By Guillermo Granja

PINGUE, Ecuador, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Undeterred by ash and fiery rock spewing from Ecuador's "throat of fire" volcano and predictions of greater activity, peasant farmers worked their corn and potato plots on the mountain on Friday.

"I'm not going to stay with my arms crossed," said Rosa Marino, a diminutive 76-year-old farmer preparing to climb the volcano's slopes to work her plot a few miles (km) from the crater. "All my land is up there and I know God protects me."

Tungurahua, which means "throat of fire" in the native Quichua language, is a volcano 80 miles (130 km) south of the capital, Quito. It last erupted in August 2006 and has been rumbling and belching up rock, gas and ash this week.

Volcanologists expect stronger activity from Tungurahua because it is in the middle of an eruption cycle that began in 1999 after decades of inactivity.

Marino and more than 200 people, mostly peasants, from her hamlet Cusua fled their homes during the last eruption and settled in tiny prefabricated shelters next to the highway in Pingue.

In 2006, streams of fast-moving molten rock and ash enveloped several hamlets tucked in the volcano's folds, killing four people and forcing thousands to evacuate and lose their corn and potato crops.

"You only sleep here, but everybody heads up there during the day to make a living," said 40-year-old Marcos Guerrero, wearing rubber boots and ready to work as the 16,460-foot (5,020-metre) volcano billowed huge plumes of ash in the background.

The volcano's crater is about a mile (1.6 km) south of the resort town of Banos, where 17,000 residents were forced to evacuate in 1999 after loud explosions and big clouds of ash blew out of its crater. (Writing by Alonso Soto; Editing by Saul Hudson and Peter Cooney)

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