It's Bicentennial Time, Again

Last summer, on my first visit to Ecuador, I considered myself lucky to be in the country at the

very moment it was celebrating its bicentennial. Quito was full of events and commemorative celebrations last year, and I attended as many as I could, eager to take advantage of the being here at the exact right time. My Ecuadorean friends, on the other hand, seemed rather unmoved by the ruckus. I chalked this up to a lack of patriotism.

August 2009

Fast forward to this month, August 2010, and I find I'm in the midst of a whole new series of bicentennial commemorations. On my desk right now is a guide to events entitled, "Vive el Bicentenario 2010." What's going on, wasn't 2009 the bicentennial year? Can there really be two bicentennials? Well, yes. And given Ecuador's long, labored birth, bicentennial celebrations are likely to last for many years to come, perhaps until 2030.

The tepid reaction of my friends to the events of 2009 was not so much a lack of patriotism as a defense mechanism: they were just settling in for the long haul.

How is it that the first country in Latin America to celebrate its bicentennial could, in reality, have been one of the last to achieve true independence, in 1830? The story is complicated. I'll do my best to be succinct.

The story of Latin American independence from Spain begins with the French, of course. One thing I've learned in my life is that if I dig deep enough into almost any inquiry, there is certain to be a French connection.

In 1808, Napolean invaded Spain, conquered and installed his hapless brother, Joseph, on the throne. In the colonies, this produced the odd situation in which the people, loyal to the deposed King, Ferdinand VII, suddenly found themselves being ruled by officials who were functionaries of a French King, Joseph Bonaparte (see dandy Joe, at right).

For a number of reasons, this was felt more acutely in Quito than elsewhere in South America. First of all, Quito was the intellectual center of the region, perhaps of all Spanish South America. An important and prolonged French scientific expedition (those French again) to the equator in 1736 exposed Quitenians to the ideals of the enlightenment. Meanwhile, Quito was home to three universities and was beginning to produce thinkers who were daring to question the colonial system.

Finally, Quito's political status as a political also-ran added pressure to stand on its own in an apparent new world order. Despite its cultural importance, Quito was always second as a center of power. First, it was under the administration of the Viceroy of Peru, in Lima and then under a new viceroyalty created in the north, Nueva Granada, headquartered in Bogota. Even during the Inca empire, Quito was the northern capital, playing second fiddle to Cuzco.

So, in August of 1809, a group of leading Quito creols, or "criollos" as the native-born whites were called, declared independence. Actually, independence might be too strong a word. What they established was a self-governing entity, loyal to Ferdinand, the true King of Spain, but autonomous from the viceroys in Bogota and Lima as well as the royal representative, count Ruiz de Castilla.

This revolt in Quito marked the first instance in Spanish America of locally born elites seizing power. This despite more than two centuries during which political power in the colonies was exercised exclusively by envoys from Spain. With revolutions in North America, France, and Haiti, it isn't surprising that this spark in Quito lit the fire of independence throughout the Spanish colonies and led to Quito being nicknamed by Latin American patriots, "Luz de America" (The Light of America).

Unfortunately for Quito--but central to understanding her many bicentennials--this spark was extinguished here rather quickly. By December 1809, troops from Bogota and Lima had descended on Quito and imposed martial law. Some forty of the town's leading citizens were thrown into the dungeon beneath the main military barracks in the center of town. Count Ruiz de Castilla, nominally back in power, promised there would be no reprisals. Yet the real power was in the hands of the military and their undisciplined soldiery who not only kept the rebel leaders in jail but became increasingly rowdy with the townspeople, as soldiers tend to do under conditions of extended martial law.

By the summer of 2010, the citizens of Quito had had enough and determined to liberate the rebel leaders from the dungeons. At 1:30 on August 2, 1810, two hundred years ago almost to the minute from when I writing these words, the bells of the main churches in Quito began to peal to signal the revolt. The timing was designed to coincide with the soldiers's midday meal. But the soldiers, perhaps tipped off to the plan, were ready. Not only did they crush the effort to storm the dungeons, they took the opportunity to massacre all the prisoners, forty feeble men exhausted after six months of subterranean confinement. Only two escaped, making their way through the sewers of the dungeon to a nearby river.

Once the soldiers had completed their grisly task in the dungeons they turned on the townspeople in a spree of random reprisal killings that left more than 300 dead in the streets and patios of the city. More than 1% of the population were shot and bayonetted to death before the violence ended around 3pm.

Quito's declaration of "independence" in August 1809, while endorsed by some freedom-minded revolutionaries in other colonies, had been met with only weak support from most of the empire; in fact, only a few minor neighboring cities joined Quito in declaring autonomy. However, the bloodletting the following year solidified opposition not only to the French King, but against Spanish rule of any sort. The Quito massacre caused Simon Bolivar (at right), who had not yet taken up arms against Spain to declare himself to "a war to the death against Spain."

After the events of August 2, 1810, things in Quito settled into an exhausted calm. First, a form of limited self-government was established but by 1812 this had devolved into full reassertion of royal control and the independence movement seemed dead. Elsewhere, however, the revolution was picking up steam.

By 1820 armies led by Bolivar in the north and Jose Marti in the south were advancing towards Quito and Lima, constricting the Royalist forces of Spain who, although now liberated of their French King, were still fighting tooth and nail to maintain their empire. On the 24th of May, 1822, rebel forces led by Bolivar and his deputy, Antonio Jose de Sucre (left), defeated Spanish forces in the Battle of Pichincha, within view of the city of Quito.

Spanish control of Quito and lands that would become Ecuador was over, but the country was not yet independent. Bolivar's dream of a united continent was not be, even he could see that regional rivalries on the continent were too big to overcome as, one by one, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, and Peru established independent entities.

But Bolivar still hoped to keep intact the lands that had once been the Viceroyalty of New Granada, basically comprising today's states of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. Bolivar called the country, Gran Colombia and the great liberator set himself up as its "President for life." Alas, this dream was not to be either. Despite Bolivar's charisma, jealousies prevailed and Gran Colombia slowly began to split apart. Just before his death in December 1830, Bolivar renounced control of his splintering nation. He had lived just long enough to see his dream fall to pieces as Venezuela and then Ecuador, in September, 1380, declared themselves independent states. (Panama would finally be prised away from Colombia in 1903 by Teddy Roosevelt who wanted a to build a canal.)

From 1809 until 1830, Ecuador was fighting, in one way or another, for independence. A group of rebellious, locally-born elites in Quito gave first expression to the desire for self-government in Latin America, but as the seeds of independence sown in Quito slowly bore fruit elsewhere, the city would see its leaders massacred and its lands forcibly reverted to royal control for more than ten years. Later, once the mantle of Spain had been thrown off, Quito and the surrounding country continued to live under dictatorial domination, this time from Bogota in the person of the great Liberator himself, Simon Bolivar.

It's a long, sad story. Today, August 2, 2010, Quito commemorates the bicentennial of the massacre of its revolutionary leaders and hundreds of its citizens, but the bicentennial celebrations of the country's independence will continue for years to come.

The (first) Declaration of Independence, August 10, 1809