"Some people think that all Kichwas don't wear clothes or understand Spanish. Or that we sleep in hammocks and have small houses. And that we don't have light," 25-year-old Jaime Calapucha tells me. "They tell me they saw this online. Seriously? Who's giving out this information?"
Like most 25-year-olds, Calapucha has a Facebook and Instagram account, is updated on pop culture, and enjoys a drink and the occasional night out in the nearest city. The difference is that he has lived in the Amazon rainforest his entire life.
Calapucha is full-blooded Kichwa (or Quichua), an indigenous group that spans parts of South America, including Ecuador. His town of Ahuano, with a population of roughly 4,000 people—most of them Kichwa—has been quickly modernizing in recent years. It's still a rainforest town; a great chunk of the population are subsistence farmers, which leaves its youth navigating the line that can often separate technology and indigenous culture.
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