History of Ecuador
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This is the history of Ecuador. See also the history of South America and the history of present-day nations and states.
Pre-Columbian times and colonization
It is believed that Native Americans originated in Asia and that they entered the Western hemisphere via the Bering Strait approximately 50,000 years ago. Their descendants dispersed south and in time formed diverse civilizations.
16,000 to 18,000 years ago, the first Native Americans arrived to what is now Ecuadorian territory. The best-known ancient cultures of the Costa are: Las Vegas, Chorrera, Machalilla, Valdivia, Jambelí, Guangala, Bahía, Jama-Coaque, and La Tolita; of the Sierra: El Angel, Tuncahuán, Chaullabamba, Narrio, Cotocollao, and Carchi. In the period of "Integration," many of these cultures unite and new ones form. In the Costa the following cultures develop: Milagro-Quevedo, Atacames, Manteña, Huancavilca, Jama-Coaque II, and Chirije. In the Sierra the following cultures develop: Palta, Cañari, Puruha, Cayambe, Panzaleo, Caranqui, Otavalo, Pastos, and Quillacinga. In the Oriente the following cultures develop: Napo and Cotococha.The political history of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador before the Spanish conquest is based in large part on speculation, as they had no written languages. Their history was passed on orally to their descendants. Except for the two or three generations before the arrival of the Spanish, the accounts narrated by the natives cannot be recognized as true. What has been proven is that indigenous tribes had a political-military order under the command of the cacique. For the most part, it can be said that various "kingdoms" existed, and that the cacique was the equivalent of a "king." One of the tribes organized in that way is what can be categorized as the "Kingdom of Quito." The "Shyris" of Quito never integrated their "kingdom" to other tribes that now constute Ecuador. Only to defend their territory did they confederate to other tribes.
The population of the territory that is now Ecuador was from 300,000 to 350,000 inhabitants when the Spanish arrived. The diseases (smallpox, measles, and influenza) brought by the Europeans, and the physical abuse exercised by them, enormously reduced the indigenous population. Until the mid-fifteenth century, the number of inhabitants decreased even with the immigration of Europeans and the importation of African slaves. The introduction of horses, cattle, sheep, domestic birds, European fruit plants, and technology like the wheel, the plough, and iron tools, helped much to sustain the inhabitants.
In 1531, the Spanish conquistadors under Francisco Pizarro arrived and defeated the Inca Emperor Atahualpa and his army during the Battle of Cajamarca in 1532. In subsequent years the Spanish colonists became the new elite. The indigenous population was decimated by disease in the first decades of Spanish rule; a time when the natives also were forced into the "encomienda" labor system for Spanish landlords. In 1563, Quito became the seat of a royal audiencia (administrative district) of Spain.
Independence
On August 10, 1809, after nearly 300 years of Spanish colonization, there took place in Quito, which at the time had a population of about 10,000, the first serious revolt against established rule, when a group of nobles and landholders set up a Junta, refusing to recognize the colonial authorities, claiming Ferdinand VII was the legitimate King of Spain. Historians debate whether this was a true attempt at obtaining independence from Spain. Be that as it may, the members of the Junta found little support, either in other cities of the Real Audiencia de Quito, or even among the lower classes in Quito, and were soon arrested by colonial troops sent from Lima.After the Patriotic armies led by Venezuelan-born General Antonio Jose de Sucre defeated the royalist forces in the Battle of Pichincha (May 24, 1822), the provinces of the former Audiencia de Quito joined Simón Bolívar's Republic of Colombia, but on May 13, 1830, they seceded from Colombia and established a new nation, the Republic of Ecuador.
Ecuador in the 19th and 20th centuries
The 19th century was marked by instability, with a rapid succession of rulers. The conservative Gabriel Garcia Moreno unified the country in the 1860s with the support of the Catholic Church. Following his assassination in 1875, conservatives remained in power until an 1883 revolution in which the Progresistas, a liberal Catholic party, came to power. In the late 19th century, world demand for cocoa and rubber tied the economy to commodity exports and led to migrations from the highlands to the agricultural frontier on the coast, while fostering a slavery-based economy of rubber extraction in the Oriente.A coastal-based liberal revolution in 1895 under Eloy Alfaro reduced the power of the clergy and opened the way for capitalist development. The end of the cocoa boom produced renewed political instability and a military coup in 1925. The 1930s and 1940s were marked by populist politicians, such as five-time president Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra. In January 1942, Ecuador signed the Rio Protocol to end the Ecuadorian-Peruvian War with Peru the year before. Ecuador agreed to a border that conceded to Peru much territory Ecuador previously had claimed in the Amazon basin.
After WWII
After World War II, a recovery in the market for agricultural commodities and the growth of the banana industry helped restore prosperity and political peace. From 1948-60, three presidents - beginning with Galo Plaza Lasso - were freely elected and completed their terms.Recession and popular unrest led to a return to populist politics and domestic military interventions in the 1960s, while with the discovery of oil in the 1970s foreign companies started to develop oil resources in the Ecuadorean Amazon. In 1972, a nationalist military regime overthrew José María Velasco Ibarra for the last time and used the new oil wealth and foreign borrowing to pay for a program of industrialization, land reform, and subsidies for urban consumers. With the oil boom fading, Ecuador returned to democracy in 1979, under the first Ecuadorean president of the 1979 constitution, Jaime Roldós Aguilera who, with his Popular Forces' Concentration (CFP) party, won a decisive victory against Sixto Durán Ballén of the Social Christian Party (PSC). After a leadership disagreement with Assad Bucaram, the then leader of the CFP, Roldós left the above-mentioned party to found his own along with his wife. This Roldós-founded party, called "People, Change and Democracy" (PCD), would become an unimportant third-runner in Ecuadorean politics when Abdalá Bucaram Ortiz's Guayaquil-based Ecuadorean Roldosísta Party (PRE) was founded in 1982. In January 1981, the country went through yet another episode in its long-standing border dispute with Peru (see History of the Ecuadorian-Peruvian territorial dispute, during the so-called Paquisha Incident, which saw Peruvian troops expelling Ecuadorian soldies from three outposts located in the disputed and undemarcated zone.
By the end of the year 1981, Vice President Osvaldo Hurtado Larrea, member of the Popular Democracy Party, (DP) succeeded Roldós after the President died in a plane crash. Due to the economic pressure of war and over-reliance in commodity (particularly oil) exporting for its economic needs, the government of Osvaldo Hurtado faced a chronic economic crisis in 1982, including inflation, budget deficits, a falling currency, mounting debt service, and uncompetitive industries.
The 1984 presidential elections were narrowly won by León Febres Cordero Rivadeneira, of the Social Christian Party (PSC). During the first years of his administration, Febres-Cordero introduced free-market economic policies, took a strong stand against drug trafficking and terrorism, and pursued close relations with the United States. His tenure was marred by bitter wrangling with other branches of Government and his own brief kidnapping by elements of the military. A devastating earthquake in March 1987 interrupted oil exports and worsened the country's economic problems.
Rodrigo Borja Cevallos of the Democratic Left (ID) party won the presidency in 1988, running in the runoff election against Abdalá Bucaram of the PRE. His government was committed to improving human rights protection and carried out some reforms, notably an opening of Ecuador to foreign trade. The Borja government concluded an accord leading to the disbanding of the small terrorist group, "¡Alfaro Vive, Carajo!" ("Alfaro Lives, Dammit!") named after Eloy Alfaro. However, continuing economic problems undermined the popularity of the ID, and opposition parties gained control of Congress in 1990.
In 1992, Sixto Durán Ballén won in his third run for the presidency. His tough macroeconomic adjustment measures were unpopular, but he succeeded in pushing a limited number of modernization initiatives through Congress. Durán Ballén's vice president, Alberto Dahík, was the architect of the administration's economic policies, but in 1995, Dahík fled the country to avoid prosecution on corruption charges following a heated political battle with the opposition. A war with Peru (named the Cenepa War, after a river located in the area) erupted in January-February 1995 in a small, remote region, where the boundary prescribed by the 1942 Río Protocol was in dispute.
Recent times
Abdalá Bucaram, from the PRE, won the presidency in 1996 on a platform that promised populist economic and social reforms and the breaking of what Bucaram referred to as the power of the nation's oligarchy. During his short term of office, Bucaram's administration drew criticism for corruption. Bucaram was deposed by the Congress in February 1997 on grounds of alleged mental incompetence. In his place, Congress named interim President Fabián Alarcón, who had been President of Congress and head of the small Radical Alfarista Front (FRA) party. Alarcón's interim presidency was endorsed by a May 1997 popular referendum. During Alarcón's presidency, a new constitution was drafted. The 1979 constitution would be replaced by this new constitution without coming into effect on June 5, 1998.Congressional and first-round presidential elections were held on May 31, 1998. No presidential candidate obtained a majority, so a run-off election between the top two candidates - Quito Mayor Jamil Mahuad of the DP and Social Christian Álvaro Noboa Pontón - was held on July 12, 1998. Mahuad won by a narrow margin. He took office on August 10, 1998. On the same day, Ecuador's new constitution came into effect.
Mahuad concluded a well-received peace with Peru on October 26, 1998, but increasing economic, fiscal, and financial difficulties drove his popularity steadily lower. However, the coup de grace for Mahuad's administration was Mahuad's decision to make the indigenous currency, the sucre (named after a Venezuelan hero of the revolutionary war against Spain), obsolete and replace it with the U.S. dollar (a policy called dollarization). This caused massive unrest as the lower classes struggled to convert their now useless sucres to U.S. dollars and lost wealth, while the upper classes (whose members already had their wealth invested in U.S. dollars) gained wealth in turn.
On January 21, 2000, during demonstrations in Quito by indigenous groups, the military and police refused to enforce public order. Demonstrators entered the National Assembly building and declared, in a move that resembled the coups d'etat endemic to Ecuadorean history, a three-person "junta" in charge of the country. Field-grade military officers declared their support for the concept. During a night of confusion and failed negotiations President Mahuad was forced to flee the presidential palace for his own safety. Vice President Gustavo Noboa took charge by vice-presidential decree; Mahuad went on national television in the morning to endorse Noboa as his successor. The military triumvirate that was effectively running the country also endorsed Noboa. The Ecuadorean Congress then met in an emergency session in Guayaquil on the same day, January 22, and ratified Noboa as President of the Republic in constitutional succession to Mahuad. Although Ecuador began to improve economically, the government of Noboa came under heavy fire for the continuation of the dollarization policy, its disregard for social problems and other important issues in Ecuadorean politics.
On January 15, 2003, retired Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez, a member of the military junta that overthrew president Jamil Mahuad in 2000, assumed the presidency of Ecuador. He campaigned against corruption. Gutierrez's Patriotic Society Party had a small fraction of the seats in Congress and therefore depended on the support of other parties in Congress to pass legislation. In April 2005, President Lucio Gutiérrez was overthrown following weeks of public protests resulting from his unconstitutional dissolution and appointment of new judges to the Supreme Court in December 2004. This move was generally seen as a kickback to deposed ex-President Bucarám whose political party (the PRE) had sided with Gutiérrez and helped derail attempts to impeach him in late 2004. The new Supreme Court dropped charges of corruption pending against the exiled Bucarám, who soon returned to the politically unstable country. The corruption evident in these maneuvers finally led the populace to seek the ouster of Gutiérrez in April. Vice President Palacio assumed the Presidency and vowed to complete the term of office and hold elections in 2006. Palacio has promised to select a new Supreme Court through a transparent process.
See also
The information in Pre-Columbian Times and Colonization is translated from Cronología de la Historia Resumida del Ecuador By Alfredo Tinajero Cevallos and Amparo Barba González. This is available at http://users.erols.com/tinajero/External links
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