The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

But such a despotism largely existed only on paper. The Spaniards who came to South America brought with them their characteristic constitutional traditions and personal independence. Instinctively they flocked into cities and organised municipal governments after the time-honoured Spanish form. So a system came into existence which had the sanction of the people's co-operation and was therefore workable. The country districts were left to the Indians and as long as they paid their tribute to the Crown or to the Spaniard who claimed the lands they tilled, little heed was paid to the form of civil government among them. The influence of their hereditary chiefs survived for centuries, and their old laws and customs died out only by degrees. In the cities contact between Spaniards and Indians was closer. In process of time the increasing number of half-breeds aided in the process of amalgamation, and even the pure-blood Indians of the fields and villages learned much of what their masters had to teach them.

CHURCH OF SANTO DOMINGO AT GUAYAQUIL.

The Church, however, operated more powerfully than any other influence in making Ecuador Spanish. Within a few years after the conquest a regular bishopric was established in Quito, and hundreds of priests and friars flocked over to take part in the wholesale evangelisation of the heathen natives. The gospel was preached everywhere, churches and chapels built in even the smallest villages, the obdurate Indians were treated with scant ceremony, and it soon became well understood among the natives that a hearty acceptance of the Christian cult tended to keep them out of trouble. Ecuador quickly became one of the most devotedly Catholic countries in the world, and has ever since remained so. The Crown and the landed proprietors made lavish gifts to the cause of religion, and a great proportion of the property of the country ultimately fell into the hands of the religious orders. Quito has appropriately been called the city of convents, and if we are to believe the accounts of travellers in colonial times half the population must have been priests, monks, and nuns. The introduction of Christianity among the Indians aided powerfully in spreading a knowledge of the Spanish language, but was more effective in substituting the Quichua for the ancient local tongues. The evangelists found it easier to preach to all the tribes in one language, and Quichua was naturally chosen, since it was already in the most general use as the official medium of the Inca empire. The Spanish priests reduced it to written form and it became a lingua franca which was understood among all the nations of the Andean plateau very much as Guarany was among the Indians of the Atlantic slope.

The details of Spanish civil, military, and financial administration in Ecuador did not differ greatly from those in the other provinces, and there is no need to repeat them here. The peaceable character of the Ecuador Indians made the maintenance of a standing army or even of a militia unnecessary. A few companies of troops in each of the principal towns and the natural military aptitude of the Spanish residents were sufficient to suppress any symptoms of rebellion, and to keep the Indians at work for their masters. Happily for the natives no great finds of silver or gold were made except in the southern province of Loja, and forced labour in the mines did not decimate the population, as happened in Bolivia and parts of Peru. Spaniards did not immigrate to any considerable extent, and negro slavery flourished on the seacoast.

The only schools were priests' seminaries in which little except theology was taught and the level of intellectual culture among the Creoles sank very low. Taxes were heavy, public employments and titles of nobility were openly sold by the government, commerce amounted to little, because little gold and silver was mined and other articles would not bear the heavy transportation charges and the exactions and restrictions of the Spanish colonial system. The magnificent stone highways which the Cara and Inca monarchs had built were allowed to fall into ruins, but their remains are to be seen even to this day on the table-land near Cuenca, still solid in spite of the storms and earthquakes of four centuries. Population on the plateau slowly decreased. Quito had been a great city while it was the Cara capital—the residence of Huaina Capac and Atahuallpa—and in 1735 Ulloa estimated that it contained over seventy thousand people, but at the end of the eighteenth century it had fallen to less than forty thousand. However, the introduction of the plantain undoubtedly brought about an increase of population in the coast provinces, and Guayaquil flourished with the cultivation of cacao and sugar-cane.

No great figure of a soldier, reformer, or administrator stands out among all the hundreds of officials who were sent over from Spain to rule the country. Even records of the growth of jealousies between Spaniards and Creoles, such as we encounter in other countries of South America are wanting. The Creoles appear never to have been able to interrupt the monotonous course of Spanish administration. In 1564 the old kingdom of Quito, with the addition of some outlying Colombian and Peruvian provinces, was erected into a presidency, and a royal audiencia, or court of appeals, with important administrative functions, was established. The viceroy of Lima continued to exercise nominal jurisdiction over all Spanish South America until the year 1719, when the viceroyalty of New Granada was first created. The Quito presidency was attached to the new jurisdiction, and this emphasised the separation from Peru. Twelve hundred miles of crooked, wretched road intervened between Quito and Lima, while the distance to Bogotá was less than half as great. However, the natural outlet for the plateau from Cuenca north to Popayan was the road to Guayaquil, and the Quito presidency was therefore co-extensive with a natural commercial subdivision of the continent.

In 1736 a party of scientists commissioned by the king of France came to Quito for the purpose of measuring an arc of the earth's meridian at the equator. These savants erected two pyramids to serve as a permanent record of the line they had measured, and placed upon them an inscription stating that the work had been done under the patronage of the king of France. Years afterwards a Spanish official, offended in his national pride by the wording of the inscription, obtained an order from Madrid for the destruction of these monuments, so invaluable to the science of exact geography.

The latter part of the eighteenth century was marked by a greater interest in education. The seminaries widened their courses of study to include something more than the canon law and the Fathers, and public-spirited Creoles endowed new and better institutions of learning. No press or periodical literature appeared, but poetry and belles-lettres were cultivated with some success by native authors. Though the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1765 was accomplished without bloodshed, it resulted in no material weakening of ecclesiastical influence. The revolutionary ideas which were transforming the political thought of the world during the eighteenth century hardly penetrated Ecuador at all, and whatever influence they had was confined to the small percentage of the population that boasted of non-Indian blood. The news of Lexington and Yorktown and the enfranchisement of British North America stimulated no similar movement among the patient Indians and devout Creoles of the Andean valleys, and even the tremendous cataclysm of the French Revolution passed almost unnoticed.