The flood melted La Comuna and La Gasca, two Quito neighborhoods with different realities and origins

The afternoon of Monday, January 31 it rained in La Comuna, a neighborhood built with the exclusive effort of its inhabitants, without papers or deeds, in the surroundings of Occidental Avenue, at the height of the center-north of Quito.

The neighbors they went into their houses until the downpour passesexcept the lovers of the ecuavóley, who were in the habit, more so in the pandemic, of staying until night in the neighborhood pitch, taking advantage of the fact that it had a ceiling and lights.

The field had a grandstand where fans assembled their teams and waited their turn or simply watched the games. About six players improvised sales used to be installed.

around 18:00, a flood came down the slopes of Pichincha with a force that never seen before and it took everything in its path: cars, walls, trees… And people.

At night, the court became a huge deposit of mud and debris. The preliminary reports of the Municipality register at least 27 deaths, of which the majority correspond to the neighbors who went out that afternoon to the La Comuna field. The bodies were found even more than a kilometer away, along the Gasca Avenue, which -due to its geographical layout: straight and downward- became the inevitable outpouring of the alluvium originated in the foothills of Pichincha.

In the gasca, a middle class sector, with an intense commercial and student activity, the inhabitants recorded images that surprised the worlddue to the violence with which the nature burst in the middle of the urban area of ​​the capital, destroying everything.

There were fewer images of La Commune during the first hours of the tragedy. The name of this neighborhood -formally baptized as the commune of Santa Clara de San Millán- passed into the background. However, with the passing of time, reality revealed that there, in that poor neighborhood, was the center of the devastation, ground zero.

The The border that divides the Commune of La Gasca is invisible. There is no marked milestone, but rather the transition from a narrow street to a four-lane avenue. However, they are two different territories and realities.

The Commune, more than a century of history

on the slopes of Pichincha volcano is the commune of Santa Clara de San Millan, which accounts for his religious vocation.

In colloquial treatment it is known as La Comuna and is one of the main entrances to the cable car and, in the lower part, it joins with the La Gasca neighborhood.

Was a indigenous settlement which is even mentioned by the Spaniards in their chronicles of the foundation of Quito, according to the archives of the Capital Municipality.

Legally it was recognized as a social organization in 1911 by the president Eloy Alfaro, which gave it territorial autonomy, that is, direct control of the land.

For this reason, the oldest inhabitants always proudly underline their origin in the comuneros.

However, the Commune has had to adapt to the expansion of the city, to migration and the division of its territory. Today, Occidental Avenue (or Mariscal Sucre) crosses it from north to south.

In the upper part, on the slopes of Pichincha, is the broken the roof, which already collapsed in 1975, causing material and human losses, according to the inhabitants who lived through the disaster. However, that barrage does not compare with that of January 31 of 2022, which left more than 20 dead.

Edwin Llumipanta knows the history of the name of the community inherited from their ancestors. He knows that the free Indians of La Commune they built the church Saint Clare of Assisi, because they found an image and became devotees of it. “In addition, we were adopted by a priest named Barros de San Millan, this in colonial times. That is why it is called La Commune of Santa Clara de San Millán”, he says.

The Commune is currently made up of about 12,000 people, Llumipanta says. “Since we are in the heart of the city and there are people from Colombia, Venezuela, the Coast and the East of the country they have arrived. For example, my wife is from Manabí,” she adds.

He affirms that the protective forest belongs to the community and that a water board operates there.

However, today The Commune is not regularized as a formal neighborhood in the town. “It’s not that we don’t want to be a neighborhood; what happens is that to become one we should be taken as an invasion or settlement. That is the legal part that we will never accept. We are not an invasion, we were before the city”.

He explains that they are governed as an autonomous local government and that they maintain coordination with the Municipality of Quito.

In the commune of Santa Clara de San Millán they celebrate two parties a year. From August 6 to 8 of each year are the festivities of Saint Clare of Assisi. And they have taken the July 25 as foundation date, It corresponds to when they were given legal status in 1911.

The more traditional inhabitants try to continue with the customs of their ancestors. For this there is the communal house, the organization between partners and decision making in assemblies. All that community knowledge was activated for the reconstruction of La Comuna, which became “ground zero” for this year’s flood.

La Gasca, the door to modern Quito

La Gasca -raised on a huge landfill- is several things. Is a short avenue -two lanes going up and two going down, separated by a parterre with trees- that begins on Occidental Avenue, as Mariscal Sucre is commonly known, and which reaches Gaspar de Carvajal Street or, for more references , to “the Supermaxi of La Gasca”, as important for the neighbors as the soccer fields, the pharmacies, the fast food restaurants or the “holes” located along a kilometer and a half.

The inclination of this avenue is so pronounced that, in 2019, the Municipality of Quito chose it as the setting for the last of the traditional wooden car races.

There, the sidewalks boil. Every day, thousands of students and visitors -a kind of floating population- mix with the inhabitants of the sector, which has caused, over the years, a great business growth and, along with the delinquency.

The Traffic accidents are also common: a miscalculation or a malfunction in the brakes can be fatal.

That elongated and straight disposition of this avenue, which hardly has a curve in the upper part, can explain cHow did it become the conduit for tons of sediment from the alluvium? that last Monday originated in the foothills of Pichincha, went down through La Comuna and reached the lower part of the city, carrying mud, stones and sticks, even to the area of ​​La Mariscal, a few kilometers from the disaster area.

But also, La Gasca is a middle-class residential neighborhood, that was consolidated in the seventies, as a pillar of modern Quito.

Among the best known sites are the Major Seminary, the Central University or the Juan Montalvo school. A good part of its inhabitants are “chagras” who have come from the provinces to study in the capital. (I)