History of Ecuador

The history of Ecuador encompasses developments in the territory of the Republic of Ecuador from prehistory to the present. It can be divided into eight periods. The region was inhabited by several independent peoples until the 15th century. The Incas ruled the area for about a century . Between the 1530s and the 1820s, Ecuador was a Spanish colony. Between 1810 and 1830 the country experienced the War of Independence and became part of Greater Colombia and then an independent state. From the middle of the 19th century to the 1920s, the country was shaped by the clashes between "conservative" forces from the Sierraand “liberal” fractions from the Costa , with the export boom in cocoa giving the latter a dominant position. Between 1925 and 1947, Ecuador was marked by political chaos, the collapse of the cocoa industry and the global economic crisis . From 1947 to the 1960s, the country experienced an economic boom thanks to the cultivation of bananas and the first approaches to industrialization . Since 1973, oil production has played a key role in determining the country's economic and political stability.

Pre-Incan

The pre-Inca period can in turn be divided into four sections:

• Pre-ceramic
• Formative period
• Period of regional development
• Integrating period and arrival of the Incas

Pre-ceramic

The beginning of the Pre-Ceramic Age coincides with the end of the last Ice Age and the onset of the Holocene . It lasted until around 4200 BC. Chr.

Las Vegas culture

The oldest known cultural level in Ecuador was the Las Vegas culture (9000 to 6000 BC). It focused on the Pacific coast with an emphasis on the Santa Elena Peninsula . Three phases can be distinguished in their development. In the beginning, their culture bearers were mainly hunters and gatherers who also caught fish . From around 6000 BC In the 2nd century BC they switched to agriculture , consequently bottle gourd and maize were cultivated. The best preserved human remains from this era are the so-called Lovers of Sumpa , which are exhibited in the Santa Elena Cultural Center.

Inga culture

The people of the Inga culture (9000 to 8000 BC) were specialized hunters of the Sierra around Quito . Several sites on an ancient trade route can be assigned to it. The stone tools found, mainly made of obsidian, show great similarities with comparable finds from Fell's Cave in southern Chile and even with the grooved tips of the North American Clovis culture .

Formative period

During the three-part formative period , there was a transition from a hunter-gatherer existence with simple farming methods to a more complex society with sustainable developments (increase in agricultural productivity and the first use of ceramics ). In the coastal area the Valdivia culture , the Machalilla culture and the Chorrera culture emerged , in the central area of ​​the Sierra the Cotocollao culture and the Chimba culture . In the east of Ecuador (Oriente) the Mayo-Chinchipe culture (4500 BC to 1532), the Pastaza culture , the Chiguaza culture and others were formed. In the southern provinces of Cañar and Azuay , they made their mark between 2000 BC. And 600 the Cerro-Narrío culture and the Chaullabamba culture .

Valdivia culture

In the 40th century BC Chr. Put in the coastal region with the Valdivia Culture the Older Formative period one. Its abundant artifacts , scattered all over Ecuador, contain the oldest ceramics in the two Americas, including bowls and pots. Looms were also already known. Female figures were made from clay , which were probably used in religious fertility rites. Painted seashells were transformed into masks . For the first time, the sea was now also sailed on rafts with sails . Trade relations existed with tribes in the Andes and Amazonas.

Machalilla culture

The Middle Formative Period is represented by the Machalilla culture , it existed between the 18th and 10th centuries BC. Their ceramics were a seamless development from the Valdivia culture, but they were generally thinner-walled. As innovations, knuckle-bow vessels and anthropomorphic vessels appeared for the first time. Statuettes have also been found depicting the strange custom of skull deformation .

Chorrera culture

The for younger formative period scoring Chorrera culture can, with effect from the 12th century. Prove. Their livelihood was already based predominantly on agriculture . In addition to corn and kidney beans , calabashes and pumpkins ( Cucurbitaceae ) were also grown. Towards the end of the culture, which was caused by the volcanic eruption of Pululahua around 476 BC. Was accelerated, the gold trade came up for the first time .

Period of regional development

Figure of the Bahía culture , 300 BC BC to AD 500

The period of regional development lasted roughly from 500 BC. Chr. To 500 AD. Their name refers to the high degree of social and political organization of the cultures of that time, whose autonomous structures mainly followed natural, geographical conditions. The societies were now organized according to a division of labor with priests, potters, weavers, farmers and traders as professions. In the coastal area of ​​Ecuador the Tumaco-La-Tolita culture , the Guangala culture , the Tejar-Daule culture , the Jama-Coaque culture and the Bahía culture established themselves .

Tumaco La Tolita Culture

In the coastal area of ​​northern Ecuador and southern Colombia was from the 10th century BC. The Tumaco-La-Tolita culture . Their trade relations reached as far as northern Peru and the Andean region around Quito. The gold processing started because of the far lying in the hinterland soaps very early, the precious metal was later mostly tumbaga alloyed. For the first time ever in cultural history, platinum was used in the La Tolita ceremonial center. The culture lasted until the beginning of the 5th century.

Guangala culture

The Guangala culture spread from the 3rd century BC. In the area between the Pacific coast and the Cordillera Chongón-Colonche. Characteristics are delicately crafted ceramics as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic sculptures. For the first time copper is processed in Ecuador and towards the end of the culture in the 5th century, due to the trade contacts with the Tumaco-La-Tolita culture, gold and platinum are also processed. In Cochasqui in the highlands there is monumental architecture from the pre-Inca period, which occupied a southern area of ​​the Tumaco-La-Tolita culture and dates between 950 and 1550 AD.

Capulí culture

North of Quito , the Capulí culture is tangible from 850 to 1500 in Ecuador .

Inca period

Inca ruins in Ingapirca

Towards the end of the 15th century, under the rule of Túpac Yupanqui , the Inca conquered the area as far as the Pasto area (now southern Colombia) in protracted battles against the Quitu-Cara and established the capital Quito as the northern capital of their empire. From here the last Inca ruler Atahualpa gained power in a civil war lasting several years against his brother Huáscar .

Conquista and colonial times

Shortly afterwards, in the course of the Conquista , Sebastián de Belalcázar , a captain of Francisco Pizarro , conquered the areas between today's Peru and the Chibcha empire and founded today's capital, San Francisco de Quito, in 1534. It was from here that Gonzalo Pizarro's expedition discovered the Amazon in 1546 , which is why Ecuador has repeatedly and ultimately unsuccessfully claimed access to this river.

As a forerunner of today's Ecuador, the Real Audiencia de Quito existed throughout the colonial period , which was not always calculated with precisely defined borders to the Viceroyalty of Peru and later to the Viceroyalty of New Granada , which was separated from Peru .

In 1802 Alexander von Humboldt traveled and researched the area and climbed the Pichincha and the slopes of the Chimborazo .

Independence and Greater Colombia

In the area of ​​the Real Audiencia of Quito, the aspirations for self-determination began as early as 1809. The first independence from Ecuador , the "State of Quito", proclaimed in 1810 , lasted only until 1812, as the Spaniards in Peru sent their troops and defeated the separatists militarily. After that, any tendencies towards revolt were suppressed by the Spaniards.

Sucre

With the liberation of New Granada in 1819, hope grew again, which sparked an uprising in Guayaquil. With outside help, first from the Argentine-Chilean expedition from San Martín in Peru and later from Greater Colombia from Simón Bolívar , Antonio José de Sucre finally succeeded , on behalf of Bolívar, in the battle of the Pichincha in 1822 finally defeated at Quito and expelled from the country. The Battle of Pichincha (May 24, 1822) brought independence as well as the incorporation as the southern department of Bolívar's Greater Colombia , which also included the areas of today's Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama , which had already belonged to New Granada during the colonial days .

The Republic of Ecuador emerged in 1830 from the collapse of Greater Colombia. The name goes back to the Franco-Spanish expedition (with the participation of Charles Marie de La Condamine , Pierre Bouguer , Louis Godin , as well as Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa ), which, among other things, was the first to determine the exact location of the Had measured the equator .

The first President of the Republic of Ecuador was General Juan José Flores , a supporter of Simón Bolívar. He is regarded as a mastermind and is the main beneficiary of the murder of Sucre, who was also a candidate for office, which was only investigated at the lowest level. It was overthrown in 1845 by the so-called March Revolution . As in the colonial days, Ecuador lost territories to Peru, especially in the eastern parts of the country that were covered by jungle.

In 1832, Ecuador occupied and annexed the previously more or less uninhabited and ownerless Galápagos Islands , which are about 1000 km away from the coast of the country. Three years later, in 1835, Charles Darwin visited the famous archipelago as part of the British expedition of the HMS Beagle and gathered there knowledge that later led him to the development of the theory of evolution .

The entire further history of the country was characterized by the sharp contrasts between liberals and conservatives, large landowners and the indigenous landless population, mestizos and Indians, the backward provinces and cities, the highlands and the coast, as well as the competition between the capital Quito and the largest port city Guayaquil coined. These opposites caused a more or less consistently chaotic political development to this day, which in short succession was marked again and again by coups and counter-coups, short episodes of civil war and regional particularism. At times, up to three nominal heads of state “ruled” in Ecuador at the same time.

Moreno rule and Liberal Revolution

Eloy Alfaro

The second half of the 19th century was marked by the clashes between conservative and liberal political forces. After General Flores was deposed in the March Revolution , liberal forces initially dominated, before the clerical-conservative Gabriel García Moreno (in alliance with Flores) emerged victorious from the civil war of the “National Crisis” of 1859/1860. During his two presidencies, he pursued a comprehensive modernization program, mainly focused on education and infrastructure development. On the other hand, he suppressed political opponents with a hard hand, strove to align the country with fundamental Christian-Catholic values, and granted religious orders such as the Jesuits great influence. He was murdered in 1875.

20 years of renewed political instability followed. In 1895, General Eloy Alfaro, who had been involved in uprisings against various governments for over 20 years, came to power through a coup in Guayaquil , and with him the era of the Liberal Revolution began in Ecuador, which again implemented a modernization program that was particularly oriented towards education and infrastructure. However, this happened under the Moreno rule: Alfaro and his colleagues consistently secularized the Ecuadorian state: They confiscated church property , introduced religious freedom and civil marriage and strengthened the sovereignty of the state in the education system. Alfaro was overthrown in a coup in 1911 after attempting to persuade his elected successor, Estrada, to retreat so he could continue to rule. In 1912, after trying again to seize power, he was arrested and imprisoned. He was murdered in prison and his body was publicly burned.

20th and 21st centuries

Political history

After the Liberal Revolution, elected governments that had been installed by a military coup replaced each other in rapid succession in the 20th century, and democratic institutions were barely able to consolidate due to the influence of the Ecuadorian military . On average, the respective government was overthrown by a military coup or civil coup every one and a half years, which earned Ecuador the reputation of a classic banana republic . Oil fields have been found and extracted in Ecuador since the 1940s, which, particularly in the 1970s, led to a phase of economic growth and relative political stability, albeit mostly under military governments. Ecuador belongs to the Andean Community , which was founded in 1969 and which has set up a free trade area between the member states since 1995 .

The conservative populist José María Velasco Ibarra (1893–1979) played an important role for decades . He was president five times:

• 1934-1935
• 1944–1947 (ended by a coup d'état by Defense Minister Carlos Mancheno Cajas ; he was in office on August 25-31 , 1947)
• 1952–1956 (however, the constitution forbade immediate re-election)
• 1960 until a coup on December 7, 1961
• 1968-1972

In 1972 it was overthrown in connection with the discovery of large oil reserves in the Amazon lowlands by the coup of General Guillermo Rodríguez Lara . Ecuador joined OPEC .

The successors of this initially relatively stable, self-proclaimed 'national-revolutionary' military dictatorship were replaced in 1979 by the freely elected Social Democrat-oriented President Jaime Roldós , who died in a plane crash on May 24, 1981 under circumstances that have not yet been clarified . Vice-President Osvaldo Hurtado followed him in office; This was followed in 1984 by the conservative León Febres Cordero . Cordero was followed by the social democratic Rodrigo Borja and the conservative architect Sixto Durán-Ballén (President August 1992 to August 1996). These three presidents each ruled for their entire constitutional term.

In 1997, the presidency of Abdalá Bucaram , a brother-in-law of Jaime Roldós, ended after just a few months in the chaos caused by political incompetence and corruption, whereupon the president had to flee the country for Panama.

A new constellation arose when, as a result, middle-ranking left-wing military in a rare coalition with Indian groups overthrew President Jamil Mahuad in a coup on January 21, 2000 . The main reason for this was the protests against the abolition of the national currency, sucre, in favor of the US dollar . After a triumvirate consisting of the Indian leader Antonio Vargas , the former constitutional judge Carlos Solórzano and the Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez appeared to have taken power, the previous Vice President Gustavo Noboa was finally installed and sworn in as President - also at the urging of the US Embassy . He served January 22, 2000 through January 15, 2003, bringing Mahuad's term to an end.

In the elections in October 2002, in addition to the ex-presidents Rodrigo Borja and Osvaldo Hurtado and the multimillionaire Álvaro Noboa , Lucio Gutiérrez, who has since become a politician, also ran. In the second ballot he won the presidential election with 54% of the vote, but was unable to form a permanently stable government because he was barely able to implement his election promises, especially in the area of ​​social policy. The ministers of the Plurinational Indian Movement Pachakutik , which was part of the government , then left the cabinet. Gutiérrez 'own party only had six out of 100 parliamentary seats, so that he was dependent on changing coalitions and unstable majorities in the period that followed. Among other things, he unconstitutionally refilled judges at the Supreme Court to enable ex-President Abdalá Bucaram to return from exile.

On April 20, 2005, after a month-long demonstrations in Quito accusing him of incompetence, corruption and nepotism, the President was removed from his office in a special session of the National Congress; In his place, the former Vice President Alfredo Palacio was sworn in. He was President from April 20, 2005 to January 15, 2007.

At times, Ecuador was threatened with involvement in the Colombian civil war through no fault of its own, as the FARC rebels repeatedly crossed the country's northern border to use the impassable areas south of the Putumayo as a resting place. In 2000 , the USA also set up a naval base on the Pacific coast in Manta in order to destroy Colombian coca fields from the air and to fight the guerrillas .

On April 26, 2009 elections were held for the National Assembly . The ruling party Alianza PAÍS was the strongest faction of the 124-member parliament with 59 members.

On April 26, 2009 and February 17, 2013 , Rafael Correa was elected President in the first round of the presidential and parliamentary elections. After his reign the treasury was empty after government spending tripled and national debt more than doubled in the oil boom up to 2014. A law that had restricted the growth of government spending had been overturned by Correa while he was still minister of finance. The country's debt service exceeded spending on education in spring 2017.

Correa's successor was his preferred candidate Lenin Moreno in 2017 with a narrow majority . He had to take on a budget deficit of 5.5 percent and soon embarked on a neoliberal course. In order to meet the conditions for a US $ 4 billion loan from the IMF , it ordered the immediate cancellation of all subsidies on diesel and petrol at the beginning of October 2019, which would roughly double the price of diesel (albeit to a comparatively low US $) 2.40 per gallon ). This triggered nationwide protests, roadblocks and unrest. President Moreno declared a state of emergency and had the seat of government moved from Quito to Guayaquil . On October 7, demonstrators occupied three oil production facilities .

Military clashes with Peru

Loss of territory in Ecuador in the 20th century

See also : Peruvian-Ecuadorian Border War  and Cenepa War

In 1904 Ecuador lost large parts of its nominal national territory in the north and east to its neighboring countries Peru and Colombia, although it had never really controlled these areas.

In 1941 the Peruvian army marched into the south of Ecuador, triggering the Peruvian-Ecuadorian War . The Peruvian military burned the city of Santa Rosa, occupied the important banana port of Machala and threatened Guayaquil. As a result, Ecuador had to surrender half of its remaining territory to Peru in the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro in 1942, again largely in areas mainly in the east and south-east of the Amazon, in which an Ecuadorian administration had de facto never existed since colonial times had.

The last border war with Peru over the Cordillera del Condor area on the Río Cenepa broke out in early 1995. The disputes over the interpretation of the Rio Protocol were officially ended on October 26, 1998 by a border and peace treaty that was now referred to as "final".

Individual evidence

1. ↑ D. Jamison: Pre-Historic Civilizations in Ecuador in Ancient History .
2. ^ William J. Mayer-Oakes, Robert E. Bell: Early Man Site Found in Highland Ecuador . In: Science . tape 131 , no. 3416 , June 17, 1960, p. 1805-1806 , doi : 10.1126 / science.131.3416.1805 .
3. ^ Cerro Narrío Exploring Ecuador
4. ↑ Valuation of the ruins of Cochasquí , Completed projects of the University of Bonn
5. ↑ Fight for Ecuador's empty cash register , NZZ, April 1, 2017 - online title: When party and populism come to an end
6. ↑ asc / dpa / AFP / Reuters: Ecuador declares a state of emergency. In: Spiegel Online . October 4, 2019, accessed May 15, 2020 . 
7. ↑ Violent protests in Ecuador - demonstrators enter parliament. In: srf.ch . October 9, 2019, accessed October 9, 2019 . 

literature

• George Lauderbaugh: The History of Ecuador . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2012, ISBN 978-0-313-36250-7 .
• Carlos De La Torre, Steve Striffler (Eds.): The Ecuador Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press, Durham 2008, ISBN 978-0-8223-4352-3
• Allen Gerlach: Indians, Oil, and Politics: A Recent History of Ecuador. Scholarly Resources, Wilmington, Del. 2003, ISBN 0-8420-5108-2 .
• GaloChacón Izurieta: Las guerras de Quito por su independencia. Centro de Estudios Históricos del Ejército, Quito 2002.
• Jorge Salvador Lara: Historia contemporánea del Ecuador. 2nd ed., Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico 2000, ISBN 968-16-6115-X .
• Claudio Mena Villamar: El Quito rebelde (1809-1812). Abya-Ayala, Quito 1997.
• Atlas Universal y del Ecuador. Instituto Geográfico Militar, Quito 1995.
• Enrique Ayala Mora: Resumen de Historia del Ecuador. Corporación Editora Nacional, Quito 1993.
• Enrique Ayala Mora (Ed.): Nueva Historia del Ecuador. 12 volumes. Corporación Editora Nacional, Quito 1983-1989.

Web links

Commons : History of Ecuador  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Friendship treaty between the German Empire and the Free State of Ecuador. March 28, 1887.  - Sources and full texts

• Historia del Ecuador ( Memento of May 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). Series of supplements to the daily La Hora (Quito) from 2003, coordinated by Enrique Ayala Mora (Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar) and Sonia Fernández Rueda (Presidenta e Investigadora del Taller de Estudios Históricos). In Spanish.
• Alfredo Tinajero Cevallos and Amparo Barba González, Cronología de la Historia Resumida del Ecuador , 54-page PDF document, 127 kB, Spanish. English version by the same authors ( Memento from July 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive )