Ecuadorian election and demographic maps

[Sir John Johns]

Starting this thread to post maps dedicated to Ecuador’s fascinating elections and demographics. I have got my hands on presidential election results by province since 1931 (bar 1932 and 1933), by cantons since 1992 (with a few missing data and inconsistencies) and by parishes since 2002 as well as results of the 2010 census (plus interesting data from previous censuses) which would allow for the making of cool maps.

A map showing the current provinces as well as the four regions of Ecuador: the Costa (in cyan); the Sierra (in orange); the Amazon or Oriente (in green); the Galápagos (in purple).



Costa

Very broadly speaking and with a lot of generalization, the Costa is corresponding to the lowlands stretching from the seashore to the western slope of the Andes. It is an area on which the Spanish crown exercised a weak authority and where the Church had few influence during the colonial period and it remained a largely underpopulated area until the development of export-oriented cultures (firstly cocoa and coffee in the nineteenth century, afterwards banana which experienced a major boom in the 1950s, shrimps and palm oil in recent decades) which provoked a major immigration movement from the Sierra to the largely unsettled areas corresponding to most of Los Ríos, Santo Domingo, easternmost part of Guayas, northeast Manabí and southeast Esmeraldas (where tiny villages like Quevedo or Santo Domingo had morphed into cities with over 100,000 inhabitants in four or five decades) as well as to the port of Guayaquil which became the largest city and the economic hub of the country in the 1950s and a major rival of the capital, Quito.

Demographically speaking, the Costa is populated by few indigenous communities (Chachi and Awá in the remote parts of Esmeraldas, the negligible Epera community who came from Colombia to Esmeraldas in the 1960s, the tiny Tsáchila community in Santo Domingo and maritime communities in Santa Elena and southwest Manabí who claimed an indigenous identity based on traditional community organizations), an important Afro-Ecuadorian population in Esmeraldas and some urban parts of Guayaquil with the majority of the population self-identifying as mestizo or as montubio, a cultural identity associated with the countryside way of life and mostly to be found in Manabí, Los Ríos and rural Guayas.

Agriculture in the Costa is dominated by day laborers working in banana, coffee, cocoa, rice or palm oil plantations or in aquaculture with social organizations like agrarian or trade unions being generally less developed than in the Sierra; there are usually more men than women in the Costa rural parts.

Sierra

By contrast, the Sierra (corresponding to a series of valleys located along a north-south axis between the western and the eastern slopes of the Andes), especially the northern-central part around Quito, was firmly controlled by the Spanish crown which developed and maintained a system of intense exploitation of indigenous work (in obrajes [textile workshops] and in haciendas) and extorted large tributes or financial contributions to the indigenous and even the mestizo population (especially at the end of the eighteenth century after the passage of the Bourbon reforms). The Church was also very powerful and played a leading role in the organization of the society. Even after the independence, the indigenous continued to pay an exorbitant tribute (until the mid-nineteenth century when revenues from cocoa exports became a more important source of income for the government which abolished tribute) and were submitted to a state of quasi-serfdom (huasipungo) on landowners’ estates.

Ethnic divisions (associated with the wearing of traditional clothes and the speaking of Kichwa language) were strictly maintained by colonial and post-independent authorities which strongly discouraged ‘passing’ (but failed to totally prevent it). As a consequence, despite the abolition of huasipungo in the 1960s, the granting of election franchise to illiterates (mostly indigenous and countryside inhabitants) in 1984 and efforts to economically and culturally integrate the indigenous, traditional cultural/ethnic identities remain strong in the rural Sierra, especially in the impoverished or remote areas (Bolívar, Chimborazo, Cañar, western and central rural Tungurahua, central Cotopaxi, Saraguro valley in northern Loja) but also in more integrated Imbabura and eastern Pichincha (Cayambe canton). Some provinces (Carchi and Loja) however distinguished themselves by their overwhelming self-identified mestizo population.

Agriculture remains here mostly oriented toward domestic market with productions like potatoes, vegetables, garlic or milk and dominated, due to the lack of ambitious land reform and shortage of lands, by small if not tiny farms owned by indigenous or mestizo peasants who often have to go to work in the Costa to provide their families extra revenues and compete with larger estates (and potentially mining companies) over access to water. Handicraft is still an important activity, even after the demise of the Panama hat cottage industry in the 1950s and 1960s with Otavalo (Imbabura), Tungurahua or northeast Azuay having kept an important textile, clothes or shoemaking craft industry. Recent decades have seen the development of export-oriented agriculture dominated by middle and large companies, notably flowers (in Imbabura and Cayambe and southeast Cotopaxi) or broccoli (in Cotopaxi and southern Pichincha).

There are more women than men in the rural Sierra, especially in Azuay and Cañar provinces, which experienced an important emigration to Northern America since the 1960s. Social organizations are stronger in the Sierra than in the Costa, notably the indigenous federations like the CONAIE which have emerged as influential social and political actors since the 1960s and have became the main driving force in social movements since the 1990s.

Amazon

The Amazonian part, which is stretching from the eastern slopes of the Andes to the (for a longtime highly disputed) border with Peru and where traditionally communications were made by waterway (along the numerous tributaries of the Amazon river) is truly a mixed bag with areas having been historically controlled by very exploitative landowners which have kept a strong indigenous identity (southern Napo), areas which have largely preserved from white/mestizo colonization and kept a strong indigenous identity (most of eastern Morona Santiago, parts of Pastaza, northeast Zamora Chinchipe, corresponding mostly to Jivaroan-populated hilly territories) or, on the contrary, are experiencing since several decades a rapid cultural decline and assimilation by Ecuadorian Spanish or culturally more vibrant indigenous communities (eastern Pastaza and Orellana, home to the Zaparoan and Waorani populations, these latter having only been contacted in the 1950s), areas that have been settled by mestizo (northern Napo, western Pastaza and Morona Santiago, southern Zamora Chinchipe) or indigenous from the highlands (northwest Zamora Chinchipe) and, finally, most of Orellana and Sucumbíos which, like most of the Amazon but at a more pronounced extent have been the theater for centuries of the worst violence and whose indigenous communities have been decimated by successive waves of settlement (systematically spreading deadly diseases and provoking important population movements), slave raiding (up until the early twentieth century for rubber collection), disastrous evangelization processes (Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with their grim reductions; US evangelical sects in the twentieth century), consequence of border conflicts (successive wars with Peru and delimitation of borders separating communities, especially in Pastaza and Morona Santiago; Colombian civil war spilling over neighboring Sucumbíos), development of criminal organizations (Colombian drug organizations, illegal logging) and, since the 1960s, extractive activities (oil in Orellana and Sucumbíos since the 1960s; mining in Zamora Chinchipe) with all its environmental consequences and influx of migrants from the Sierra (central Sucumbíos and Orellana being opened to colonization in the 1970s).

The Galápagos

The Galápagos Islands (officially Colón Archipelago) only play a very marginal role in Ecuadorian politics. Culturally, it is close to the Costa with Northern American (since it became home to a US military airbase during WWII) and European influences due to tourism influx and Westerners residing there (notably the scientists of the Charles Darwin Research Station). It is also home of a sizable (by local standards) indigenous community made of migrants from the central highlands who came there in the 1990s.



Some maps (at parish level) of the 2010 census to illustrate the sharp Costa/Sierra divide:

Male to female ratio: the bluer a parish is the more women resided in it; the redder it is the more men resided in it



Basically, the few parishes on the Costa with a feminine majority are the main cities as the countryside economy is dominated by tropical products plantations (bananas, cocoa, coffee, rice, palm oil, sugar cane), fisheries (tuna) and shrimp farming employing mostly male laborers who often also comes from the highlands where the local agricultural economy is often unable to provide enough jobs or revenues to local communities.

Sucumbíos and Orellana provinces have been opened to settlement by migrants from other parts of Ecuador (notably Manabí and Loja) and agricultural colonization in the 1970s by the military dictatorship; their economies are dominated by oil extraction, agricultural plantations, construction, transport, logging and informal if not illegal activities.

The most feminine parishes in the Sierra are located in Cañar and Azuay, two provinces that have experienced heavy emigration toward Northern America since the 1950s after the brutal decline of panama hat cottage industry.

Self-identification according to culture and customs:



National numbers
Mestizos and Whites 78.0% (Mestizos 71.9%; Whites 6.1%)
Montubios 7.4%
Afro-Ecuadorians, Blacks and Mulattoes 7.2% (Afro-Ecuadorians 4.2%; Blacks 1.0%; Mulattoes 1.9%)
Indigenous 7.0%
Others 0.4%

Ethno-cultural identity in Ecuador is a very complex topic with the boundaries between groups being often blurred and uncertain: between Afro-Ecuadorians and Indigenous from one hand and Mestizos on another; between light-skinned Mestizos and Whites; between the Montubios – essentially defined by their culture associated to the rural life in the Costa – and Mestizos, Afro-Ecuadorians and Indigenous as they are supposedly the result of the blending between these three ethnic groups. Indigenous are widely considered as underreported in censuses mostly due to the historical stigma associated to these ethnic groups (the actual number remaining highly discussed but generally considered to be closer to around 15% than to the 40% once put forward by the CONAIE) while, paradoxically, some mestizos groups (mostly in Santa Elena and the southernmost coastal part of Manabí, the most famous case being Salango, Manabí, where the inhabitants were fighting against the construction of a polluting fish-meal factory) have since the early 2000s began to self-identify as indigenous since the indigenous status is offering to rural communities a better legal protection of land rights and a recognition of traditional social organization. The out-of-place high number of self-reported Montubios in southeast El Oro and northern Loja appears similarly as a way to protest against a perceived abandonment by the central state and obtain potential ‘compensations’. You can add also some oddities like the Afro-Ecuadorians of the Chota Valley (forming the boundary between Carchi and Imbabura) being considered as indigenous by the CONAIE, the attempt by that same CONAIE to split the Kichwa de la Sierra into countless subgroups (to the point of creating new indigenous ‘peoples’ like the Waranka in the Bolívar province – they are genuine indigenous, still often speaking Kichwa and wearing traditional clothes, but until recently only identified either as Kichwa de la Sierra either just as a member of their local community – in complete opposition with the FENOCIN) or the insistence of the heavily Kichwanized Andoa and Zapara (Pastaza province) or Siona and Secoya (Sucumbíos provinces) to preserve their few remaining traditions (including Andoa and Zapara’s languages which are sadly probably extinct now) to prevent their incorporation into the Amazonian Kichwa magma.

Largest Occupation Category



National numbers
Private employee or worker 31.5%
Self-employed 27.1%
Day laborer or laborer 12.4%
Public employee or worker 10.6%
Domestic employee 3.7%
Employer (patrono) 2.9%
Non-remunerated worker 1.5%
Shareholder/associate (socio) 1.1%

Undeclared 4.8%
‘New worker’ (Trabajador nuevo) 4.3%

Private employees are mostly found in major cities, in the floriculture industry (northeast Pichincha, northeast Cotopaxi), in Camilo Ponce Enríquez, Azuay (mining since the 1980s), in Jambelí, El Oro (shrimp farming) and in Santa Elena (furniture industry and canned fish factories).

Day laborers are employed in export-oriented plantations but also in domestic-market oriented farms in the Costa as well as in the potato farms in Carchi.

Self-employed are to be found in the small farms of the highlands (producing notably vegetables, garlic, cattle and dairy products), in the textile and footwear craft industry (around Otavalo in Imbabura, in Tungurahua, in eastern Azuay and southeastern Cañar), in the Amazonian provinces and in the fishing harbors of southern Manabí and in Puna Island (Guayas).

‘New worker’ is a category I struggle to find the exact definition but apparently applied to people not having a stable job but still being employed, often in changing industry of employment. The only parish where it constituted the majority of the labor force is Cononaco (Orellana), which is populated by Waorani, an indigenous nationality that remained uncontacted until the 1960s and whose economic way of life probably fit nowhere in the categories of the census forms.

Largest Occupation Group:



National numbers
Elementary occupations 19.9%
Service and sales workers 17.4%
Craft and related trades workers 12.5%
Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers 11.0%
Professionals 7.7%
Plant and machine operators and assemblers 6.8%
Clerical support workers 6.2%
Technicians and associate professionals 3.7%
Managers 2.4%
Armed forces occupations 0.5%

Undeclared 7.6%
‘New worker’ 4.3%

Quite similar to the previous map. Elementary occupations largely match the day laborer or laborer occupation category. ‘Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers’ is obviously mostly small farmers as well as fishermen (in Puna Island, southern Manabí with Salango and presumably also the islands in northern Esmeraldas whose inhabitants live off fishing and shellfish collection). Craft and related workers are textile workers (in Otavalo and in Sigsig and Chordeleg, eastern Azuay) and workers in furniture factories (Atahualpa, Santa Elena). Plant and machine operators and assemblers are mostly either miners (Camilo Ponce Enríquez, Azuay; Zaruma, El Oro, a mining city since the Spanish time; San Carlos de las Minas and Paquisha in Zamora Chinchipe) or workers in shoemaking and sewing (Tungurahua). Professionals constituted the largest occupation group in Cumbaya and Nayón, east of Quito, while managers constituted the largest occupation group only in Samborondón where La Puntilla (the wealthy suburb of Guayaquil with a lot of gated communities) is located.

[Sir John Johns]

Let’s begin with a fun election:

The 1992 presidential election

A bit of background: in 1988, Rodrigo Borja, running for the officially social democratic (actually much more social liberal) Democratic Left (ID), defeated in the presidential runoff Abdalá Bucaram (Ecuadorian Roldosist Party, PRE), a young flamboyant populist sporting a Hitler mustache who considered himself as the champion of the poor, dubbed himself as El Loco (‘the Madman’) and distinguished himself by his exceptionally crude and vulgar style (going as far as calling during the campaign Borja a homosexual, nicknaming him ‘Rodrigo Borgia’ and pretending his semen was ‘aqueous’). Sixto Durán-Ballén, the candidate of the ruling Social Christian Party (PSC), had placed third in the first round, the consequence of the failure of rightist President León Febres-Cordero to deliver the promised pan, techo y empleo (‘bread, roof and job’) he was elected on in 1984 and, more generally, of the pretty chaotic four years the Febres-Cordero administration was (with the implementation of a deeply unpopular neoliberal agenda the president was forced to partly roll back to save the electoral fortunes of his party, seven general strikes, a brutal crackdown on unions and the tiny Alfaro Vive urban guerrilla, a military mutiny during which Febres-Cordero was held hostage, permanent confrontation with the Congress,  a referendum lost in a landslide and a devastating earthquake which interrupted oil exports for six months).

LFC’s 1984 presidential ad:

Abdalá’s 1988 campaign ad with the iconic La Fuerza de los pobres (‘the force of the poor’) anthem:

Despite enjoying a strong plurality in Congress (with the ID holding 32 out of 71 seats), Borja quickly became unpopular due to persistent economic problems that led his administration to pass legislation liberalizing labor relations and severely undermining unions and to continue the economic policies of his predecessor in office. A style far less bombastic and confrontational than Febres-Cordero, a literacy program and the disarming of the Alfaro Vive guerrilla weren’t enough to prevent the June 1990 indigenous levantamiento (the first large indigenous social uprising since the return of democracy which established the CONAIE as a key political actor) nor the debacle of the ID in the 1990 mid-term legislative elections which saw its caucus reduced to 14 congressmen.

With eleven parties by then represented in the Congress (the largest of them, the PSC, holding only 16 out 72 seats), the constitution of a working parliamentary majority led to long horsetrading and a series of shady deals as well as an infamous incident in which several protagonists of the 1992 presidential election would be part of. In August 1990, an alliance made up by the PSC, the PRE, the populist Concentration of Popular Forces (CFP) and several tiny parties elected Averroes Bucaram (Abdalá’s cousin and the leader of the CFP) as president of the Congress. As part of the deal, an amnesty was voted in favor of Abdalá Bucaram (exiled in Panama for the second time of his life) then sued for bribery when briefly (1984-85) mayor of Guayaquil; the controversial decision led to heated discussions which degenerated into a brawl during which congressman Alberto Dahik (elected for the Ecuadorian Conservative Party, PCE) suffered a head injury after a crystal ashtray had been thrown into his face by a PRE congressman and Popular Democracy (DP) congressmen Jamil Mahuad and Vladimiro Álvarez were punched by PRE congressmen led by Jacobo Bucaram (Abdalá’s brother and the PRE presidential candidate in 2002).

Shortly thereafter, three congressmen defected from the anti-Borja alliance and joined a pro-government parliamentary coalition that ousted Averroes from the presidency of the legislature and elected an Ecuadorian Socialist Party (PSE) congressman as the new president of the Congress.

A (then) record number of twelve candidates ran for president in the 17 May 1992 first round:

* Raúl Baca Carbo, a long-time rival of Borja in the ID, had the difficult task to prevent an electoral meltdown of the social democrat party which had placed first in the 1988 presidential first round with 24.5% of the vote. Unlike the Quiteño Rodrigo Borja, Baca Carbo, while born in Quito, had been associated with the coastal part of the country at the beginning of his political life, having been served under the military dictatorship as prefect of Guayas (1976-77) and mayor of Guayaquil (1977-78). The running-mate of Borja during the first presidential bid (1978) of this latter, Baca Carbo was elected a congressman on the ID national list in 1979 and for Pichincha (Quito’s province) in 1984 and presided over the legislature in 1980-82 and 1984-85 before joining the Borja administration as minister for Social Well-Being (1988-91) in which post he negotiated with the indigenous leaders of the 1990 uprising and implemented a program in favor of 200,000 deprived children.

* Jaime Nebot, 45, the designated heir of Febres-Cordero and new national director of the party, was selected as the candidate of the rightist PSC over veteran politician Sixto Durán-Ballén, a decision that angered many in the party (especially the members from the highlands which denounced a stranglehold of the Guayaquil business sectors on the PSC). The son of an interior minister (1971-72) under President Velasco Ibarra and himself a former governor of Guayas in the Febres-Cordero administration (1984-88) and a PSC congressman from Guayas (1990-92), Nebot had served as the leader of the social christian caucus in the Congress since two years. He was a controversial politician for being closely associated to the polarizing figure of Febres-Cordero and the human rights violations committed during the PSC 1984-88 administration and for having a hot-temper as illustrated by another infamous parliamentary incident which took place in 1990 when he publicly insulted a PSE congressman and threatened to urinate on him (the ven para mearte phrase which probably ruined all his chances of being elected president of Ecuador).

* Sixto Durán-Ballén, 71, ran for the third time for president after two unsuccessful bids in 1978/79 (defeated in a landslide in the runoff when the candidate favored by the military dictatorship) and in 1988 (placing third with 14.7% of the votes). A Boston-born architect and one of the founders of the PSC in 1951, Durán-Ballén had served as mayor of Quito between 1970 and 1978, remaining in this position even after the 1972 military coup. Having lost the PSC nomination to Nebot, he announced his decision to left the party he co-founded and his retirement from politics only to start few weeks later his own political organization, the Republican Unity Party (PUR or UR) originally intended as a moderate and centrist party true to its Christian roots and aiming at capturing the ID center-left disgruntled voters (mostly urban middle class in the Sierra). Nevertheless, the alliance of the UR with the PCE and the selection by Durán-Ballén of Alberto Dahik, a finance minister under Febres-Cordero widely perceived as a neoliberal hardliner, angered numerous officials of the new party, including its director, Mauricio Gándara, who resigned and left. Consequently, there were no real programmatic differences between the candidacies Nebot and Durán-Ballén with the main cleavages being the geographical origin (Guayaquil for Nebot, Quito for Durán-Ballén) and the personal style (young confrontational ‘macho’ for Nebot; the affable grandpa for Durán-Ballén).

Sixto’s political ad with its hilarious tune:

Another one using the Nebot’s ven para mearte incident:

* After his stunning success in 1988 (winning 17.6% in the first round and 46.0% in the runoff), the self-proclaimed ‘force of the poor’ Abdalá Bucaram made his second presidential bid as the candidate of his personal vehicle, the Ecuadorian Roldosist Party (PRE), a Costa-based populist party claiming the legacy of President (1979-81) Jaime Roldós (Abdalá’s own brother-in-law) who was elected as a populist in 1979 as the candidate of the CFP but ruled mostly as a technocrat and a center-left reformist until his tragic death with his wife (the influential Martha Bucaram) in a plane crash. However, unlike Roldós who was seen as a respectable politician, Bucaram made himself famous with his antics, his colorful insults against his political rivals and his pretty deranged rants against the ‘oligarchy’ portrayed as a bunch of decadent effeminate homosexual alcoholic drug-addicted atheists. Bucaram had started his political career at 28 as a very moralistic police intendent in Guayaquil (1979-80) when he conducted a campaign against ‘pornographic’ movies (including Bertolucci’s La Luna), homosexuality and prostitution, closed down the most popular nightclub of the city and tried to prohibit ball-games in the streets. In 1984, he was elected mayor of Guayaquil but left the country the following year to prevent indictment for having insulted the army and, potentially, for corruption cases. He came back after the Congress had pardoned him to run for president in 1988, fled back to Panama when judicial proceedings were resumed against him by President Borja but returned in 1990 in Ecuador after having been again pardoned by the Congress. The candidacy of Bucaram was seriously hampered by the disastrous administration his sister, Elsa, as mayor of Guayaquil (1988-91), marked by the ‘death toboggan’ scandal (a toy distribution on Christmas 1989 which ended with the death of two children during a stampede), the financial difficulties of the municipality which had no longer money to pay the sinecures for the PRE members (with predictable disastrous political results) and the general incompetence of the PRE municipality which had made a lot of unreasonable promises but proved totally unable to address the anarchic urban sprawl or provide basic services (electricity, running water, garbage collection, decent housing) to the city’s inhabitants; in 1991, Elsa resigned from mayor in the middle of a city political crisis and (of course) fled to Panama to evade being charged for corruption.

* After the candidate of the CFP, Ángel Duarte, had placed sixth with 7.9% (down from the 13.5% and the third position achieved by that same Duarte in 1984), the leader of the right-leaning populist party, Averroes Bucaram, ran himself for president. He was the son of Assad Bucaram, the longtime leader of the CFP who had successively served as mayor of Guayaquil (1962-63, 1967-70), prefect of Guayas (1970) and president of the Congress (1979-80) in which latter post he turned into a strong opponent to Jaime Roldós, the relative he got elected as president of Ecuador as the candidate of the CFP (being himself banned from running due to an ad hoc provision instituted by the military dictatorship). When Assad died in 1981, Averroes had prevailed over his brother, Avicena, as the leader of the faction loyal to the late caudillo while facing competition from both People, Change and Democracy (PCD), the party founded by Roldós few months before his death and then chaired by Jaime’s brother, León Roldós, and the nascent PRE led by Averroes’ cousin, Abdalá. Averroes managed to get elected one of the youngest (alternate) congressmen in Ecuador’s history in 1979 before becoming a national congressman in 1984-86 and 1988-92 and presiding the national legislature twice (1985-86 and 1990). His presidential candidacy suffered however from the inexorable decline of the CFP, his controversial and short tenure in office as president of Congress in 1990, the competition of his more dynamic and charismatic relative Abdalá and the departure of the CFP faction led by Avicena to launch a new party.

* Bolívar González, a lawyer from Tungurahua province (central highlands) who previously ran for congressman for the PRE in 1988 but fell out with Abdalá and was expelled from the party by a phone call from Panama in 1990, was the presidential candidate initially fielded by Avicena’s new party, the Assad Bucaram Party (PAB), which tried to capitalize on the (controversial) legacy of the late populist leader. González was however expelled from the PAB in the middle of the campaign after allegations made by Avicena over a drug case involving González, his running-mate and Avicena’s wife (no details unfortunately) and an even bizarre story about an alleged financial support proposition from the prime minister of Angola. Despite no longer supported by the PAB (or what remained of it), González’s name remained on the ballot paper.

* As part of yet another internal feud of the Bucaram-Roldós clan, former vice president of Ecuador (1981-84) León Roldós (Jaime’s brother who started his political career as a secretary to Assad Bucaram) was running as the candidate of the Ecuadorian Socialist Party (PSE), which had four years before supported the candidacy of crazy general Frank Vargas Pazzos (see below). Having lost control of the PCD founded by his brother by the mid-1980s, León Roldós was technically an independent supported by the oldest self-described Marxist party which had never managed to experience electoral breakthrough due to permanent infighting, countless splits, lack of implantation among population despite its ties with the FENOCIN agrarian/indigenous organization. Like his brother and later his daughter (Martha, a presidential candidate in 2009), León Roldós belonged to the sane branch of Bucaram-Roldós clan, advocating broad center-left positions (in 1992, he promoted a vague ‘socialism that isn’t statist’) and having never been involved in corruption cases. He would later made two other presidential bids.

* Gen. Frank Vargas Pazzos, aka El Loco (‘the Madman’ just like Abdalá) was the candidate of the Ecuadorian Revolutionary Popular Action (APRE), a party founded in 1970 by former mayor of Guayaquil and presidential candidate Carlos Guevara Moreno after he had lost the control of the CFP he had founded to Assad Bucaram. The populist APRE, which supported the right-wing Durán-Ballén in 1979 and the left-wing Borja in 1984 was moribund in the mid-1980s after the failure of the administration of the journalist/part-time singer it got elected as mayor of Guayaquil in 1980 but ended in jail for corruption. Vargas Pazzos, who was seeking a party to support his 1988 presidential bid, became the new owner of the APRE and placed a strong fourth with 12.6% of the vote, running on a left-wing populist, nationalist and anti-US platform and helped by his staunch opposition to President Febres-Cordero against whom he led two military mutinies to protest alleged corruption in the Defense Ministry; a third mutiny (Taurazo), which took place on Taura military base (Guayas province), obtained his amnesty and his liberation from jail after rogue soldiers had killed several presidential bodyguards and hold Febres-Cordero hostage until he signed the amnesty decree at gunpoint. Among prominent members of the APRE at that time were Gustavo Larrea (later an interior minister under Correa and a minor presidential candidate this year) who previously led the leftist Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and was already then a good friend of future president Lenín Moreno (who was a member of both the MIR and the APRE). Unlike 1988, Vargas Pazzos’ candidacy wasn’t supported by the PSE nor the National Liberation (LN), a split of the Communist FADI.

* Vladimiro Álvarez (the guy with the bloody mustache in the ashtray brawl video) was selected as the candidate of the Popular Democracy (DP, christian democratic) after a bitter nomination process which had opposed Jamil Mahuad (the guy with the black eye in the ashtray brawl video) to popular mayor of Quito and sport leader Rodrigo Paz. Mahuad, who had previously ran for president in 1988 and then gathered 11.6% of the vote (placing fifth), was supported by former president of Ecuador (1981-84) Osvaldo Hurtado (elected as Roldós’s running-mate in 1979 on a CFP-DP joint presidential ticket) whose attempts to take full control of the party had provoked few months before the departure of the left-wing faction under Julio César Trujillo (a disciple of the main proponent of Liberation Theology in Ecuador and ‘bishop of the Indians’ Leonidas Proaño who would later participated in the foundation of Pachakutik) mostly made up by former members of the Progressive Conservative Party, a split of the PCE which merged wit the DP in 1977, but also by one of its historical founders, Juan Pablo Moncagatta (who would became the campaign director of ‘civic left’ candidate Freddy Ehlers in the 1998 presidential campaign). Ultimately, Álvarez was nominated as the party’s presidential candidate while Mahuad ran for mayor of Quito in succession of Paz. The Guayaquil-born Álvarez had previously served as labor minister (1981-83) and interior minister (1983-84) in the Hurtado administration before being elected a congressman in 1988 and appointed the national director of the DP in 1989 in succession of Gen. René Vargas Pazzos, Frank’s brother as well as an oil minister during the dictatorship and the main ideologist of bolivarianism in Ecuador who would became an ambassador to Venezuela under Correa.

* After the relative success of the candidacy of its charismatic Afro-Ecuadorian lawyer Francisco Hurtado (5.0% of the vote, down from 7.3% in 1984) also endorsed by the rival Broad Left Front (FADI) in 1988, the Democratic Popular Movement (MPD) went alone in the 1992 presidential election, fielding a former congressman from Loja and graduate in political sciences, Fausto Moreno, who was the youngest (36) candidate of the election. His running-mate was Carlos Carrillo, a sociologist and former congressman from Tungurahua. The electoral vehicle of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (Hoxhaist and Maoist), the MPD enjoyed strong connections with student unions (Federation of University Students, FEUE; Federation of Secondary School Students, FESE) and the National Union of Teachers (UNE).

* Gustavo Iturralde, the vice-rector of the Guayaquil University, a lawyer and then the acting president of Guayas Electoral Tribunal, was the candidate, was the candidate fielded by the FADI, the electoral wing of the Communist Party of Ecuador (not to be confused with the Ecuadorian Communist Party, a pro-Correa split of that party founded in 2012), which never managed to become a relevant political force due to endless splits, repression during the military dictatorship periods and lack of implantation in the population despite the role it played in the 1940s in the constitution of the first indigenous organization, the Ecuadorian Federation of Indians (FEI).

* Bolívar Chiriboga, a lawyer from Riobamba (Chimborazo, central Sierra) and a former president of the Development Bank of Ecuador, was the candidate nominated by the old Ecuadorian Radical Liberal Party (PLRE) which, after having dominated political life from the late 1890s to the mid 1920s, desperately struggled to not falling into irrelevance. Even more than its traditional rival, the Conservative Party, it had failed to adapt to the gradual extension of suffrage (culminating with the 1984 elections when illiterates were able to vote for the first time), had suffered several splits from the 1960s to the 1980s (ID founded by its left-wing Sierra faction; Alfarist Radical Front founded by a Costa populist leader; the short-lived ‘modernist’ Democratic Party) and lost a good share of its traditional voters to the ID in the urban centers of the highlands and to the PSC (which had successfully displaced it as the champion of Guayaquil and coastal business interests) in the Costa.

Results:

Sixto Durán-Ballén (UR/PCE) 31.9%
Jaime Nebot (PSC) 25.0%
Abdalá Bucaram (PRE) 22.0%
Raúl Baca Carbo (ID) 8.4%
Frank Vargas Pazzos (APRE) 3.2%
León Roldós (PSE) 2.6%
Fausto Moreno (MPD) 1.9%
Vladimiro Álvarez (DP) 1.9%
Averroes Bucaram (CFP) 1.4%
Bolívar Chiriboga (PLRE) 1.0%
Gustavo Iturralde (FADI) 0.5%
Bolívar González (PAB) 0.3%

Valid votes: 84.1%
Blank votes: 5.9%
Null votes: 10.0%

Turnout: 71.1%

Map:

[Sir John Johns]

Trying to elaborate a bit on 1992 presidential election patterns (even if Loja results are all over the place but in line with the pattern for minor or once major parties fallen into electoral oblivion to overperform in north Amazon and the two border provinces of Sierra, Loja and Carchi) with maps of results at cantonal level for each candidate.



Durán-Ballén obtained, by far, his best result in Quito, the canton he used to be the mayor, receiving an impressive 58.9% of the votes, which may be one of the few time a presidential candidate achieved a majority of the votes in the capital. His second and third best cantons were Pedro Moncayo (49.5%) and Rumiñahui (47.0%), both neighboring Quito. The UR candidate also performed very well in Tulcán (45.9%), the main city of Carchi and then a PCE stronghold, as well as in Cuenca (43.0%), the third largest city of the country, and the main cities of the Sierra like Riobamba (41.0%), Ambato (40.8%), Ibarra (40.5%) with weaker results in Azogues (36.8%), Latacunga (35.8%), Loja (34.0%) and Guaranda (30.3%). Widely speaking, he clearly captured votes from traditional PCE voters but also from middle-class members and mestizo farmers who previously voted for the ID or the DP.

For some reason (possibly support of a local caudillo), he also received results way over his national average in four cantons located in central Manabí (worth mentioning that the Sucre canton included all the northern littoral of Manabí; it still comprised an exclave located at 63 km from the canton seat) including 41.9% in Manta and 38.6% in Portoviejo, the two largest cities of the province. Durán-Ballén’s strong result in the Galápagos (36.0%), won by Rodrigo Borja in 1984 and 1988  is also to be noticed.

On the other hand, Durán-Ballén received results under his national average in the marginalized rural parts of the Sierra like southern Carchi, Bolívar province, central and southern Chimborazo (15.0% in the Guamote canton where almost all residents self-idenfies as indigenous), rural Cañar, the periphery of Cuenca in Azuay and most of Loja province while performing very poorly in the whole agri-export production areas in the Costa (slightly stronger however in El Oro with 26.4% in Machala and breaking the 20% bar in the mining areas in the southeast part of the province), receiving over 20% of the vote in only one canton (Milagro, the third-largest city, with 23.4%, which then included the more rural General Antonio Elizalde exclave later made a canton). In the Guayaquil canton, he placed only third with 18.1% of the vote, behind both Nebot and Bucaram) and received his worst provincial performance in Esmeraldas (16.7%) with his best canton there being the Esmeraldas (City) one with 18.6% of the vote and his worst the two cantons of San Lorenzo (10.0%) and Eloy Alfaro (9.1%) in the eastern part of the province, a predominantly rural area populated by Afro-Ecuadorian and indigenous communities.



In a caricatural way, Nebot’s best canton was Guayaquil (which includes the Tenguel exclave, on the other side of the Gulf of Guayaquil, bordering El Oro province), the only one he received a majority of the votes (50.9%) with his second best canton being Durán (47.1%), the most popular and booming surburb of Guayaquil. In the municipal elections held the same day than the presidential first round, the economic hub of the country was captured over the ruling PRE by former president Febres-Cordero who would be reelected in 1996 and succeeded in 2000 by Nebot. The PSC’s strongest areas included the Guayas River basin, the southern and less indigenous part of the Bolívar province and the rural cantons located at the border between Loja, El Oro and Peru, even if I don’t no why.

Conversely, bar the aforementioned Bolívar and, to a lesser extent, Cañar province, Nebot received results under his national average in most cantons of the highlands, notably in the main cities with 18.3% in Loja, 15.8% in Latacunga, 13.5% in Riobamba, 12.7% in Ibarra, 11.2% in Cuenca, 9.3% in Tulcán and an abysmal 8.5% in Quito where he placed third behind Durán-Ballén and Baca Carbo and only slightly ahead of Bucaram.



The map of Sixto vote versus Nebot vote in the first vote (blue is where Sixto placed ahead of Nebot and yellow the reverse) illustrating the duel of the Ecuadorian rights showed clearly the Costa/Sierra cleavage with Nebot placing ahead of Sixto in only a handful of cantons in the highlands (southern Bolívar; Loja including Saraguro the only one of the province with an indigenous majority, central Cañar and Chunchi in southern Chimborazo) and only three in the Amazon (including Chinchipe, the less indigenous part of Zamora Chinchipe) while Sixto came ahead only in northern littoral and urban Manabí, the Muisne canton in Esmeraldas, parts of El Oro including the main city and banana-export major port of Machala and Babahoyo, the capital of Los Ríos and its neighboring cantons). Tellingly, while Quito canton accounted for 17.6% of the total valid votes, it accounted for 32.5% of the total Sixto vote but only 6.0% of the total Nebot vote; meanwhile, Guayaquil canton accounted for 19.2% of the total valid votes , it accounted for 10.9% of the total Sixto vote but for 39.2% of the total Nebot vote.

[Sir John Johns]

Support for Abdalá Bucaram is, unsurprisingly, mostly concentrated in the coastal provinces, especially in the banana-growing areas which have experienced economic and demographic boom since the 1940s/1950s (for example, 50.1% in Balao, Bucaram’s best canton; 49.2% in El Guabo; 40.6% in Baba; 40.4% in Puebloviejo; 39.6% in Puebloviejo; or 39.5% in La Troncal) and in the rice-growing area north of Guayaquil (42.8% in Salitre; 45.6% in Daule; 47.6% in Palestina; 42.8% in Santa Lucia; 38.8% in Samborondón; 36.7% in Colimes). He also performed way above his national average in the coffee-growing areas of southern Manabí which, by the early 1990s, were experiencing a pronounced economic decline worsened by droughts (36.8% in Paján; 36.3% in Veinticuatro de Mayo; 32.3% in Jipijapa). All these areas are roughly corresponding with the places where inhabitants are largely self-identifying as Montubios.



A map showing on cantonal level the percentage of the labor force employed in the ‘growing of tropical and subtropical fruits’ which, in this case very largely concerns the growing of bananas and plantains. The numbers are from the 2010 census as previous censuses don’t include such specific category.

Bucaram also overperformed among Afro-Ecuadorians in Esmeraldas province (receiving there 43.2%, his best province nationwide), receiving 47.2% in Esmeraldas canton (his fourth best canton and his best predominantly urban canton nationwide), 43.2% in Quinindé; 40.5% in San Lorenzo (along the Colombian border); 35.4% in Muisne and 34.5% in Atacames. The populist leader has indeed a real ability to connect with Afro-Ecuadorian communities (not only in Esmeraldas but also in the Afro-Ecuadorian migrants to Guayaquil), partly due to the fact he was the first national politician to (pretend to) care about discrimination faced by these populations. There are some recent examples of his rhetoric aimed at seducing Black voters on his Twitter account where he quite often makes reference to slave trade and slavery (including a tweet where he compared himself being forced to wear an electronic tagging to African slaves having to wear chains...) or mocks racism with photos of him eating a banana (part of a campaign some years ago to show solidarity with a Black soccer player that received racist insults) and tweets like this:

https://twitter.com/abdalabucaram/status/780877419838369792

If Trump wins, it would be the first time in history that a racist multi-millionaire will go to live in a public housing that has been inhabited by Blacks.

The official video of his 2021 bid for national assemblyman also featured prominently Afro-Ecuadorian persons and is showing the former president dancing with some sort of rapper and dancers in a ridiculous and hopeless attempt to regain what have been his most loyal voters for years:

It should be noted that, if Bucaram improved his result compared to his first presidential candidacy in 1988 on national level (from 17.6% to 22.0%), he lost ground in a single province, Guayas, and, considering the strong results he received in the rural part of this province, it is not hard to deduce where most of his losses took place: Guayaquil where, in the concurrently held municipal elections, benefiting from the disastrous performance of Elsa Bucaram as mayor, former president León Febres-Cordero (PSC) was elected mayor in a landslide with 67.1% of the vote against only 15.7% for the PRE candidate when, four years before, Elsa Bucaram had been elected with 42.3% of the votes; in the presidential election, Bucaram still placed second in the city with 24.0% of the votes, only two percent points above his national result (a historical result considering that Guayaquil was the home turf of the type of populism embodied by Abdalá). Also Abdalá quite under-performed in Manabí, his worst coastal province with 25.9% of the vote, and in the southeastern part of El Oro whose economy is dominated by mining and is appearing to be culturally and politically closer to the highlands than the coast.

Despite impressive progressions compared to 1988 (more than doubling – from 5.0% to 10.7% - his result in Pichincha and considerably increasing it in the northern provinces of Carchi and Imbabura – from respectively 4.6% and 5.6% in 1988 to 18.9% and 21.8% in 1992 – certainly helped by the fact that Bucaram’s running-mate, Marco Proaño was a native and outgoing deputy from Imbabura), the PRE candidate received results under his national average in most cantons in the highlands. He notably received weak results in most (but not all, see his 31.8% in Saraguro, 23.4% in Otavalo, 23.0% in Cañar and 22.1% in Saquisilí) indigenous-populated cantons and in the major cities, notably in Cuenca (11.5%) and in Quito (where he placed fourth behind Sixto, Baca Carbo and even Jaime Nebot, with 8.1%).

In Amazon, his best provinces were Sucumbíos (14.0%) and Zamora Chinchipe (20.2%) and he received his best results mostly in the non-indigenous areas, notably in Lago Agrio (17.8%), a major center of oil extraction as attested by the canton’s very name (the simple translation in Spanish of the name of the locality Texaco company originated from: Sour Lake, Texas), in Zamora (20.0%) and in Chinchipe (21.1%).

[Sir John Johns]

The map of Baca Carbo is basically a combination of traditional ID strongholds in rural areas and indigenous-populated areas.

Like for Borja in 1988, his best province was Morona Santiago (19.1% down from 46.0% for Borja), home to the majority of the Jivaroan population in Ecuador, where he received homogeneous result on cantonal level (ranging from 15.7% to 21.1%). His best canton with 38.5% was the overwhelmingly indigenous canton of Guamote in Chimborazo and he generally performed very well in cantons with strong indigenous populations like Aguarico, Napo (36.7%; currently in Orellana and home to an important Waorani community), Nabón, Azuay (23.6%), Guaranda, Bolívar (22.1%), Archidona, Napo (20.6%), Cayambe, Pichincha (19.1%), Colta, Chimborazo (18.4%), Cañar, Cañar (18.1%), Otavalo, Imbabura (16.4%), Saquisilí, Cotopaxi (15.1%).

He also received strong results in places usually supporting the ID like the mining and small farming areas in southeast El Oro (30.7% in Atahualpa, 27.2% in Chilla, 13.5% in Piñas and 12.4% in Zaruma), the province of Carchi (its fifth best province with 15.4%, down from 33.1% for Borja in the 1988 first round), the mestizo-populated rural parts of Azuay (28.7% in Oña; 20.3% in Gualaceo; 17.8% in Paute; 16.8% in Sigsig; 14.8% in Santa Isabel) and in the province of Imbabura (receiving there 13.3% of the vote, down from 30.3% for Borja in the 1988 first round).

However, while the ID candidate managed to retain the traditional voters of the orange party coming from the highlands’ mestizo countryside (small farmers and craftsmen), he clearly lost a good share of the urban middle class of the highlands to Durán-Ballén. Apart Cuenca, where he still received 18.5% of the vote, his results in the major cities of the Sierra weren’t very strong: 13.7% in Riobamba, 12.4% in Azogues, 12.3% in Loja, 11.4% in Ibarra, 8.2% in Ambato, 7.8% in Latacunga and a weak 10.9% in Quito: the bad result in the capital is reflected in the collapse of the vote for the ID in the Pichincha province, from 33.8% in the 1988 first round (Borja’s sixth best province) to 10.8% in 1992 (Baca Carbo’s thirteenth best province).

The ID candidate received particularly low results in the coastal provinces (bar Esmeraldas where he got 10.0%, down from the 25.3% received by Borja in the 1988 first round) where the self-described social-democratic party usually poll poorly: 6.9% in El Oro (down from 31.6% for Borja in 1988!) - in spite of the strong results in the southeast part of the province that couldn’t offset the horrendous 4.4% received in Machala, the province’s capital and largest city); 6.6% in Manabí (down from 18.1%); 3.4% in Los Ríos (down from 17.3%) and an absolutely pathetic 3.1% in Guayas, the most populous province (down from 12.3% in 1988 first round when already the ID’s worst province). There are located the two worst cantons for Baca Carbo: Guayaquil (2.0%) and its poor suburb, Durán (1.9%). The insane collapse of the ID in the province of Zamora Chinchipe (from 34.3% to 6.1%) should be noticed even if I haven’t explanation for such result.





For his second presidential bid, Frank Vargas Pazzos received only 3.2% of the vote, down from the 12.6% he had received four years before. The populist candidate got his best results in the northeastern corner of the Amazon, receiving 31.6% of the vote in Putumayo (Sucumbíos), 24.2% in Francisco de Orellana (Napo, present-day Orellana), 18.3% in Lago Agrio (home to Nueva Loja, in Sucumbíos) and 15.6% in Shushufindi (Sucumbíos). This largely corresponds to the oil extraction area where migrants from other parts of Ecuador (especially Loja and Manabí, the latter being also the native province of Vargas) settled starting from the 1970s. The ‘frontier mentality’ with its disdain for central government and its macho attitude seems a good fit for a candidate like Vargas, a former military coup leader, providing an explanation for his success in that area. Other factors may include the former position of Vargas’s brother, Gen. René Vargas Pazzos, as an oil minister during the military dictatorship period (so he may have kept relations there, especially in the oil companies leadership), the tendency for Amazonian provinces to vote for minor candidates and the aforementioned fact that a relatively sizable share of inhabitants of present-day Sucumbíos and Orellana provinces are natives of Manabí (according to the 2010 census, it is 4.1% of inhabitants in Lago Agrio canton, 5.7% in Francisco de Orellana canton, 6.0% in Shushufindi canton and 7.8% in Cuyabeno canton, a part of Lago Agrio until 1998).

Unlike 1988, when he won the province with 31.1% of the vote, Vargas fared very poorly in Manabí, receiving only 3.9% of the vote. He still got 8.1% in Chone canton (his birthplace) and scored above average results in the main urban centers of the province (5.4% in Portoviejo; 4.2% in Manta).

Vargas received also above average results in the central highlands (6.7% in Cotopaxi; 4.7% in Chimborazo; 3.9% in Tungurahua) and in the northern highlands (5.6% in Pichincha and 4.5% in Imbabura) polling well in a mix of rural indigenous areas (10.8% in Salcedo, Cotopaxi; 6.8% in Pujilí, Cotopaxi; 4.3% in Colta, Chimborazo; 4.2% in Guamote, Chimborazo; 5.6% in Cayambe, Pichincha), rural mestizo areas (5.9% in Guano, Chimborazo; 5.5% in Baños, Tungurahua), suburban areas (12.7% in Mejía and 9.3% in Rumiñahui, two cantons adjacent to Quito) and in the main urban centers (5.7% in Quito; 5.1% in Riobamba; 5.8% in Ibarra).

Otherwise, Vargas flopped in the southern highlands (1.9% in Azuay; 1.0% in Loja province), in southern Amazon (still 4.2% in Pastaza but, further south in provinces preserved from oil extraction, 1.5% in Morona Santiago and 0.5% in Zamora Chinchipe) and in the whole Costa, bar Manabí (1.5% in Guayas, 1.2% in Los Ríos, 1.1% in El Oro, 0.7% in Esmeraldas).





León Roldós 1992 is much more a map of the Ecuadorian Socialist Party than a map of a member of the Bucaram-Roldós family and is very different from the maps of his two subsequent presidential bids (2002 and 2006).

Best results are here to be found in indigenous-populated areas, especially among Saraguro (32.3% in Yacuambi, Zamora Chinchipe; 14.7% in Saraguro, Loja) and Shuar (19.0% in Huamboya, 17.9% in Santiago, 14.7% in Gualaquiza, 13.1% in Limón Indanza and 10.7% in Sucúa, all located in Morona Santiago; 19.3% in Nangaritza, Zamora Chinchipe). Also strong results in Cayambe (8.0%), the birthplace of indigenous labor movement and in cantons with an important textile cottage industry (in Azuay: 11.0% in Sigsig; 9.4% in Gualaceo; 7.0% in Paute; in Cañar: 7.6% in Azogues; 7.3% in Biblián; in Tungurahua: 7.1% in Pelileo, a center of blue jeans production since the 1970s).

Roldós didn’t do that well in urban areas: while he overperformed in Cuenca (6.4%) and Riobamba (4.3%), he received results only slightly above his average in Ambato (3.4%) and Loja (2.9%) and below his average in Quito (2.4%), Machala (2.4%), Guayaquil (1.6%), Portoviejo (1.3%) and Esmeraldas (0.7%).

[Sir John Johns]

Maps of the minor candidates, on which I haven’t too much to say about:



In addition of a few random indigenous-populated cantons like Nangaritza, Zamora Chinchipe (23.1%) or Guamote, Chimborazo (13.5%) and rural white/mestizo cantons like Chaguarpamba, Loja (20.4%) or Chambo, Chimborazo (10.1%), Moreno received one of its best result (its fourth best canton, actually) in Loja, his home turf, with 10.6% of the votes. Moreno hold important student union positions in that city, having been notably the president of the local branch of the FEUE, which may explained his strong result in the university town, home to the Universidad Nacional de Loja, the second oldest university in Ecuador established in 1859.

The Costa/Sierra divide is very apparent with Moreno also not doing very well in Bolívar province (0.8%). The MPD candidate performed only slightly above his national average in Quito (2.2%) and received an insignificant result in Guayaquil (0.5%).





The two best provinces of Vladimiro Álvarez were Sucumbíos and Morona Santiago (11.4% and 11.3%), where he appeared to have do very well among indigenous, probably due to the lasting influence of Catholic missionaries that were particularly active there: Carmelites in Cascales, Sucumbíos (Álvarez’s second best canton with 26.6%); Capuchins in Shushufindi, Sucumbíos (18.3%) and the neighboring canton of La Joya de los Sachas, Napo (14.5%); Salesians in Morona Santiago where Álvarez received for example 19.9% in Huamboya canton (including the parish of Pablo Sexto named after Pope Paul VI) and 16.5% in Limón Indanza canton (including the parish of San Juan Bosco named after John Bosco, the founder of the Salesian order). Álvarez also did well in the cantons of Zapotillo (27.3%, his best canton) and Celica (24.2%), two traditional strongholds of the DP (apparently Zapotillo was the only canton won by Julio César Trujillo in the 1984 presidential election), and in Cotopaxi (7.9%), the home province of his running mate.

The DP candidate received average to mediocre results in the urban centers of the highlands bar Latacunga (7.6%) and Cuenca (4.0%) with 1.9% in Quito (despite the city having been won by the DP candidate, Jamil Mahuad, in the concurrently held municipal elections), 1.5% in Loja, 1.4% in Riobamba and 1.3% in Ambato and Ibarra. He also performed very poorly in the Costa (0.9% in Babahoyo, 0.6% in Guayaquil and Portoviejo, 0.5% in Machala for example) except in the rural parts of Esmeraldas province (6.1% in Eloy Alfaro canton; 6.0% in Muisne canton; 5.0% in San Lorenzo canton).





The map of Averroes Bucaram is mostly a collection of rural peripheral cantons, the CFP candidate doing below his national average in the most populated cantons: 0.5% in Guayaquil, the cradle of the populist party; 0.6% in Cuenca; 0.7% in Machala; 0.8% in Loja canton; and even 0.3% in Quito.

Amusingly enough, the majority of the cantons where Averroes incredibly overperformed is located in the province of Loja, the only one lost by the CFP presidential candidate Jaime Roldós in the 1979 runoff: 36.7% in Calvas; 31.0% in Gonzanamá; 24.6% in Espíndola; 21.6% in Paltas; 20.1% in Sozoranga; 18.8% in Quilanga; 17.2% in Puyango. Such exceptional support for a candidate who received only 1.3% of the vote on national level seems to be explained by the personal local influence enjoyed by Jorge Montero Rodríguez, a CFP bigwig and a native of Calvas canton, who was elected a provincial deputy that same year and would be reelected in the Congress until 2006 when then the last remaining CFP deputy in the national legislature. By an irony of history, the CFP, founded in the urban slums of Guayaquil, ended its existence as a local party of a remote rural part of the highlands.

The best province of Averroes was however Zamora Chinchipe, where he received 12.7% of the vote, a province with cultural affinities with the neighboring Loja as numerous (indigenous and non-indigenous) settlers of the second one have moved to the first one since the nineteenth century.





Quite similarly, Bolívar Chiriboga, the candidate of the PLRE, received his best results in peripheral/impoverished, more than often, rural provinces: 4.4% in Bolívar (a remote highland province where, for some reason, minor right-wing parties/candidates tend to overperform) where he got his best results in the less indigenous cantons, 4.3% in Manabí (a province associated with the legacy of Ecuadorian liberalism; Chiriboga’s third best canton with 12.4% of the vote was Montecristi, the birthplace of iconic liberal hero Eloy Alfaro whose head served as a logo for the PLRE), 3.4% in Pastaza, 2.8% in Carchi (also one of the last strongholds of the other historical party, once rival to the PLRE, the Conservative Party), 1.9% in Loja, these two later provinces being located at, respectively, the northern and southern ends of the highlands.

On the other hand, Chiriboga received his worst results in the Guayas Basin and in El Oro, his worst province with 0.2%. He received 0.4% of the vote in Quito, 0.5% in Cuenca and 0.1% in Guayaquil.





The map of Iturralde is a bit hard to decipher but the communist candidate did below his average in largest urban areas (0.4% in Cuenca, 0.3% in both Quito and Guayaquil). He received more than 1% of the vote in only 16 out of 177 cantons, his best one being, for some reason, 5.1% in Salitre (Guayas). Other strong results are to be found in the northeastern fringe of northern highlands, including 4.3% in Pedro Moncayo (Pichincha), in central/southern Chimborazo – a rural, poor and remote part of the country populated by indigenous communities – with 2.3% in Alausí, 2.1% in Guamote and 1.3% in Colta and in Pastaza, his best province with 3.0% (but only 375 votes cast in his favor there...)





Finally, the hilarious map of the PAB candidate going along with that fantastic statistic: while the Napo province accounted for only 0.9% of the total registered voters, it made up for 11.3% of González’s total vote. Out of the only fourteen cantons where he received more than 1% of the valid votes, five were located in Napo and three of his four best cantons are located there: Aguarico (with an impressive 19.8%), Tena (8.9%) and Archidona (3.7%). He received more votes in Tena (893) than in Guayaquil (750), his seventh worst canton. His third best canton with 4.7% was Naranjal, a major center of banana production, whose mayor office was won by a candidate of the PAB. González placed slightly ahead of Averroes Bucaram in Quito with 0.29% against 0.26%.