The Lingering Death of Indian Tribute in Ecuador
ERUVIAN social critic Manuel Gonzalez Prada once posed the following question: "Does the Indian suffer less under the Republic than under Spanish rule?" His rhetorical reply strongly suggested that the Indian's condition deteriorated after Indepen-dence. Though the oppressive colonial institutions of corregimientos and encomiendas were gone, the Indian was still the 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 the neighboring Andean republic of Ecuador the 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 the native peoples of his nation.2 Though Jaramillo relied chiefly on vigorous assertion to support his indictment, he could easily have cited the testimony of early nineteenthcentury witnesses. In 1835, for example, Liberal President Vicente Rocafuerte declared that the tribute-paying Indian "groans under a shameful feudalism more unfortunate than that of Russia."3 Eleven years later, the members of a constituent congress of Ecuador justified a reduction in tribute rate with the assertion that the 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