Insular y Costero Landscape

The ancestral Karas, in their settlement in the territory of what today comprises the province or marka de la mama “neck of the moon” or Coto Paxi, carried as distinctive of their lineage: a lion or feline in their belly, as the chronicler Cieza de León relates, for that singularity they were called “panzaleos”.

The old Panzaleo was, according to F. Salomón, the micro-region corresponding to the current Machachi under the tutelage of the Illinizas, while after the arrival of the Inkas, the Panzaleo Inka settled in the area of El Callo, towards the current Latacunga or Llaktakuna, a city in the shape of a puma or Andean lion. Their tutelary Apu, the Cotopaxi mama, when she reverberates from her magmatic belly and tinges her snowy cone, becomes then: the Black Mama.

Diego Velasco Andrade.