Ecuador Historical Setting
Winged god cast in gold and platinum (La
Tolita culture)
THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY, Ecuador has displayed a continuity in
traditional cultural and economic patterns as well as in social and
political interaction among the country's highly heterogeneous
social groupings. Modern patterns overlay the traditional, making
present-day Ecuador a veritable living museum of its varied, rich
heritage. Pre-Columbian Ecuador is reflected in the persistence of
native languages, customs, and economic activities among a
considerable, though diminishing, number of communities in the
Sierra (Andean highlands) and the Oriente (eastern region). The
legacy of three centuries of Spanish colonial rule is also
pervasive and includes a social inequality that largely coincides
with race, rural land tenure patterns, and the nation's dominant
European cultural expressions.
Analysts of Ecuador's postindependence political history have
pointed to a number of persistent ingredients. Regionalism is
especially prominent, particularly as expressed in the struggle for
power between the Sierra, represented by Quito, and the Costa
(coastal region), represented by Guayaquil. Regionalism has
coincided with the party struggle between the Quito-based
Conservatives and the Guayaquil-based Liberals. Personalism, from
the political prominence of military caudillos in the early years
of the republic to the civilian dictators and the populists of more
recent times, has been another persistent theme since independence.
Perhaps the most consistent element of Ecuador's republican
history has been its political instability. In just over a century
and a half, there have been no fewer than eighty-six changes of
government, making for an average of 1.75 years in power for each
regime. The 1979 Constitution is Ecuador's seventeenth national
charter. Ecuador's political instability is a product of the
struggles mentioned above combined with the important political
role maintained by the nation's armed forces. The longest periods
of civilian, constitutional rule were between 1912 and 1925 and
again between 1948 and 1961. Governmental institutions, as a
result, have had little opportunity to mature into established
expressions of civilian, democratic rule.
Ecuadorian economic history has displayed marked cycles of
"boom" and "bust" based on the rise and fall of particular export
products. The longest-lasting "boom," between the last years of the
nineteenth century and the early 1920s, resulted from Ecuador's
near monopoly on the production and exportation of cacao. An onagain , off-again banana boom punctuated the decades of the 1950s
and 1960s, whereas the oil boom--the most pronounced as well as the
shortest of all the boom periods--lasted from 1972 until 1979. The
sudden end of the oil expansion coincided with the onset of a
foreign debt crisis bred by massive foreign borrowing by two
successive military governments (1972-79) and by Jaime Roldós
Aguilera's regime (1979-81).
Although petroleum revenues brought about significant social
change by generating a sizable middle class, the widely anticipated
political changes were less apparent. The populist Roldós and
Conservative León Febres Cordero Ribadeneyra (1984-88) represented
traditional elements, although other prominent postboom
personalities, such as Osvaldo Hurtado Larrea (1981-84), did
espouse more modern, center-leftist ideologies. Still, prosperity
from petroleum strengthened the state's traditionally weak fiscal
hand and promised to tilt the regional balance of power
significantly toward the nation's capital.
The intensity of the political struggle, commonly played out
between the president and Congress during periods of civilian rule,
did not seem to diminish after 1979. Perhaps the central unanswered
question of the 1980s, however, was whether the armed forces would
persist in their historically active political role, or would be
content to operate from the sidelines without directly intervening
in the political process.
Data as of 1989
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