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Very interesting read
I read while I was living/traveling in Ecuador for two months, and it provided many interesting insights into the country's history and politics. The variety of articles is excellent. (Personally I would have wished for a greater weight on contemporary writings, but to each his own.) There are few books in English about Ecuador generally. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the country.

Good academic overview
There are few academic books giving an overview of Ecuador.This one does a good job without being too dry.Good for the traveler who wants a deeper understanding, and essential for any student doing advanced cultural studies in the country.

Excellent, intellegent look at Ecuador
From Pre-Colombian history to modern day recipes, this book has it all. Definitely an intellectual read, it covers Ecuardor's people and history in depth. The book covers indigenous issues, afro-ecuadorian history, poetry, fiction, mountaineering, the Panama Hat, the banana and oil booms, and so much more. I felt like I really understood the country as a whole after I read this book.

Interesting topics
This book has a series of excellent articles covering a range of topics on Ecuadorian culture.As a foreign aficionado of Ecuador, I truly appreciated the new insights into Ecuador found in this book.This is not a book that you read through from cover to cover - you read individual chapters. ... Read more

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A case study of why Third World countries are still poor, the premise of Portrait of a Nation: Culture and Progress in Ecuador is that while some progress has been made in transforming the political economy of Ecuador, certain behaviors, beliefs and ... Read more

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Timely and Current
I purchased this book prior to a school trip to Ecuador.Once there, I leared this book is required reading in international studies.It is current and give a good history and retrospecive view of the history and political culture of Ecuador. ... Read more

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This history of relations between Ecuador and the United States is a revealing case study of how a small, determined country has exploited its marginal status when dealing with a global superpower. Ranging from Ecuador's struggle for independence in the 1820s and 1830s to the present day, the book examines the misunderstandings, tensions, and--from the U.S. perspectiv--often unintended consequences that have sometimes arisen in relations between the two countries.

Such interactions included U.S. efforts in Ecuador to stem yellow fever, build railroads, and institute economic reforms. Many of the two countries' exchanges in the twentieth century stemmed from the global disruptions of World War II and the cold war. More recently, Ecuadorian and U.S. interests have been in contest over fishing rights, foreign development of Ecuadorian oil resources, and Ecuador's emergence as a transit country in the drug trade.

Ronn Pineo looks at these and other issues within the context of how the United States, usually preoccupied with other concerns, has often disregarded Ecuador's internal race, class, and geographical divisions when the two countries meet on the global stage. On the whole, argues Pineo, the two countries have operated effectively as "useful strangers" throughout their mutual history. Ecuador has never been merely a passive recipient of U.S. policy or actions, and factions within Ecuador, especially regional ones, have long seen the United States as a potential ally in domestic political disputes. The United States has influenced Ecuador, but often only in ways Ecuadorians themselves want. This book is about the dynamics of power in the relations between a very large if distracted nation when dealing with a very small but determined nation, an investigation that reveals a great deal about both. ... Read more

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USEFUL STRANGERS analyzes these failures and re-considers them in light of modern times
Any college-level collection strong in political histories of Latin American nations needs USEFUL STRANGERS, an in-depth and detailed coverage of changing relations between Ecuador and the U.S. From Ecuador's struggle for independence in the 1820s and 30s to modern times, USEFUL STRANGERS charts changing relationships between the countries, and how U.S. actions have resulted in unintended consequences for both nations. The U.S., Pineo maintains, has often disregarded Ecuador's structure and social divisions, which has fostered much misunderstanding. USEFUL STRANGERS analyzes these failures and re-considers them in light of modern times: political collections will find this an invaluable expose. ... Read more

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Marxist Drivel!
This book provides a distorted view of Ecuador and its banana industry.It is typical of the work produced by so many Marxists and leftists who dominate U.S. universities and Latin American Studies.

Best Book on Ecuador
This is social history at its best.It takes Ecuadorian history to a new level.

Great Book
This is a wonderful book.Not sure what first (amazon) reviewer was thinking.He is an international aid worker so it's no surprise he misses the point.

Incomplete Analysis of Ecuador's Banana Industry
Steve Striffler has analyzed an important chapter in the history of Ecuador's banana industry and the country's relations with foreign investors. He documents quite well how peasant workers defeated the United Fruit Company at Tenguel Hacienda on Ecuador's southern coast and forced a large multinational to abandon direct production in that country. Such action, however, condemned workers to deeper poverty and limited access to new investment and improved living standards.

Hopefully research like Striffler's will encourage scholars and Latin American intellectuals to reexamine how they have demonized the United Fruit Company. They have misinformed an entire generation about the positive impacts U.S. multinationals have had on Latin America as described in the best seller "Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot".

For fifty years the United Fruit Company has been portrayed by leftist ideologues and most academics as the symbol of U.S. imperialism and hegemony in the Americas. Yet we see in the 1940s and 1950s at Tenguel what a positive force this company was in introducing new technologies, increasing banana production and exports, paying taxes, contributing to Ecuadorian development, and dramatically improving worker salaries and living conditions. Indeed, it was United Fruit's pioneering investments that saved Ecuador from collapse of the cocao boom and produced one of its most important exports. If a small band of peasant workers defeated the United Fruit Company in Ecuador, scholars must now explain how this "demonic force" came to play such a significant role in Central America.

Striffler's book unfortunately provides little analysis of United Fruit and its executives, except by pejoratively characterizing them as "the banana boys". The company is shown as a faceless actor with little or no examination of its views of Ecuador and local workers. A more complete analysis would have shown that United Fruit was led by a missionary capitalist, Samuel Zemurray, who saw his company as helping countries overcome poverty and improve living conditions. Many of his executives had the same commitment to local development as did their contemporary Point Four technicians and later Peace Corps volunteers. As described in Lawrence Harrison's "The Pan American Dream"(chapter four), Zemurray was a strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Tenguel Hacienda was an example of how he saw his company and modern capitalism bringing New Deal progress to countries like Ecuador.

In addition, Striffler fails to examine the role of domestic businesses in encouraging peasant unions and the Ecuadorian state to harass United Fruit because they were threatened by its large size and progressive labor standards. They wipped-up Ecuador's deep xenophobia and nationalistic suspicions against United Fruit to pursue their own business interests. This follows a similar pattern in Central America where local mercantilists used weak States and labor/peasant unions to run out competitors and take over their investments and markets either directly, or as at Tenguel, through government expropriation.

An important part of the Tenguel story that Striffler does not address is the rise of the Ecuadorian Noboa Group, and other domestic banana producers, who replaced United Fruit and paid workers lower wages and provided few social services.Indeed, the development of the Noboa Group as one of Latin America's first multinationals filled the vacuum left by the withdrawal of United Fruit.Its Guayaquil founder, Luis Noboa, prided himself on how his company came to dominate the Ecaudorian banana industry in the 1960s and 1970s and regularly beat out United Fruit and Standard Fruit in business ventures. In effect, the Noboa Group used its mercantilist penetration of the Ecuadorian State, government subsidies, alliances with populist movements, and threats of labor problems (like those at Tenguel) to limit foreign competition and become the dominate force in producing and exporting Ecuadorian bananas.

Because of the myopic view of many scholars, and their irrelevant Marxist paradigms, they have focused mainly on foreign multinationals while ignoring how domestic companies exploited the weak and fragmented Ecuadorian State and labor/peasant unions to maintain a corrupt mercantilist system.
As described by Hernando DeSoto in "The Other Path", countries like Ecuador are locked into mercantilist economies that allow domestic businessmen to pursue protectionist measures through public-private alliances and payoffs to government officials.Defeat of United Fruit at Tenguel was not just the defeat of a multinational, but the destruction of an important initiative to bring to Ecuador the benefits of progressive democratic capitalism and greater development.

Throughout the 20th century, Ecuadorian mercantilism kept the country largely closed to foreign investment (except limited areas in the petroleum sector) and condemned it to greater poverty and increasing dominance and corruption from local business groups. This has been re-enforced by right wing mercantilists in Guayaquil, allied with left wing mercantilists in Sierra-based military, labor unions and populist movements. It explains why Ecuador, with its rich natural resources, remains one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the region.

Reviewer is an international consultant who has lived and worked many years in Ecuador and other Latin American countries. ... Read more

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"It is indispensable that Ecuador has peace, but to have peace you need freedom and to have freedom you need justice. And the Indian population needs justice."—President Gustavo Noboa, January 23, 2000

For five centuries, the Indians had very little voice in Ecuador. Now they are major protagonists who seek more acceptable terms in which to coexist in a society with two vastly different world views and cultures—that of Indians and that of the descendants of Europeans. Their recent political uprising has become the most powerful and influential indigenous movement in Latin America. They have inspired other Indian movements throughout the continent.

Author Allen Gerlach details the origins and evolution of the Indian rebellion, focusing on the key period of the last thirty years. In the process, he also presents a concise political history of Ecuador. Gerlach infuses his text with an abundant supply of quotations from participants in the rise in ethnic politics, bringing Ecuador’s history and the Indians’ opposition to the country’s government to life. In addition, Indians, Oil, and Politics serves as a case study on what happens to a nation when its economy is based solely on one commodity—in this instance, oil. The discovery of oil in the Amazon in 1967 was a major factor in Ecuador’s modernization and also sparked the Indians’ fight for their rights. Oil wealth wreaked havoc on the environment and cultures of the native people of the Amazon, and it did not end old traditions of political fragmentation and corruption.

Gerlach explains that the Indians fought back by forming federations to advance their interests and by joining forces with similar structures molded in the highlands of Ecuador. Together they created the country’s first truly national indigenous organization in 1986—CONAIE (The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador)—and by 2000 their movement was a major force to be reckoned with, one which increasingly influenced state policy.

This book shows how the Indians helped bring down two governments when massive demonstrations led to the fall of two regimes in 1997 and 2000. The Indians battled for economic advancement, but above all demanded respect for the dignity of their culture and for their moral and historical rights to their lands and territories. This valuable case study of the politics of ethnicity will become increasingly useful for those interested in Latin American politics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A Thorough Analysis
If you want to understand the current economic climate in Ecuador, this book will lend you a helping hand as to the pre-cursor that has led to Correa's regime.

useful but rambly
This book has lots of information and a lack of jargon but I do agree that an editor could have helped make the text flow better. Once the author starts talking about indigenous movements he tends to move around in time and repeat points in ways which make it hard to keep a clear thread. The chapters on recent presidencies also could use more structure. Still, worth reading if you want to get a quick picture of Ecuaforan politics till about 2001.

Where was the editor?
I have recently moved to Ecuador and thought this book might give me a better understanding of what is going on here.There is plenty of information in this book--but it is completely garbled!I have read many political science books, and this is the most disorganized, badly written, unedited one I have ever tried to get through.There are outright misktakes, frequent repetitions, poor translations, and no clear storyline, chronological or otherwise. Could someone please write a better book about Ecuadorean politics? It should be a fascinating subject.

Superb, but dense
Gerlach's discussion of the Indian uprising of 2000 is excellent, although at times his book suffers from too much detail and too little abstraction.If you are in search of a history of Ecuador, specifically the rise of the indigenous movement, then this is your book.

Political Thriller
A superb review of contemporary Ecuadorian politics and their historical roots. It's very engaging and many chapters read like a political thriller. ... Read more

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Ecuador provides a valuable model for comparison with other developing countries. The author examines the shift from unrestricted support for import substitution industries to stabilization policies and to export-led growth strategies. Paying special attention to how the oil boom cycle affected the developmental role of the state, the author goes behind the scenes to present an account of the influence of industrialists on the social, political and economic affairs of Ecuador since the 1970s. ... Read more

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This authoritative book provides a deeply informed overview of contemporary Indigenous movements in Ecuador. Leading scholar Marc Becker traces the emergence of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) in 1990, the launch of a new political movement called Pachakutik in 1995, and the election of Rafael Correa in 2006. Even though CONAIE, Pachakutik, and Correa seemingly shared similar concerns for social justice, they soon came into conflict with each other. Becker examines the competing strategies and philosophies that emerge when social movements and political parties embrace similar visions but follow different paths to realize their objectives. In exploring the multiple and conflictive strategies that Indigenous movements have followed over the past twenty years, he definitively charts the trajectory of one of the Americas' most powerful and best organized social movements. ... Read more

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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "ECUADOR," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have ECUADOR in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with ECUADOR when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name ECUADOR, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "ECUADOR," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have ECUADOR in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with ECUADOR when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name ECUADOR, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "ECUADOR," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have ECUADOR in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with ECUADOR when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name ECUADOR, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: s.n. in 1921 in 120 pages; Subjects: Ecuador; Peru; History / General; History / Latin America / South America; History / Americas; Literary Collections / General; Travel / South America / General; ... Read more

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This volume traces the history of organized labor in Peru and Ecuador from its first appearance in the late nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century. It discusses the relations of trade unionism with economic development and politics, particularly the political tendencies within organized labor. It also discusses the negative impact on the trade union movement of the free enterprise-free trade policies of the last decades of the twentieth century.

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In colonies like Quito, order was typically maintained by local, private law enforcement, while weak and impoverished bureaucratic infrastructures receded into the background. Judicial administration was therefore open to the influences of social networks, rumor, and reputation. Upholding justice was a communal rather than a state-run enterprise, and the dominating rules were social and theological rather than legal.
Herzog's combination of legal and historical analysis challenges the traditional paradigm in which the state was born under Spain's Catholic monarchs and only later exported to Spanish America. Her research reveals a more integrated and less oppositional relationship between the state and early modern society. Including both a specific case study and an innovative framework for the study of interactions between society, law, and the state, Upholding Justice will interest scholars of history, Latin American studies, anthropology, law, and political science.
Tamar Herzog is Associate Professor of History at the University of Chicago.
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