Military history of Ecuador

The rebel forces of the newly declared independent State of Quito attempted to extend their control to other parts of the territory but proved little match against the royalist army dispatched by the Viceroy of Peru.

A new independence movement began in 1820, Ecuadorian forces assembled in Guayaquil, forming contingents with revolutionary soldiers from Colombia commanded by Antonio José de Sucre, a close collaborator of the Venezuelan liberator, Simón Bolívar Palacios.

At the dissolution of Gran Colombia in 1830, most of Ecuador's senior army officers and many of its troops were Venezuelans, as was the country's first president, Juan José Flores.

By 1859 the nation was on the brink of anarchy and was marked by the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War of 1857–1860 Guayaquil's Guillermo Franco, had declared several regions autonomous and signed the Treaty of Mapasingue, ceding the southern provinces of Ecuador to an occupying.

Gabriel García Moreno, leaving aside his differences with General Juan José Flores, met with the former dictator to quell the various local rebellions.

Rebellions, uprisings and lack of loyalty of both senior Generals and medium ranking officers made the Ecuadorian forces weak and disorganized.

Under a military assistance agreement with the United States in 1952, the Ecuadorian Armed Forces, which now totaled approximately 15,000 troops, received additional equipment, including howitzers, tanks, and armoured personnel carriers.

These clashes flared into another outbreak of serious fighting in January 1981 called the Paquisha War, for the control of three watchposts which the Ecuadorian Army setup inside the disputed border area.

The final major military operation involving Ecuadorian forces was the Cenepa War in which both sides, yet again, claimed to be fighting inside their own territory.

One of the outposts causing the dispute, called Tiwintza by the Ecuadorians and Tiwinza or Tihuintsa by the Peruvians, came to symbolize the war because of the bitter clashes that took place around it and the emotional importance that both sides attached to its possession.

In contrast to a similar but shorter clash that had occurred in 1981, also within the undemarcated border area, the focus of all the struggles would become the advanced posts called South Base, Cave of the Tayos, Tiwintza by the Ecuadorians (and Tiwinza or Tihuintsa by the Peruvians) until the signing of a ceasefire.

This was supervised by a multinational mission of military observers from the "guarantor" countries of the Rio Protocol of 1942: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the United States.

Its troop deployment with emphasis on the southern area and personnel strength, reflected a large scale force ready to fend off an invasion.