Camp Africa Esmeraldas Ecuador

Thanks to my friend Maryanne I was lucky enough to go to Camp Africa which is on the coast of Ecuador in Esmeraldas. Camp Africa is a small beach hut run by Archimedes an Afro-Ecuadorian.  The culture Tolita inhabited Ecuador from 500 B.C until 500 A.C . There are two important settlements of this culture, the first one is located in the Tumaco Bay, Colombia, and the other in the island of La Tolita, Ecuador. Archimedes, an ex navy man, has been collecting artefacts from the ground for more than 20 years and built a small museum into his home which reflects the Tolita culture. Archimedes and his family and friends are black and are descendants the days of the slave trade when ships would run aground or sink and the slaves swam to safety. “The documented history of Ecuador establishes the beginnings of Afro-Hispanic culture in what is now Esmeraldas, Ecuador, where a Spanish slaving ship ran aground in 1553. There a group of twenty-three Africans from the coast of Guinea, led by a black warrior named Antón, attacked the slavers and liberated themselves. Not long after, this group, together with other blacks entering the region, led by a ladino (Hispanicized black person) named Alonso de Illescas, came to dominate the region from northern Manabí north to what is now Barbacoas, Colombia. Illescas was a strategist in guerrilla warfare. He quelled many military expeditions against blacks and Indians esmeraldeños, by defeating all the Spanish captains sent to conquer the blacks and Indians. These rushing to the Esmeraldas, in an effort to find the emeralds, gold, wood, earth, and also to prevent blacks allied with the English pirates and cause damage to Spanish interests.”