Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador is a democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border with Brazil. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific.
Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, andhas an area of 283,561 km2. Its capital city is Quito, which has the best preserved and least altered historic centre in Latin America. The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic centre of Cuenca is the third largest city in the country, and is an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas.
Ecuador became independent in 1830, after having beenpart of the Spanish colonial empire and the republic of Gran Colombia

GEOGRAPHY
The country has three main geographic regions, plus an insular region in the Pacific Ocean:
 La Costa, it comprises the low-lying land in the western part of the country.
 La Sierra, it runs north-south along the centre of the country, its mountainous terrain dominated by the Andes mountain range.
 LaAmazonía, also known as El Oriente, comprises the Amazon rainforest areas in the eastern part of the country.
 The Región Insular is the region comprising the Galápagos Islands, west of the mainland in the Pacific Ocean.
Cotopaxi, which is just south of Quito, features one of the world's highest active volcanoes.
The top of Mount Chimborazo is considered to be the most distant point from the centreof the earth.

HISTORY
Evidence of human cultures in Ecuador exists from circa 3500 BC. Many civilizations rose throughout Ecuador, such as the Valdivia Culture and Machalilla Culture on the coast, the Quitus and the Cañari Each civilization developed its own distinctive architecture, pottery, and religious interests, although consolidated under a confederation called the Shyris which exercisedorganized trading and bartering between the different regions and whose political and military power was under the rule of the Duchicela blood line before the Inca invasion. After years of fiery resistance by the Cañaris and other tribes, as demonstrated by the battle of Yahuarcocha where thousands of resistance fighters were killed and thrown in the lake, the region fell to the Incan expansionand was assimilated loosely into the Incan empire.

Inca Empire
Through a succession of wars and marriages among the nations that inhabited the valley, the region became part of the Inca Empire in 1463. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived from the north, the Inca Empire was ruled by Huayna Capac, who had two sons: Atahualpa, being in charge of the northern parts of the empire, and Huascar,seated in the Incan capital Cusco. Upon Huayna Capac's death in 1525, the empire was divided in two: Atahualpa received the north, with his capital in Quito; Huascar received the south, with its capital in Cusco. In 1530, Atahualpa defeated Huascar and conquered the entire empire.

Colonization

Disease decimated the indigenous population during the first decades of Spanish rule a time when thenatives also were forced into theencomienda labor system for Spanish landlords. In 1563, Quito became the seat of a real audiencia of Spain and part of the Vice-Royalty of Lima, and later the Vice-Royalty of Nueva Granada.
After nearly 300 years of Spanish colonization, Quito was still a small city of only 10,000 inhabitants. It was there, on August 10, 1809 (the national holiday), that the firstcall for independence from Spain was made in Latin America "Primer Grito de la Independencia", under the leadership of the city's criollos like Juan Pío Montúfar, Quiroga, Salinas, and Bishop Cuero y Caicedo. Quito's nickname, "Luz de América" "Light of America", comes from the fact that it was the first successful attempt to produce an independent and local government, although for no more...