In 1984, Grassroots Development (Vol. 8, No. 1) contained a poignant and powerful poem from coastal Ecuador. In 44 highly structured lines, “The Black Man’s Question” exposed the racial discrimination its author had encountered when he traveled from his home in the rain forests of Esmeraldas province to a highland city in neighboring Colombia.

The poet, Benildo Torres, is one of Esmeradas’ several decimeros, or composers of décimas, an ancient and very complex form of poetry transported by Spanish settlers to the New World where African slaves and their descendents embraced it. The strength of the tradition in Esmeraldas came to light through Juan Garcia, whom the IAF supported during his decades of work recording the oral traditions of his native province. Garcia was motivated by the lack of attention to Ecuador’s African descendants in Esmeraldas and the Chota Valley. “There are no monuments to blacks in Ecuador,” he once said. As he probed deeper, Garcia began to see in storytellers and poets “the only monuments we have,” and he became determined to get their words down on paper.

His quest led to the publication of this poetry along with stories, memories, biographies and descriptions of folk practices. Cultural centers were created around the material. Awareness of their past led many in Esmeraldas to examine the present and eventually to fight poverty and exclusion by banding together, including in palenques, an organizational form favored by Afro-Ecuadorians. Leaders cite Garcia’s work as their inspiration. Eventually the Ecuadorian Constitution was revised to provide for the collective rights of the country’s African descendants. “That,” said Garcia, “was like the juridical birth of the black community in the political world, in the social world.”

Garcia still travels Esmeraldas’ rivers, pursuing the oral tradition. He is turning the material gathered into formats for use in schools and is also preparing a biography of Benildo Torres. For his part, Torres, at 74 the only surviving decimero of his generation, continues to use poetry to highlight social problems. His latest rhymes complain about the lack of sanitary services in the town of Borbón, where he recently handed out copies to the discomfort of the local authorities.

Patrick Breslin is IAF’s vice president for external affairs.