For five hours, the British photographer Tristan Partridge trekked alongside 80 Kichwa-Panzaleo Indigenous people on a narrow mountainous path near San Isidro in the highlands of Ecuador, to reach a high-altitude wetland ecosystem called the páramo. The group then reached the community’s alpaca corral, where two thatched-roof huts became their base for the next two days.
“Páramos are alpine moorland found only in the northern Andes, and this particular páramo is located in the hills above the community itself,” Partridge says. “Some folk were on horseback, and we were accompanied by a number of donkeys and llamas laden with sacks of cement, food, firewood and tools.”
During that weekend in September 2011, their minga – voluntary work typically focused on building and maintaining shared infrastructure – was to help maintain San Isidro’s 12-mile (20km) irrigation water pipeline. To keep the water flowing, the volunteers had to fix a section of the pipeline that had been washed away by a landslide.
By 7pm, darkness had enveloped the hills, and the group clustered in and around the huts, with some people preparing the evening meal, chatting with the occasional Kichwa word mixed in among the everyday Spanish.
“The cook team were making huge steaming pots of soup on an open fire within the smoke-blackened hut, and I took a quick photo. We ate where we could perch, gathering together at the end of 13 hours of work and hiking,” he recalls.
The “quick photo” Partridge refers to is a striking image in his new photography book, Mingas+Solidarity, the result of a decade of collaborative work with the people of San Isidro.
A specialist in anthropological fieldwork, he joined the community of 500 people in 96 households in the Andes foothills in 2011 and documented their way of life, especially the mingas, which form an integral part of life there.
The book describes mingas, which originated in Inca culture, as “collective work parties” that last from a few hours to a few days. They are “a form of cooperative labour with a very long history across Andean regions”. Partridge says that mingas are central to the Indigenous people’s struggles for justice and dignity.
“Often celebrated, if not romanticised, by outsiders as emblematic of community unity, mingas are also sometimes critiqued as a way for the state – and previously Inca rulers and Spanish colonial powers – to extract free labour from Indigenous peoples,” the book reads.
Partridge has a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Edinburgh and extensive experience in community activism and fieldwork photography in countries such as India and Chile. He specialises in environmental justice and land rights and his work often documents “collective efforts to maintain connectedness with place and with each other”, the book says.
He first became interested in Ecuador when a new constitution came into force in 2008, which he says was “very progressive, very forward-looking” as, among other measures, it included landmark provisions for Indigenous rights.
Ecuador is a plurinational country with 14 Indigenous nationalities, including the Kichwa people. “One thing that is really remarkable about Ecuador is the strength and visibility of the national Indigenous movement and how well organised it is,” Partridge says.
Three main Indigenous bodies represent the Amazon, the highlands and the coastal regions. “This tight and established hierarchical organisation of the Indigenous movement allows cooperation between different communities and branches. It also enables swift and effective mobilisation of communities nationwide,” Partridge says.
But achievements made by the Indigenous peoples, says Partridge, could be fragile.
“One key point in my project is that Indigenous rights and achievements in Ecuador, and everywhere, always have to be defended because, despite the gains, there might be a change of government at any time and it might completely disregard those rights,” he says.
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Partridge first met members of the San Isidro community when he was working with the Seed Guardians Network, an organisation promoting sustainable farming, and visited them soon afterwards. He was struck by how well organised they were in the village.
San Isidro was given control of the páramo in the 1960s when land reforms forced a breakup of the large hacienda farm estates. In 2009 it received a government grant to build the irrigation pipeline, in partnership with neighbouring communities.
“Community members are responsible for all ongoing maintenance of the pipeline, work which is unfunded. That’s where the mingas come in,” he says. “Mingas are also social events. There aren’t many employment opportunities locally, and people often travel for work. Mingas are a chance to reconnect.”
Partridge stayed with the community for all of 2011 and visited many more times over the next decade, taking the last of thousands of photographs in 2022. A selection of 55 appear in Mingas+Solidarity, a bilingual book, with parallel texts in English and Spanish. Several community members, such as Porfirio Allauca Guamán, the president of the ancestral community of San Isidro, have contributed by writing short essays.
Guamán underlines the significance of Partridge’s book. “While there are some written histories for our people, they are rare; ours is more of an oral culture. And so it is necessary to publish, including photographs,” he says.
In recognition of his work, Partridge was formally made an honorary member of the Kichwa-Panzaleo ancestral community of San Isidro in September.
One of his favourite photographs from the book is an image showing a group of volunteers cleaning out a reservoir. However, land disputes in the area meant that he could not include all of his favourite photos. Some territories could not be depicted, even in the background, amid tensions with neighbouring communities.
“The situation of Indigenous communities is always unstable, unfortunately,” Partridge says. “Continuing to build collective strength through shared days of work like mingas is critical to the ability of communities to go on defending their land, their water, their territories and their livelihoods.”
