The Lingering Death of Indian Tribute in Ecuador

Resumen

ERUVIAN social critic Manuel Gonzalez Prada once posed following question: Does Indian suffer less under Republic than under Spanish rule? His rhetorical reply strongly suggested that Indian's condition deteriorated after Indepen-dence. Though oppressive colonial institutions of corregimientos and encomiendas were gone, Indian was still victim of inhumane systems of forced labor and conscription. We keep him in ignorance and seifdom, wrote Gonzalez Prada. We debase him in our barracks; we brutalize him with alcohol; we hurl him to his destruction in our civil wars.1 In neighboring Andean republic of Ecuador same question has been posed and answered similarly many times. Pio Jaramillo Alvarado, Ecuadorian humanitarian and publicist, once declared that Independence from Spain was harmful to native peoples of his nation.2 Though Jaramillo relied chiefly on vigorous assertion to support his indictment, he could easily have cited testimony of early nineteenthcentury witnesses. In 1835, for example, Liberal President Vicente Rocafuerte declared that tribute-paying Indian groans under a shameful feudalism more unfortunate than that of Russia.3 Eleven years later, members of a constituent congress of Ecuador justified a reduction in tribute rate with assertion that living standard of the miserable class of indigenas has declined visibly since Independence.4 Foreign travelers who visited Ecuador between 1830 and 1856 almost invariably