Ecuador: Green was my forest, by Edna Iturralde

Instituto Cervantes in Manchester and Leeds organise Tales from Latin America to promote and encourage reading among young people with the best stories by Latin American authors. An ideal opportunity to learn about literature in Spanish and get to know other worlds through literature. 

The second session is dedicated to Ecuador with "The Hunt", one of twelve short stories from Green Was My Forest by Edna Iturralde, an illustrated collection about each of Ecuador's six remaining Amazon indigenous groups, told from the point-of-view of the indigenous children themselves. In simple, yet beautiful language, the stories explore the culture, customs and ancestral wisdom of the indigenous groups living in the Ecuadorian Amazon, highlighting their collective love, respect and custodianship of the natural world. These stories offer a rare perspective on these indigenous peoples whose culture and way of life are continuously being threatened by outsiders and the forces of modernization.

They portray the way of life of the people who live in Ecuadorian Amazonia known for its forest, exotic animals, and indigenous towns. After traveling to this little-known region and meeting the people who inhabit it, Iturralde studied their way of life, observed their culture, and then wrote these imaginative entertaining stories remaining faithful to these tribes and their world".