| |
|
|
| |
Home
>
World
> South America
> Ecuador
|
History and Government
History: Ecuador – including the ancient Kingdom of Quito, established by the Shiris – was populated by several mutually antagonistic tribes at the time of the Inca conquest in the mid-15th century. When the Spanish arrived from Peru in the 1530s, they found that while many of the inhabitants were hostile, others hailed them as liberators from Inca repression. In 1533, Sebastián de Balacázar, governor of San Miguel de Piura (the first Spanish town built in Ecuador), undertook the conquest of the Inca kingdom. A year later, San Francisco de Quito was founded in a region known as the Sierra, the central part of the country, where Indian slave labour worked large estates created by the Spanish. The other two regions were described as the Costa, the Pacific coastal plain based on the port of Guayaquil, and the Oriente, the inhospitable region between the Andes and the Amazon headwaters, where normally only missionaries ventured. The early years under the Spanish were marked by civil strife between rival families contesting power. In 1739, the viceroyalty of New Grenada was created and Quito fell under its jurisdiction until independence.
In the following century, as the Department of the South, it joined New Grenada and Venezuela to form the Federation of Gran Colombia. Spanish rule lasted until the early 19th century – after suppressing several rebellions, the Spaniards were finally overthrown in 1822, by a force backed by Simon Bolivar, fresh from victory in Colombia. Soon afterwards, in 1828, the country declared war on Peru, whose armies had invaded Gran Colombia. A year later, a peace treaty was signed and Ecuador’s boundaries were permanently established. However, relations between Ecuador and Peru have been tense ever since. In 1830, Ecuador seceded from Gran Colombia and declared independence. Almost immediately, the rivalry between Quito and Guayaquil emerged, initially over trade and then over support for rival political organisations. This rivalry, between secular and religious interests, or between landowners and the merchant/banking classes, inevitably distilled to a conflict between the two cities.
In the early 1920s, the army entered the political fray, claiming that only it could sustain national unity. The period between 1925 and 1948, when the military finally conceded that they did not have a legitimate political role, was one of the most turbulent in the country’s history, with continual changes of government, along with economic and administrative chaos. The inter-city rivalry persisted as before. After 1948, civilian administrations predominated, with power alternating between Liberals (from the Costa) and Conservatives (from the Sierra). The discovery of oil and the sharp increase in world oil prices in the late and mid 70s should have transformed Ecuador’s economic fortunes. However, the windfall was largely squandered and the poor domestic economic situation has led to regular outbreaks of civil and labour unrest.
The Liberal/Conservative stranglehold on domestic politics was broken in 1988, when presidential elections brought Rodrigo Borja Cevallos of the Izquierda Democratica (Democratic Left) party to office, at the head of a coalition government. Borja was followed by Sixto Duran, of the newly formed right wing Republican Unity Party, in 1992. Political and economic turbulence plagued the Duran government from the first; a major corruption scandal in 1995 destroyed its remaining credibility. In May 1996, the election was won by the charismatic and eccentric Bucaram Ortiz of the Partido Roldosista Ecuatoriano (PRE). Bucaram’s bizarre personal behaviour and irresponsible attitude towards the conduct of government led Congress to impeach him in February 1997. Bucaram promptly fled to Panama.
The new and most recent presidential election, which followed in the summer of 1998, brought the ex-major of Quito, Jamil Mahaud, of the centre-right Popular Democracy Party, to power. The party also took control of the National Congress, in a coalition government led by Eduardo Huerta. Mahaud managed to settle Ecuador’s principal foreign policy problem – the long-running border dispute with Peru, concerning a potentially mineral-rich region of Amazonian jungle, which had flared up into full-scale fighting on several occasions during the 1990s. However, he proved unable to arrest Ecuador’s deteriorating economic situation and after just 18 months in office, in January 2000, Mahaud was forced out under pressure from the military and the influential federation of ethnic Indian organisations, CONAIE. He was replaced by his deputy, Gustavo Noboa Bejarano. Noboa has concentrated on the economy. The Sucre has been abolished and replaced as the national currency by the US dollar, while in 2002, after protracted negotiations, international financial institutions agreed to support Ecuador’s shaky finances. Nonetheless, Noboa faces a hard fight to retain office at the presidential election due in the autumn of 2002.
Government: The constitution was approved by national referendum in 1978, taking effect in 1979. The President, elected for a term of four years, holds executive power. He is assisted by the Vice President and a Cabinet, which includes 12 Ministers and a Secretary General. Legislative power is unicameral and resides in the House of Representatives, with 69 members; there are 12 national representatives and the remainder represent the provinces.
Copyright © 2003 Columbus Publishing Ltd.
Terms and Conditions apply.
|
|
|
|
|
