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Modernity in the Andes, April 19, 2007
This review is from: The Redemptive Work: Railway and Nation in Ecuador, 1895-1930 (Latin American Silhouettes) (Hardcover)
Geographically Ecuador has a long coast with a narrow coastal plane. Moving eastward, high mountains restrict access to the Alto Plano and the Amazon jungles beyond accentuate climate variations. Large indigenous populations share a common Inca heritage and historically Ecuador was a Spanish colony. As Ecuador was transformed and modernized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elites envisioned national reform. The discourse was about how a railroad could tie the country together. Historically, it should be noted, railroads are marked as the quintessential icon of modernity in Latin America.
A. Kim Clark traces the development and construction of the rail link between Guayaquil, a port city on the coast and Quito, the capital in the interior. The railroad was seen as redeeming because it represented "for Ecuador, her moral resurrection and emancipation as a people."(43) Differences between the "principal dominant groups in Ecuador - the landowning elite of the highlands and the agro-export elite of the coast" (2) were overcome as each group perceived an advantage from the railroad. The insular land holding elite in the interior were tempted by expanding markets for their crops and livestock. Coastal elites, on the other hand, badly need labor to produce cocoa for export. The railroad alone was a technological achievement, but more significantly it served as a unifying link for nation building.
Clark notes three important aspects of the railroad in Ecuador: "First, the construction of the railway was associated with important political-economic transformations in Ecuador.... Second, the railway, and the broader discourse of movement and connection that surrounded it, allowed for consensus about the nature of national development....Third, the processes of national economic, political, and social integration through the railway had contradictory and uneven effects on different social groups and regions."(1-2)
If constructing the railroad was fraught with difficulty, the discourse necessary to achieve a consensus to even build it, likewise was not easy. It was the conservative leader, Gabriel Moreno, who came up with the very liberal idea to develop road and rail transportation as a means of uniting the country. Unlike most other Latin American countries, he did this by bringing the church and state closer together, rather than using the military to pressure the country toward modernization. (24)
Not until 1895 when General Eloy Alfaro and other coastal liberals wrested power from the dominant conservatives in Quito did Ecuador finish the task when they contracted with North American entrepreneur Archer Harmon. "The major difficulty was...due to the climatic conditions and the nature of the rocks." (36) When the Guayaquil-Quito link was inauguration in 1908, Ecuadorian liberals preened triumphantly. Hope for the nation sprang from optimism for national unity when the railroad opened up the interior to bring people together.
Clearly the building of the railroad was redeeming in that Ecuador was for all practical purposes disunited by geographic and ideological barriers. High mountains had separated the costal lowlands from the plateau and the more insular interior elites differed in outlook from the progressive export oriented coastal elites. As such the railroad was an "arena" of discourse between a geographical and ideological divide. The quickening of movement and communication would help promote the idea of an Ecuadorian national identity.
In reading The Redemptive Work, there is very little discussion directly about consumption as a mechanism of modernization, but in talking about the effect of the railroad on labor, agriculture, urbanization, movement, and connection, it is possible to extract some clues from the text.
Cocoa production for export did little to stimulate Ecuador's domestic economy. There was little foreign investment and the capital generated went overseas or went to support a luxurious life style for a few local elites. Cocoa production did stimulate growth in the population of Guayaquil where labor was in short supply due to the climate and illness associated with coastal living. Relatively high wages were offered to laborers there, compared to agricultural workers in the interior. Similarly higher wages for rail workers did not translate into more consumption. Intermediaries took a cut and left the workers with about half of their pay.
Other factors did not help build an internal economy. "As cocoa production expanded on the coast, it did not mean that highland food production was developed through transfer of earnings from the export sector to the non-export economy." (27) Despite the fact that Ecuador was an agricultural country, it was cheaper to import foreign food staples than to acquire them from the interior. What little industry developed had an agricultural basis and this was not significant.
The railroad did create a labor market for people from the interior to seek work on the coast and, by means of the railroad, interior elites were able to expand internal agricultural and livestock markets while easing access to imported goods, which presumably benefiting themselves more than others. Exactly how these factors effected the consumption patterns of peasants and indigenous people is unclear, but most likely it was minimal.
Nevertheless Clark concludes, "The railway stimulated the internal market by improving transportation in three ways. First, it allowed rapid transportation, which facilitated the commercialization of fresh vegetables and dairy products in coastal cities and towns. Second, the railway made it possible to transport heavy or bulky products such as onions, potatoes, grains, and corn. Third, the reduced cost of transportation permitted an increase in the profit margins for certain products destined for the internal market: livestock, dairy products, and some legumes (especially lentils and peas)." (110)
Clark makes one explicit reference to expanding the internal market in a program of the Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura to create additional consumers along with the elimination of debt peonage. Underscoring its proposals was a concern that "indigenous peasants frittered away their earnings in unproductive ways." (128) This move to expand consumerism also served as a racist argument against Chinese merchants moving to Quito, accusing them of being "'meager consumers'" and "restricting costs to such extremes that they prevent legitimate competition'" (168-69) In this instance it does not seem the railroad was redemptive.
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