Since 1830

Since independence, Ecuador has faced two fundamental obstacles to development: geographic fragmentation and limited natural resources. Geography, which has been a major barrier to national integration, fostered political, social, and economic division. Regionalism, the political expression of the division and isolation imposed by geography, has been a significant and enduring factor in Ecuadorian politics. The development of divergent economic and social systems on the coast and in the sierra (highlands) resulted in antagonistic political attitudes and interests.

The demise of Spanish authority and the creation of Ecuador in 1830 plunged the country into a crisis of legitimacy. The ruling elite failed to reach a consensus that would have allowed them to resolve their conflicts amicably. To curb the tendencies toward fragmentation, strong national leaders resorted to force to maintain power. From 1830 to 2007 only twenty-one presidents completed their constitutional terms of office. There have been only three periods (1921–1925, 1948–1961, and 1979–1997) when several presidents were elected, completed their terms, and transferred power to other elected chief executives. Ecuador is an extreme example of the crisis that engulfed most of Spanish America in the post-independence period.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ECUADORIAN POLITICS

Historically, a small elite has dominated effective political participation in Ecuador. Large landowners, wealthy businessmen, professionals, and high-ranking military men were the principal power contenders in the nineteenth century. Despite the trend toward greater political participation that emerged in the twentieth century, the elite continue to dominate Ecuadorian politics. Literacy requirements denied the vote to large segments of the population until 1979. As the nineteenth century progressed, ideologies grew in importance in national and regional politics. Whereas the coast became the home of liberalism, the highlands were the stronghold of conservatism. However, the development of political parties dedicated to implementing these competing world views had little effect on the manner in which national leaders governed. Both liberals and conservatives responded in similar ways to the challenges of ruling a divided country. The characteristic features of Ecuadorian politics—regionalism, authoritarianism, militarism, and personalism—provide coherence and continuity to the nation's chaotic political history.

From the time of Ecuador's independence, regionalists struggled to receive adequate representation in national government, to obtain a significant share of national revenues for their areas, and to maintain local autonomy. During the nineteenth century Ecuador endured four civil wars that threatened to dismember the country. Although Ecuador was, in theory, a constitutional republic, force became the accepted method of transferring or retaining power. All eleven constitutions promulgated during the period provided for elected officials. Political reality, however, was quite different. Elections were generally held not to select a president but to ratify or legalize the power of a person who gained office through force. In such cases, elections were usually preceded by the writing of a new constitution. In other instances, the government controlled elections to ensure the victory of its official candidate. In either situation, disappointed presidential contenders often violently challenged the outcome.

The use of force was not limited to politicians: Generals Juan José Flores (1830–1834, 1839–1845), José María Urvina (1851–1856), Francisco Robles (1856–1859), and Ignacio Veintimilla (1876–1883) relied on armed might either to bring them to power or to help them retain it, as did the leading civilian politicians. The two great nineteenth-century statesmen Vicente Rocafuerte (1835–1839) and Gabriel García Moreno (1861–1865, 1869–1875) achieved power through armed conflict and then relied on force to remain in office.

A pattern of authoritarian politics developed in Ecuador. Liberals, conservatives, and opportunists relied on controlled elections, press censorship, and extralegal coercion to limit the opposition. A close relationship between authoritarianism and militarism emerged. The willingness of many groups to use force to attain political goals meant that national leaders, whether civil or military, had to rely on the army for support. The system favored strong and ruthless chief executives, whether civilian or military. The pressures of war, economic decline, and political instability led to the rise of powerful individuals who could circumvent legal structures. Individual leaders, rather than political parties or institutions, governed the country. The failure to develop strong political institutions meant that men, rather than ideas or abstract political principles, shaped political movements. Individuals with strong personalities and political ambition took control of existing political parties or formed their own organizations.

During the twentieth century, groups such as the liberals, conservatives, socialists, and social democrats attempted to replace personalist politics by creating effective mechanisms for selecting candidates and developing programs. However, the traditional patterns of social and political relations retarded the formation of a modern political structure. The most enduring personalist movement in Ecuadorian politics, velasquismo, led by José María Velasco Ibarra, remained an important force into the 1970s. Although the movement's leader served as president on five different occasions (1934–1935, 1944–1947, 1952–1956, 1960–1961, 1968–1972), it failed to develop an institutional structure that could function in the absence of Velasco Ibarra.

THE CACAO AGE

In the late nineteenth century expanding cacao exports provided Ecuador with its first period of sustained economic prosperity since the decline of sierra textile production in the colonial period. Cacao growers and exporters financed the successful liberal revolution of 1895, which shifted the balance of political power to the coast. The liberals, who retained power until 1925, used growing government revenues to form a secular, activist state. The liberal development program sought to remove obstacles to social and economic progress and to foster national development.

Although the liberals were successful in defeating the conservatives and fostering modernization through an ambitious public works program, they were less successful in establishing a mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power. The liberal triumph did not herald a change in Ecuador's political culture. Personalism and regionalism remained crucial factors. The emergence of an activist state in Ecuador provided a new arena for regionalist struggles, while two men, Eloy Alfaro (1895–1901, 1906–1911) and Leonidas Plaza Gutiérrez (1901–1905, 1912–1916) dominated the first decades of liberal rule. Their rivalry was a major cause of the turbulence that lasted until 1916. The death of Alfaro in 1912 as the result of an abortive rebellion enabled Plaza to initiate the process of strengthening political institutions and to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in the period between 1916 and 1924.

THE 1920 TO THE 1940S

The combined effects of unsound liberal fiscal practices and the economic crisis resulting from a decline in the value and volume of cacao production ended the political stability established by Plaza. Because the government received the majority of its revenue from customs receipts, cacao exports were the primary determinant of government income. As the scope of government activity expanded after 1896 to meet the growing demands for material progress, liberal administrations relied on loans from Guayaquil banks to cover perennial budget deficits. The symbiotic relationship between successive liberal administrations and coastal banks angered sierra regionalists, who viewed the relationship as proof that coastal exporting interests controlled the country.

As the economy deteriorated, Quito journalists and politicians were increasingly vocal in their criticism of the "corrupt coastal banking oligarchy." A few of these critics courted young army officers, arguing that only the military could save the country from disaster by returning political control to the sierra. In July 1925 a group of these military officers overthrew the government. In the period 1925–1931, military-backed governments, acting on the advice of a team of foreign advisers led by Princeton economist Edwin W. Kemmerer, implemented a number of reforms that restructured the nation's banking and fiscal systems. A major objective of the reforms was to eliminate the budget deficits that had characterized liberal administration by centralizing tax collection and disbursement. Ecuadorians, however, found it easier to enact laws than to implement them. Many of the institutional and procedural changes proved incapable of maintaining fiscal integrity during a period of economic, social, and political stress.

The severe economic dislocations of the 1930s exacerbated Ecuador's perennial problems of insufficient government revenues and chronic political instability. President Isidro Ayora's ouster in 1931 ushered in the most turbulent period in the country's history. Between 1931 and 1948 nineteen men served as chief executive; none completed his term of office. The period witnessed the rise of populist politics and the loss of half of the national territory to Peru in 1941. Political stability would not be restored until the country entered a second period of economic expansion based on a new agricultural export, bananas.

THE POSTWAR ERA

Banana exports underwrote a twelve-year period of political stability in which three presidents, Galo Plaza Lasso (1948–1952), José María Velasco Ibarra (1952–1956), and Camilo Ponce Enríquez (1956–1960), completed their constitutional terms. The export boom allowed expanded government investments in economic and social infrastructure and promoted population movement from the sierra to the coast. When the economy deteriorated in the 1960s, however, the weakness of the political system resurfaced; no president completed his term of office during the next decade, and for three years (1963–1966) the country was ruled by a military junta.

The 1970s were a period of rapid economic growth based on the export of petroleum, which fostered the emergence of a relatively autonomous state. From 1972 to 1979 Ecuador was governed by two moderate military juntas. Although these military governments, like their 1960s counterparts, sought to implement socioeconomic reforms, economic inequity and political underdevelopment continued to characterize Ecuador in the 1980s.

RETURN TO CIVILIAN RULE

The return to civilian rule in 1979 with the inauguration of President Jaime Roldós Aguilera initiated a new state of Ecuadorian political development. Although Roldós was a member of Assad Bucaram's populist Concentration of Popular Forces (CFP), he and his running mate, Osvaldo Hurtado, represented a new generation of politicians who stressed programmatic rather than personalist concerns. They supported the modernization of the political system through the expansion of the electorate, issue-oriented campaigning, and the development of modern political parties.

Roldós and Hurtado proposed using petroleum revenues to promote national agricultural and industrial production through investment in economic and social infrastructure. Hydroelectric, transportation, and communication projects; agricultural credits; and rural education were priorities. In addition, the government proposed to improve tax collection, to promote national integration, and to expand the political and economic participation of the lower socioeconomic groups.

The ambitious reform program failed when Assad Bucaram withdrew his support and assumed leadership of the anti-Roldós congressional majority. Congress thwarted the efforts of the Roldós administration to contain deficit expenditures and to introduce a national development strategy, which included educational and agrarian reform. With the fall of petroleum prices in 1980 and a burgeoning public debt, the administration was forced to implement an austerity program and to abandon its efforts to introduce structural reforms. The worsening economic situation eroded public support for the government. Labor, the economic elite, and politicians on the right and left became increasingly strident in their criticism of the government.

In May 1981 Osvaldo Hurtado inherited a deteriorating economic and political situation when Jaime Roldós was killed in a plane crash. His administration faced a series of political and economic crises that threatened to provoke military intervention. Hurtado managed to preserve civilian rule by forming an unstable center-left coalition within Congress. With this uncertain support, the administration was unable to pass reform legislation, but did manage to restrain public spending. The energies of the executive branch were consumed in managing the country's finances, including renegotiating the foreign debt and maintaining fiscal austerity. The political costs of the austerity program were high, particularly in 1983, when the worsening economic crisis resulted in a sharp devaluation of the sucre (the national currency) and a burst of inflation. The economic decline had begun to moderate by the 1984 presidential campaign.

The campaign highlighted a central weakness of the Ecuadorian political system: highly factionalized politics that promoted unstable coalitions and personalism. Nine presidential candidates and seventeen political parties participated in the elections. In the first electoral round, Rodrigo Borja Cevallos, founder of the center-left Democratic Left Party (ID), barely beat the right-wing Social Christian León Febres-Cordero. However, in the runoff, populist appeals and regional rather than ideological factors determined the outcome: Febres-Cordero edged out Borja.

The election of Febres-Cordero was less a reflection of the general appeal of the coalition of right-wing parties that endorsed his candidacy than a protest vote against the economic problems that crippled the Roldós and Hurtado administrations. Febres-Cordero took office with a Congress controlled by the opposition. Of the thirteen parties represented in Congress, the four rightist parties elected sixteen of the seventy-one members of Congress. His free market, neoliberal economic program, which failed to control inflation or end the nation's economic recession, sparked an upsurge in political confrontation and violence, including abortive coup attempts and clashes between students, labor, and the government. The situation was exacerbated by declines in the price of petroleum and disruptions in exports when an earthquake in 1987 damaged the trans-Amazonian pipeline. A series of confrontations between Febres-Cordero and Congress led to the censoring of a number of administrative officials for corruption and abuse of civil rights. Economic uncertainty fueled capital flight and the depreciation of the sucre.

The 1988 presidential election was won by Rodrigo Borja, whose campaign called for a mixed economy, the rescheduling of the nation's foreign debt, and an end to the neoliberal economic program of Febres-Cordero. Borja's platform stressed reducing unemployment through public works projects and tax incentives to companies, increasing the minimum wage, promoting social welfare, and reforming public finances.

Unlike Roldós, Hurtado, and Febres-Cordero, Borja took office with significant congressional support: ID elected twenty-nine of the seventy-one deputies, and Borja had the support of other major parties. Despite this advantage, he faced a difficult economic situation, including a large public-sector deficit, high unemployment, unresolved foreign debt negotiations, and high inflation. During his first year in office he introduced mini-devaluations of the sucre; increased taxes, the minimum wage, and prices for electricity, gasoline, and basic foods; and imposed import restrictions. Although the program fell short of the requirements of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which included elimination of public subsidies, sharp cuts in public expenditures, the privatization of state enterprises, and the freezing of interest rates, the gradualist approach satisfied neither labor nor business. Borja's limited austerity policies had a high political cost, including strikes and the re-emergence of a highly fragmented political system.

In the 1990 congressional elections, the president's party lost sixteen of its thirty seats. None of the twelve parties represented in the legislature achieved a majority, returning Ecuador to government by unstable coalition. Labor unrest and confrontations between the legislature and the other branches of government, including impeachment proceedings against a number of Borja's ministers, increased in 1991.

Confrontations between Congress and the Borja administration continued in 1992 as politicians positioned themselves for the presidential elections. As in the 1980s, the 1992 campaign was dominated by bitter personal rivalries and a fragmented party system. Sixto Durán-Ballén defeated Jaime Nebot Saadi in a runoff election. Durán-Ballén, a founder of the Social Christian Party (PSC) with Febres-Cordero, broke with the party when Jaime Nebot Saadi was selected to run for president in the 1992 elections. Nebot and his supporters formed the Republican Unity Party (PUR) as a vehicle to support his candidacy. Although Sixto Durán-Ballén won the election, his party secured only twelve seats in the seventy-seven-seat legislature.

The new government faced the difficult task of implementing tough austerity measures and structural economic reforms in a country with a highly inequitable distribution of income, where living standards had fallen steadily throughout the 1980s. Durán-Ballén's program, which included the privatization of state-owned industries, a sharp reduction in the public-sector payroll, and policies to stimulate foreign investment, threatened a number of important groups. Despite repeated efforts to establish and maintain coalitions with other parties, including the Social Christian Party, which held twenty legislative seats, the administration was unable to avoid the legislative gridlock and repeated votes of censure that have crippled Ecuadorian governments since 1979.

THE CRISIS OF ECUADORIAN DEMOCRACY

Former Guayaquil mayor Abdalá Bucaram (brother-in-law of Roldós and the nephew of Assad Bucaram) won the 1996 election, defeating Jaime Nebot, a Febres-Cordero protégé. Bucaram's election would open a new chapter in Ecuadorian politics, a time when widespread popular disaffection with government unwillingness or inability to retreat from neo-liberal economic policies led to several serious blows to Ecuadorian democratization. During his campaign for the presidency, Abdalá Bucaram made a strong appeal to the Ecuadorian underclass by verbalizing a great contempt for the wealthy. In his speeches he sharply rejected neoliberalism, signing agreements with organized labor denouncing austerity measures and free market policies. Bucaram pledged to provide government subsidies for basic necessities, block further privatizations, and promote social programs. Nicknamed el loco (the crazy person), Bucaram's campaign appearances were noteworthy for their unconventional style.

Despite his campaign promises, in December 1996, four months after taking office, Abdalá Bucaram and his leading economic adviser, Domingo Cavallo, launched a neoliberal austerity program, radically reducing government subsidies and price controls. By January 1997 the cost of basic goods and services had risen dramatically, with the heaviest blows absorbed by the nearly two-thirds of the nation that lived in poverty. Angry protests followed, and by early 1997 Abdalá Bucaram's approval rating plummeted. Three former presidents, Febres-Cordero, Hurtado, and Borja, called for Abdalá Bucaram to resign. Massive anti-Abdalá Bucaram marches occurred daily, as protesters rallied in opposition to his neoliberal economic policies, his often outrageous personal conduct, and widespread allegations of government corruption. A nationwide general strike began on February 5, 1997, with two million people demanding Abdalá Bucaram's resignation. In response, Abdalá Bucaram announced a reduction in electricity and gas taxes and hinted at suspension of neoliberal austerity measures. Nevertheless, opposition forces in Congress voted February 6, 1997, to remove Abdalá Bucaram on the grounds of mental incapacity.

During the crisis, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) emerged as a key political actor. The CONAIE had formed in 1986 when indigenous peoples came together in the first truly national Indian organization in Ecuador. In June 1990 CONAIE organized a mass levantamiento (uprising) calling for recognition of Indians rights and demanding social programs from government. In what became the CONAIE's signature protest tactic, Indians set up roadblocks on the Pan-American Highway, cutting down trees and setting tires on fire to block the nation's sole commercial artery. CONAIE roadblocks in February 1997 played a critical role in forcing Bucaram from office.

After Abdalá Bucaram's removal, Congress named legislative chief Fabián Alarcón as interim president, refusing to appoint then vice president Rosalía Arteaga. Arteaga objected, asserting that her power was being usurped because she was a woman. Later that year voters approved a plebiscite calling for a new constitution, Ecuador's eighteenth. Alarcón served as Ecuador's interim president until 1998 when elections were held under the new constitution. Former Quito mayor Jamil Mahuad took office (1998–2000), defeating right-wing candidate Álvaro Noboa.

Mahuad's administration was immediately beset by intractable problems. The economy floundered, burdened by heavy foreign debt and the vast damage caused by the arrival of El Niño in 1998. In response Mahuad adopted deeply unpopular austerity measures. As the crises deepened, more than a third of Ecuadorian banks failed. In 1999 Mahuad froze all bank accounts for a year, and when they were finally reopened, rampaging inflation had dramatically reduced the value of deposits. Leading bankers fled the country with bank assets in tow, including significant funds from a $6 billion government bailout. When news broke of an illegal $3.1 million donation to Mahuad's 1998 election campaign by Banco del Progreso owner Fernando Aspiazu, citizens were enraged. Mahuad could give no accounting of the money. By January 2000 Mahuad's approval had fallen to single digits. In a hastily designed, last ditch effort to staunch inflation and save his rapidly collapsing presidency, Mahuad dollarized the Ecuadorian economy, adopting the United States dollar as Ecuador's national currency.

Mahuad was forced out of office on January 21, 2000, in a movement led by Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez; Carlos Solórzano, former chief of the high court; and CONAIE leader Antonio Vargas. The uprising brought together junior military officers who were outraged at Mahuad's apparent corruption, supported by mass protests organized by the CONAIE. Within hours of the overthrow, however, a counter-coup led by senior military officers turned the presidency over to Mahuad's vice president, Gustavo Noboa Bejarano (2000–2003).

In the 2003 elections, former coup leader Gutiérrez won the presidency, bolstered by the enthusiastic support of CONAIE's political party, Pachakutik. As a candidate Gutiérrez had angrily decried neoliberalism, but almost immediately upon assuming office he entered into a fresh agreement with the International Monetary Fund, launching a new round of austerity measures, raising gasoline prices and bus fares and freezing wages. Cabinet members from Pachakutik resigned in protest.

Like other Ecuadorian presidents, Gutiérrez enjoyed scant support in Congress, and by November 2004 the legislature had initiated impeachment proceedings against him, alleging misuse of campaign funds. In December Gutiérrez sought to neutralize political opposition in the Supreme Court, appointing all new judges. To gain support in Congress for this action, Gutiérrez reached a deal with the supporters of former president Abdalá Bucaram, dropping all charges against the former leader and permitting him to return to Ecuador. Following massive protests in early 2005, Congress voted on April 20 to remove Gutiérrez from office, naming vice president Alfredo Palacio (2005–2007) to complete the term.

Leftist university professor Rafael Correa won the 2006 presidential elections with a 57 percent to 43 percent victory over Álavaro Noboa, the richest man in Ecuador. Correa's victory was consistent with the broader trend in Latin American politics since the late 1990s, which has seen the emergence of leaders openly skeptical of the efficacy and fairness of neoliberal economic policies.

See alsoAlfaro Delgado, José Eloy; Borja Cevallos, Rodrigo; Bucaram, Abdalá; Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (CONAIE); Durán-Ballén, Sixto; Ecuador: Conquest Through Independence; Febres-Cordero Ribadeneyra, León; Flores, Juan José; García Moreno, Gabriel; Hurtado Larrea, Osvaldo; Plaza Gutiérrez, Leonidas; Plaza Lasso, Galo; Ponce Enríquez, Camilo; Robles, Francisco; Rocafuerte, Vicente; Roldós Aguilera, Jaime; Veintemilla, José Ignacio de; Velasco, José María; Velasco Ibarra, José María.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leading Overviews

Corkill, David, and David Cubitt. Ecuador: Fragile Democracy. London: Latin America Bureau (Research and Action), 1988.

Hanratty, Dennis M., ed. Ecuador: A Country Study, 3rd edition. Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1991.

Hurtado, Osvaldo. Political Power in Ecuador, trans. Nick D. Mills, Jr. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1980.

Quintero, Rafael, and Erika Silva. Ecuador: Una nación en ciernes, 3 vols. Quito: Abya-Yala, 1991.

Schodt, David W. Ecuador: An Andean Enigma. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987.

Focus Studies in Ecuadorian History

Acosta, Alberto. Breve historia económica del Ecuador. Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 1995.

Conaghan, Catherine M. Restructuring Domination: Industrialists and the State in Ecuador. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988.

de la Torre, Carlos. Populist Seduction in Latin America: The Ecuadorian Experience. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000.

Gerlach, Allen. Indians, Oil, and Politics: A Recent History of Ecuador. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003.

Hey, Jeanne A. K. Theories of Dependent Foreign Policy and the Case of Ecuador in the 1980s. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1995.

Isaacs, Anita. Military Rule and Transition in Ecuador, 1972–1992. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.

Martz, John D. Politics and Petroleum in Ecuador. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987.

Pineo, Ronn. Ecuador and the United States: Useful Strangers. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007.

Pineo, Ronn. Social and Economic Reform in Ecuador: Life and Work in Guayaquil. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.

Roberts, Lois J. El Ecuador en la época cacaotera: Respuestas locales al auge y colapso en el siglo monoexportador. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador, Editorial Universitaria, 1980.

Roberts, Lois J. The Lebanese Immigrants in Ecuador: A History of Emerging Leadership. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.

Rodríguez, Linda Alexander. The Search for Public Policy: Regional Politics and Government Finances in Ecuador, 1830–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

Spindler, Frank MacDonald. Nineteenth Century Ecuador: A Historical Introduction. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1987.

Van Aken, Mark J. King of the Night: Juan José Flores and Ecuador, 1824–1864. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

                           Linda Alexander RodrÍguez

                                           Ronn Pineo