Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0118/01184.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 27KB | 455 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01184}
$Pretitle{252}
$Title{Ecuador
Chapter 5A.   Social System}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Thomas E. Weil}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{sierra
class
social
middle
lower
indians
costa
society
upper
classes}
$Date{1973}
$Log{}
Country:     Ecuador
Book:        Ecuador, A Country Study
Author:      Thomas E. Weil
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 5A.   Social System

     As a society, Ecuador possesses features common to many states in an
early stage of the development process. Its rigid class structure, presided
over by a small traditional elite and resting on a base formed by a large
rural underclass, could be duplicated in developing countries in various parts
of the world. Its closed, hierarchic institutions, fragmented both
horizontally with respect to geographical location and vertically with respect
to social class, bear a recognizable likeness to institutions in other
developing nations. Typically also it adheres to value orientations determined
in times long past. Furthermore, Ecuador shares with preindustrial societies
everywhere in the twentieth century its confrontation with profound social
change.

     When Ecuador is observed alongside other Latin American countries, the
similarities increase. Resemblances are particularly strong between its social
system and those of its nearest neighbors, the other Andean states. The
nations of the Andean region are situated far from the avenues of trade and
immigration of recent centuries and are set in rugged landscape. Each of these
countries has lived in isolation from the world outside; furthermore, every
area of each has been separated from the rest of the country to which it
belongs. The effects of psychological as well as physical isolation can also
be perceived in them, since the great bulk of their inhabitants are persons
belonging to cultural entities conquered by the Spaniards but never
assimilated either by them or by the republic that succeeded them. Thus all of
the Andean societies combine customs, institutions, and beliefs inherited from
medieval Spain with customs, institutions, and beliefs that go back to the
pre-Columbian societies of the region, creating a distinctive Andean pattern.

     Yet the conditions that have shaped Ecuador as a nation have given it a
social configuration not precisely like that of any of its neighbors. First,
fragmentation and separatism have been carried to their extreme limit; second,
these forces have been exerted in a way that has resulted in a uniquely
Ecuadorian problem-the polarization between the Sierra and Costa; third, the
static quality of the society has been especially pronounced, and resistance
to change has been more successfully prolonged here than elsewhere; and
fourth, because of the newly discovered petroleum resources this
traditionalism now faces what may become the most abrupt economic rise in the
history of the continent.

     Scholars report an age-old cultural discontinuity that reflects the
fragmented topography of the country; they described, for example, Indian
communities that have lived for centuries a few miles apart with little or no
interaction between them. Even the towns and cities of the Sierra preserve
today much of the separatism and self-sufficiency that has characterized them
since colonial times. Neither the Inca Empire nor the Spanish conquest
succeeded in unifying the people of these titled, fractured lands, and the
success of the Republic of Ecuador in achieving unification has been limited.

     The economic and social differences between the people of the highlands
and those of the coastal plains are formidable in all the Andean countries. In
Ecuador, however, they have been exacerbated by an approximate balance of
strength between the two regions. Whereas in other countries either Sierra or
Costa managed to dominate the whole, the struggle here went on and on, and the
national government remained in a state of perpetual fluctuation between the
two poles, Quito and Guayaquil. In discussing Ecuador as a social system this
dichotomy creates a problem: nearly every feature must be described twice,
because neither the customs and institutions of the Sierra nor those of the
Costa have established themselves as the predominant social system of the
country.

     The singularly static quality of Ecuadorian society has been, at least in
part, a functiom of the country's relative poverty. In Peru and what is now
Bolivia, impressive mineral wealth was discovered soon after the conquest.
Colombia, Chile, and Venezuela, during succeeding centuries, were found to
possess mineral or agricultural resources (or both) attractive enough to bring
a stream of capital and immigration from the outside world; thus both the
economic capacity for change and the availability of models of a more advanced
life-style were present in those countries. Like the other Andean counties,
Ecuador was subjected to the intensive search for hidden treasure, but little
comparable to its neighbors' natural resources was brought to light until the
discovery of major petroleum fields in 1967. Thus the presence of important
modernizing influences is either very recent or still to come.

     As might be anticipated in a society so divided and so oriented toward
the past, its characteristic traits are apparent not only in the structure of
the society itself but also in the substructures: its institutions. The
institutions in question relate to agriculture, business and trade, education,
political parties, and every other aspect of the country's life. In each,
whatever its function, vertical and horizontal disjunctions split the whole
into segments; in each there exists, to a greater or lesser degree, a
polarization between the part in the Sierra and that in the Costa;
furthermore, entrenched traditionalism in each confronts forces of change that
show signs of gathering strength. Institutional religion and the institutions
related to the family provide clear examples of the ways in which these trends
operate in other contexts as well (see Family and Kinship; Religious Life,
this ch.).

     Social value orientations continue to manifest little change since
colonial times. The society's values had their origin, at the conscious level,
in the country's Hispanic heritage; there are also deep, less conscious
loyalties to indigenous-or, in some areas, Negro-values. All of these,
Hispanic and non-Hispanic alike, form a single, amalgamated tradition.

     Changing conditions have been slowly shifting the foundations of the
society; many of the traditional values have been gradually reinterpreted, but
few have as yet been transformed beyond recognition. The ways in which a more
rapid rate of change will modify this traditional social system can be
extrapolated only in part from the experience of other countries, even those
in the kindred Andean group. The character of Ecuador itself, the suddenness
with which its economic rise is expected to begin, and the timing of this
occurrence in relation to world conditions and the climate of world opinion
may give the country's imminent development a pattern distinctively its own.

Class Structure

     Class cleavages are extreme in all parts of the country. Members of
different classes diverge from one another in ways that are clearly
apparent-in physical appearance, in dress, and in general life-style. Rigid
class distinctions are supported by a strong tradition of social distance
between the gente decente (gentlefolk) and the pueblo (common people). A
static economic system, limiting opportunities for upward mobility has
reinforced the barriers between classes erected by long-prevailing social
conservatism.

     Class structure in the Sierra differs profoundly from that of the Costa.
The Sierra is the center of resistance to change. The society of its upland
valleys took shape around a static agricultural economy created in colonial
times by Spanish settlers, many of them scions of noble families, who