Panzaleo Geobiocultural Landscape

The ancestral Karas, in their settlement in the territory of what today comprises the province or marka of the mama "neck of the moon" or Coto Paxi, carried as distinctive of their lineage: a lion or feline in their belly, as the chronicler Cieza de León relates, for that singularity they were called "panzaleos".

The old Panzaleo, according to F, Solomon, the micro-region corresponding to the current Matachi under the tutelage of the Illinizas, both in after the arrival of the Inkas, the Panzaleo Inka settled in El Callo, towards the current Latacunga or Llaktacunga, a city in the form of a puma or Andean lion. Its tutelary Apu, the Cotopaxi mama, when it reverberates from its magmatic belly and tinges its snowy cone, becomes then: the Black Mama.

Diego Velasco Andrade.