History of Ecuador

Among the main cultures of this period were the Jambelí, Guangala, Bahia, Tejar-Daule, La Tolita, Jama Coaque on the coast, Cerro Narrío Alausí in the sierras, and Tayos in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle.

At the foot of Mount Chimborazo, near the modern city of Riobamba (Ecuador), he met and defeated the forces of the great Inca warrior Rumiñahui with the aid of Cañari tribesmen who served as guides and allies to the conquering Spaniards.

Rumiñahui fell back to Quito, and, while in pursuit of the Inca army, Benalcázar encountered another, quite sizable, conquering party led by Guatemalan Governor Pedro de Alvarado.

The blacks killed or enslaved the native males and married the females, and within a generation they constituted a population of zambos that resisted Spanish authority until the end of the century and afterwards managed to retain a great deal of political and cultural independence.

In 1602, Father Rafael Ferrer began to explore the Aguarico, Napo, and Marañon rivers (Sucumbios region in what is today Ecuador and Peru), and set up, between 1604 and 1605, missions among the Cofan people.

The title of the memoire is called Nuevo Descubrimiento del gran rio de las Amazonas, and it was used by academics as a fundamental reference pertaining to the Amazon region.

A group of Quito's leading citizens followed suit, and on August 10, 1809, they seized power in the name of Ferdinand from the local representatives, whom they accused of preparing to recognize Joseph Bonaparte.

Despite assurances against reprisals, the returning Spanish authorities proved to be merciless with the rebels and, in the process of ferreting out participants in the Quito revolt, jailed and abused many innocent citizens.

Their actions, in turn, bred popular resentment among Quiteños, who, after several days of street fighting in August 1810, won an agreement to be governed by a junta composed with a majority of Criollos, although with the Peninsular president of the Royal Audience of Quito acting as its head.

Two months later, the Junta approved a constitution for the state of Quito that provided for democratic governing institutions but also granted recognition to the authority of Ferdinand should he return to the Spanish throne.

The second chapter in Ecuador's struggle for emancipation from Spanish colonial rule began in Guayaquil, where independence was proclaimed in October 1820 by a local patriotic junta under the leadership of the poet José Joaquín de Olmedo.

By this time, the forces of independence had grown continental in scope and were organized into two principal armies, one under the Venezuelan Simón Bolívar in the north and the other under the Argentine José de San Martín in the south.

Unlike the hapless Quito junta of a decade earlier, the Guayaquil patriots were able to appeal to foreign allies, Argentina and Gran Colombia, each of whom soon responded by sending sizable contingents to Ecuador.

Antonio José de Sucre, the brilliant young lieutenant of Bolívar who arrived in Guayaquil in May 1821, was to become the key figure in the ensuing military struggle against the royalist forces.

Later that July, he met San Martín at the Guayaquil conference and convinced the Argentine general, who wanted the port to return to Peruvian jurisdiction, and the local Criollo elite in both major cities of the advantage of having the former Quito Audiencia join with the liberated lands to the north.

The latter group was to prevail following Venezuela's withdrawal from Gran Colombia at the very moment that an 1830 constitutional congress had been called in an ultimately futile effort to stem the growing separatist tendencies throughout the country.

In May of that year, a group of Quito notables met to dissolve the union with Gran Colombia, and in August, a constituent assembly drew up a constitution for the State of Ecuador, so named for its geographic proximity to the equator, and placed General Flores in charge of political and military affairs.

During this decade and the one that followed, Urbina and his archrival, García Moreno, would define the dichotomy — between Liberals from Guayaquil and Conservatives from Quito — that remained the major sphere of political struggle in Ecuador until the 1980s.

One of these caudillos, Guayaquil's Guillermo Franco, signed the Treaty of Mapasingue, ceding the southern provinces of Ecuador to an occupying Peruvian army led by General Ramón Castilla.

[3] In May 1945, after a year of growing hostility between the president and the assembly, which was vainly awaiting deeds to substantiate Velasco's rhetorical advocacy of social justice, the mercurial chief executive condemned and then repudiated the newly completed constitution.

During the following year, three different men briefly held executive power before Galo Plaza Lasso, running under a coalition of independent Liberals and socialists, narrowly defeated his Conservative opponent in presidential elections.

Velasco's fourth term in the presidency initiated a renewal of crisis, instability, and military domination and ended conjecture that the political system had matured or developed in a democratic mold.

According to former CIA agent Philip Agee, who served several years in Ecuador, the United States incited this coup d'état to eliminate a government that refused to break with Cuba.

The economic crisis was aggravated in 1982 and 1983 by drastic climatic changes, bringing severe drought as well as flooding, precipitated by the appearance of the unusually warm ocean current known as "El Niño".

During the first years of his administration, Febres Cordero introduced free-market economic policies, took a strong stand against drug trafficking and terrorism, and pursued close relations with the United States.

[25] In May 1997, following the demonstrations that led to the ousting of Bucaram and appointment of Alarcón, the people of Ecuador called for a National Assembly to reform the Constitution and the country's political structure.

Demonstrators entered the National Assembly building and declared, in a move that resembled the coups d'état endemic to Ecuadorean history, a three-person junta in charge of the country.

[27] Although Ecuador began to improve economically in the following months, the government of Noboa came under heavy fire for the continuation of the dollarization policy, its disregard for social problems, and other important issues in Ecuadorean politics.

Citing those accusations and claiming that the government had failed to meet its demands from June 2022, CONAIE called on Lasso to resign and declared itself in a state of "permanent mobilization", threatening additional protests.

[94][95] Following the escape, Noboa declared a state of emergency, to last for 60 days,[96] giving authorities the power to suspend people's rights and allowing the military to be mobilized inside prisons.