Tourism has opened up work in more directions than people might expect — not just guides, but musicians, dancers, artists, travel agencies, bars, internet cafés, and taxi drivers like her own father. Most of the people involved are mestizo rather than Indigenous; she can name only one small hotel owner in town who isn't originally from the region at all, but from Chile.
The range of people involved is wide — young people work as guides, older residents as porters or hotel staff. For women, tourism has opened a more visible role in the family economy through local crafts and textiles, a shift that's nudged relationships between men and women in a historically machista society toward something more equal, even if there's still a distance to go.
Children have more freedom now that both parents often work. Young women in particular can move through public space more freely, meeting people they wouldn't have otherwise — including, sometimes, falling for a foreigner passing through.
In less than five years, fifteen new bars have opened up. However, western tourists won't go there.
The city itself is visibly growing, and not only for tourists — new houses, apartments, restaurants and businesses are eating into the space children once had to simply play outside. Land prices have risen with the economic crisis, to the point where only the wealthy can really afford to build; Riobamba remains cheap relative to the rest of the country, but that gap is narrowing.
Imported goods are common now, bought mostly by western tourists wary of unfamiliar food, though some visitors deliberately seek out local products instead, curious to actually experience the culture rather than avoid it. Crime has risen nationally amid the economic crisis, and tourists haven't been spared — her own father, a taxi driver, no longer works nights because he doesn't feel safe doing so.
Older residents have changed little because of tourism; they don't feel the same pull to adapt that younger people do, and still wear traditional dress — hats, ponchos — without much thought of trends. Young people are a different story, quicker to imitate outsiders' style, and quicker too to notice how much money tourists appear to carry, a perception she thinks is starting to shift local attitudes in less appealing directions — more begging, more opportunism, more people trying to overcharge at the market.
Tourists should not forget to bargain at the market. However, in order to bargain, they should speak some Spanish.
“We welcome tourists in a nice, quiet place,” she says. “Tourists shouldn't destroy that life.”