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HISTORY OF ECUADOR

New Granada: AD 1740-1810

The modern nations of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador are grouped together, from 1740, as the Spanish viceroyalty of New Granada with its capital at Bogot?.

The second half of the 18th century is a time of considerable progress in the region. Spain relaxes the long-standing mercantilist restrictions on trade with its colonies, resulting in a rapid increase in prosperity. An educated and professional class of Creoles begins to emerge, self-confident and increasingly resentful of the privileges of the peninsulares. In these circumstances New Granada is a natural region for the first resistance to imperial rule. There is a brief uprising in Ecuador as early as 1809. But sustained opposition begins elsewhere a year later.

BolÃvar and Gran Colombia: AD 1810-1822

Sim€n BolÃvar, Venezuelan by birth and the central figure in the story of the independence movements of Latin America, is a young officer in Caracas in 1810. He is part of the conspiracy by which a junta expels the Spanish governor of the province of Venezuela, on April 19, and takes control. For the next twelve years BolÃvar's efforts are directed single-mindedly towards liberating the whole of New Granada from Spanish rule. There are many reverses on the way.

The optimism of July 1811, when a national assembly in Caracas formally declares Venezuela's independence, is followed by a complete reversal a year later. The Spanish authorities rally, recover a military initiative, and by July 1812 regain control of the entire province.

BolÃvar escapes to Cartagena, the main seaport of neighbouring Colombia. The city is in rebel hands, and here he pens a powerful political pamphlet, the Manifesto de Cartagena, addressed to the citizens of New Granada. In it he offers the inspiring vision of a united effort to expel the Spaniards.

He soon proves his own abilities in this great enterprise. In 1813, at the head of an army of liberation, he returns to Venezuela and wins six successive engagements against Spanish forces. On 6 August 1813 he enters Caracas. Welcomed as the Liberator, he takes political control with dictatorial powers.

Again success is short-lived. By July 1814 BolÃvar has once more lost Caracas. He marches instead to Bogot?, which he succeeds in recapturing from the Spanish. He makes this capital city his base for a while, but soon the Spanish recover it yet again. BolÃvar flees into exile, in Jamaica and Haiti. But by the end of 1817 he is back in Venezuela, building up a new army in an inaccessible region on the Orinoco river.

Here he conceives a bold plan. He will not make another attempt on Caracas. Instead he will strike at the capital city of New Granada by a route which is considered impossible - along the waterlogged plain of the Orinoco and then over the Andes for a surprise attack on Bogot?.

In 1819 BolÃvar's small force, of only about 2500 men, uses cowhide boats to cross a succession of flooded tributaries of the Orinoco (one of his men claims later that for seven days they marched in water up to their waists). This ordeal is followed by one even worse, a mountain crossing during which a considerable number of the rebel band die of cold.

But the surprise holds. They descend from the high passes upon an unsuspecting enemy. In an engagement at Boyac?, on 7 August 1819, the Spanish army surrenders. Three days later BolÃvar enters Bogot?. On December 17 the Republica de Colombia is proclaimed. It covers the entire region of modern Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

As yet the republic is little more than a notion, for Venezuela and Ecuador are still securely in Spanish hands. But the Liberator soon puts this right. In Venezuela on 24 June 1821 he wins a battle at Carabobo which yields to him once again his native city of Caracas. And in Ecuador on 24 May 1822 BolÃvar's favourite general, the young Antonio Jos» de Sucre, wins a victory at Pichincha and brings the patriots into Quito.

With this liberation of Ecuador, the Republica de Colombia becomes a reality as a free republic. (To avoid confusion with later republics of Colombia, BolÃvar's pioneering state has subsequently been given the name Gran Colombia by historians, and this now common anachronism is followed here.)

Gran Colombia: AD 1822-1830

Gran Colombia only has eight years as a functioning state, and they are increasingly turbulent. BolÃvar technically remains president even during the period (1823-6) when he is away controlling the campaign in Peru. In his absence the acting president is one of his trusted commanders, Francisco de Paula Santander, a native of Colombia.

Unfortunately another close colleague of BolÃvar's is increasingly discontent with the attempted rule of the entire region of Gran Colombia from the capital at Bogot?. The Venezuelan patriot Jos» Antonio P?ez leads a rebellion in 1826 demanding independence for Venezuela.

The crisis of 1826 brings BolÃvar back from Peru to Gran Colombia. He appeases P?ez, allowing him a degree of autonomy in Venezuela, but in doing so he provokes opposition in Colombia - where he assumes dictatorial powers in 1828 (and later in the same year is lucky to survive an assassination attempt).

Meanwhile Ecuador, the third part of Gran Colombia, has been in political turmoil since independence was first achieved in 1823; and its valuable southern port of Guayaquil has remained a bone of contention with Peru. The Peruvians invade in 1829. They are only driven back when Sucre emerges from his recent retirement and defeats them, against heavy odds, on the plain of Tarqui.

By 1830 BolÃvar is isolated, ineffective and increasingly ill. Santander has been exiled after the 1828 attempt on BolÃvar's life (in which he was not directly implicated). And in 1829 P?ez has launched a renewed separatist movement demanding Venezuelan independence.

In May 1830 BolÃvar decides to leave Bogot?, resigning as president and planning to retire to Europe. He only gets as far as Santa Marta, on the Atlantic coast of Colombia, where he dies of tuberculosis - but not before hearing of two final blows. In September both Ecuador and Venezuela secede formally from Gran Colombia. And June has brought news of a more personal loss.

Of his many devoted followers BolÃvar has always favoured the talented but unassuming Antonio Jos» de Sucre, treating him almost as a son and seeing him as his likely successor. Early in 1830 BolÃvar asks Sucre to preside over a congress in Bogot?, in a final attempt to hold Gran Colombia together. When the congress fails, Sucre sets off to ride home to Quito. He is assassinated on his journey, probably by agents of a political rival.

BolÃvar and his associates have won independence for the nations of Spanish America. But the republics begin their separate histories in a lethal atmosphere of mistrust and political gangsterism.

CaudÃllos and assassinations: AD 1830-1912

The early years of the republic of Ecuador (a region deriving its name from its position on the equator) are spent in a power struggle between two of the generals who have won the nation its independence. Both Juan Jos» Flores and Vicente Roqafuerte have fought in BolÃvar's campaigns.

The two men become associated with factions and power centres which constitute a lasting rivalry in Ecuador's history. Flores, a conservative, finds his support mainly in the ancient capital of Quito, a city in the highlands where the influence of the landed aristocracy and the church is strong. Rocafuerte, a liberal, has his following in the bustling modern commercial port of Guayaquil.

Flores, the younger man by seventeen years , is the first to take power. He leads Ecuador out of the federation of Gran Colombia and becomes the first president of the republic in 1830. After a liberal rebellion in 1834, and a year of civil war, Rocafuerte inherits the presidency in 1835 on an agreed basis of alternating terms of office. Rocafuerte duly yields to Flores in 1839, but Flores clings to power in 1843 - resulting in his overthrow and exile in 1845.

This semblance of political stability is followed by fifteen years of undeniable chaos, until in 1860 Gabriel GarcÃa Moreno, the first of Ecuador's two remarkable caudÃllos, seizes power.

GarcÃa Moreno is a political theorist whose ideas have been formed by the recent chaos in Ecuador and by Europe's year of revolutions in 1848. He has concluded that public order can only be safeguarded by the firm discipline of the Roman Catholic church.

He is well placed to impose such a view, for he is married to the daughter of the exiled conservative president Juan Jos» Flores. His father-in-law returns in 1860 to head a military coup which brings GarcÃa Moreno to the presidency. The new president restores order to Ecuador under a strong personal rule, placing much of the administration in the hands of clerics and suppressing every other religious affiliation together with all political opposition.

This spiritual rigour brings Ecuador stability, but it also provokes increasing liberal resentment - which finds violent expression in the assassination of GarcÃa Moreno in 1875 on the steps of the presidential palace.

This event exposes Ecuador to a renewed period of anarchy until the emergence of another caudÃllo, this time a liberal. Eloy Alfaro wins power in an uprising of 1895. His regime rescinds all the privileges granted to the Catholic church, and attempts to transform Ecuador into a secular state. As ever a return of strong rule brings economic benefits tarnished by political resentment. Alfaro is finally toppled in 1911. He is placed in a gaol in Quito, where a lynch mob breaks in during 1912 and kills him.

nstable times: AD 1912-1999

During most of the 20th century Ecuador has lacked the political stability to cope with its pressing social and economic problems. The career of the most charismatic politician of the period, Jos» MarÃa Velasco Ibarra, vividly demonstrates the point. Between 1934 and 1968 he is five times elected president, but on all but one of those occasions he is forcibly deposed before he has completed his four-year term (the exception is 1952-6).

An added distress in this mid-century period is the 1941 invasion by Peru of disputed territory in southeast Ecuador around the headwaters of the Amazon. Peruvian forces easily win the brief war. A peace conference in Rio de Janeiro grants Peru much of the region (a conclusion strenuously rejected in Ecuador).

During the 1970s Ecuador suffers a nine-year spell of military rule, but since 1979 the republic has functioned as a democracy - albeit with frequent complaints of corruption.

In 1996 Abdala Bucaram becomes president, but in the following year congress votes for his removal from office on the grounds of insanity. In 1998 Jamil Mahaud, formerly the mayor of Quito, is elected to the presidency.