Ecuador in the New Millennium 25 Years of Democracy

Resumen

Diéz de agosto, 2004, formally marked the 25th continuous year of democracy for the Republic of Ecuador, and the media and scholarly reminiscences and pro-jections of its pathway since emerging from nine long years of military dictatorship constituted significant public and private commentary from May on. As the rebirth of democracy was celebrated, the death of the populist president, elected in 1979, was mourned. On 24 de mayo, 1981—Ecuador’s independence day—Jaime Roldós Aguilera, his wife, Martha Bucarám de Roldós and a small entourage, perished in a plane crash in Loja.At his inauguration in 1979 Roldós spoke in Quichua, a language understood by at least one third of the people, Kunan punchaka, mana pushaita jap-inchik (Today we are no longer entrapped [as in the year past]), he said, and he went on to name, and thereby recognize, the indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorian, those who come from other lands, and other people of Ecuador. His last words in 1981, deliv-ered in a speech in Quito an hour before he boarded the military Beechcraft plane especially designed in the United States for mountain flying and landing in difficult terrain, were Ecuador amazónico desde siempre y hasta siempre, ¡Viva la patria! In its 25th year of democracy, it is very widely acknowledged throughout the country that the nation-state of Ecuador in 2004 seems to be turning in on itself, going nowhere, and that it has lost all sense of direction. Seen from Amazonia, the nation seems to be moving on a trajectory characterized in Quichua of Pastaza Province as mana tuparina ñambi, a path or road that leads into the unknown where strange and powerful forces reside, and from which no one knows how to return. Ecuador in the New Millennium 439