Qualla: Salinas de Guaranda

Salinas de Guaranda: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The cheese is called Salinerito, and if you have eaten Ecuadorian cheese in a restaurant in Quito or Guayaquil, you have probably eaten cheese from this town. What makes Salinas de Guaranda extraordinary is not the cheese itself but how the cheese happens. In 1971, an Italian priest named Antonio Polo arrived in a poor salt-mining village at 3,550 meters elevation and helped the community organize itself as a cooperative. They built a dairy. Then a wool-spinning mill. Then a chocolate workshop, a dried-mushroom operation, a sausage factory, an essential-oil distillery. Today almost everything in town is owned collectively by the people who make it, and the model has spread to other villages across the central Andes as Salinas became a quiet argument that communities can build economies together.

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Salinas de Guaranda: From Salt Mines to Salinerito

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The name Salinas comes from the salt springs that gave the village its first economy. For centuries, residents boiled brine from local seeps to produce salt, a grueling process that yielded modest returns and did not lift anyone out of poverty. When Antonio Polo arrived from Ital...

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Salinas de Guaranda: The Cooperative Chain

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Today Salinas de Guaranda supports more than two dozen community-owned enterprises. The cheese cooperative produces wheels of gouda, mozzarella, and aged varieties that reach restaurants across the country. The chocolate workshop buys cacao from neighboring farms and processes it...

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Salinas de Guaranda: Beyond the Workshops

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The landscape around town holds more than cooperatives. Salt formations left over from the old mining operations still rim the valley, eerie white crystals visible in the dry months. A natural salt-water spring continues to flow, and visitors can still see where the community onc...

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Salinas de Guaranda: Pajaro Azul

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The traditional drink of Salinas is called Pajaro Azul, Blue Bird, a sugarcane liquor infused with mandarin, pineapple, and other ingredients that varies from bar to bar and bottle to bottle. The color is an improbable blue. Local businesses serve it, and anyone who asks around w...

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