Pastaza Province

Pastaza Province Provincia de Pastaza
flag
Location in Ecuador
Basic data
Capital	Puyo
population	71,565 (2005,)
- Share in Ecuador	0.5%
- Rank in Ecuador	Rank 21 out of 22
- density	2 inhabitants per km²
surface	29,068 km²
- Share in Ecuador	11.3%
- Rank in Ecuador	Rank 1 of 22
License Plate	S.
Set up	1959
prefect	Jaime Guevara (UP)
governor	Ángel Guamán
Seats in the National Congress	2 of 100
structure	4 cantons
ISO 3166-2	EC-Y
http://www.pastaza.gob.ec/

The Province of Pastaza ( Spanish Provincia del Pastaza ) is a province in Ecuador . It is located in the Oriente of Ecuador in the Amazon basin and bears the name of the Pastaza , a tributary of the Amazon . The province has about 75,000 inhabitants on an area of ​​29,500 km². Its capital is Puyo . The nature of the province is characterized by high biodiversity .

geography

The province of Pastaza lies between 75 ° 30 'and 78 ° 20' west longitude and 1 ° 10 'and 2 ° 40' south latitude. It is located in the north-south axis in the center of the Amazon region, the eastern part of Ecuador. It borders in the north on the provinces of Napo and Orellana , in the east on Peru ( Loreto region ), in the south on the province Morona Santiago and in the west also on Morona Santiago and the Andean province Tungurahua . It is the largest province in the country and, after the Galápagos Islands, the one with the smallest population.

The climate in most of the province of Pastaza, which belongs to the Amazon lowlands, is tropical with temperatures between 18 and 24 ° C. In the east of the province, which belongs to the sub-Andean cordillera, the foothills of the Andes, the climate is a little cooler depending on the altitude.

Most of the province is covered with partially untouched tropical rainforest . This has a high biodiversity and is partially designated as a nature reserve.

The most important rivers that flow through the province are the eponymous Río Pastaza , which forms the border with the province of Morona Santiago, its tributaries Río Bobonaza and Río Copataza , the Río Curaray , the Río Tigre , the Río Pintoyacu , the Río Conambo , the Río Corrientes and the Río Alpayacu . The rivers have diverse, sometimes spectacular waterfalls .

population

The province of Pastaza is the most sparsely populated province with a population density of just under 2.5 inhabitants per km². The population is concentrated in a small part at the foot of the Andes in the west of the province. The largest city is the capital Puyo with about 28,000 inhabitants (2005). Mera is also important as a base for the oil industry .

The rest of the province, which is part of the Amazon lowlands, is largely uninhabited. Until a few decades ago it was reserved for the indigenous peoples of the Shuar , Achuar , Huaorani and Záparo and has recently been increasingly used for oil production activities . Most of the inhabitants of the province are immigrant mestizos and, in addition to the indigenous ethnic groups mentioned, the so-called Amazonian Quichuas (also called Canelo Quichuas ).

economy

In the last few decades, since Shell began drilling the first wells in Pastaza Province in 1941, oil production has become the financially most important industry in the province. However, it is increasingly taking place in remote areas outside of the main settlement areas, which until now were almost entirely reserved for the indigenous peoples.

In the small main settlement areas in the west of the province, agriculture ( sugar cane , bananas , yuca , tobacco , tea ) and cattle breeding ( cattle , dairy farming ) predominate. The industry is limited to the processing of agricultural primary goods and handicrafts (fabrics, ceramics, musical instruments). In addition, there is fishing in the rivers of the province, some of which can also be used for gold panning.

As the province's forests are rich in species, ecotourism is also a growing branch of the economy, although its most important resource is endangered by logging and in some cases by oil production. In addition, the infrastructural connection between the province of Pastaza and the Andean provinces is not as good as in the province of Napo, which means that tourism demand is developing more strongly there than in Pastaza.

history

The Incas did not exert any influence on the Amazon region. During colonial times, the area of ​​today's province of Pastaza was called Provincia de los Canelos , after an indigenous people of the same name. At the same time, its name echoes the hope of finding the legendary cinnamon land (Spanish canela = cinnamon ) and Eldorado , which gave rise to the Gonzalo Pizarro expedition , among other things . Cinnamon was in great demand and precious in the 16th century and Gonzalo Pizarro had been told of huge cinnamon trees east of the Andes. In fact, cinnamon trees only grow in Asia, so the samples that Pizarro received were likely to have been from other laurel plants , for example from the genus Ocotea or Nectandra . The trees of the species Nectandra coeloclada , which occur in the Pastaza province, are still called Canelo today and are felled and processed as tropical woods.

Pastaza's first missionary station was set up in Canelos in 1624, but it did not have much influence. The areas of the province were largely reserved for the indigenous population. Little changed in this situation after the independence of Greater Colombia and Ecuador. Between 1880 and 1915, the rubber boom spread from Iquitos to Ecuador. In today's province of Pastaza, it was restricted to the less developed areas in the east (on Curaray ) and mainly led to the enslavement or forced labor of the Huaorani .

In the 1880s and 1890s, the establishment of places and mission stations was intensified again. In this context, today's capital Puyo was created, initially in 1889 on the site of a Shuar settlement, which was shortly afterwards destroyed by Indians from Macas (today: Morona Santiago province) and re-established nearby in 1897. Population influx, limited urbanization and infrastructural development began to a significant extent with the oil production activities only after 1940 and after the opening of the road from Baños to Puyo in 1942. In 1949 the production activities were initially discontinued as unprofitable, before new prospecting in the 1950s and 1960s began. The main settlement flow began after 1972 when, on the one hand, a settlement program of the military government for the Amazon lowlands (as a result of periods of drought in the Andean region) started and, on the other hand, the oil production activities in newly developed fields were intensified.

In 1921, the refinement of territorial legislation in the Amazon lowlands created the provinces of Napo-Pastaza and Santiago-Zamora. The capital of Napo-Pastaza was Tena , today's capital of the Napo province . The province of Pastaza itself was created in 1959 when the provinces of Napo and Pastaza were separated. At that time it consisted of a single canton, the 1911 established canton Pastaza with the capital Puyo.

The eastern boundary of the present province of Pastaza was after the Peruvian-Ecuadorian War in Rio Protocol drawn relatively arbitrarily (1942). The result of this war was a downsizing of Ecuadorian territory in favor of Peruvian territory.

Administrative division

The cantons of the Province of Pastaza

Canton	Population 2001	Area km²	Capital
Arajuno	5,150	8,767	Arajuno
Mera	8,088	520	Mera
Pastaza	45,512	19,727	Puyo
Santa Clara	3,029	311	Santa Clara

politics

The province is ruled by Prefect Jaime Guevara Blaschke, who won the 2004 elections as an independent candidate for his “Movimiento Unidos por Pastaza” (Eng. Movement Together for Pastaza ). He shares his power with the mayors of the canton's capitals, among them the mayor of Puyo , Óscar Ledesma from the Partido Sociedad Patriótica (PSP), who was elected in an alliance with the regional parties “Movimiento Independiente Pastaza en Marcha” (MIPM) and MRLA. The governor appointed by the government of Ecuador is currently Ángel Guamán Jiménez.

Cantons

The province of Pastaza is currently divided into four cantons . These are (in order of their establishment):

1. Pastaza (established in 1911, capital: Puyo . The canton was established in 1911 with the capital Andoas , since 1912 Sarayacu was the capital, since 1921 Puyo was the capital of Jefatura Pastaza , which is equivalent to today's canton; puyu is Kichwa ( phuyu in southern Quechua ) for fog or drizzle ; the former capital of Andoa is now in Peru)
2. Mera (established in 1967, capital: Mera )
3. Santa Clara (established in 1992, capital: Santa Clara )
4. Arajuno (established in 1996, capital: Arajuno )

Remarks

1. ^ INEC, Población total y tasas brutas de natalidad, mortalidad general, mortalidad infantil y materna según regiones y provincias de residencia habitual, año 2005 ( Memento of October 15, 2005 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 13, 2007.
2. ↑ Susanne Schmall, The Ecotourism Program of the Organización de Pueblos Indígenas de Pastaza (OPIP) in the Amazon lowlands of Ecuador's approaches to self-determined development of an indigenous grass-roots organization , Diss. Humboldt University Berlin, 1999, p. 28 (note 12)

Web links

• The Ecuadorian Ministry of Tourism of the province (Engl.) ( Memento of 13 March 2008 at the Internet Archive )
• Basic information about the province of Pastaza (span.)
• Susanne Schmall: The ecotourism program of the Organización de Pueblos Indígenas de Pastaza (OPIP) in the Amazon lowlands of Ecuador. Approaches to the self-determined development of an indigenous grass-roots organization, dissertation in the subject of geography, Berlin (HU), 1998/99 (especially chapter 2).
• Ecotourism portal (span.)

Coordinates: 1 ° 38 ′  S , 76 ° 58 ′  W