The Republic
The Republic of Ecuador as such, saw the light in 1830 when it definitively abandoned the Gran Colombia federation due to internal problems. For the nascent nation, the liberator Antonio José de Sucre who came from Colombia to Quito was expected as president to probably take the reins of the country due to his great popularity in the southern department, but he fell dead after being shot on the way; According to the most widespread versions, he was ordered to be assassinated by the Venezuelan Juan José Flores who, in the end, took the first presidency of the Republic of Ecuador.
After three presidents, from 1845 to 1859 there was a period of liberal governments until a new revolt led to new elections where the figure of Gabriel García Moreno came to national politics in 1859 and until 1875, the year in which he was assassinated. García Moreno governed with an authoritarian, repressive and dictatorial regime linked to the Catholic clergy and that although it promoted a policy of construction of public works such as the railroad, schools and hospitals, it was overshadowed by the multiple and constant violations of human rights and freedom. cult.
After the death of Gabriel García Moreno, the two political parties of Ecuador tried to unify their thinking towards what would be called progressivism to a kind of liberal conservatism.
The most important moment of this stage would be when the well-known Sale of the Flag was held during the period of President Luis Cordero, which triggered the military revolt that gave rise to Ecuadorian liberalism with Eloy Alfaro as constitutional president.
There was a Plural Civil-Military Government in which each member of the junta governed for a week, thus governing until March 1926 when the junta ceased its activity and Isidro Ayora was appointed as president, who issued a new constitution, number 13, during his government the Central Bank of Ecuador, the Development Bank, the Superintendency of Banks, the Pension Fund, the National Customs Directorate, among other state agencies were created; In 1930 a general deflation took place and Ayora was pressured to resign, leaving power to the Minister of Government, Luis Larrea Alba, who assumed power on August 24, 1931 and before the refusal of the congress to acquire full powers, he decided to dissolve it and the people reacted against the dictatorship and thus he handed over power to the president of the Senate, Alfredo Baquerizo Moreno, who called presidential elections for October, and after a series of problems of governments, Velasco Ibarra took office in 1934.
Present
According to youremailverifier, the last decades of Ecuadorian history have been marked by political instability. Since the 1980s, the measures of the IMF and other international economic institutions have deepened the social crisis.
During the 1990s, popular discontent with neoliberal policies, the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, the North American presence at the Manta base, the implementation of Plan Colombia, and internal corruption, caused the fall of several governments.
The promises of Lucio Gutiérrez, the winner in the 2002 elections, were also a dead letter. The demonstrations that took place in Ecuador during 2005 ended up removing him from the presidency.
In the 2006 elections, the victory of Rafael Correa, a 43-year-old economist, at the head of the Alianza País movement, restored hope to Ecuadorians to re-found the nation. Upon being invested as president, he proclaimed the citizen’s revolution with five fundamental axes. First, the constitutional revolution. To carry out these transformations, the people decided in a referendum to establish a Constituent Assembly to draft the new Magna Carta.
The 15 of April of 2007 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, which promulgated a new constitution, in force since October 2008. Due to the new Constitution, general elections had to be called to designate the authorities, thus, in 2009President Correa was re-elected to his position in a single round, a position he held since August 10 of the same year. being reelected in the presidential elections of 2013 winning again in a single round with 57.17% of the votes.
The fight against corruption, as well as the economic revolution and the renegotiation of the debt only on legitimate grounds, constitute other objectives for the current presidency. Alianza País has also moved towards more equitable social policies. In the international arena, it has prioritized Latin American integration.
In the 2017 presidential elections, the successor of President Correa, Lenín Moreno, is elected as president after defeating the opposition Guillermo Lasso, with promises to continue the legacy of Rafael Correa in the country.
Earthquake 2016
The 16 of April of 2016 occurs devastating earthquake of magnitude 7.8 on the Richter scale recorded at 18.58 (local time) [1] . The telluric movement lasted approximately one minute [2] .
The epicenter of the earthquake was located in the Muisne Canton, between the towns of Cojimíes and Pedernales (coastal resorts), in the north of the Manabí province (northwest) and adjacent to Esmeraldas, at a depth of 20 kilometers, being perceptible in the entire Ecuadorian coast (provinces of Guayas, Santa Elena, Los Ríos, Santo Domingo and El Oro), several provinces of the Sierra Norte of the country (Carchi, Imbabura, Pichincha and the Metropolitan District of Quito), to the southwest of Colombia in lNariño, Cauca, Valle del Cauca, Cali, Popayán, Pasto and Neiva and in border areas with Peru in cities such as Tumbes, Piura and Jaén.
Several parameters, in addition to the magnitude, made the earthquake the most powerful to have occurred in the country in 36 years, the last one of greater magnitude had been in 1979 [3] .
The death toll reached 661 and the total injured 17,674. A total of 113 people were rescued alive. The earthquake caused considerable material damage in a radius of several hundred kilometers and affected important cities such as Manta and Portoviejo and in several districts of the most populated city in the country, Guayaquil.
Among the deceased, 29 foreign citizens were counted: from Colombia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, England, Ireland, Italy, France, Germany, the United States and [12] [13] [14] and three Cuban doctors: Bárbara Caridad Cruz Ruiz, from 46 years old, specialist in Comprehensive General Medicine and Internal Medicine, from the Cienfuegos province ; Leonardo Ortiz Estrada, 53, specialist in Comprehensive General Medicine, resident in Villa Clara, a native of Manzanillo, Granmaprovince, and Eric Omar Pérez de Alejo Quesada, 41, who was also a specialist in Comprehensive General Medicine in Villa Clara province [15] .
There were 13 missing persons, 29,301 sheltered, 6,998 destroyed buildings, 2,740 buildings and 281 affected schools.
The economic losses caused were estimated at around 3,000 million dollars (almost 2,650 million euros), a figure that represents 3% of the country’s GDP.
