Ecuador Introduction
Figure 1. Administrative Divisions of Ecuador, 1989
AS THE 1980S DREW TO A CLOSE, deep-rooted sociological,
geographical, economic, and political features continued to define
Ecuador. Despite such post-World War II developments as widespread
migration, the growth of import substitution industrialization, and
the emergence of an urban middle class, Ecuador remained strongly
influenced by its history. Four key themes dominated the historical
landscape and remained essential to an understanding of
contemporary Ecuador. First, the nation had a highly skewed social
structure that could be traced to its colonial past. Second,
persistent regional rivalries often determined the outcome of key
national issues. Third, the economy continued to be subject to the
fortunes of a single commodity. Finally, the political system
lacked strong, stable institutions.
Spanish social structures and values took hold most completely
in the sixteenth century in the Sierra (Andean highlands). Not
coincidentally, the Sierra was also that Ecuadorian region where
the Inca conquerors had been most successful fifty years earlier.
Spanish officials adapted the prevailing Inca hierarchical social
system and established a tripartite, semifeudal structure
consisting of small numbers of white elites (both
peninsulares--Spanish-born persons residing in the New
World--and criollos--persons of pure Spanish descent born in the
New World), a somewhat larger group of mestizo artisans, and a
large Indian underclass. Since Ecuador lacked the mineral riches
found in other Spanish colonies, such as Peru and Mexico, land
became the critical commodity. Through the encomienda
system, elites received tracts of Sierra land along with the right
to extract labor from Indians living on that land. Colonists also
adapted the Inca concept of obligatory public service (mita)
and required Indians to toil in textile sweatshops scattered
through the highlands. Debts incurred through the Spanish
mita often transformed what was supposed to be a transitory
labor obligation into a peonage system passed across generations.
The successful struggle for independence in the 1820s resulted
in the transfer of power from peninsulares to criollos. It
did little, however, to change other aspects of the social system,
which by then had become dominated by haciendas with a resident
Indian labor force. These residents, known as
huasipungueros, typically worked the hacienda fields for
four days per week in exchange for the right to own a small plot of
land (minifundio).
The huasipungo system survived in isolated pockets of
the Sierra until finally being abolished by the 1964 Agrarian
Reform Law. This law and a successor measure in 1973, however, did
not affect the basic distribution of landownership, which remained
highly inequitable. In the early 1980s, only 5 percent of all farms
exceeded fifty hectares, yet these same farms represented over 55
percent of land under cultivation. By contrast, 80 percent of all
farms encompassed fewer than ten hectares and accounted for only 15
percent of farmland.
Until the 1970s, landless Sierra peasants in search of work
typically migrated to the Costa (coastal region). At independence,
the Costa contained less than 20 percent of the national
population. Nonetheless, it represented the most dynamic force in
Ecuador's economy. This dynamism was centered in the port city of
Guayaquil, which had established itself during the colonial period
as an important shipbuilding and trade center.
An intense rivalry between Guayaquil and Quito--the national
capital and most important Sierra city--dominated nineteenth-
century Ecuadorian politics. By the 1850s, a clear dichotomy had
emerged between the Catholic, conservative Sierra and the
anticlerical, liberal Costa, with regional leadership in the hands
of Gabriel García Moreno and José María Urbina, respectively.
García Moreno played a critical role in the late 1850s and early
1860s in pulling Ecuador back from the brink of permanent
dissolution. However, during a rule that lasted until his
assassination in 1875, García Moreno polarized the religious issue
through the enactment of legislation granting broad powers to the
Roman Catholic Church. Following a twenty-year transitional period,
José Eloy Alfaro Delgado seized power on behalf of Guayaquil
Liberals and established a permanent separation of church and
state.
The removal of the religious issue from the national agenda did
little to alter regional tensions. Costa elites long resented what
they perceived to be a transfer of their wealth to the less
industrious Sierra. In addition, economic stagnation in the Sierra
and dynamism in the Costa combined to produce a massive population
shift in the twentieth century. By the early 1980s, the population
of Guayaquil easily outdistanced that of Quito. Despite the
presence of large squatter communities in both cities, regional
rather than class identification remained the most important
determinant of voting behavior. For example, a majority of Costa
voters supported the second-round presidential candidates from
their region in both the 1984 and 1988 elections, even though the
political ideologies of these candidates varied widely.
On three separate occasions over the last hundred years, a
single export product offered the prospect of a solid financial
future. In each case, however, Ecuadorian hopes were dashed by a
cruel dose of fiscal reality. Ideal growing conditions north of
Guayaquil and the latter's excellent port facilities enabled
Ecuador by 1900 to become the world's leading exporter of cocoa.
Customs duties from cocoa exports filled government coffers. The
cocoa boom also had an important sociological impact as Costa
growers sought to attract Sierra peasants through sharecropping and
wage-labor arrangements. By the mid-1920s, however, crop disease
and competition from other producing nations had devastated
Ecuadorian cocoa production. Lowered world demand resulting from
the Great Depression dealt a further crushing blow to Ecuador's
export effort. From 1928 to 1932, the total value of Ecuadorian
exports declined by two-thirds.
Following World War II, Ecuador had a second commodity bonanza,
this time in the form of bananas. Taking advantage of crop diseases
in Central America and the unleashing of pent-up demands in the
United States after the war, the value of Ecuador's banana exports
grew tenfold from 1948 to 1952. Once again, customs duties allowed
ambitious public works spending. As was the case with cocoa,
bananas were grown in the Costa. Besides stimulating the regional
economy, the banana boom set off another migration wave from the
Sierra. By the mid-1960s, however, Ecuador experienced a
substantial drop in the volume and value of banana exports.
Economic stagnation once more became the order of the day.
The discovery in 1967 of vast amounts of petroleum in the
sparsely populated Oriente (eastern region) created conditions for
a third economic boom. Five years later, petroleum began flowing
through the 503-kilometer Trans-Ecuadorian Pipeline, bound for
foreign industrialized markets. Largely as a result of petroleum
exports, Ecuador's foreign exchange earnings climbed eightfold
between 1971 and 1974.
Several noteworthy features distinguished the petroleum boom
from the earlier cocoa and banana booms. First of all, the locus of
economic activity occurred outside of the Costa. Although the
Oriente was the actual source of the petroleum wealth and received
important infrastructural development, the bulk of the revenues
flowed directly to the national treasury in Quito. The government
used these revenues to finance an unprecedented level of public
spending, creating numerous state enterprises and expanding the
scope and activities of previously established national agencies.
Government funding also supported industrial growth in Quito.
Finally, industrialization and public-sector expansion allowed for
the emergence of an urban middle class.
Unfortunately, petroleum proved to be as illusive a treasure as
the earlier golden commodities. In the first half of the 1970s, the
income from petroleum made possible the purchase of a wide range of
imports. When revenues stagnated around 1975, the military
government that had assumed power three years earlier resorted to
massive foreign borrowing. Between 1976 and 1979, Ecuador's foreign
debt increased by over 400 percent. Although the civilian
administrations that came to power in 1979 succeeded in slowing the
debt growth rate, it still had doubled by 1986 and totalled nearly
US$9 billion.
Ecuador was unprepared for the economic calamities that befell
it in the 1980s. During that decade, Ecuador experienced two sharp
drops in the market price for petroleum, a global recession, a
dramatic increase in international interest rates, widespread crop
damage resulting from flooding, and an earthquake that severed the
oil pipeline for five months and cost the nation US$700 million in
lost revenues. In order to qualify for additional loans and
renegotiation of scheduled interest payments, Ecuadorian
governments adopted various austerity packages that included
reductions in public expenditures, currency devaluations, and
increases in interest rates. Although necessary, these measures
increased unemployment and underemployment nationwide.
Stronger political institutions might have enabled Ecuador to
weather its varied economic storms. Unfortunately, national
political structures historically exacerbated rather than
ameliorated the fiscal picture. Except for a brief period during
the 1880s and early 1890s, nineteenth-century Ecuadorian
governments were authoritarian rather than democratic. Most of the
heads of those governments were forcibly removed from office.
Although the Liberal Party held power from 1895 to 1925, those
years were hardly a model of stability. For the first half of that
period, Alfaro and Leónidas Plaza Gutiérrez waged a bitter rivalry
that only ended when the former unsuccessfully staged a coup and
was murdered by a government-sponsored mob. In the second half,
liberal politicians surrendered key financial decisions to
Guayaquil banking interests. The printing of national currency by
private banks generated runaway inflation and contributed heavily
to the economic chaos of the late 1920s.
On three occasions in the twentieth century--1925, 1963, and
1972--the military seized direct political control. In each case,
it was unsuccessful in carrying out espoused socioeconomic reforms.
The last period of military rule--1972 to 1979--was both the most
ambitious and disappointing of the three. Although one of the
motivations for intervention was to prevent civilian politicians
from dissipating the new-found petroleum wealth, the military's
principal legacy was that of ever-increasing foreign debt
obligations.
The 1979 Constitution is the seventeenth such document since
independence in 1830. It is both an impressive and hopeful sign
that as of December 1989 Ecuador had had democratically elected
governments since the inception of this Constitution and two
nonviolent transfers of power. Nonetheless, the maturation of
Ecuador's political institutions remained open to debate. Ecuador
had a staggering number of political parties, most of which had
rather shallow roots and were often little more than electoral
labels for their leaders. Party identification and ideology
remained weak, whereas personalism remained strong.
Perhaps most disturbing was the deteriorating level of
political discourse. This was particularly true during the
presidency of León Febres Cordero Ribadeneyra (1984-88). Febres
Cordero's disdain for the give and take of the democratic process
led to his adoption of an authoritarian style that resulted in
acrimonious debates with the National Congress and threats of
impeachment. In an incident that both typified the tumultuous years
of the Febres Cordero administration and painfully exposed the
potential threats to the democratic process, paratroop commandos
kidnapped the president in 1987 and forced him to honor a
congressional amnesty previously granted to Lieutenant General
Frank Vargas Pazzos. Febres Cordero had dismissed Vargas as armed
forces chief of staff after the latter had accused both the defense
minister and an army commander of corruption. Following his
dismissal, Vargas attempted two unsuccessful revolts against the
government. In the bewildering interplay of Ecuadorian politics,
Vargas ran for the presidency in 1988 and received over 12 percent
of the vote.
Ecuador thus faced many challenges in the years ahead.
Observers believed that it needed to design social structures that
would allow a more equitable distribution of income and
opportunities. It also needed to identify creative strategies of
economic growth. Most important, Ecuador required strong,
democratic political leadership.
December 31, 1989
Dennis M. Hanratty
Data as of 1989
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