^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Quito Canton (Pichincha, Ecuador)

image by Jens Pattke, 29 October 2002

Overview
Variant (?)
Coat of Arms
Parish of Amaguaña

see also:

Overview

Quito's flag is a blue-red-blue tricolour, and about half of them showed a coat of arms (see: Variant (?)) .
T.F. Mills, 11 December 1997

I located a "simpler" variant at <www.ciudadfutura.com/pabrllon.htm> and also a gonfalon at <estand.htm>. CoA at <escudo.htm>.
Dov Gutterman, 10 December 2001

It's not the same blazon seen above. In fact, it's just the castle. But the flag (pabellón) and gonfalon (estandarte) in this website date from 1944. Shall we accept them as official? I think we can take them as former representations of the Quito flag.
Blas Delgado, 13 December 2001

I made the "Variant (?)" from a small flag which I purchased in Quito shortly before submitting them. I saw many more like them on buildings and none like the 1944 model -- so I think your assumptions are fairly sound. I know very little about the vexillographic culture of Ecuador, but in my experience much of the world does not have "sealed patterns". It is therefore possible that the difference is not an official evolution.
T.F. Mills, 13 December 2001

The flag above is based on the province official site at <www.pichincha.gov.ec>.
Falko Schmidt, 29 October 2002

From <www.quito.gov.ec>:
"BANDERA DE QUITO
Ordenanza N° 1634
La Bandera de la Ciudad se oficializó el 17 de mayo de 1944 en el Concejo Municipal de Quito. Es un rectángulo horizontal dividida en tres franjas paralelas; la parte central es de color rojo y las dos laterales de color azul. En el centro va un castillo como símbolo de fortaleza, nobleza y lealtad de la ciudad. Al extremo superior del asta cuelga el cordón de color oro de San Francisco."
Dov Gutterman, 14 June 2003

Variant (?)

image by T.F. Mills, 11 December 1997

Coat of Arms

image by T.F. Mills, 11 December 1997

See also: <www.pichincha.gov.ec>, located by Falko Schmidt, 29 October 2002

Parish of Amaguaña

image by Ivan Sache, 24 February 2007

The parish of Amaguaña (20,000 inhabitants; 60 sq. km) belongs to the Metropolitan District of Quito; it is located in the valley of Chillos, 28 km south-east of Quito, at an elevation of 2,683 a.s.l.
The origin of the name of Amaguaña is controversial. E. Moreno Yánez (Nueva Historia del Ecuador) claims that the two main parishes of the valley are named after their respective caciques (chiefs), in the north, Sangolquí named after Sangoquiza, in the south, Amaguaña, named after Amaguañuy. Other say that Amaguaña means "love" in Aymara. Anyway, the oldest mention of Amaguaña dates back to 1559, as listed by the Franciscan monk Agustín Moreno in his "Cien preguntas sobre los orígenes Franciscanos" (Hundred questions on the Franciscan origins). In the early years of the Spanish settlement, Amaguaña was inhabited by "doctrinas" (native tribes not incorporating into a parish) and colonists, including Pedro Ampudia, the son of the the founder of Quito.
Teodoro Wolf, Gonzáles Suárez and Aquiles Pérez consistently reports the eruption of volcano Pichincha in October 1660, considered as the biggest ever, which causes the flooding of the valley of Chillos and the opening of the precipice of Sincholagua. The villagers escaped to the hillsides of the Pasochoa and Rumiñahui. Accordingly, the inhabitants of the valleys of Tumbaco and Chillos still believe that the place was once a big lake.
Amaguaña might have become a civil parish during the first term of Gabriel García Moreno, 1861-1865. On 29 May 1861, the National Convention of Ecuador issued the Law on the Territorial Division, erecting Amaguaña as one of the 47 parishes of the Canton of Quito, Province of Pichincha. There is, however, no other decree stating that Amaguaña was already a civil parish, but there are hints in local archives of the existence of a civil administration in 1861 and 1863.
The National Park Pasochoa is located close to Amaguaña. It is made of a sleeping volcano and hosts several endemic or endangered. During 1996 and 1997, Doris Vela and Violeta Rafael, from the Pontifical University of Ecuador, collected specimens of Drosophila (fruit flies) in the western slopes of the Pasochoa. They described three new species, on e of them being named D. amaguana, after the parish of Amaguaña (Vela, D., Rafael, V. 2004. Three new andean species of Drosophila (Diptera, Drosophilidae) of the mesophragmatica group. Iheringia. Série Zoologia 94, 295-299 - available online.
Maize has been grown in the valley of Chillos since the pre-Inca period; the valley of Chillos is still known as the land of maize.
Accordingly, the flag of Amaguaña is horizontally divided yellow-blue, yellow representing maize and blue representing the clear sky and the water of the rivers.
Source: Amaguaña by Enrique V. Carrera.
Ivan Sache, 24 February 2007