The activists fighting to defend Black Ecuadorian culture

Painted with the support of the city council in 2017, a mural spanning the entire side of a six-storey building in Guayaquil's financial district went largely unnoticed for more than a year in Ecuador's most populous city -until it triggered outrage.

- Tiago Rogero and Blanca Moncada

The painting showed two men grappling over money: one dressed in a suit, tie and shoes, with fair skin; the other shirtless, in shorts, flip-flops and a stocking mask. He was dark-skinned.

For Black activists, the artwork's message left no room for doubt: it implied a robbery and reinforced racist stereotypes, smearing Ecuador's African-descendant minority, which suffers the worst outcomes in areas such as unemployment and genderbased violence.

"It was an offence to the Black people of Guayaquil," said Guillermo Leones Pacheco, 62, president of the Pueblo Negro organisation, who was one of the leading figures in the campaign against the mural. That pressure ultimately led to the work's removal in 2020 and the creation of six new murals depicting Black resistance.