Día de los Difuntos in Ecuador

The festival

On November 2, Ecuador honours its dead by a Métis tradition born from the meeting of the Andean rites — the pre-Columbian Aya Marcay Killa, the "month of the dead" — and from the Catholic calendar. Families go to the cemetery, especially to Calderón, north of Quito, where food is shared on the grave of the deceased and ritual drink is poured out to "savour" it.

The taste of the festival is that of the colada morada, a thick drink and violet of black corn, Andean fruits like mortiño and mora, and spices, heiress of the Yana Api quitu-cara that symbolized the blood and the link between living and dead. It uses with the guaguas de pan, small breads in the shape of a child, and Quito Turismo makes it every year a contest of neighborhoods that rewards the best coladas and guaguas in the capital.