Malacatos

Malacatos lies in a warm valley south of Loja, enclosed by ridges of the southern Ecuadorian Andes. The valley takes its name from the Indigenous Malacatus, who occupied it when the Incas and later the Spaniards arrived. Their lands included neighbouring settlements towards Vilcabamba and Yangana.

Under Spanish rule the inhabitants were subjected to encomiendas, and the valley lay on the old road between Quito and Lima. One encomendero named in local accounts was Pedro Cianca, who received responsibility for Malacatos at the end of the sixteenth century. Colonial authorities organised Malacatos as a parish in 1691. Over the eighteenth century estates and their labourers became increasingly prominent in the valley, continuing a long history of settlement and cultivation along its river and slopes.