Notes on the history of the Masons' Guild in Quito: City and Popular Culture

Based on a series of interviews directed to the members of the Masons' Guild in Quito, the article formulates a series of hypothesis relating to the creation of popular culture in the first half of the 20th century. The Masons' Guild evolved within the context of a city that pretended to be modern but simultaneously reproduced the privilege and determined forms of symbolic violence characteristic of a more traditional society. In light of these concepts of privilege, the research explores the notions of popular race and respect that emerge from the popular domain. At the same time, the article discusses sorne of the methodological and ethical problems that are related with the biographical method and with the possibility of writing labor history.