Diablada Pillarena

A six-day devil-mask festival in Pillaro, a small Andean town in Tungurahua province, running each January 1 through 6, featuring elaborate horned devil costumes symbolizing historical rebellion against colonial hacienda abuse, alongside line dancers representing the landowning class, recognized as Ecuadorian Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2009.

For six days each January, from New Year's Day through January 6, the small Andean town of Pillaro in Tungurahua province, set more than nine thousand feet above sea level, fills with dancers wearing elaborate devil masks fashioned from deer, boar and llama horns, teeth and fur, a tradition whose origins trace to the colonial-era hacienda system when local indigenous communities reportedly adopted devil disguises as a form of rejection toward the physical, psychological and economic abuse they suffered under Spanish colonizers.