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Ecuador Constitutional Rule, 1948-60
Galo Plaza differed from previous Ecuadorian presidents. The
son of former President Plaza Gutiérrez, he had been born in the
United States, where he also attended several universities. His
ties to the United States grew even closer as a result of serving
there as ambassador under President Arroyo del Río. These links, as
Pike points out, "rendered him vulnerable to charges by Velasco
Ibarra and other demagogic opponents of being the lackey of U.S.
imperialism." Galo Plaza was not a professional politician, but a
gentleman farmer with a sizable cattle ranch near Quito, where he
customarily spent weekends throughout his four years as president.
Galo Plaza brought a developmentalist and technocratic emphasis
to Ecuadorian government. He invited a wide variety of foreign
experts in economic development and in governmental administration
to recommend and catalog reforms in both areas. In large part
because of a lack of political will within either the executive or
the legislature, however, virtually none of the recommended reforms
was enacted. Nevertheless, the economy experienced a marked
improvement, with inflation finally slowing down and both
government budget and foreign currency accounts balancing for the
first time in many years. This achievement was even more remarkable
in light of the series of major earthquakes, landslides, and floods
suffered by Ecuador in 1949 and 1950.
No doubt Galo Plaza's most important contribution to Ecuadorian
political culture was his commitment to the principles and
practices of democracy. Galo Plaza endorsed such democratic
guarantees as freedom of the press and the freedom of opponents to
voice their opinions, to assemble for political purposes without
fear of being jailed or worse, and to be elected to the legislature
without fear of being defrauded or arbitrarily dismissed. Galo
Plaza was able to create a mystique around the idea of his
completing his term in office, something no president had
accomplished since 1924, and this mystique no doubt helped him
achieve his goal.
As Galo Plaza readily admitted, however, his greatest asset,
both politically and economically, was the onset of the nation's
banana boom, as diseases plaguing plantations in Central America
turned Ecuador into an alternative supplier to the huge United
States market. Ecuador's banana exports grew from US$2 million to
US$20 million between 1948 and 1952. During these years, Ecuador
also benefited from sizable price increases--generated by the
Korean War--for its commodity exports.
A proof of the politically stabilizing effect of the banana
boom of the 1950s is that even Velasco, who in 1952 was elected
president for the third time, managed to serve out a full four-year
term. He continued to spend as before--building bridges, roads, and
schools at will and rewarding his political supporters (including,
this time, the military) with jobs, salary increases, and weapons--
but, in contrast to his previous times in office, there were now
sufficient funds to pay for everything.
Always the master populist, Velasco (who by now liked to be
known as "the National Personification") again came to power with
the support of the common man, this time through the vehicle of the
Guayaquil-based Concentration of Popular Forces (Concentración de
Fuerzas Populares--CFP). Once in office, however, he arrested and
deported the CFP boss, Carlos Guevara Moreno, together with several
other party leaders. Guevara Moreno reassumed control of the CFP in
1955 following a three-year exile. Velasco's subsequent party
support during the 1950s came from the Conservatives, the
conservative Social Christian Movement (Movimiento Social
Cristiano--MSC), and the highly nationalistic, anticommunist,
quasi-fascist Ecuadorian Nationalist Revolutionary Action (Acción
Revolucionaria Nacionalista Ecuatoriana--ARNE).
On repeated occasions, members of ARNE acted as thugs and shock
troops, attacking students, labor unions, and the press. In 1955
Velasco also chose to pick a fight with the United States. In the
opening round of what would later become known as the "tuna war,"
Ecuadorian officials seized two fishing boats carrying the United
States flag, charging them with fishing inside the 200-nauticalmile limit claimed by Ecuador as territorial seas under its
sovereignty
(see The United States
, ch. 4).
In 1956 Camilo Ponce Enríquez, the MSC founder who had served
in Velasco's cabinet, assumed the presidency after a close election
replete with allegations of fraud. Although late support from
Velasco proved crucial to Ponce's victory, shortly afterward "the
National Personification" became the principal opponent of the new
chief executive. In a display of statesmanship and political
acumen, Ponce co-opted the Liberal opposition by including it,
along with Conservatives and the MSC, in his cabinet.
Although Ponce did not enact the Social Christian reforms of
which he spoke vaguely during the campaign, the relative political
calm that prevailed during his four years in office was, in itself,
an accomplishment given the worsening economic situation. Ponce's
term saw the end of the banana boom that had sustained more than a
decade of constitutional rule. Falling export prices led to rising
unemployment and a social malaise that briefly erupted into riots
in 1959. By the following year, the effects of the discontent were
ready to be exploited by the populist appeal of the irrepressible
Velasco, who was elected with his widest margin of victory ever.
Velasco's fourth turn in the presidency initiated a renewal of
crisis, instability, and military domination and ended conjecture
that the political system had matured or developed a democratic
mold.
Data as of 1989
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