Spanish is Ecuador’s official language of business and government, although there are dialectal differences between Sierra and Costa Spanish; Sierra Spanish has been influenced by Quichua. Quichua and Shuar (both of which are official intercultural languages) as well as other ancestral languages are spoken by the country’s Indigenous people. More than 10 Indigenous languages exist in Ecuador, and several of these will likely persist as mother tongues. Most Indigenous males are bilingual, and women are increasingly becoming bilingual as well. The concepts of bilingualism and bilingual or bicultural education are becoming increasingly important.

Religion

Ecuador is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic Church plays a significant role in education and social services and influences the selection of significant places for festivals and pilgrimage sites, such as Quinche in the north and Biblián in the south. Protestantism continues to grow rapidly, particularly among the disadvantaged; the largest groups are the non-Pentecostal Evangelicals and the Pentecostals. There is also a sizable Mormon congregation. Quito, Ambato, and Guayaquil have been urban centres of Protestant activity, and many of the Indigenous people of the Sierra and Oriente have also converted. Many highlanders are practicing Catholics, and religion plays an important part in daily life. In Carchi, Azuay, and Loja provinces in the Sierra and in Manabí province in the Costa, there has been more reluctance to accept Protestant conversion. A small Jewish population is concentrated in Quito, and there are also some Bahāʿī adherents.

Settlement patterns

In prehistoric times, settlement was widely dispersed throughout the coastal river valleys, highland basins, and Amazon riversides. Diseases brought by Europeans in the 16th century decimated Indigenous populations on the coast. By late colonial and early modern times, most people lived in the rural Sierra. By the late 20th century the growth pattern had again changed, and the majority of the population shifted to the lowland regions, especially the Costa, with a tendency to concentrate in the cities.

Parts of the coast were colonized by mid-20th-century mestizo pioneers, especially the area to the west and northwest of Quito around Santo Domingo de los Colorados; isolated Indigenous populations have gradually been reduced to minority status. A similar process has been occurring in the northern part of the Oriente, with oil fields and new highways allowing highland mestizos and highland Indigenous people to move into areas settled by Amazonian Indigenous groups.

In the highlands, traditional Indigenous and mestizo villages, hamlets, and scattered farmsteads are associated with a checkerboard pattern of small agricultural plots of corn (maize), potatoes, barley, wheat, broad beans, kidney beans, and domesticated lupine, alternating with fields temporarily lying fallow and used for grazing. Sheep are grazed on fallow land and higher-elevation pastures. Prior to the 1960s, small-scale farmers lived in a dependent relationship with large-scale haciendas, which controlled the best flat land and high pastures. Since the 1960s, land reform and economic changes have resulted in the subdivision of haciendas into more profitable medium-sized commercial farms producing dairy products, new potato varieties, fruits, flowers, and vegetables. Highland villages and towns were usually built on the Spanish colonial grid plan, which was centred on one or more squares distinguished by church and government buildings.

By the beginning of the 21st century, more than three-fifths of the Ecuadoran population had become urban dwellers, with most living in the two major cities, Guayaquil and Quito. Guayaquil is the largest city, the major port and commercial centre, and also the cultural centre of the Costa. Quito, apart from its governmental activities, has become an important regional headquarters for international organizations working in the Andes and has attracted a substantial tourist trade.

Other cities are much smaller, but Esmeraldas, Manta, Portoviejo, and Machala are important coastal agricultural and trade centres, and Ambato and Cuenca are the largest and most dynamic highland trade centres outside of Quito.

Demographic trends

Ecuador, like other Andean countries, has experienced a population increase, the result of a decreasing death rate and a continued high birth rate. Though the birth rate has fallen since the end of the 1990s, it is still slightly higher than the world average. This growth has resulted in a relatively young population. Ecuador has also attracted immigrants from neighbouring countries, mostly from Colombia and Peru, since the beginning of the 21st century. The largest group of immigrants consists of displaced Colombians, victims of escalated violence and crop-destroying sprays in their country. Thousands of Peruvians, the next largest immigrant group, arrived seeking better wages after Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar as its national currency in 2000. A small number of Chinese and East Asians have immigrated to Ecuador as well. Significant numbers of Ecuadorans have emigrated to the United States, especially to the borough of Queens in New York City.

Remittances from migrants provide important support for family members left behind. Rural northern highlanders tend to migrate to Quito, seeking opportunities for income not available in the countryside. The rural coastal people, on the other hand, have generally migrated to Guayaquil, and southern highlanders have migrated to the southeastern and northeastern Oriente and to the north-central Costa, as well as to Cuenca, Quito, and Guayaquil. In areas where people can generate a more substantial cash income, migration has been slower.