On this episode of the Ivonne Baki podcast, the Ambassador talks with a group of experts, Mariano Proaño, Richard Lunniss, Juan Andrés Jijón, Patricio Tamariz and Gustavo Gonzáles, about Cerro Jaboncillo. Cerro Jaboncillo is a sacred mountain close to the Pacific Ocean on the central coast of Ecuador. It was a principal origin site of the people, known as Manteños, who occupied that area at the time of the Spanish conquest. It was converted through architecture, myth, and ritual into a vast ceremonial center that celebrated, above all, their principal earth and water spirit, a supernatural caiman.
The main processional way crosses an 8-kilometer route from west to east along the main ridges of the mountain, connecting a series of single, double, and triple east-facing temples built on ramped platforms. The main way culminates with a complex of temples and ceremonial houses on the 641 m high summit.
These buildings and the spaces around them accommodated sculptures and bas-relief tomb pillars that represented key aspects of Manteño cosmogony. The processional way then continues beyond the summit and down the east slope of the mountain, to connect with further temples directed, principally, towards the rising sun in different phases of the solar year.

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