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This is part of a special series, Cumbia Across Latin America , a visual report across six countries developed over several years, covering the people, places and cultures that keep this music genre alive.

The first cumbia recorded in Ecuador at the end of the 1960s had only one verse. It was called "Cumbia Triste" and was written by Polibio Mayorga. This musician from Ambato, Ecuador, tropicalized the national music of the Ecuadorian highlands, which had long been stigmatized for its Indigenous roots and the sad melodies often associated with them. Mayorga combined the rhythms of the San Juanito — traditional Andean music — with rural Colombian cumbia, which arrived in Ecuador via the record industry, already processed and whitewashed. The result marked a new ide

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