Instability and reform. Ecuador and the Central-South Region between 1929 and 1944

The project is part of a program of four investigations on political history of the Ecuadorian twentieth century, aimed at exploring the process of building modern republicanism in a structurally heterogeneous society, with serious tensions in the consolidation of its basic democratic institutions. During the period 1929-1944, to the high degree of political instability an important loss of territory is added in 1942. Characteristics of these years are the economic crisis, the social issue, and state intervention in the economy to boost the development of the domestic market. In the Central-South region, the export of the Toquilla straw hat becomes a axis axis of Azuay and Cañar, provinces that suffer the crisis to a lesser extent than the rest of the country. On the political-social level, the popular majorities achieve some conquests that allow them to advance in the field of institutionality and labor organization. The objectives of the project seek to elucidate the degree of continuity/discontinuity of political and economic patterns of the nineteenth century in the first half of the twentieth century. It maintains as the main hypothesis the absence in that period of social projects that transcend the traditional oligarchic model of power, as well as the overload of the State by the social demands that, when politicized, translate into a rapid intensification of the state bureaucracy and the old clientele structure. The category of "Social Agency" (A. Giddens), and complementary concepts, make up the theoretical-methodological approach that mobilizes the research process, based on the study and interpretation of historical sources.

III UNIVERSITY RESEARCH PROJECT COMPETITION