Popular liberalism and Indian servitude: The making and unmaking of Ecuador's antilandlord state, 1845-1868

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 83, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 697-733

  Williams, Derek ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 14944355434     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-83-4-697     Document Type: Article

References (103)

1. There is a remarkable lack of consistency in the orthography of the president's paternal surname. Both "Urbina" and "Urvina" are used interchangeably in the historical documentation and historiography - sometimes in the same edited volume. See, e.g., Enrique Ayala Mora, ed., Nueva historia del Ecuador, 15 vols. (Quito: Corp. Ed. Nacional; Grijalbo, 1990), vol. 8
2. Following the president's own usual usage, I use "Urvina," "Urvinista," etc. For an explanatory note by Urvina's principal biographer, see Camilo Destruge Illingworth, Urvina el Presidente: Biografía del General José María Urvina (Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, 1992), 14-15
3. Urvina, "Mensaje del Presidente . . . sobre . . . aguas," 258
4. Urvina, "Mensaje" reprinted in Noboa, Recopilación, 2: del Presidente de la República," 16 Sept. 1856, 241
5. The historiography of the Audiencia of Quito is an increasingly illuminating one. A fruitful starting place is John Leddy Phelan's magisterial political and administrative history, The Kingdom of Quito in the Seventeenth Century: Bureaucratic Politics in the Spanish Empire (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1967)
6. and Rafael Quintero López's "El estado colonial," in Ayala Mora, Nueva historia del Ecuador, vol. 5
7. On state formation and the politics in early colonial period, see Karen Vieira Powers, Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogenesis, and the State in Colonial Quito (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1995)
8. On the late colonial origins of Ecuadoran regionalism, see Kenneth Andrien, The Kingdom of Quito, 1690-1830: "The State and Regional Development (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press)
9. For an influential historical sociology of Ecuadoran political culture and a provocative thesis that the paternalist colonial hacienda system served "as a model for national authority structures," see Oswaldo Hurtado, Political Power in Ecuador, trans. Nick D. Mills Jr. (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1980)
10. For an enlightening discussion of the conservative scope of political projects in postcolonial Ecuador in comparative Andean perspective, see Brooke Larson, "Andean Highland Peasants and the Trials of Nation Making during the Nineteenth Century," in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, ed. Frank Salomon and Stuart Schwartz (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999), 3:558-703
11. On Flores, see the impressively contextualized biography by Mark J. Van Aken, The King of the Night: Juan José Flores and Ecuador, 1824-1864 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1989). On García Moreno, see fn. 90
12. On the origins and development of Ecuadoran liberalism, see Enrique Ayala de Mora, Historia de la revolución liberal ecuatoriana (Quito: Corporación Editera Nacional, 1994)
13. Enrique Ayala Mora, Lucha política y origin de los partidos en Ecuador (Quito: Centro de Publicaciones, Pontificia Univ. Católica del Ecuador, 1978)
14. Nick D. Mills Jr., "Liberal Opposition in Ecuadorian Politics" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of New Mexico, 1972)
15. Urvina, "Mensaje del Presidente," 241
16. On the anti-Flores reaction, see Luis Robalino Dávila, La reacción anti-floreana (Puebla: J. Cajica, 1967)
17. Ayala, Lucha política, 75-94
18. Alfredo Pareja Díez Canseco, Historia de la República: El Ecuador desde 1830 a nuestros días (Quito: Ariel, 1974), 31
19. Van Aken, King of the Night, 196-201
20. Juan Maiguashca, "El proceso de integración nacional en el Ecuador: El rol del poder central, 1830-1895," in Historia y región en el Ecuador, 1830-1930, ed. Juan Maiguashca (Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 1994), 367, 373-77
21. "El Progreso," El Seis de Marzo, 28 Nov. 1845
22. Cited in Maiguashca, "El proceso de integración nacional," 377-78
23. Junius (Benigno Malo), "Literatura histórica - Semblanza de Urvina," La República (Cuenca), Apr. 1860, reprinted in Revista del Centro de Estudios Históricos y Geográficos de Cuenca 2, no. 5 (Nov. 1921): 84-88
24. See also the laudatory obituaries from 1891 collected in Destruge, Urvina el Presidente, 291-99
25. Urvina, "Mensaje a la Convención de 1852," reprinted in Noboa, Recopilación, 2:129
26. and Julio Tobar Donoso, "El general José María Urbina: Ensayo biográfico," Boletín de la Sociedad Ecuatoriana de Estudios Históricos Americanos 4, no. 12 (May/June 1920): 468-96
27. Hurtado, Political Power in Ecuador, 100
28. For midcentury anti-Jesuit sentiment, see, e.g., [Javier Endara] "Informe de la Gobernacion de . . . Imbabura," 13 July 1854
29. El Seis de Marzo, 21 Nov. 1854
30. El Seis de Marzo, 9 Sept. 1853
31. Maiguashca, "El proceso de integración nacional," 381, 410-12
32. Mark Van Aken, "The Lingering Death of Indian Tribute in Ecuador" Hispanic American Historical Review 61, no. 3 (1981): 429-59
33. Ministry of Interior report, 1854, cited in Maiguashca, "El proceso de integración nacional," 379
34. For two influential studies of postcolonial Indian-state relations emphasizing the "ethnocidal" consequences of liberal-minded land and fiscal policies, see Tristan Platt, "Liberalism and Ethnocide in the Southern Andes," History Workshop Journal 17 (1984): 3-17
35. and Andrés Guerrero, "Curagas y tenientes poĺiticos: La ley de la costumbre y el ley del estado (Otavalo, 1830-1875)," Revista Andina 7, no. 2 (1989): 321-65
36. For a critique of the generalized application of the " ethnocide" thesis and a compelling counterargument of re-Indianization in early-nineteenth-century Peru, see Paul Gootenberg, "Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru: Some Revisions," Latin American Research Review 26, no. 3 (1991): 109-57
37. Ley . . . de Indígenas, 23 Nov. 1854, reprinted in Historia social del Ecuador, ed. Piedad Peñaherrera de Costales and Alfredo Costales Samaniego, vol. 1, El concertaje de indios y manumisión de esclavos (Quito: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, 1964), hereafter cited as LI
38. Based on similar legislation from 1851, the 1854 law differed both in structure and content from earlier legislation. Absent from the 1854 law, for example, were separate sections addressing cabildos de indígenas, resguardos, and protectores de indígenas - all present in the earlier law. Lei de contribucion de indijenas, dada por la convencion nacional en 1851 (Quito: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1851)
39. Largely based on Juan de Velasco's influential writings in the late eighteenth century, Ecuador's indigenous population during the postindependence period had been customarily understood as comprising two parts - the sedentary, docile, and civilized sierra Indians and the nomadic, fierce, barbaric Amazon tribes. Juan de Velasco, Historia del reino de Quito en la America Meridional, que contiene la historia natural: año de 1879, ed. Agustín Yerovi (Quito: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1844), 183-216
40. On colonial and postcolonial discourse on the Indian, see also Hernan Ibarra, "La identidad de los indios modernos," in Indios: Una reflexión sobre el levantamiento indígena de 1990, ed. Ileana Almeida et al. (Quito: Abya-Yala, 1991)
41. The liberal understanding of and approach to the problems facing Indian society at midcentury are articulated most expressly in the publication of Manuel Villavicencio, Geografía de la República del Ecuador (New York: Imprenta de Robert Craighead, 1858), 165-77
42. On nineteenth-century liberal land reforms in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia in comparative context, see Larson, "Trials of Nation Making."
43. See also Florencia Mallon's cogent overview, "Indian Communities, Political Cultures, and the State in Latin America," Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (fall 1992): 35-53
44. and Erick Langer, "El liberalismo y la abolición de la comunidad indígena en el siglo XIX," Historia y Cultura 14 (1988): 59-95
45. LI, art. 47. The Ecuadoran law was not comparable, for example, to Bolivia's more comprehensive Ley de Exvinculación (1874) or Mexico's Ley Lerdo (1856). The absence of any anticommunity rhetoric made Urvinista land reforms more akin to the 1850s liberal reforms under Castilla in Peru. See Nils Jacobsen, "Liberalism and Indian Communities in Peru During the Nineteenth Century," in Robert Jackson, ed., Church and Indigenous Community Lands and the Challenge of Liberal Reform in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1997), 140, 144
46. Honorable [Deputy] Bustamante, in House of Representatives Session, 29 Sept. 1855, El Seis de Marzo, 29 Jan. 1856
47. As early as 1831, presidential decrees had outlined specific rights and obligations for conciertos. Juan Flores, circular, 18 Nov. 1831, cited in Pío Jaramillo Alvarado, El indio ecuatoriano: Contribución al estudio de la sociología nacional (Quito: Ed. Quito, 1922), 161-63
48. El Seis de Marzo, 29 Jan. 1856
49. Honorable [Deputy] Bustamante, in House of Representatives Session, 29 Sept. 1855
50. Guerrero, "Curagas y tenientes políticos."
51. Derek Williams, "Negotiating the State: National Utopias and Local Politics in Andean Ecuador, 1845-1895" (Ph.D. diss., State Univ. of New York-Stony Brook, 2001), chap. 3
52. Friedrich Hassaurek, Four Years among Spanish-Americans (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867)
53. All quotations from the work are taken from the 1967 abridged version, Four Years among the Ecuadorians, ed. C. Harvey Gardiner (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1967)
54. Hassaurek, Four Years, 170-71. Emphasis added
55. Hernán Ibarra, "Haciendas y concertaje al fin de la época colonial en Ecuador (Un análisis introductorio)," Revista Andina 6, no. 1 (1988): 175-95. The end of the quinta (literally, one-fifth of the working-age male Indians drafted on a rotating basis) also promoted the expanded use of other labor arrangements on haciendas, such as sharecroppers (partidarios), service tenants (yanaperos), and wage workers (jornaleros)
56. From the verb concertar - to agree - concertaje was similar to other debt service/tenancy arrangements elsewhere in Latin American, such as terrazgueraje in southwest Colombia or inquilinaje in Chie. On the nature and historical development of concertaje, see Peñaherrera de Costales and Costales Samaniego, Historia social del Ecuador, 1:283-87
57. Andrés Guerrero, La semántica de la dominación: El concertaje de indios (Quito: Libri Mundi; E. Grosse-Luemern, 1991), 83-86
58. Ibarra, "Haciendas y concertaje"; Roque Espinosa, "Hacienda, concertaje y comunidad en el Ecuador," Revista Cultura (Quito) 19 (1984)
59. Joseph Kolberg, Hacia el Ecuador - Nach Ecuador: Relatos de viaje, trans. Federico Yepez Arboleda (Quito: Centro de Publicaciones Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, 1977), 79; President, Message, ". . . Transmitting, . . . the Report of George Earl Church upon Ecuador," [21 Sept. 1881], 47th Congr., 2d Session, Ex. doc. no. 69, 16 Feb. 1883, 19
60. Pedro Fermín Cevallos, Resumen de la historia del Ecuador desde su origin hasta 1845, 2d ed. (Guayaquil: Imprenta de la Nación, 1889), 6:145
61. Historians have tended to view the state-sanctioned debtors' prison as the key to concertaje. Such an interpretation follows that of the early-twentieth-century "abolitionists" of concertaje, who believed eliminating debtors' prisons would end of labor servitude. For a convincing dissenting view, stressing the extraeconomic social and cultural bonds between peon and patron, see Guerrero, La semántica de la dominación, 83-86
62. The insufficiency of debt alone to translate into coercive power has been noted in other Latin American contexts of rural labor servitude. As Arnold Bauer notes, "To establish the presence of a functioning peonage, there must be evidence of the landowner's ability to restrict workers' mobility" ("Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression," Hispanic American Historical Review 59, no. 1 [1979]: 34-63)
63. See also Friedrich Katz, "Labor Conditions on Haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: Some Trends and Tendencies," Hispanic American Historical Review 54, no. 1 (1974): 1-47, esp. 15-23
64. On the 1855 debate, see Peñaherrera de Costales and Costales Samaniego, Historia social, 1:283-87
65. Andrés Guerrero, "The Construction of a Ventriloquist's Image: Liberal Discourse and the 'Miserable Indian Race' in Late-Nineteenth- Century Ecuador," Journal of Latin American Studies 29, no. 3 (1997): 555 -90
66. On hacendado interests and hacienda-community relations in Azuay during the early nineteenth century, see Silvia Palomeque, Cuenca en el siglo XIX: La articulación de una región (Quito: FLACSO/Abya-Yala, 1990), 146-85
67. "Informe de la Gobernador de . . . Loja . . . 1855," 28 June 1856, El Seis de Marzo, 12 Aug. 1856
68. "Informe del Gobernador de . . . Cuenca . . . 1855."
69. Jefe Político of Pujilí to Governor of Leon, 7 May 1867; Oficios de la Jefatura Política de Pujilí (1867), Archivo de la Gobernación de la Provincia de Cotopaxi (Latacunga) (hereafter AGPC), bundle 34. Elsewhere, such as the canton of Cumbe (province of Azuay), Indians entering into concertaje contracts were obliged by patrons to put up their community lands as collateral for their advances. Martha Moscoso, "La tierra: Espacio de conflicto y relación entre el estado y la comunidad en el siglo XIX," in Los Andes en la encrucijada: Indios, comunidades y estado en el siglo XIX, ed. Heráclio Bonilla (Quito: Libri Mundi; E. Grosse-Luemen; FLASCO, 1991), 385
70. The industry and strength of free communities in Imbabura relative to other serrano regions is evidenced both in statistical and anecdotal sources of the period. See, e.g., "Libro de Tributo," Otavalo, Archivo Histórico Nacional de Ecuador, Tributes 27, 1820
71. Edouardo André, "América equinoccial (Colombia-Ecuador)," in América pintoresca: Descripción y viajes al Nuevo Continente por los más modernos exploradores: Carlos Wiener, Doctor Crevaux, D. Charney, etc. (Barcelona: Montaner y Simon, 1884), 827
72. and IOA, Jefetura Política (hereafter JP) 1, caja 43, doc. 1165 (1865)
73. [Various gañanes vs. Hacienda Pinsaquí], IOA, JP1, caja 43, doc. 1165 (1865). For similar lawsuits initiated by Imbabura-area conciertos claiming rights granted under Article 51, see, e.g., Siete gañanes vs. Hacienda Perugache, IOA, JP2, caja 50, doc. 888 (1857)
74. IOA, JP1, caja 43, doc. 1066, ff. 23-31
75. Williams, "National Utopias and Local Politics," chap. 2
76. Rosemary Bromley and Robert J. Bromley, "The Debate on Sunday Markets in Nineteenth-Century Ecuador," Journal of Latin American Studies 7, no. 1 (1975): 85-108
77. "Acuerda municipal," Reglamento de artesanos, sirvientes de diversas clases, 13 Aug. 1861, Ordenanzas y acuerdos municipales, 1861-80
78. "Reglamento y ordenanza"
79. "Reglamento de Policia."
80. Reglamento de artesanos, art. 13
81. Detailed studies of Indian-state politics at the local level in the Garcían era do not exist. But see Williams, "The Making of Ecuador's Pueblo Católico, 1861-1875," Political Cultures in the Andes, 1750-1950, ed. Cristóbal Aljovin and Nils Jacobsen (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, forthcoming)
82. Maiguashca, "El proceso de integración nacional," 383
83. On García Moreno and his state- and nation-building project, see Marie-Danielle Demélas and Yves Saint-Geours, Jerusalem y Babilonia: Religión y política en el Ecuador, 1780-1880, trans. Carmen Garatea Yuri (Quito: Corporación Ed. Nacional, 1988)
84. Enrique Ayala Mora and Rafael Cordero Aguilar, "El período Garcíano: Panorama histórico (1860-1895)," in Ayala, Nueva historia del Ecuador, vol. 7
85. Derek Williams, "Assembling the 'Empire of Morality': State Building Strategies in Catholic Ecuador, 1861-1875," Journal of Historical Sociology 14, no. 2 (2001): 149-74
86. Williams, "Empire of Morality."
87. Guerrero, "The Construction of a Ventriloquist's Image," 562-68
88. On the construction of a common discursive framework as a critical element of hegemonic processes, see William Roseberry, "Hegemony and the Language of Contention," in Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1994), 361-65
89. El Nacional, 4 Mar. 1874
90. Similar arguments would be made by conservative landlords in the early twentieth century; see, e.g., Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, Política conservadora (Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador; Corporación Ed. Nacional, 1981)
91. On the representations of Indians by indigenista thinkers in early-twentieth-century Ecuador, see Kim Clark, "La medida de la diferencia: Las imágenes indigenistas de los indios serranos en el Ecuador (1920s a 1940s)," in Ecuador racista: Imágeries e identidades, ed. Emma Cervone and Fredy Rivera Vélez (Quito: FLACSO, 1999)
92. The articulation of the conservative ideology in the second half of the 1860s was typically framed as a reaction to the diffusion the Urvinista antilandlord initiatives. See, e.g., the pro-García Moreno periodical La Estrella de Mayo (Quito), no. 1 (1 July 1868)
93. Destruge, Urvina el Presidente. Quotation from 295
94. Guerrero, "A Ventriloquist's Image," 587
95. Ayala, Revolución liberal, 206
96. See, for example, Rafael Quintero, El mito del populismo en el Ecuador (Quito: Univ. Central del Ecuador, 1983)
97. Williams, "The Making of Ecuador's Pueblo Católico."
98. On counterrevolutionary "Christian populism" in nineteenth-century France, see Raymond Jonas, France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic Tale for Modern Times (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2000)
99. Larson, "Trials of Nation-Making," 600
100. Blanca Muratorio, "Nación, identidad y etnicidad: Imágines de los indios ecuatorianos y sus imagineros a fines del siglo XIX," in Muratorio, Imágenes e imagineros
101. Williams, "Assembling the State."
102. Guerrero, "A Ventriloquist's Image," 568-70
103. For a comprehensive overview on the relationship between central and local governance in nineteenth-century Ecuador, see Enrique Ayala, "El municipio en el siglo XIX," Procesos: Revista Ecuatoriana de Historia 1, no. 2 (1991): 69-96