Ecuador: A Brief Historical Background

Evidence of human cultures in Ecuador exist from c. 3500 B.C. Many civilizations rose throughout Ecuador, such as the Valdivia Culture on the coast, the Quitus (near present day Quito) and the Cañari (in present day Cuenca). Each civilization developed its own distinctive architecture, pottery, and religious beliefs. After years of fierce resistance the Cañari fell to the Incan expansion, and were assimulated loosely into the Incan empire.

In 1531, the Spanish conquistadors, under Francisco Pizarro, arrived in an Inca empire torn by civil war. Atahualpa wanted to defeat Huascar and reign over a re-unified Incan empire.

After nearly three hundred years of Spanish colonization, Quito was a city of around ten thousand inhabitants. It was there, on August 10, 1809 (the national holiday) that the first call for independence from Spain was made in Latin America ("Primer Grito de la Independencia"), under the leadership of the city's criollos like Carlos Montúfar, Eugenio Espejo and Bishop Cuero y Caicedo. Quito's nickname, "Luz de América" ("Light of America") comes from the inspiration that this first attempt produced in the rest of Spanish America, creating a domino effect that would ultimately lead to the expulsion of Spain from the continent. It was also near Quito, at the Battle of Pichincha in 1822 that Ecuador, under the leadership of Antonio José de Sucre, joined Simón Bolívar's Republic of Gran Colombia, only to become a separate republic in 1830.