Quito and Madrid 1788 – 1828: their culture on divergent roads

Abstract

We consider in this study the two devergent ways of politics and culture of Quito ̶today Ecuador ̶ on the one hand, and Madrid in Spain on the other, concerning the period between 1788 and 1828. These two ways are identical to two opposed courses, relatives to the intellectual and academic formation in both countries during the European ‘Ilustration’, and her going over to Quito, the Spanish Colony in the Andes on the Equator-Line.
Whereas the Americans tried to innovate in order to improve, the Spaniards, in reality, practiced the opposite, for example by the Bourbonical Reforms since 1763, and by reason of the Independence of Northamerica, in 1783. The measures, taken by Spain in Quito, remained completely behind the increasing desire of the ‘quiteños’, to know and to read about modern culture, about experimental physics, about modern economy, and all these subjects in relation to the geography of their country , that they began to nominate ‘Patria’. These Americans formed the beginning of secular and American culture in Quito, Ecuador: it magnified more and more the desire of the habitants, to take their politics in their own hands, and this all the more Spain answered in the negative to those questions of commercial and cultural transformation, in practice. Each of the two cultures, therefore, had to develop herself, opening by this way in America, the obvious consequence: the Independence of Quito.