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Ecuador History - Pre-Inca Times
Although the earliest evidence of man in Ecuador can be traced back to 10,000 BC, there are few concrete facts about the country's history before the invasion of the Incas in the mid-15 th century.
However, research is still ongoing, and The Museo Banco Central del Ecuador has some fascinating artifacts that are laid out to chart the probable development of the country before this time, from the age of hunter-gatherers to the dawn of pottery and ceramics, agriculture and fixed settlements.
After the natives began to put down roots(between 500BC and 500AD), distinct cultures began to evolve, and by 1480, dominant Indian groups included Imbayas, Shyris, Quitus, Puruhaes and Caarisin the highlands, and the Caras, Manteos and Huancavilcas along the coast.
The Inca Invasion
The Incas had dominated Peru since the 11th-century, but it was not until the mid 15th-century that they began to expand into Ecuador. Yapanqui led the invasion with his son Tpac Yapanqui. Despite resistance by local Indians, they eventually arranged peace terms with one dominant group in the south, the Caaris, but continued to battle resistance in the north. Tpac Yapanqui extended the empire further after the death of his father; establishing himself at Ingipirica before dominating the Quitu/Caras Indians at Present-day Quito. He then built a huge road stretching the length of his empire from Cusco in Southern Peru north to Quito.
Problems arose when Tpac Yapanqui died and left the empire to his two sons (rather than the eldest, as was traditional). Huascar based himself at Cusco and Atahualpa in Quito. However, both brothers were greedy for the whole empire, and soon after their father's death, civil war broke out. In 1532 Atahualpa secured victory over his brother, re-establishing his base in Northern Peru.
The Spanish invasion - The Conquest
The Inca Atahualpa ruled for less than a year before the Spanish arrived, led by Francisco Pizarro. Atuhualpa - foolishly as it turns out - thought of Pizarro and his band as an innocent bunch of foreigners. He welcomed them into the country and befriended them, only to be captured and held hostage by them. Fearing for his life, Atahualpa offered a huge ransom of gold and silver in return for his release. Pizarro accepted, then beheaded the leader anyway. Within one bloody year, hundreds of thousands of Incas had been slaughtered and the whole empire had fallen to the Spanish.
Pizarro founded his capital at Lima, Peru,while his lieutenants, Sebastian de Benalczar and Diego de Almagro founded San Francisco de Quito as another base, building a new city on the charred remains of the Inca capital (knowing that the Spanish were winning the battle, the Inca had preferred to destroy the original city, rather than leave it in the hands of the conquistadors). Pizarro's brother took over the city four years later before setting out in 1540 on an exploration of the Oriente, Ecuador's Amazon lowlands. This move was triggered by Inca legend that the Amazon was rich in gold, waiting to be discovered. Having found nothing after several months,and running out of food, he sent Francisco de Orellana ahead to see if anything was there. However, Orellana never returned. Instead he ended up floating down the entire Amazon River through Brazil, ending up in the Atlantic Ocean. This marked the first crossing of the continent by a white man in a canoe, and the event is still celebrated in Ecuador today.
Meanwhile, the Spanish had been busy dividing up Ecuador's land among themselves. The 'encomienda' system was established in which landowners forced the indigenous people who happened to occupy the land into slavery. In exchange for their back-breaking labour, the slaves were given room and board. However, the food was so little and the work so hard that many starved to death or died from diseases. As a result, the indigenous population decreased dramatically. About half of Ecuador's Indian population was forced to live like this for centuries. Although the encomienda system was theoretically outlawed in the 17th-century, in practice the oppression of the indigenous population continued under various guises until 1964 when the Agrarian Reform Law was passed. The rest of the indigenous people were either rounded up into purpose-built Indian towns and forced to work in textiles or agriculture (it is for this reason that Otavalo became so famous for its weavings) or lived so deep in the Amazonian lowlands that they completely escaped all the implications of the Spanish rule (good and bad).
Independence
The Spanish rule functioned relatively peacefully under this system until the late 18th-century, when the Spanish settlers started to resent their Spain for their constant interference and fortaking such high taxes, and started to work towards independence. After a couple of failed attempts to crush the Spanish armies, the first real victory was attained at Guayaquil,which gained independence in October 1820. At this point, an urgent request for backup was sent to the South American liberator, Simon Bolvar. To help prevent the conquistadors from regaining power, Bolvar swept into action, sending his best general, Antonio Jos de Sucre to take over at Quito.Sucre won the city over in a single day at the legendary battle of Pichincha on May 24, 1822. After this, Bolvar declared the citythe southern capital of a huge new nation, Gran Colombia,which also included Colombia,parts of Panama and Venezuela (hisdream was to make the whole continent into a single, independent, nation).However, the idea went down badly with the residents and in 1830 the Quito representatives won independence for their ownrepublic, calling it Ecuadorafter its position on the equator.
Civil War and Rivalry
New problems emerged between the conservative residents of the highlands, who had been happy enough with Spanish rule, and the liberal costeos, who wanted complete independence. To some extent this rivalry still continues, albeit in the form of lighthearted teasing; the costal residents call thehighlanders boring and backward, and the highlanders call their coastal counterparts 'monos' (monkeys) and tease them for being loud and obnoxious.
1859 was a messy year, with different cities and areas declaring their own various rules - Guayaquil gave itself over to Peruvian rule, and much of Ecuador became close to being taken over by the Colombians. However, in 1861 Garca Moreno, a fearless and devout catholic, became president. The biggest effect of his rule was to turn Ecuador into a catholic republic and force its beliefs on all its residents - those who rejected Catholicism were not granted official citizenship. However, after his death, the equally fearsome but liberal president, Eloy Alfaro took over and immediately started undoing Moreno's work, secularising the state and education. He came to a sticky end in 1911,when he was overthrown by the military, and his body dragged through the streets of Quito and publicly burned. This marked the beginning of a 50-year tug-of-war between the liberals and conservatives, which cost the country thousands of lives, numerous presidents (some of whom lasted only days) and almost half if its land, which Peru - taking advantage of Ecuador's weakened state - claimed as its own.
Bananas and Oil
The country went through a relatively peaceful period in the 50s and 60s, helped by the combination of the popular president, Galo Plaza Lasso, and the beginning of the banana boom, which created thousands of jobs and did huge favors for the economy. It was during this period that the Agrarian Reform Law put a stop to the virtual slavery that the indigenous people had been subjected to since the 17th-century.
However, in the 60's, banana exportation was abruptly cut by a fungal disease that affected the country's whole crop, and the country went into a short period of decline until large oil reserves were found in the Oriente in 1967 by international oil company, Texaco. The Ecuadorian military, led by General Guillermo Rodrguez Lara, managed to block the swarms of money-hungry oil companies waiting to pounce on the land, and negotiated fair contracts for oil extraction. While the environment underwent some terrible damage (the effects are still being felt today), the economy began to prosper and money was pumped into education, healthcare, urbanization and transport. However, the country was still unable to pay off its enormous debts, and some foolish decisions by Lara to overcome this problem (such as raising taxes to ridiculous levels), resulted in his overthrow in 1976, and democracy was restored soon after.
Dollarization and Beyond
From 1979 until 1996 a string of governments attempted (and failed) to stabilise the delicate economy - which swung dramatically up and down due to fluctuating oil prices and severe debt -and to temper the indigenous people, who had started to rise up against the government through the new organisation Confederacin de Nacionalidades Indgenas del Ecuador.
In 1998, the situation was worsened when Ecuador suffered its most severe economic crisis; the GDP shrank dramatically, roads were blockaded and virtually the whole country went on strike. Inflation rose and banks collapsed. In 1999, the then-mayor of Quito, Jamil Mahuad, decided nothing could be done to stop the national currency, the Sucre, from falling, and decided that the only answer was to switch over to the dollar.
Although this move had the immediate desired effect of stabilising the economy, it brought numerous other problems for the Ecuadorian people. Costs went up, and poverty worsened. The indigenous population suffered the most and, in 2000, thousands of protesters stormed congress, backed by the military, and ousted Mahuad from office in just three hours. He was replaced immediately by his vice-president, Gustavo Noboa, under whom the economy slowly started to recover.
In 2002, Lucio Gutirrez, one of the military leaders who had been involved in the coup to overthrow Mahuad, was elected President. Ecuador has lived in "relative" stability until today.
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