ECUADOR'S 150 YEARS

Tke First 140 Were tke Hardest

IN Quito (alt. 9,000 ft.) one cool morning last week, salvos of artillery and clanging bells from 150 churches awakened the capital and nation. People poured into the winding streets, cheered 6,000 parading soldiers and 25 stunting jets. President Camilo Ponce Enriquez attended a Te Deum in the 412-year-old cathedral, reviewed goose-stepping cadets, and recalled for assembled foreign diplomats and Houses of Congress a day in August 1809--the hour of "greatest Ecuadorian glory."

On Aug. 10, 150 years ago, a handful of Quito Creoles rose up, overthrew Spanish rule for the first time in South America. It took three more revolts before Ecuador decisively crushed Spanish power on May 23, 1822. An officer named Juan Jose Flores became President, preaching freedom and practicing tyranny. He wrote three constitutions, all disregarded.

The Great Conservative. Ecuador hustled Flores off to Europe in 1845 with a pension, and underwent 15 years of anarchy. For the next 15, the country was ruled by the greatest Ecuadorian of the 19th century. Gabriel Garcia Moreno hated democracy. He was a conservative, a working Roman Catholic who dressed in black, went daily to Mass and revered Thomas `a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ; he believed that "only through force may good be attained." But he also despised militarism, gave the country a uniform currency, the first highway between mountainous Quito and seaside Guayaquil, established an efficient treasury, schools, an observatory, and provided stability so that the country could grow. Yet Garcia ruled that non-Catholics might not be citizens, subordinated the state to the church, in 1873 solemnly dedicated Ecuador to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A leather worker hacked him to death in 1875. For the next 20 years Ecuador floundered through civil war, brigandage and six more dictators.

In 1895 a businessman (Panama hats) named Eloy Alfaro came to power, began a half century of Liberal Party control, marked by anticlericalism, e.g., confiscation of huge church estates, enactment of some of South America's first divorce laws. He built the buckety Quito-Guayaquil railroad. Then in 1912, Eloy Alfaro overreached for a third term, and the army handed him over to the fickle mob, which tore him limb from limb.

For 25 years after that, the generals, the bankers and Liberals gave Ecuador "chocolate prosperity," based on rich cacao plantations. Paris became the mecca of the planters, while back home the nation and the people lost ground, literally, to grabby neighbors: 26,000 sq. mi. to Brazil in 1904; 62,000 sq. mi. to Colombia in 1916; 79,000 sq. mi. to Peru in 1942, at gunpoint. By 1949, the nation had tried 15 constitutions, 44 presidents, only 10 of whom lasted out full terms.

Full-Term Presidents. Ecuador had nowhere to go but up. It did. In 1948 Manhattan-born Galo Plaza, onetime football player for U.C.L.A., won election at the head of an independent ticket. Plaza, now 53 and main speaker at the recent Puerto Rican conference of U.S. Governors, gave Ecuador its first census, developed the world's largest banana industry to relieve Ecuador's dependence on witches'-broom-diseased cacao, offered Ecuador "chemically pure" democracy, free of press censorship and police statism. He served out all his four years, the first president to do so in 28 years, boasted that "my full term healed Ecuador." Successor Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra also served out his term (1952-56).

Ecuador's current President, Ponce Enriquez, first Conservative in the office since 1895, provided the toughest test of the new stability. Squeezing through a split in the Liberals, Ponce won only 29% of the vote, topped his nearest Liberal opponent by only .5%, nevertheless was confirmed, and has held on with only a few uprisings, so mild as to be almost unnoticeable. After 150 years, Ecuador has learned how to live with freedom.

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