchos alone.”