Ecuador

Sabado 15 de Agosto
nos han regalado dos sombreros
de Jipijapa.....

Ecuador
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Equador" redirects here. For the city in Brazil, see Equador, Rio Grande do Norte.
For a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of Ecuador.
Republic of Ecuador
República del Ecuador

Flag Coat of arms
Motto: "Dios, patria y libertad" (Spanish)
"Pro Deo, Patria et Libertate" (Latin)
"God, homeland and liberty"
Anthem: Salve, Oh Patria (Latin)
We Salute You, Our Homeland

Capital Quito
00°9′S 78°21′W
Largest city Guayaquil
Official languages Spanish
Ethnic groups 65% Mestizo, 25% Amerindian, 6% White, 3% Black
Demonym Ecuadorian
Government Presidential republic
- President Rafael Correa
- Vice President Lenín Moreno
Independence
- from Spain August 10, 1809
- from Spain May 24, 1822
- from Gran Colombia May 13, 1830
Area
- Total 256,370 km2 (73rd)
98,985 sq mi
- Water (%) 4
Population
- 2009 estimate 13,625,000[1] (66th)
- Density 53.8/km2 (151st)
139.4/sq mi
GDP (PPP) 2008 estimate
- Total $106.993 billion[2]
- Per capita $7,685[2]
GDP (nominal) 2008 estimate
- Total $52.572 billion[2]
- Per capita $3,776[2]
Gini 42 (medium)
HDI (2006) ▲ 0.807 (high) (72nd)
Currency U.S. dollar2 (USD)
Time zone ECT, GALT (UTC-5, -6)
Drives on the right
Internet TLD .ec
Calling code 593
1 Quechua and other Amerindian languages spoken by indigenous communities.
2 Sucre until 2000, followed by the U.S. dollar and Ecuadorian centavo coins
Ecuador (pronounced /ˈɛkwədɔr/), officially the Republic of Ecuador (Spanish: República del Ecuador, pronounced [reˈpuβlika ðel ekwaˈðor]), literally, "Republic of the equator") is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America (with Chile) that do not have a border with Brazil. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 965 kilometres (600 mi) west of the mainland. Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 256,371 square kilometres (98,985 sq mi). Its capital city is Quito, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic centre in Latin America.[3] The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic centre of Cuenca, the third largest city of this country, was also declared a World Heritage Site in 1999, for being an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas.[4] Ecuador is a medium-income country with an HDI score of 0.807 (2007), and about 38.3% of the people living below the poverty line.[5] Ecuador is also home—despite its size—to a great variety of species, many of them endemic, like those of the Galapagos islands. This species diversity makes Ecuador one of the top eighteen megadiverse countries in the world.[6]
Contents [hide]


Main article: History of Ecuador
Evidence of human cultures in Ecuador exists from c. 3500 B.C.[7] Many civilizations rose throughout Ecuador, such as the Valdivia Culture and Machalilla Culture on the coast, the Quitus (near present day Quito) and the Cañari (near present day Cuenca). Each civilization developed its own distinctive architecture, pottery, and religious interests. After years of fiery resistance by the Cayambes and other tribes, as demonstrated by the battle of Yahuarcocha (Blood Lake) where thousands of resistance fighters were killed and thrown in the lake, the region fell to the Incan expansion and was assimilated loosely into the Incan empire.
[edit]Inca Empire
Through a succession of wars and marriages among the nations that inhabited the valley, the region became part of the Inca Empire in 1463. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived from the north, the Inca Empire was ruled by Huayna Capac, who had two sons: Atahualpa, being in charge of the northern parts of the empire, and Huascar, seated in the Incan capital Cusco. Upon Huayna Capac's death in 1525, the empire was divided in two: Atahualpa received the north, with his capital in Quito; Huascar received the south, with its capital in Cusco. In 1530, Atahualpa defeated Huascar and conquered the entire empire for its own.
In 1531, the Spanish conquistadors, under Francisco Pizarro, arrived to find an Inca empire torn by civil war. Atahualpa wanted to reestablish a unified Incan empire; the Spanish, however, had conquest intentions and established themselves in a fort in Cajamarca, captured Atahualpa during the Battle of Cajamarca (1532), and held him for ransom. The Incas filled one room with gold and two with silver to secure his release. Despite being surrounded and vastly outnumbered, the Spanish executed Atahualpa. To escape the confines of the fort, the Spaniards fired all their cannon and broke through the lines of the bewildered Incas. In subsequent years, the Spanish colonists became the new elite, centering their power in the vice-royalties of Nueva Granada and Lima.
[edit]Colonization
Disease decimated the indigenous population during the first decades of Spanish rule — a time when the natives also were forced into the encomienda labor system for Spanish landlords. In 1563, Quito became the seat of a royal audiencia (administrative district) of Spain and part of the Vice-Royalty of Lima, and later the Vice-Royalty of Nueva Granada.


Old downtown Quito, one of the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
After nearly 300 years of Spanish colonization, Quito was still a small city of only 10,000 inhabitants. It was there, on August 10, 1809 (the national holiday), that the first call for independence from Spain was made in Latin America ("Primer Grito de la Independencia"), under the leadership of the city's criollos like Carlos Montúfar, Eugenio Espejo and Bishop Cuero y Caicedo. Quito's nickname, "Luz de América" ("Light of America"), comes from the idea that this first attempt produced the inspiration for the rest of Spanish America. Quito is also known as "La Cara de Dios" ("The Face of God") for its beauty.
[edit]Independence
Main article: Ecuadorian War of Independence
On October 9, 1820, Guayaquil became the first city in Ecuador to gain its independence from Spain. On May 24, 1822, the rest of Ecuador gained its independence after Field Marshal Antonio José de Sucre defeated the Spaniard Royalist forces at the Battle of Pichincha, near Quito. Following the battle, Ecuador joined Simón Bolívar's Republic of Gran Colombia - joining with modern day Colombia and Venezuela – only to become a republic in 1830.
The 19th century for Ecuador was marked by instability, with a rapid succession of rulers. The first president of Ecuador was the Venezuelan-born Juan José Flores, who was ultimately deposed, followed by many authoritarian leaders such as Vicente Rocafuerte; José Joaquín de Olmedo; José María Urbina; Diego Noboa; Pedro José de Arteta; Manuel de Ascásubi; and Flores's own son, Antonio Flores Jijón, among others. The conservative Gabriel Garcia Moreno unified the country in the 1860s with the support of the Roman Catholic Church. In the late 19th century, world demand for cocoa tied the economy to commodity exports and led to migrations from the highlands to the agricultural frontier on the coast.
[edit]Liberal Revolution
The coast-based Liberal Revolution of 1895 under Eloy Alfaro reduced the power of the clergy and the conservative land owners of the highlands, and this liberal wing retained power until the military "Julian Revolution" of 1925. The 1930s and 1940s were marked by instability and emergence of populist politicians such as five-time President José María Velasco Ibarra.

[edit]War with Peru
Main article: History of the Ecuadorian-Peruvian territorial dispute
[show]
Ecuadorian-Peruvian Wars


Colonial city gates of Loja
Control over territory in the Amazon basin led to a long-lasting dispute between Ecuador and Peru. In 1941, amid fast-growing tensions between the two countries, war broke out. Peru claimed that Ecuador's military presence in Peruvian-claimed territory was an invasion; Ecuador, for its part, claimed that Peru had invaded Ecuador. In July 1941, troops were mobilized in both countries. Peru had an army of 11,681 troops who faced a poorly supplied and inadequately armed Ecuadorian force of 2,300, of which only 1,300 were deployed in the southern provinces. Hostilities erupted on July 5, 1941, when Peruvian forces crossed the Zarumilla river at several locations, testing the strength and resolve of the Ecuadorian border troops. Finally, on July 23, 1941, the Peruvians launched a major invasion, crossing the Zarumilla river in force and advancing into the Ecuadorian province of El Oro.
During the course of the war, Peru gained control over part of the disputed territory and some parts of the province of El Oro, and some parts of the province of Loja, demanding that the Ecuadorian government give up its territorial claims. The Peruvian Navy blocked the port of Guayaquil, almost cutting all supplies to the Ecuadorian troops. After a few weeks of war and under pressure by the United States and several Latin American nations, all fighting came to a stop. Ecuador and Peru came to an accord formalized in the Rio Protocol, signed on January 29, 1942, in favor of hemispheric unity against the Axis Powers in World War II. As a result of its victory, Peru was awarded the disputed territory.
Recession and popular unrest led to a return to populist politics and domestic military interventions in the 1960s, while foreign companies developed oil resources in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In 1972, construction of the Andean pipeline was completed. The pipeline brought oil from the east side of the Andes to the coast, making Ecuador South America's second largest oil exporter. The pipeline in southern Ecuador did nothing, however, to resolve tensions between Ecuador and Peru.
The Rio Protocol failed to precisely resolve the border along a small river in the remote Cordellera del Cóndor region in southern Ecuador. This caused a long-simmering dispute between Ecuador and Peru, which ultimately led to fighting between the two countries; first a border skirmish in January-February 1981 known as the Paquisha Incident, and ultimately full-scale warfare in January 1995 where the Educadorian military shot down Peruvian aircraft and helicopters and Peruvian infantry marched into southern Ecuador. Each country blamed the other for the onset of hostilities, known as the Cenepa War. Sixto Durán Ballén, the Ecuadorian president, famously declared that he would not give up a single centimeter of Ecuador. Popular sentiment in Ecuador became strongly nationalistic against Peru: graffiti could be seen on the walls of Quito referring to Peru as the "Cain de Latinoamérica," a reference to the murder of Abel by his brother Cain in the Book of Genesis.[8] Ecuador and Peru reached a tentative peace agreement in October 1998, which ended hostilities.
[edit]Milita