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Marqueses, cacaoteros y vecinos de Portoviejo:
cultura política en la Presidencia de Quito
Colonial Period
Marqueses, cacaoteros y vecinos de Portoviejo: cultura política en la Presidencia de Quito. By Carmen Dueñas S. De Anhalzer. Quito: Universidad San Francisco de Quito, 1997. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. 320 pp. Paper. Relatively few students of the late colonial and independence periods have focused on Ecuador, although recent contributions by Kenneth J. Andrien, Martin Minchom, and Anthony McFarlane have made the colonial kingdom's history more accessible. Marqueses, cacaoteros y vecinos de Portoviejo adds to this literature with a perceptive and reasonably detailed examination of three Ecuadorian regions.
This version of a 1992 University of Florida dissertation titled "The Political Culture of Quito at Independence: A Regional Comparison," provides a comparative analysis of the political culture of the aristocracy in Quito, the merchants and planters in Guayaquil, and the inhabitants of the province of Portoviejo, which is located roughly north of Guayaquil and southwest of Quito. The book examines each region in turn, considering its economy, society, tensions, and participation in the independence movements. In addition, the author gives particular attention to the different language each region's inhabitants employed in their political discourse.
The portrait that emerges confirms the accepted vision of the city of Quito as an aristocratic center marked by economic stagnation at best and of Guayaquil as a less socially pretentious and more economically expansive region benefiting from the Bourbon reforms and the related substantial growth of cacao exports. The discussion of Portoviejo adds significantly to appreciating the complexity of the Kingdom of Quito. A center for contraband trade and thus a competitor with Guayaquil, Portoviejo had a much more egalitarian population. As in Guayaquil, its population grew substantially after 1765. Colonial secular and religious administration were weak, and the inhabitants had little respect for authority. Efforts at reform introduced by visitor general José García de León y Pizarro--for example, the establishment of monopolies for brandy and tobacco--were highly unpopular, and illegal trade with Panama increased until a contemporary authority alleged that it was greater than the legal trade through Guayaquil. [End Page 185]
The different social and economic conditions present in the late colonial period in Quito, Guayaquil, and Portoviejo produced divergent responses to the political events that began in 1808. The junta created in Quito in 1809 justified and sought to legitimize its actions through an appeal to the past. In 1820, in contrast, the junta in Guayaquil drew upon the ideas and language of the Enlightenment and thus represented a more modern response. Portoviejo followed a third course that reflected its more open frontier society. Although affected little by the Enlightenment, it exhibited both democratic characteristics and an appeal to the past. The pronounced regionalism of the late colonial period thus persisted into independence and ultimately fed into the liberal-conservative divisions in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Marqueses, cacaoteros y vecinos de Portoviejo rests on a solid documentary base. The author uses archival materials in Spain and Ecuador, printed primary sources that include travel accounts, and secondary literature related both to the history of Ecuador and to theoretical approaches to the analysis of language and ideology. Unfortunately, Andrien's recent volume on the Kingdom of Quito appeared too late for Anhalzer to use.
This valuable multiregional study adds nuance to understanding the late colonial period and the varied responses to the crisis of independence in Ecuador, although the aptness of comparing the political discourse of 1809 in Quito with that of 1820 in Guayaquil is questionable. One hopes for an English edition of the book to serve nonspecialists.
Mark A. Burkholder
University of Missouri, St. Louis
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Marqueses, cacaoteros, y vecinos de Portoviejo: (cultura politica en la Presidencia de Quito) (review)
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