🇪🇨 Ecuador · Coast
Santo Domingo de los Colorados is the capital of the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas and one of the fastest-growing cities in Ecuador. Set on the western Andean foothills, in a fully humid tropical zone, it is a major commercial and communications hub: the roads connecting the highlands (Quito, about three hours away) with the coast (Guayaquil, Manta, Esmeraldas) all pass through here, which turned it into a logistics, farming and services center.
Its name refers to the Tsáchila people, historically known as 'los Colorados' because the men traditionally dye their hair red with achiote. This Indigenous people, which still keeps comunas in the surrounding area, is the main cultural marker of the city and the province, and its ancestral knowledge —especially that of its shamans (poneses)— is one of the great draws of the area.
This guide takes a practical approach to Santo Domingo: rather than a city of monumental postcards, it is a meeting point and a destination for cultural and nature tourism, where you can get to know Tsáchila culture, visit river bathing resorts, reserves and tropical forests, and use it as a base or a stop on the route between the Ecuadorian highlands and the coast.
For centuries the region was the territory of the Tsáchila people, the 'Colorados', whose men dye their hair with achiote. The modern town grew fast from the mid-20th century, driven by the roads that turned it into a crossroads between the highlands and the coast, and by agricultural colonization (bananas, African palm, cacao). It became a canton in 1967 and, thanks to its explosive demographic and economic growth, in 2007 the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas was created, with the city as its capital. The full version is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The young province of the western foothills (2007): land of the Tsáchila people —the «colorados», with hair dyed red with achiote, and famed shamans—, heirs of the ancient Yumbos, the country's great road hub, a powerhouse of African oil palm and the commercial gateway between the Sierra and the Coast.
Read the history of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Tsáchila tradition tells that, centuries ago, a plague brought by the colonizers was decimating the people, until they discovered that painting their bodies and hair with achiote protected them. That emergency remedy became, over time, the most recognizable mark of an entire culture: the men's bright red hairstyle, which earned them the name 'los Colorados' and which today gives its name to a whole city and to a province of Ecuador.
Long before the city existed, the western Andean foothills were the territory of the Tsáchila people, an Indigenous nationality of the humid tropical zone of present-day Ecuador. The Spanish called them 'los Colorados' because of that custom: the men dye their hair a deep red with a paste of achiote (onoto), giving it a characteristic shape, and paint their bodies and faces with black lines of huito (genipa). That paint, beyond its aesthetic and ceremonial value, had a practical purpose as protection against insects and disease.
The Tsáchilas lived from hunting, fishing, gathering and forest agriculture, with a deep knowledge of the tropical environment. Their culture gives a central role to the poneses or shamans, keepers of a vast knowledge of the region's medicinal plants, whom people of every background turned to —and still turn to— in search of cures and cleansings. That reputation for medicinal wisdom is one of the traits that still sets this people apart today.
For centuries, the isolation of the humid tropics kept their way of life relatively protected. Even now, the Tsáchilas maintain comunas around the city and keep much of their language (tsafiki), their traditions and their organization alive, although they face the pressures of land encroachment and modernization. Their presence is the deepest cultural root of Santo Domingo and the one that gives the city and the province their name.
Tsáchila identity is condensed into very concrete symbols. The most recognizable is the men's hairstyle, shaped with achiote (Bixa orellana) into a kind of bright red helmet. Oral tradition says the use of achiote was born as a response to an epidemic: in ancient times, a disease (linked in the stories to smallpox or to other plagues brought by the colonizers) was decimating the people, and the Tsáchilas discovered that painting their bodies and hair with achiote protected them. So what began as a remedy turned into a mark of cultural identity.
To this is added body painting with huito (Genipa americana), which gives a blue-black color and is applied in horizontal lines across the body, and traditional dress, such as the 'mapachundu', the men's striped skirt. Each element has a meaning within a worldview that understands the person in close relation with the forest, the rivers and the spirits that inhabit them.
Their own language, tsafiki ('the true language'), belongs to the Barbacoan family and is one of the pillars of the culture. Although threatened by Spanish, it is still alive in the comunas and is the object of revitalization efforts. At the center of this worldview are the poneses or yachaks, wise men who know the plants and mediate between the human and the spiritual world, heirs to a medicinal knowledge that made this people famous far beyond their territory.
The modern city of Santo Domingo is, to a large extent, a child of the roads. Through the first half of the 20th century it was still a small town in the middle of the tropics, but the opening and improvement of the roads connecting the highlands with the coast turned it into a strategic crossroads. The highway linking Quito with the area and, from there, with Guayaquil, Manta, Portoviejo and Esmeraldas, made Santo Domingo an unavoidable transit point for trade and transport across much of the country.
That role as a communications hub set off rapid growth. In the middle and second half of the 20th century, the city drew waves of settlers and migrants from different provinces, attracted by the fertile tropical land and by the commercial opportunities. Agricultural colonization transformed the landscape: large stretches of humid forest gave way to plantations of African palm, bananas, cacao, cattle ranching and other tropical crops, and the city consolidated itself as an important farming and services center.
This headlong growth turned Santo Domingo into one of the most populated cities in Ecuador within a few decades, with an identity shaped by the mix of migrants from all over the country and by its commercial and logistical role. The rapid expansion, however, also had a flip side: pressure on Tsáchila territories and on the region's tropical forests.
The economic and demographic weight Santo Domingo was gaining translated, in the early 21st century, into an important political recognition: in 2007 the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas was created, split off from the province of Pichincha, with the city of Santo Domingo as its capital. The name of the new province was in itself a gesture of vindication: it explicitly incorporated the Tsáchila people, recognizing their role as the cultural root of the region.
The creation of the province reflected both the growth of the city and the will to make visible and value an Indigenous heritage long overshadowed by commercial and agricultural drive. In recent years, cultural tourism around the Tsáchila comunas —with their dances, their ancestral medicine, their food and their crafts— has developed as a way of giving that identity its due and generating income for the communities themselves.
Today Santo Domingo combines two faces: that of a modern, commercial, bustling city, a great road junction of Ecuador, and that of the guardian of one of the country's most singular Indigenous cultures. For the traveler, that duality is precisely what makes it interesting: a place where the ancestral culture of the Colorados lives alongside the dynamism of one of the fastest-growing cities in Ecuador.