The History Of Ecuador

This handbook provides an unmatched, comprehensive political history of Ecuador written in English. Ecuador is a nation of over 13 million people, its area between that of the states of Wyoming and Colorado. Like the United States, Ecuador's government features a democratically elected President serving for a four-year term. The Galápagos Islands, well known as the birthplace of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, are part of a province of Ecuador. The History of Ecuador focuses primarily on the political history of Ecuador and how these past events impact the nation today. This text examines the traditions established by Ecuador's great caudillos (strong men) such as Juan José Flores, Gabriel García Moreno, and Eloy Alfaro, and documents the attempts of liberal leaders to modernize Ecuador by following the example of the United States. This book also discusses three economic booms in Ecuador's history: the Cacao Boom 1890–1914; the Banana Boom 1948–1960; and the Oil Boom 1972–1992.

Encompassing Amazonian rainforests, Andean peaks, coastal lowlands, and the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador’s geography is notably diverse. So too are its history, culture, and politics, all of which are examined from many perspectives in The Ecuador Reader. Spanning the years before the arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s to the present, this rich anthology addresses colonialism, independence, the nation’s integration into the world economy, and its tumultuous twentieth century. Interspersed among forty-eight written selections are more than three dozen images. The voices and creations of Ecuadorian politicians, writers, artists, scholars, activists, and journalists fill the Reader, from José María Velasco Ibarra, the nation’s ultimate populist and five-time president, to Pancho Jaime, a political satirist; from Julio Jaramillo, a popular twentieth-century singer, to anonymous indigenous women artists who produced ceramics in the 1500s; and from the poems of Afro-Ecuadorians, to the fiction of the vanguardist Pablo Palacio, to a recipe for traditional Quiteño-style shrimp. The Reader includes an interview with Nina Pacari, the first indigenous woman elected to Ecuador’s national assembly, and a reflection on how to balance tourism with the protection of the Galápagos Islands’ magnificent ecosystem. Complementing selections by Ecuadorians, many never published in English, are samples of some of the best writing on Ecuador by outsiders, including an account of how an indigenous group with non-Inca origins came to see themselves as definitively Incan, an exploration of the fascination with the Andes from the 1700s to the present, chronicles of the less-than-exemplary behavior of U.S. corporations in Ecuador, an examination of Ecuadorians’ overseas migration, and a look at the controversy surrounding the selection of the first black Miss Ecuador.

This history of relations between Ecuador and the United States is a revealing case study of how a small, determined country has exploited its marginal status when dealing with a global superpower. Ranging from Ecuador’s struggle for independence in the 1820s and 1830s to the present day, the book examines the misunderstandings, tensions, and--from the U.S. perspective--often unintended consequences that have sometimes arisen in relations between the two countries. Such interactions included U.S. efforts in Ecuador to stem yellow fever, build railroads, and institute economic reforms. Many of the two countries’ exchanges in the twentieth century stemmed from the global disruptions of World War II and the cold war. More recently, Ecuadorian and U.S. interests have been in contest over fishing rights, foreign development of Ecuadorian oil resources, and Ecuador’s emergence as a transit country in the drug trade. Ronn Pineo looks at these and other issues within the context of how the United States, usually preoccupied with other concerns, has often disregarded Ecuador’s internal race, class, and geographical divisions when the two countries meet on the global stage. On the whole, argues Pineo, the two countries have operated effectively as “useful strangers” throughout their mutual history. Ecuador has never been merely a passive recipient of U.S. policy or actions, and factions within Ecuador, especially regional ones, have long seen the United States as a potential ally in domestic political disputes. The United States has influenced Ecuador, but often only in ways Ecuadorians themselves want. This book is about the dynamics of power in the relations between a very large if distracted nation when dealing with a very small but determined nation, an investigation that reveals a great deal about both.

This handbook provides an unmatched, comprehensive political history of Ecuador written in English. Ecuador is a nation of over 13 million people, its area between that of the states of Wyoming and Colorado. Like the United States, Ecuador's government features a democratically elected President serving for a four-year term. The Galápagos Islands, well known as the birthplace of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, are part of a province of Ecuador. The History of Ecuador focuses primarily on the political history of Ecuador and how these past events impact the nation today. This text examines the traditions established by Ecuador's great caudillos (strong men) such as Juan José Flores, Gabriel García Moreno, and Eloy Alfaro, and documents the attempts of liberal leaders to modernize Ecuador by following the example of the United States. This book also discusses three economic booms in Ecuador's history: the Cacao Boom 1890–1914; the Banana Boom 1948–1960; and the Oil Boom 1972–1992.

An attorney and independent scholar, Albuquerque-based Gerlach lived in Peru and Ecuador for several years, and taught at the Centro Andino in Quito. He reviews Ecuador's history during the last half millennium, in particular its evolution during the past 30-plus years following the discovery of oil in the Amazon in the 1960s and subsequent development of the country's oil industry. Gerlach's study demonstrates the increasing interrelations between politics, economics, culture, the environment, finance, and diplomacy in the country. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Highland Indians and the State in Modern Ecuador chronicles the changing forms of indigenous engagement with the Ecuadorian state since the early nineteenth century that, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, had facilitated the growth of the strongest unified indigenous movement in Latin America. Built around nine case studies from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ecuador, Highland Indians and the State in Modern Ecuador presents state formation as an uneven process, characterized by tensions and contradictions, in which Indians and other subalterns actively participated. It examines how indigenous peoples have attempted, sometimes successfully, to claim control over state formation in order to improve their relative position in society. The book concludes with four comparative essays that place indigenous organizational strategies in highland Ecuador within a larger Latin American historical context. Highland Indians and the State in Modern Ecuador offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of state formation that will be of interest to a broad range of scholars who study how subordinate groups participate in and contest state formation.

This handbook provides an unmatched, comprehensive political history of Ecuador written in English. Ecuador is a nation of over 13 million people, its area between that of the states of Wyoming and Colorado. Like the United States, Ecuador's government features a democratically elected President serving for a four-year term. The Galápagos Islands, well known as the birthplace of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, are part of a province of Ecuador. The History of Ecuador focuses primarily on the political history of Ecuador and how these past events impact the nation today. This text examines the traditions established by Ecuador's great caudillos (strong men) such as Juan José Flores, Gabriel García Moreno, and Eloy Alfaro, and documents the attempts of liberal leaders to modernize Ecuador by following the example of the United States. This book also discusses three economic booms in Ecuador's history: the Cacao Boom 1890-1914; the Banana Boom 1948-1960; and the Oil Boom 1972-1992.

Ecuador is the third-largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the western United States. As the source of this oil, the Ecuadorian Amazon has borne the far-reaching social and environmental consequences of a growing U.S. demand for petroleum and the dynamics of economic globalization it necessitates. Crude Chronicles traces the emergence during the 1990s of a highly organized indigenous movement and its struggles against a U.S. oil company and Ecuadorian neoliberal policies. Against the backdrop of mounting government attempts to privatize and liberalize the national economy, Suzana Sawyer shows how neoliberal reforms in Ecuador led to a crisis of governance, accountability, and representation that spurred one of twentieth-century Latin America’s strongest indigenous movements. Through her rich ethnography of indigenous marches, demonstrations, occupations, and negotiations, Sawyer tracks the growing sophistication of indigenous politics as Indians subverted, re-deployed, and, at times, capitulated to the dictates and desires of a transnational neoliberal logic. At the same time, she follows the multiple maneuvers and discourses that the multinational corporation and the Ecuadorian state used to circumscribe and contain indigenous opposition. Ultimately, Sawyer reveals that indigenous struggles over land and oil operations in Ecuador were as much about reconfiguring national and transnational inequality—that is, rupturing the silence around racial injustice, exacting spaces of accountability, and rewriting narratives of national belonging—as they were about the material use and extraction of rain-forest resources.