Ecuador Instability and Military Dominance, 1960-72
Plowing a field
Courtesy World Bank
The instability began immediately. Ponce was so angry over
Velasco's vicious campaign attacks on his government that he
resigned on his last day in office rather than preside over the
inauguration of his successor. During his campaign, "the National
Personification" had promised government support to the masses of
urban poor, many of whom had recently migrated to Guayaquil and
other major cities in search of a decent job and a place to live.
Velasco's populism continued into his inaugural address, when he
renounced the hated 1942 Rio Protocol. He thus came to power with
the adoration of the masses, but he saddled himself with expensive
commitments to the poor at a time when deficits in the state
coffers were approaching a critical level. Additionally, Velasco
threatened Ecuador's shaky economy with what amounted to a
declaration of hostilities against Peru and the guarantors of the
Rio Protocol, namely Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the United
States.
Sensing the direction of the political wind in the wake of the
Cuban Revolution, Velasco magnified his anti-United States rhetoric
and included leftists in his government. Meanwhile, the United
States encouraged Latin American governments to break diplomatic
relations with Cuba. Before long, Ecuador's widening political
polarization became manifest in outbreaks of violence between
leftist students and the anticommunist right.
The rapidly deteriorating economic situation soon brought about
a split in the velasquista coalition, however, with the
left, led by Vice President Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy (who was
also president of the Chamber of Deputies) openly opposing the
government in July 1961. By October relations between Velasco's
government and Congress had deteriorated to the point where
legislators and progovernment spectators engaged in a gun battle.
Although dozens of bullet holes were later found in the Chamber, no
one was injured.
A series of new sales taxes imposed during the same month in
order to raise desperately needed revenues then sparked a general
strike and a series of demonstrations and riots in several major
cities. Amid growing chaos, Velasco ordered the arrest of his vice
president, a move that opened him to charges of violating the
constitution. On November 8, after only fourteen months in office,
Velasco was ousted by the military and replaced by Arosemena, who
was his constitutional successor as well as his leading opponent.
Arosemena came from a well-known Guayaquil family; his father
had briefly served as president following a previous anti-Velasco
coup in 1947. In an attempt to allay concerns about his being a
dangerous leftist (as Velasco's vice president he had expressed
warm sympathy for Cuban leader Fidel Castro Ruz and made a much-
criticized trip to the Soviet Union), Arosemena named a cabinet
that included Liberals and even Conservatives and quickly sent
former President Galo Plaza on a goodwill trip to Washington.
Arosemena's insistence on maintaining relations with Cuba,
however, became a major domestic political issue in Ecuador.
Political opponents labeled Arosemena a dangerous communist, and
part of the military went into open rebellion in March 1962. The
following month, Ecuador broke diplomatic relations with Cuba,
Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The crisis over Cuba proved to be very
costly for Arosemena, who lost not only much of his local political
support, but also the self-confidence to pursue his own,
independent course. Afterward, the government drifted with little
leadership from the president, who allegedly indulged in frequent
drinking bouts.
The brief appearance of a guerrilla movement in the coastal
jungle and a rash of small-scale terrorist incidents (many of which
later were found to have been staged by right-wing provocateurs)
also left Arosemena open to accusations of being either unable or
unwilling to stop communist subversion. By early 1963, military
conspiracy was again afoot. On July 11 the high command of the
armed forces decided, without dissent, to depose Arosemena.
The four-man military junta that seized power announced its
intention not to return the nation to constitutional rule until the
institution of basic socioeconomic reforms, which both Velasco and
Arosemena had promised but never implemented. This failure by their
two civilian predecessors, the junta believed, had become a source
of growing frustration within the lower classes, thus making them
more receptive to the lure of communism. The junta combined its
reformist anticommunism with the more traditional hard-line
variety. After jailing or exiling the entire leadership of the
communist left, the new government reorganized the nation's two
leading universities in an effort to eliminate them as sources of
left-wing political activity.
In July 1964, the junta decreed the Agrarian Reform Law to
commemorate the first anniversary of its assumption of power. The
law abolished the huasipungo system, the feudalistic land
tenure arrangement widely used in the Sierra
(see Peasants
, ch. 2).
However, the law resulted in little real improvement in the lives
of the long-suffering Sierra peasants and died from lack of funding
under subsequent civilian governments.
Meaningful reform was precluded, in part at least, by the
increasingly cumbersome process of decision making within the
politically heterogeneous, plural executive. Insubordination by the
air force representative on the junta led to his dismissal and
arrest in November 1965; thereafter, the junta had only three
members.
In 1965 Ecuador also saw a dramatic drop in its revenue from
banana exports and, despite generous development assistance from
the United States government and the Inter-American Development
Bank, the junta suddenly faced an economic crisis of major
proportions. The announcement of increased taxes on imports sparked
the opposition of the powerful Guayaquil Chamber of Commerce, which
in March called for a general strike. Long- disgruntled student
groups and labor unions were only too happy to join in the protest,
which rapidly spread to other cities. On March 29, 1966, following
a bloody and demoralizing attack on the Central University in
Quito, the disillusioned military reformers stepped down.
The following day, a small group of civilian leaders named
Clemente Yerovi Indaburu, a non-partisan banana grower who had
served as minister of economy under Galo Plaza, to be provisional
president. In October a popularly elected constituent assembly
drafted a new constitution and elected Otto Arosemena Gómez, a
cousin of Carlos Julio and a political centrist, to act as a second
provisional president. During his twenty months in office, the new
constitution went into effect in May 1967, and popular elections
for president were held in June 1968. Incredibly, Velasco--now
seventy-five years old--was voted into the presidency for the fifth
time, an incredible thirty-four years after his initial victory.
The weakness of Velasco's mandate--he managed only a plurality
of barely one-third of the popular vote in a crowded field of five
candidates--foreshadowed political difficulties that plagued him
during his final term. His newly formed National Velasquista
Federation (Federación Nacional Velasquista--FNV) was far short of
a majority in either house of Congress, and a failure to build any
working coalition made for a stalemate in the legislative process.
Even Velasco's own vice president, a Guayaquileño Liberal named
Jorge Zavala Baquerizo, turned into a strident and vocal critic.
Cabinet ministers came and went with astonishing frequency. This
political impasse soon combined with the fiscal and balance-of-
payments crises, which by now had become customary under the
spendthrift habits and administrative mismanagement associated with
each of Velasco's terms in office, to spawn a major political
crisis. The turning point came on June 22, 1970, when Velasco, in
an action known as an autogolpe (self-seizure of power),
dismissed Congress and the Supreme Court and assumed dictatorial
powers.
Velasco subsequently decreed a number of necessary, though
extremely unpopular, economic measures. After devaluing the sucre
(for value of the
sucre--see Glossary) for the first time since
1961, he placed tight controls on foreign exchange transactions and
then decreed a number of new tax measures, the most controversial
of which raised import tariffs considerably. Velasco attempted to
compensate for his lost prestige by baiting the United States,
seizing and fining United States fishing boats found within 200
nautical miles of the Ecuadorian coast. The intensification of the
"tuna war" inflamed tempers in both countries; Ecuador dismissed
United States military advisers, and the United States withdrew
almost all economic and military aid to Ecuador. Such nationalistic
adventures were of only momentary value to Velasco, however. In
1971, amid mounting civic unrest that verified the extent of the
opposition, he was forced to cancel a scheduled national plebiscite
in which he hoped to replace the 1967 constitution, with the
charter written under his own auspices in 1946 the Constitution,
Velasco argued, made the president too weak to be effective.
The president's autogolpe and his continuance in power
were possible because of support from the armed forces. Velasco's
key ally was his nephew and minister of defense, General Jorge
Acosta Velasco, who continually reshuffled the high command in
order to retain velasquistas in key posts. In the wake of a
failed attempt to oust the powerful commandant of the Quito
military academy in April 1971, however, Acosta himself was forced
to resign his ministerial portfolio and was summarily dispatched to
Madrid as ambassador. Having lost the man who was his linchpin in
the armed forces and the only apparent heir to the
velasquista throne, Velasco was left to the mercy of the
high command.
Two circumstances proved critical in persuading the military to
overthrow Velasco before the scheduled completion of his term in
1972. On the one hand, the state was due very shortly to begin
reaping vast revenues under a 1964 petroleum concession. On the
other hand, the overwhelming favorite to win the presidency in 1972
was Asaad Bucaram Elmhalim, a former street peddler who in 1960 had
seized the leadership of the CFP from Guevara Moreno and later had
twice been an extremely popular mayor of Guayaquil
(see Constitutional Rule, 1948-60
, this ch.;
Political Parties
, ch. 4).
Both the military and the business community regarded Bucaram as
dangerous and unpredictable and unfit to be president, especially
at a time when unprecedented income was expected to flow into the
state coffers. On February 15, 1972, four months before the
scheduled elections, the military once again overthrew Velasco, who
was sent into his final period of exile. He was replaced by a
three-man military junta headed by the Army chief of staff, General
Guillermo Rodríguez Lara.
Data as of 1989
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