A map, a myth and a pre-Incan lagoon: the man who brought water back to a drought-ridden town

When historian Galo Ramón uncovered a long-forgotten pre-Incan water system in Ecuador, he set about restoring it, and helped transform the landscape and livelihoods

One day in 1983, while studying a hand-drawn map from 1792 of his home town in Ecuador, Galo Ramón, a historian, came across a dispute between a landowner and two local Indigenous communities, the Coyana and the Catacocha. The boundary conflict involved an ancient lagoon, depicted on the map.

“The drawing depicted a lagoon brimming with rainwater,” says Ramón. Ravines were depicted forming below the high-altitude lagoon, indicating that it supplied watersheds further down – contrary to the typical flow where a watershed feeds into the lagoon.