Ecuador MIGRATION AND URBANIZATION
Unavailable
Figure 8. Population Distribution by Region, Census Years, 1950-82
Source: Based on information from Ecuador, Instituto Nacional de Estadística
y Censos, IV Censo Nacional de Población y III de Vivienda, 1982 -- Resumen
Nacional: Breve Análisis de los Resultados Definitivos, Quito, 1985, 31.
Figure 9. Population Density, 1986
Source: Based on information from Federal Republic of Germany, Statistiches
Bundesamt, Länderbericht Ecuador, 1988, Wiesbaden, 1988, 8.
For most of Ecuador's history, the majority of the population
lived in the Sierra. Most of the Sierra population was clustered in
the more habitable hoyas. For example, the capital city,
Quito, is located in a hoya at the foot of Mount Pichincha
(see Geography
, this ch.).
From 1950 to 1974, however, large numbers of land-poor Sierra
peasants migrated to the Costa; as a result, the Costa grew
substantially faster than the nation as a whole (see
table 2,
Appendix). By the mid-1970s, population figures for the Sierra and
the Costa were roughly similar. The Costa expanded only at roughly
the national average during the 1974-82 intercensal period.
Nonetheless, by 1982 the Costa had become the most populated region
in the country
(see
fig. 8).
Migration (coupled with the high birth rate) transformed the
country in the twentieth century. Costeños from the central
region often migrated to Guayaquil and its hinterland following
declines in export crop production. Serranos (residents of
the Sierra) were often first "pulled" by the expanding coastal
economy and then "pushed" by population pressure, agrarian reform,
and modernization. The cacao-producing areas of Guayas and El Oro
provinces--strategically located for those escaping the 1960s
drought in Loja Province--became the most common destinations for
serranos
(see
fig. 9).
The cacao boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries also had initiated a limited pattern of immigration to
the Costa. Immigrants from Europe and Latin America generally
arrived with capital to exploit the lucrative Costa commercial
opportunities. Significant numbers of Lebanese, referred to locally
as turcos or arabes, also moved to Guayaquil and
gained considerable influence in coastal commerce and local
politics. The Lebanese retained their ethnic identity and married
within their own community, and both their distinctiveness and
their level of prosperity set them apart and made them the target
of prejudice.
Two distinct migration waves to the Oriente occurred in the
twentieth century. In the early 1900s, some serranos trekked
to the Oriente to pan gold and stayed to settle on the east slopes
of the Andes. These migrants acquired land from the indigenous
population and set up small, largely subsistence-oriented farming
communities. Beginning in the 1950s, large numbers of
serranos arrived in search of available land; most simply
went to the Oriente province most accessible to their place of
origin. Between 1950 and 1982, the Oriente experienced a more than
fivefold population increase. The growth rate averaged
approximately 5.6 percent annually, nearly double that of the
nation as a whole. By the mid-1970s, migrants constituted nearly
half the region's residents.
Beginning in the 1950s, large numbers of Ecuadorians also
migrated from the countryside to the cities--a trend apparent in
both the Costa and the Sierra. This migration changed life not only
in the nation's two largest cities, Guayaquil and Quito, but also
in intermediate-sized cities.
Both Guayaquil and Quito reflected their different histories,
their distinctive regional settings, and their roles in
contemporary national politics and economic development. Guayaquil
was founded as a commercial link to Spain
(see Spanish Colonial Era
, ch. 1). The city's contemporary configuration began to take
form with the beginning of cacao production in the eighteenth
century. Always tied to international markets, Guayaquil's
development reflected the perturbations of whatever export crop was
currently profitable. From the colonial era onward, Quito developed
principally as an administrative center. As the capital city, Quito
represented the epitome of the serrano elite's Hispanic
values.
From 1950 to 1982, the population of Guayaquil and Quito
expanded at rates substantially above the national average.
Guayaquil's rate of growth was highest in the 1950s--a response to
the rise in banana cultivation on the coast. Ecuador's oil boom of
the 1970s generated rapid population growth in Quito during that
decade, a trend that continued into the early 1980s. By 1982
Guayaquil's population stood at approximately 1.2 million residents
and Quito's at roughly 870,000 (see
table 3, Appendix). Together,
they represented 60 percent of the urban population.
Both cities faced a number of common problems resulting from
the tremendous influx of migrants. The numbers of the poor employed
in marginal sectors and occupations increased to the point that
they defeated the ability of Guayaquil and Quito governments to
provide basic services and employment. Each city had a central core
that was ringed with densely populated tenement slums. Much of the
population of these slums consisted of relatively recent migrants.
Another phenomenon affecting Guayaquil and Quito was the
emergence of large squatter settlements on previously unoccupied
marginal lands. The establishment of suburbio (the
collective name for squatter settlements) in the marshy areas
southwest of Guayaquil proper began in the 1960s; by the early
1980s, suburbio had pushed into the Guayas River estuary and
encompassed half of the metropolitan population. Although the older
sections of suburbio had reasonably well-provisioned water
lines, sewage disposal, and streets, newer communities lacked basic
services. Those who had settled in the estuary system faced the
added problem of persuading municipal authorities to provide
landfill and to deal with periodic flooding. Quito municipal
authorities tried to prevent the spread of squatter settlements up
the mountainsides to the west of the city by strictly limiting the
provision of water above certain altitudes. In addition, the
government squelched numerous attempts by squatters to take over
private or public lands. Despite these actions, however,
settlements expanded throughout the 1970s and represented between
10 and 15 percent of Quito's population by the mid-1980s.
In contrast to much of Latin America, Ecuador's intermediatesized cities experienced very high rates of growth after 1950. This
was especially the case in the Costa, where the annual growth rate
of intermediate-sized cities dwarfed even that of Guayaquil (see
table 4, Appendix). Expansion of second-tier cities in the Costa
resulted in part from export growth. In the 1950s and early 1960s,
for example, the spread of banana cultivation and the increasing
need for port facilities spurred the growth of cities like Santo
Domingo, Quevedo, Esmeraldas, and Marchala. In the 1970s and early
1980s, Santo Domingo continued to grow as African palm plantations
spread throughout its hinterland. Other coastal cities expanded in
response to shrimp raising, fishing (and related industries), or
tourism.
In general, mid-sized cities in the Sierra were less dynamic
than their Costa counterparts. From the mid-1950s to the early
1980s, only Cuenca--Ecuador's third largest city--achieved growth
rates roughly comparable to that of Quito
(see
fig. 1). Agrarian
reform and the reduction of the resident labor force on haciendas
fostered expansion primarily of intermediate-sized cities in the
Sierra. When employment opportunities existed, mid-sized cities
drew migrants because they were closer to home, less disruptive to
ties with the countryside, and less threatening than Guayaquil or
Quito.
Data as of 1989
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