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

¡Achachay!

"Achachay!" That's what people in Quito say when it's cold.

It is a Quichua word. Quichua is derived from the old Inca language, Quechua, the lingua franca used in the polyglot Inca empire before the Spanish conquest in the 1530s. Quichua is still spoken by the native inhabitants of the Andean sierra that runs down the center of Ecuador, dividing the steaming Amazon valley in the east from the hot and dry lands of the Pacific coast. There are a number of Quichua words in common use by the Spanish-speaking majority in Ecuador today, but to me, none has the same resonance, the same onomatopoeic ability to capture that bone-chilling feeling when an Andean wind whips down from the summit of a nearby peak. "Achachay!" Or -- as has been my situation these past few weeks -- when you step out of a warm bed into the chill of an unheated Quito apartment. "Achachay!"

For people from temperate climates, the Equator can conjure nasty images of extreme heat, of undulating waves of hot, sticky air, Conrad-esque scenes of languid Europeans driven half mad by the sun and the heat. At best, the Equator can evoke thoughts of a cool drinks sipped under a leafy palms or on the veranda of an exotic hotel with a decadent, imperial sounding name like the Raffles, or maybe the Peninsula.

But here in Ecuador -- a country that takes its name from the Ecuator itself -- it's freezing. That's right, North America and Europe may be suffering through heat waves this July, but here on the Equator I'm wearing two shirts and a sweater and am considering pulling on some long underwear.

I'm not exaggerating. The temperature in Quito hasn't risen above 70-degrees in the past two weeks and every day has brought bone-chilling rain, often buckets of it. At night, temperatures regularly drop into the 40s.

Despite the withering equinoctial sun, the high altitudes of the Andean Cordillera keeps Quito's temperatures mild. Mornings and evenings tend to be cool while the days--warmed by the fierce sun high overhead--are balmy and can even get quite hot for a few hours at mid day. This makes for the ideal climate, not unlike Cape Cod or the coast of Maine in the height of summer where residents swap shorts and bathing suits for long pants and sweaters as evening falls. In

fact, the temperatures in Quito are normally so mild that houses are built with neither air

conditioning nor heating. A friend from New York who spent time in Ecuador calls it, "the best climate on the planet."

The problem with this climactic model, however, is that when it's rainy--as it has been every day this month--the sun's warmth doesn't penetrate the clouds to warm things up and the chill of the high Andes predominates (Quito sits at 2800 meters/9,300 ft). Repeat this day after day, and the ground gets get colder and colder and colder and people suffer more and more. (See a picture of cloudy Quito, at right.)

I'm not the only one bewildered. Quitenians themselves don't know what to make of this weather. It seems as if everyone I know is sniffling and coughing and wearing scarves wrapped tight around their necks. Yesterday, I saw a woman in a knit cap and gloves. A common greeting on the streets these days is the questioning lament, "Why is it so cold?" The response is to blame climate change or of all things, global warming, and the underlying tone betrays a real fear this state of affairs is here to stay.

Last year at around this same time I arrived in Quito and stayed nearly two months during which time I didn't rain once. It seemed like paradise then. I'm starting to have doubts about paradise. ¡Achachay!

Colibri

A hummingbird in flight is wondrous. The small body seems to hang suspended without support, the wings beating so rapidly they are imperceptible to human sight (although not to the camera). The rapid, frenetic movements as the tiny bird moves left or down, or sideways or up seem to obey no pattern. Trying to follow the bird's flight is more like following the movements of a bumble-bee than a bird.

Along my regular west to east walk across Quito--back to my apartment after Spanish class--there is a two-block stretch of road so steep that steps replace asphalt. It is an unlikely concession to foot traffic in this pedestrian-unfriendly city and it is one of the highlights of my 40-minute walk. The steps are bordered on either side by a strip of grass and set amidst the grass is a series of stubbly, flowering trees. The trees are in bloom at the moment and the little flowers look like minuscule, orange trumpets. The other day, darting between the flowers, I saw a hummingbird.

The sight of the tiny bird, contentedly sucking nectar just a few feet away left me staring in wonder. I've never been much of a bird watcher, but hummingbirds have always fascinated me. They are so tiny, so delicate, that after staring at one all other birds seem clumsy, lumbering beasts.

Hummingbirds--known as colibri in Spanish (that has a nice ring to it, I think, even better than hummingbird)--are notoriously sensitive to pollution and this city would seem too dirty to harbor the delicate birds. In fact, one of the most exhaust-choked places in my long commute is not two blocks downhill from where I saw the bird. There, the fumes are so bad I am often left coughing and out of breath. How could a hummingbird possibly live so close to that? It must just be a random bird that strayed into town from the hills nearby, I thought. Soon it would either fly away or die, I reasoned, and so I snapped as many pictures of the bird as I could before it tired of my stalking and zipped off to a higher tree.

I found a picture on the internet of a bird that resembles the one I saw (see left, photo by Paul Pratt). It's called a White-necked Jacobin. What a cruel name to give to this lovely bird; it makes the gentle creature sound like a rabble-rousing revolutionary. In my picture of the bird (right) you can see the similar shape of the head and curve of the beak.

The very next day I saw two of the birds working the same tree. I smiled at the thought that my little jacobin had a mate and his life on the rough streets of Quito would not be a lonely one, that his existence here was not a fluke of nature. I imagined the pair having chicks that would--with luck--survive to spread to other trees nearby. At that moment, as I snapped more pictures, a mother and her young son stopped on the steps to stare with me.

The street that is home to all this excitement is Ernesto Noboa Caamano--but everyone here simply calls it Noboa. Ernesto Noboa was a poet. He was born in 1891 in the gritty seaport of Guyaquil and died 36 years later here in Quito. His short life could not have been pleasant. He suffered from neurosis and became addicted to the morphine that gave him temporary relief. I can't yet read his poems but he was an admirer of Poe and Baudelaire so I imagine they must be brooding and dark, just the types of poems I enjoy. I look forward to the day when I can search his stanzas for clues to his life and to life in Jazz-age Quito. But will I find intimations of urban colibri?

A few days later, just after noon when the hot sun draws forth the full fragrance of the flowers, I was amazed to see another hummingbird of an entirely different variety. It had a smaller body than my jacobin but it sported an impossibly long tail. I fumbled blindly for my camera, trying to retrieve it from my backpack without taking my eyes off the tiny bird as it went zipping in and out of view between the branches. Then, for a split second, it stopped and perched on a limb in the bright sunshine, as if posing for his picture. The lucky shot shows him in all his majesty. Of the dozen pictures I snapped during those minutes, only a few show the bird at all. Most are just shots of thickets of branches, leaves, and flowers.

After the bird flitted off out of range for the last time, I rushed home to learn what type of hummingbird I had encountered this time on the smoggy streets of Quito. After looking through dozens of web pages devoted to the hummingbirds of this region, the best I can guess is that my new bird is a Long-tailed Sylph, although the one on Noboa street has a tail significantly longer than the ones in the pictures on line. Perhaps the city version of the bird sports a longer tail than his countryfied counsins I saw pictured on the web; think of it as the avian version of an urbane gentleman in his smoking jacket.

At left you can see my picture of the sylph in flight, its wings a blur as it strains to insert its beak into the horn or the flower, its tail so long that it stretches out of the frame.

Now, every day as I climb the steps of Noboa street on my way home I stop and stare into each of the trees to look for my friends. As I do, I can't help but think that Ernesto Noboa would smile if he knew that on the rough and smoggy streets of Quito--surrounded by walls covered in graffiti--colibri thrive.

Hummingbird Habitat