Ecuadorian local elections, March 24, 2019

[Sir John Johns]

Ten months to go before Ecuador holds its next local elections but I’m already starting this thread as I intend to cover in depth these elections, which promise to be exciting, and I will need a lot of time to do research, write stuff, and making maps. Hopefully, I could have end the coverage of every prefectural race and the most important mayoral races before the voting day. I must however admit that I still have a superficial knowledge of Ecuadorian politics, especially local politics, as there is a severe lack of literature and press coverage on the topic. But I will do my best to provide what I hope will be interesting and useful insights that could help understand the complex and fascinating world of Ecuadorian politics.

So, local elections will be held in Ecuador on March 24, 2019, with Ecuadorian voters being called to the polls throughout the country to renew the entirety of their local elected officials: 23 provincial prefects and vice prefects, 221 mayors, 867 urban councilors, 438 rural councilors, and 4,089 members of parish juntas. The term of office of elected local officials has been reduced to four years in order to prevent that local elections happen at the same time than general elections; previously, the term length for local elected officials has been six years (1978-1984), four years (1984-2009), and five years (2009-2019). Reelection of local elected officials was strictly prohibited from 1978 until 1994 when the ban on the reelection of every elected official but the president was lifted by referendum; the 2008 Constitution introduced a non-retroactive two-term limit for every elected office which was abolished by the National Assembly in 2015 but reintroduced with retroactive effect by referendum in last February.

On same day, the seven members of the Council for Public Participation and Social Control (CPCCS) will also be elected by popular vote, also the result of the referendum held in last February.

Administrative divisions of Ecuador

The territorial organization of Ecuador is pretty messy – which is really unsurprising given the chaotic political history of the country – with however since several decades an enduring feature which is the existence of a dual hierarchy at all levels (except autonomous regions): a democratically elected ‘local autonomous regime’ (régimen seccional autónomo) – provincial prefects, cantonal mayors, and presidents of parish juntas –, officially called since 2008 Decentralized Autonomous Governments (Gobiernos Autónomos Descentralizados, GAD), is paralleled by a (now semi-official) ‘local dependent regime’ (régimen seccional dependiente) – provincial governor, political chief, political lieutenant – made up of appointed officials who serve as representatives of the central government.

The main structures of local government in Ecuador are:

1. 7 Autonomous Regions (Regiones Autónomas).

The most recently created administrative layer, it has been introduced by the 2008 Constitution, which provides that:

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The Organic Code of Territorial Organization, Autonomy, and Decentralization, passed in 2010, specifies that creation of new provinces would have been until 2016 a voluntary process initiated by provincial governments and approved by referendum by a majority of voters in each province to be merged; after 2016, the provinces would have been forcibly merged into regions by the central government.

Autonomous regions would have been headed by a regional governor (gobernador regional), elected by popular vote, who presided over a regional council (consejo regional), also elected by popular vote. They would have authority over such policy areas as land use planning, watershed management, and building and maintenance of the road network. The constitution also opens the door to possibility of further devolution of central government’s powers to the autonomous regions.

Exceptions:

- Quito Canton is organized since 1993 into a Metropolitan District (Distrito Metropolitano de Quito, DMQ), which had originally extended powers in the sole area of transportation. The 2008 Constitution enabled the DMQ to also assumes the competences devolved to autonomous regions and provinces. The DMQ is headed by a Metropolitan Mayor (alcalde metropolitano), who is directly elected by FPTP and presides over a Metropolitan Council (consejo metropolitano) whose members are elected by open list proportional representation.

- Guayaquil conurbation (cantons of Guayaquil, Samborondón, and Durán) is eligible to gain the status of metropolitan district, similar to those of the existing DMQ, and is considered as organized as such by several entities of the central government even if the formal establishment of the Metropolitan District of Guayaquil (DMG) is in a stalemate since years.

- The Galápagos province, while being officially part of the Region 5 (Littoral), keeps like the DMG and the DMQ a special status and a distinct organization.

Aiming at decentralize and deconcentrate political power and at modernize and rationalize the country’s administrative organization, the creation of autonomous regions was also supposed to address the recurring demands of coastal provinces for greater political and economic autonomy. However, a decade after the coming into force of the 2008 Constitution, the regionalization process remains in limbo, with only the DMQ being functional. No provincial government had formally request the creation of an autonomous region and the central government has repeatedly postponed its plan to forcefully combine provinces into regions.

Can’t provide many details here due to the lack of sources, but it seems that the main reason of the failure of the regionalization process is the fact that, immediately after the passage of the new constitution, the central government drew without any prior consultation a map of what the new autonomous regions should look like and established seven Planing Areas (Zonas de planificación) which were supposed to form the skeleton of the future autonomous regions.

The map produced by the technocrats of the National Secretariat of Planning and Development (SENPLADES) is an absolute horror with provinces being grouped together with few consideration for their history, their culture, or their ethnic composition. Predictably, it was met with strong resistance from local officials and population.

Due to the lack of local enthusiasm for the regionalization process, it is currently in a stalemate and the national government seems now to have lost any interest in the matter.

2. 24 Provinces (provincias).

There are 24 provinces in Ecuador, composed of two or more cantons. Provinces were established in 1824 as subdivisions of the departments at a time when Ecuador was part of the Gran Colombia. Ecuador became independent in 1830 and, five years later, the three existing departments (corresponding to the three political and economic poles: Quito, Guayaquil, and Cuenca) were abolished, thus leaving the provinces as the first-level administrative division of the country. The number of provinces has sharply increased in Ecuador’s history, from 7 in 1835 to 11 in 1860, 19 in 1978, and 24 since 2007.



The provincial prefect (prefecto de provincia) is the highest elected administrative authority in the province and is elected by FPTP on a ticket with the vice prefect (viceprefecto). The vice prefect replaces the prefect during temporary or permanent vacancies. The position of provincial prefect was originally created in 1967, replacing the position of president of the provincial council (presidente del consejo provincial) which was established in 1946, and became an elective office in 1970 and has remained as such since then bar the period of the dictatorship (1972-1979).

Prefects are in charge of spatial planning, construction and maintenance of roads, water management, nature protection, and promotion of agricultural and economic activities. Their authority in these fields is however limited to rural areas as mayors handle de facto over the same task in the urban areas. This has led the government to contemplate changing the electoral law so that the prefects would be only elected by residents of rural parishes; the proposal has however since been dropped. Prefects have very limited powers in the financial and fiscal areas and receive most of their financial resources from the central government with the latter usually favoring the provinces ruled by prefects close to the ruling party over provinces ruled by the opposition.

Traditionally, the prefects have a large political influence on provincial level as they control access to public procurement and the hiring of civil servants in the provincial administration. They are keen to use these powers to build patronage networks, notably by awarding public contracts to businessmen friends and by dispensing fictitious jobs or sinecures (pipones) to their supporters. So that’s not a surprise that provincial administration in Ecuador is plague by patronage, cronyism, and corruption.

The provincial prefect presides over the non-directly elected provincial council (consejo provincial), an executive and legislative body made up of the prefect, the vice prefect, the mayors of cantons and by representatives elected among the presidents of the parish juntas. Initially created in 1830, the provincial councils were replaced in 1878 by the provincial chambers (cámaras provinciales) which were abolished in 1883. Provincial councils were re-established in 1928, abolished in 1935, re-established in 1938 only to be again abolished in 1939. They were definitively re-established in 1945.

Process of selection of the provincial councilors (consejeros provinciales) has greatly varied over time: partly direct and partly indirect election (1946-1963, 1998-2008), appointment by the central government (1963-1967, 1972-1979), direct election (1967-1972, 1979-1998), and indirect election (since 2008). From 1979 to 2008, provincial councils were partly renewed each two years; now they are currently renewed at the same time than the provincial prefects.

The provincial prefect shares authority over the province with a provincial governor (gobernador de provincia) which is appointed by the ministry of interior and acts as the personal representative of the president. The governor is in charge of coordinating the national civil service (notably police) on provincial level. The office of political governor is highly politicized and its holder is usually a member of the ruling party. It is often a stepping stone to elective offices and it’s very common to see a provincial governor seeking the post of prefect in the province he administers or has administered. Provincial governors were directly elected between 1861 and 1869.

Exceptions:

- The post of governor of the Pichincha Province (where is located the capital Quito) was abolished in 1929.

- Since 2009, Galápagos are run by a Governing Council of the Special Regime of the Galápagos Islands (Consejo de Gobierno del Régimen Especial de Galápagos, CGREG), an executive and legislative body presided by a provincial governor (representative of the president) and made up of the three cantonal mayors of the archipelago, the president of the Floreana Island parish junta, a representative of the SENPLADES, and three ministerial appointees representing respectively the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Tourism, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Aquaculture, and Fisheries. The CGREG has more powers than the other provincial councils, having notably authority to regulate the entry of visitors and the relocation of Ecuadorian nationals in the archipelago.

Galápagos Province was firstly established in 1861, only to be abolished in 1865 and to be put under military administration. In 1973, the archipelago definitely became an Ecuadorian province and was run, from 1980, by the National Galápagos Institute (Instituto Nacional Galápagos, INGALA), an appointed body which reported directly to the president and dealt mostly with environmental matters. From 1996 to 2009, the executive power in the archipelago was shared between the head of the INGALA and a directly elected provincial prefect.

- There are several areas, known as non-delimited areas (Zonas no delimitadas, ZND), contested between two or more provinces, the largest one being El Piedrero which is located between Guayas and Cañar. In 2017, El Piedrero was incorporated by the central government into Guayas, but Cañar seems to not having gave up its claims. La Concordia, which was claimed by both Esmeraldas and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, voted in 2012 to join the latter province; La Manga del Cura, which was claimed by Guayas, Manabí, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas and Los Ríos, voted in 2015 to be incorporate into Manabí; Las Golondrinas, which was disputed by Esmeraldas and Imbabura, voted in favor of joining the latter province.

3. 221 cantons (cantones).

Cantons were established in 1824 as subdivisions of provinces. Their number skyrocketed since then: there were 41 in 1860, 53 in 1897, 95 in 1958, 126 in 1981, and 193 in 1993.



The mayor (alcalde), who is elected by FPTP, is the head of canton. Mayor deals, among other things, with space planning, urban planning, water and waste management, building and maintenance of the urban roads. They have tax-raising powers which give them more autonomy than the provincial. Mayors of Guayaquil (Ecuador’s most populated city) and Quito have extended powers and are high-profile political figures who frequently jumped into national politics (like Abdalá Bucaram and Jamil Mahuad who were elected presidents after having served respectively as mayor of Guayaquil and mayor of Quito). Conversely, prominent politicians may have left the national political scene to run for mayor in Quito or Guayaquil; far from being a demotion, this has bolstered their national political stature. This is notably the case of León Febres Cordero who became mayor of Guayaquil after his presidency or of Mauricio Rodas who was elected mayor of Quito in 2014, the year following his presidential bid.

The position of mayor was created in 1946 to succeed the urban prefect (prefecto de la ciudad), an office introduced in 1928 but failed to have a significant political impact due to the anarchy in which the country was plunged in the 1930s. Like the urban prefect, the mayor was then only directly elected in the most populated cities (over 50,000 inhabitants) and in the provincial seats. Other cantons were headed by a president of the municipal council (presidente del consejo municipal) also called municipal president (presidente municipal) which was apparently indirectly elected until 1988. The 1998 Constitution abolished the distinction between mayor and president of the municipal council with all cantons being since then headed by a mayor.

The mayor presides over the municipal council (consejo municipal), made up of the urban and rural councilors (concejales) – elected by open list proportional representation – representing the urban and rural parishes of the canton and among whom a vice mayor (vicealcalde) is selected to assist the mayor. Municipal councils (also called cantonal councils) have, with numerous interruptions, been indirectly elected since 1835 and directly elected since 1863.

The mayor shares authority over the canton with a political chief (jefe político) which is appointed by the provincial governor and basically acts as the local agent of the ruling party. The position of political chief has been officially abolished in 1998 but in practice continues to exist.

4. 1,228 parishes (parroquias)

The lowest administrative level of Ecuador is the parish with the country being divided into 815 rural parishes and 413 urban parishes, the latter corresponding not only to the boroughs of the largest cities but also to the seats of the cantons. Parishes were officially established in 1824 but actually dated back from the colonial era. There were only 290 parishes in 1860, 389 in 1897, 781 (165 urban and 616 rural) in 1958, and 947 (227 urban and 720 rural) in 1981.

A 5-member parish junta (junta parroquial) is elected by open list proportional representation in each rural parish. The member who has received the largest number of votes becomes automatically president of the junta. The urban parishes appear to not have a legal recognition and so aren’t ruled by a junta.

Parish juntas are responsible of economic development and spatial planning of the parishes in coordination with the provincial and cantonal governments; planning for infrastructure and roads of the parish; promote citizens’ participation and environment protection at parish level.

Annually elected parish municipalities (municipalidades parroquiales) were created in 1860 but abolished in 1878, officially due to their excessive operating costs. It wasn’t until 1945 that new institutions – the parish councils (consejos parroquiales) – were recreated to run the rural parishes. In 1967, the parish councils were replaced by the parish juntas but it wasn’t until 2000 that they were directly elected and received autonomy and extended powers as provided by the 1998 Constitution.

Similarly to provinces and cantons, the rural parishes are ruled by a dual system: beside the president of the parish junta, there is a political lieutenant (teniente político), appointed by the provincial governor, who holds police and judiciary powers and exerts a considerable political influence. The 1998 Constitution had officially abolished the position and transferred most of its powers to the parish juntas but political lieutenants continue to be appointed and to play a major role in the parish political life.

5.Pluricultural and Indigenous Territorial Circumscriptions (Circunscripciones Territoriales Indígenas y Pluriculturales, CTIs)

They were introduced by the 1998 Constitution and ratified by the 2008 Constitution which provides that:

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I can’t find any information about the actual number of CTIs, but it appears that none has been created since 2008 due to the complex mechanism for the establishment of such structures.

[Sir John Johns]

The Council for Public Participation and Social Control

On March 24, 2019, Ecuadorians will also vote to elect the seven members of the Council for Public Participation and Social Control (Consejo de Participación Ciudadana y Control Social, CPCCS), the first time that the members of this independent body will be directly elected by popular vote. Indeed, since its establishment in 2008, the CPCCS members had been chosen through a complex public selection process, theoretically based on merits of the candidates. The passage through a referendum held in last February of a constitutional amendment has however led to the dismissal of all selected members of the CPCCS and the appointment by the president of a transitional board to administer the CPCCS until the election of new members.

The CPCCS, which is the main institution of the ‘fourth branch of the state’, is responsible, among other things, to foster citizens’ participation, to fight corruption (a task it spectacularly failed to carry out) and to select – once again, theoretically according to their merits – various important non-elected state officials like the attorney general, the comptroller general, the ombudsman, the members of the National Electoral Council (CNE, in charge of administering the elections), and the members of the Board of Judicature (in charge of appointing justices of the National Court of Justice and judges). These state officials were until 2008 designated by the legislative power, which had led to countless abuses (political meddling, political bargaining, corruption, appointment of people not qualified for the position) which the establishment of the CPCCS was supposed to solve. However, the appointments made by the CPCCS has been widely decried by the opposition which has repeatedly accused the institution to systematically select people close to the ruling party. So the direct election of the members of the CPCCS is supposed to restore the legitimacy of a largely discredited institution.

What is at stake?

These local elections will serve as midterm elections and will be a good indicator of the political mood, two years before the next presidential election. Numerous dramatic political shifts could be expected, especially because, due to the term limit provision passed by referendum in February, no less than 15 provincial prefects and 46 mayors are barred from running for reelection, thus increasing probably the number of seats under threat of changing party hands.

The elections will constitute a popularity test of President Moreno, two years after his difficult election as head of state. The incumbent president, whose approval ratings are in free fall since several months, will have to avoid an embarrassing defeat of its party, the Alianza Pais (AP), which currently holds a majority of provinces and cantons. An electoral debacle of the ruling party would certainly not help the president to keep his frail majority in the National Assembly where the AP has lost its absolute majority after a split provoked in last January by followers of Moreno’s predecessor, Rafael Correa. Until now, the president has been able to pass his legislative agenda, thanks to an alliance with the ‘National Integration Caucus’ (Bloque de Integración Nacional), a ragtag parliamentary group composed of no less than nine minor and regional parties (including among other the indigenist Pachakutik, the center-left Democratic Left, and the populist Fuerza Ecuador and Patriotic Society Party) and the ad hoc support of various right-leaning independent lawmakers. But a major defeat of the AP in the upcoming local elections would possibly provoke defections to the opposition and render the National Assembly unworkable.

As I mentioned earlier, the AP and its regional allies currently control the majority of the provinces; however, as many incumbent prefects are retiring due to term limits, the opposition has greater opportunities to pick up prefects’ seats, notably in the three most populated provinces: Guayas, Pichincha, and Manabí. On the other hand, as the AP has already suffered a major defeat in 2014 in every major city of the country bar Esmeraldas and Durán, it had few important mayor seats to defend the next year.

The 2019 local elections will also been the first electoral contest for Rafael Correa’s new party, the Movement of National Agreement (MANA) which, as I wrote above, formally split from the AP in last January and has since displayed a rabid opposition to Moreno. The results of the February 2018 referendum, when Correa and his supporters were the only ones to defend the ‘no’ to the proposals put to referendum, suggest that the new party could possibly capture the prefecture of Manabí (third largest populated province of the country and the only province where the ‘no’ triumphed in February) but also, depending of its opponents, the prefecture of Guayas (largest populated province) and the canton of Guayaquil (the country’s largest city and economic hub).

Another thing to watch is the ongoing competition between Creating Opportunities (CREO) and the Social Christian Party (PSC) to take the leadership of the right-wing camp. The first one, whose leader Guillermo Lasso was narrowly defeated in the 2017 presidential runoff, has to build a solid network of local elected officials to consolidate its position of leading opposition party. Back in 2013, CREO candidates were all defeated in the most high-profile races. In 2019, the party’s top target will be the prefecture of Pichincha and the metropolitan district of Quito whose mayor, Mauricio Rodas (SUMA, center-right but also open to support Moreno’s agenda), is vulnerable. There is also talks about a possible candidacy of Lasso to the post of mayor of Guayaquil but this will be an uphill battle for the CREO leader that could hamper his 2021 presidential candidacy.

For its part, the PSC, which had broke with its long tradition of parliamentary obstructionism to adopt a conciliatory stance toward Moreno (notably voting in favor of the AP candidate for president of the National Assembly), will try to keep its strongholds in the coastal provinces, notably Guayaquil where the party has nominated its 2017 presidential candidate, Cynthia Viteri, to succeeded to the popular but term-limited mayor Jaime Nebot. A strong result of the PSC would rise the prospects of a presidential candidacy of Nebot in 2021.

One of the major winners of the 2013 local elections was Avanza, the AP’s nominally social democratic sidekick, which then campaigned as the ‘other party of the presidential majority’ and won the second largest number of cantons behind the AP. Electoral prospects are now however gloomy for this party as its founder and former leader, Ramiro González, once seen as a rising star of Ecuadorian politics and a potential future president, is currently on the run, wanted for illicit enrichment. The party, now led by mayor of Ibarra Álvaro Castillo, has suffered in recent months numerous defections and should be a non-factor in the next local elections.

The main objective of the other political parties will be to remain half-relevant by keeping the positions they currently hold. This is notably the case of Pachakutik, which will try to retain the provinces of Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Zamora Chinchipe, Morona Santiago, and Orellana, for the Ecuadorian Socialist Party (PSE), which will have problems to keep all the cantons it managed to capture in 2013, and for Popular Unity (UP) which is defending the province of Esmeraldas and will try to win back the seat of this province it lost to the AP in 2013. SUMA leader Mauricio Rodas will struggle to get reelected as mayor of Quito.

The Democratic Left (ID) has some hopes to win the high-profile race for mayor of Quito, providing that former 2017 presidential candidate and former mayor of the city Paco Moncayo agrees to run for the party. Meanwhile, the Patriotic Society Party (PSP) will attempt to retake the province of Napo, its historical stronghold, it lost to the AP in 2013, while Fuerza Ecuador (FE) will try to rebuild its electoral base in the coastal provinces after the decent results obtained by Dalo Bucaram, its leader and presidential candidate, in 2017; one of the member of the Bucaram family, either Dalo Bucaram either former president Abdalá Bucaram, recently returned from exile in Panamá, could possibly run for mayor of Guayaquil with little chances of success however.

[Sir John Johns]

As a matter of introduction, two important news which I will elaborate on to give an idea on how Ecuadorian politics works to those unfamiliar with the topic.

Mauricio Rodas gives up

Firstly, the incumbent center-right (well, this is Latin America, so don’t buy too much into Ecuadorian political parties’ ideological self-identification) mayor of Quito, Mauricio Rodas (SUMA), has announced he will not seek reelection next year, avoiding thus an embarrassing electoral defeat. Back in 2014, Rodas was elected as the opposition candidate under the banner of the SUMA-VIVE alliance, against AP incumbent mayor Augusto Barrera with 58.2% of the vote; his approval currently stands at a pitiful 12.8%.

There are several reasons for such a spectacular collapse in popularity: the lack of experience and political vision of Rodas who was only 38 when he was elected and had then never held an elected office; the perceived opportunism of the mayor of Quito who, while having been elected as the opposition candidate, avoided to openly confront the AP government and even, in recent months, negotiated the support of the SUMA to President Moreno, much to the disappointment of right-leaning voters; problems related to the financing of Rodas’ infrastructure building program, especially concerning the Quito Metro, a project launched by Barrera; finally, the countless political controversies and scandals in which the mayor and the SUMA councilors were involved.

However, above all, the major problem faced by Rodas which turned his administration into a trainwreck is his lack of a stable and reliable majority in the Quito municipal council, made even more complicated by the uneasy alliance with VIVE, a regional center-left movement led by Antonio Ricaurte, an ambitious politician who, at the time of the election, described himself as both a supporter of Rafael Correa and an opponent to Barrera.

At the beginning of Rodas’ term, the composition of the municipal council was the following:

AP 11 seats
VIVE 5 seats
SUMA 4 seats
CREO 1 seat

So, Rodas had then already to negotiate with a municipal council dominated by the AP to try to get his agenda passed; things however worsened as the mayor of Quito was unable to prevent the disintegration of his frail coalition and faced a very common political phenomenon in Ecuadorian politics: the cambio de camiseta (‘change of shirt’) as floor-crossing and party switch is colloquially called there.

The composition of the municipal council is currently the following:

AP 9 seats
Independents 5 seats
VIVE 4 seats
SUMA 1 seat
CREO 1 seat
something called Solidarity and Social Action Movement (MASS) 1 seat

Problems quickly arose for Rodas as, as early as June 2014, Antonio Ricaurte withdrew his support to the mayor and started voting with the AP group. Ricaurte notably opposed the awarding of the Quito Metro construction contract to the now infamous Odebrecht company, a contract that was nevertheless signed in October 2015. By then, Ricaurte had however already been forced to resign due to a crazy scandal: during a public meeting he openly accused a SUMA councilor of sex harassment and insulted her; this led him to spent fifteen days in jail before being cleared of any charges.

In October 2015, councilor Sergio Garnica resigned from the presidency of VIVE and left the party to seat as an independent. The following month, the frail SUMA-VIVE lost another seat when SUMA councilor Ivonne Von Lippke withdrew her support to Rodas and seated as an independent to protest against his ‘macho’ politics.

In August 2016, it was the turn of vice mayor Daniela Chacón to resign for her post and to left the SUMA to join the ranks of the independent councilors. Chacón was notably opposed to Rodas’ proposed ‘Guayasamín Road Solution’, the construction of a 120-meter bridge aiming at resolving the problem of transport congestion in Quito. The project was met by strong opposition from inhabitants of the neighboring Bolaños barrio who denounced the social and environmental consequences of such a project. Additionally, several experts predicted the bridge would become useless few years only after its completion and the contract of construction, awarded to China Road and Bridge Corporation, was criticized for being too favorable to the Chinese firm.

Chacón was replaced as vice mayor by Eduardo del Pozo, the lonely CREO councilor, as Rodas, after having adopted a conciliatory stance toward Rafael Correa without much results, finally decided to endorse the presidential candidacy of Guillermo Lasso. The alliance between CREO and what remained of the SUMA-VIVE coalition was formalized in October 2016 and permitted the election of several SUMA members as assemblymen. It collapsed as early as July 2017 after the SUMA assemblymen had voted in favor of an AP-sponsored bill. As a consequence, Eduardo del Pozo turned into one of the most vocal opponent to Rodas and openly plotted to have him removed from office.

Meanwhile, Rodas’ transport and infrastructure policy continued to be erratic and inefficient. In June 2017, after a strike of bus drivers, the mayor, broking a promise he had previously made, took the unpopular decision to rise the bus fares, if I understand correctly not only to increase the bus drivers’ wages but also to finance the construction of the Quito Metro. In December 2017 and January 2018, the city barely avoided a health crisis after the Emaseo, the municipal cleaning system, proved unable to collect the garbage at time; Rodas sacked the head of the Emaseo but the public opinion put much the blame of the crisis on the mayor. Finally, in May 2018, the Army Engineer Corps announced it would renounced to pursue the construction of the Quito Cables, an aerial tramway system promised by Rodas during the 2013 campaign; the project was officially launched in 2016 but hadn’t made substantial progress since then.

So, what appeared in 2014 as a rising star of Ecuadorian politics and possibly a future president, quickly turned into a major flop. The question now isn’t if the SUMA could win the next municipal election in Quito but if it will even field a candidate.

Recall referendum in Loja

On June 24, voters of Loja Canton (ninth most populated city in Ecuador located in the southern Sierra) will vote to recall their mayor José Bolívar Castillo ‘El Chato’. Unlike Rodas, Bolívar Castillo is a shrewd politician and a competent administrator who received several international prizes for his quite successful plans to turn Loja into a greener city; he also appears to not being more corrupt than your average Ecuadorian politician. However, he is also very controversial for being a loudmouth who routinely picks fights with journalists, for his authoritarian style and for allegedly sending the municipal police after his most vocal opponents.

El Chato entered politics in 1964, at 19, when he took part in the establishment of the Popular Democracy (DP, christian democrat). In 1978, he made his first attempt to be elected mayor of Loja but was defeated by a conservative candidate. Six years later, he was elected deputy from Loja to the National Congress but fell at odds with the party leadership and was expelled from the DP. In 1988, by now a member of the Democratic Left (ID, social democratic), El Chato was elected mayor of Loja for a four-year non-renewable term. Shortly thereafter, he refused to comply with the ID leadership’s plan of purging the municipal administration and filling it with ID supporters, which led to his expulsion from the party.

When his term as mayor ended in 1992, El Chato rejoined the DP and, after a constitutional amendment allowing reelection for mayors had passed, ran again for mayor of Loja in 1996. He won a second term in office and was reelected in 2000. That same year, feeling that his DP membership would be a liability for his subsequent career as the party had became incredibly unpopular due to the disastrous administration of President Jamil Mahuad, he left the party. Two years later, at a time when the Ecuadorian political system was imploding, El Chato, like many other provincial political leaders, started his own provincial movement, the Ecuadorian Regional Integration Movement (MIRE) later renamed the Regional Action for Equity (ARE) whose only purpose (besides of advancing El Chato’s career) seems to obtain more money for the Loja province from the central government.

This led El Chato to ally with then-President Lucio Gutiérrez (sort of right-wing populist) in 2004 when he, unsuccessfully, ran for reelection as mayor of Loja. In the mid-2000s, he dumped Gutiérrez and turned into a eulogist of the Correa administration which rewarded him with a post of governor of Loja in 2009. He seems to not have kept this post very long as, later that same year, he ran once more for mayor of Loja and was again defeated. Nevertheless, he was elected assemblyman from Loja in 2013 under the banner of the ARE and constantly voted with the AP; among his ‘feats’ is his contribution to the creation of the infamous Supercom, an institution in charge of regulating media content.

In 2014, El Chato resigned his parliamentary seat for, guess what, running for mayor of Loja; his seventh campaign for the city hall proved victorious. El Chato made national headlines in 2015 when he successfully sued the La Hora before the Supercom for not having gave sufficient coverage to his official rendering of accounts, a decision that provoked uproar among journalists and free speech defenders. In the recent feud between Moreno and Correa, El Chato choose the former, because he is the one in charge and the one who has the money.

The recall petition against El Chato was initiated by Segundo Armijos, a former president of the Union of Taxis Cooperatives of Loja, who managed to gather the signatures of more than 12.5% of the registered voters, the number of signatures required to force a recall referendum. The legal reason to hold a recall referendum is that El Chato violated the law and committed an abuse of authority when he lowered the speed limits in the city streets without consulting the cantonal council as required by law.

Actually, taxi drivers (and more generally road drivers) are mad at the recent installation of photo radars and at the skyrocketing number of fines issued for road traffic offenses. In their attempt to unseat El Chato, they received the support of a wide range of people and interest groups all angry at the mayor, notably street vendors and waste pickers (that El Chato apparently tries to chase away from the city), human rights activists who claimed that municipal police committed numerous abuses under El Chato including a reported case of torture dating back from the 1990s, the animal rights movement unhappy with the mayor’s campaign to exterminate pigeons and stray dogs (El Chato notably declared he wanted to made compost with the latter), and free speech advocates (for obvious reasons). The list of political parties and organizations supporting the recall of El Chato is no less coherent as it includes CREO, the insane populists of FE, the left-wing Democracia Sí (theoretically allied to Moreno), and the YASunidos environmental movement which doesn’t seem to believe in El Chato’s ‘green’ credentials.

El Chato has denounced the holding of the recall referendum as a waste of taxpayers’ money and as political persecution and claimed the ‘no’ will triumph as predicted by several polls he refused to make public. The ‘yes’ side also obviously said it will win but, in the absence of a serious poll on the matter and with my limited knowledge of Loja political scene, I will abstain from making any prediction.

I will later post maps to try to understand the voting patterns in Loja Canton.

[Sir John Johns]

Before posting election maps of Loja Canton, here is an overview of the demographic, ethnic, social and economic background of the various parishes constituting the canton. Using the 2010 census data, which can be found on the website of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC), I have made a series of maps showing demographic and socioeconomic indicators. Some of the maps are possibly quite redundant or not particularly relevant but, in any case, it will give an idea of what kind of stuff I’m able to map for each Ecuadorian province or canton.

The INEC website permits to cross a large number of variables providing thus useful information like, for example, the literacy rate for each indigenous subgroup or what type of occupation category (self-employed, day laborers, public employee or private employee) prevails in each economic branch and even sub-branches, all of this at parish level.

There are however fields left uncovered by the 2010 census like income or religious affiliation while the INEC didn’t have include in its online database the various poverty indexes it had calculated using census data. Luckily enough, I found them for Loja Canton but it’s very likely I will be unable to provide them for every single province or canton.

Much more annoying is the lack of data for individual urban parishes in each canton as, on the INEC website, they are lumped together into a single urban unit. So there will be very few data on the social, ethnic and economic cleavages in the urban areas, which is very unfortunate. Also, there are several issues with the electoral results in urban parishes given by the National Electoral Council but I will elaborate about this later.


Loja Province

I will later try to make a bunch of maps of Loja Province but, for now, I just provide a short overview of the province.



Loja Province is located in southern Sierra and is bordered on the south by Peru, on the northwest by the coastal province of El Oro, on the northeast by the Sierra province of Azuay and on the east by the Oriente province of Zamora Chinchipe.

The province, which is over 11,000 km² in size, is mostly covered by hills and mountains with the highest elevations being found in the eastern part, notably in Loja Canton. Most human settlements are located in mountain valleys. Loja Province possesses a wide variety of natural environment ranging from dry forest and shrublands to humid tropical and subtropical forest.

Loja Province had in 2010 a population of 448,966 inhabitants, accounting thus for 3.1% of Ecuador’s total population.

Its ethnic make-up is the following: Indigenous 3.7%; Afro-Ecuadorian 2.4%; Montubio 0.7%; Mestizo 90.2%; White 2.9%; other 0.1%. Loja is noticeable for its low percentage of indigenous population (the third lowest of any Sierra province after Azuay and Carchi), mostly located in northeastern corner of the province (Loja and Saraguro cantons). Even more, it stands out for its very high percentage of Mestizo population. Actually, Loja has the largest percentage of Mestizo population of any Ecuadorian province, being however closely followed by Azuay (89.6% Mestizo). By comparison, mestizos account for 79.6% of the Sierra population and 71.9% of the Ecuadorian population.

The demographic shift, which turned an indigenous majority province with one of the largest black population in the Sierra into what have been called a ‘white province’ whose inhabitants take pride in speaking – allegedly – the purest Spanish dialect of the country, began in the second half of the eighteenth century. An acute economic crisis, provoked by the collapse of the obraje (textile manufactures in which indigenous were forced to work in dreadful conditions) industry, was then badly hitting the northern and central Sierra, leading to an important population movement toward the southern Sierra, especially the corregimiento of Loja, whose economy, by comparison, was booming, driven by mining, textile cottage industry (closer to Peruvian market than the northern Sierra) and exploitation of cinchona trees (from which the quinine is produced).

Three distinct groups of migrants then settled in the underpopulated corregimiento of Loja, changing considerably its ethnic make-up.

The first group was composed of whites/mestizos coming from the urban areas of northern and central Sierra. Not only did they settled in Loja’s major cities, but they also moved to the countryside of the corregimiento, by then mostly populated by indigenous. This led to the emergence of a new socio-ethnic category, the chazos (white rural laborers), specific to the Loja province.

A second group was made up by indigenous coming from the rural areas of northern and central Sierra. Mostly belonging to the forastero or corona category – indigenous having moved away from and lost any tie with their native communities – they settled in the indigenous majority countryside of the corregimiento of Loja where they interbred with native communities whose members were themselves predominantly originario or quinto indigenous – indigenous rigidly tied to to the land and to their community. Children born from unions of foresteros and originario managed, from the majority of them, to escape the status of originario (submitted to tribute and forced labor) to adopt the much more flexible status of forastero (who were exempted from tribute and compulsory labor because the Spanish authorities were unable to retrace their origins and tie them to an indigenous community).

Finally, a third group deserved a mention: a sizable number of Sephardi Jews, fleeing Spain and religious persecution, settled at that time in the loosely controlled corregimiento of Loja.

The adoption of mestizo identity by indigenous and Afro-descendents was accelerated and facilitated by two other factors: exerting only a weak political control over Cuenca (today Azuay Province) and Loja corregimientos, the Spanish authorities were unable to prevent the passing of indigenous and blacks from what were then rigid ethnic categories in the rest of Sierra to the much more enviable status of mestizo; the development in the corregimiento of Loja of mule raising at a large scale increased significantly the geographic mobility of the population and thus favored also their social mobility.

Another distinctive demographic feature of Loja Province is its long history of emigration due to overpopulation and chronic land shortages; the province has indeed experienced since the late stages of the colonial era a desertification process provoked by deforestation (initially due to the uncontrolled cultivation of cinchona and introduction of goats) that has accelerated in the middle of the twentieth century (with notably a dramatic drought in 1968). As a consequence, it has been estimated that between 1962 and 1982 nearly 150,000 Lojanos left the province; in 2010, 36.8% of Ecuadorian residents born in Loja province lived in another Ecuadorian province. The main migration destinations are, besides of the traditional magnet cities of Quito and Guayaquil: El Oro (where Loja-born people constitutes 9.6% of the province’s total population); Zamora Chinchipe (24.5% of the population); the area of recent colonization covering southern Esmeraldas, the whole Santo Domingo de las Tsáchilas, and the western Pichincha; finally, the Amazonian provinces of Sucumbíos (5.8%) and Orellana (5.0%) as shown by the name of the provincial capital of Sucumbíos, Nueva Loja.

Despite the fact that only 7% of the lands in Loja are considered as fertile, agriculture remains the main economic activity of the province, employing 30.2% of the labor population. The sector is dominated by small family farms producing maize, vegetables and fruits and raising cattle predominantly for domestic market. Some crops are however grown for export, notably coffee (especially organic/high quality coffee) and sugarcane.

The other main industries of employment are trade (13.6% of the employed population) – concentrated mostly in the largest cities – education (7.6%), construction (7.6%), and manufacturing (5.8%), the later being predominantly local handicraft. Mining and quarrying are negligible (0.4%).

Illiteracy rate in Loja Province is 5.8%, below the national average (6.8%), which makes Loja the Sierra province with the second lowest illiteracy rate after the much more urbanized Pichincha. As a consequence of outmigration, median age of the population is 29.4 years, above the national average (28.4 years), which means that Loja is the third oldest Ecuadorian province after Tungurahua and Carchi.

Loja Canton



Loja Canton, the seat of Loja Province, is administratively divided into four (well actually six, but the National Electoral Council still only recognizes four) urban parishes and thirteen rural parishes.



The city of Loja itself is situated 2,060 meters above the sea level, in a valley. Climate is predominantly dry subtropical in Vilcabamba, San Pedro de Vilcabamba, Malacatos and Quinara; subtropic sub-humid in Yangana; and temperate humid in the rest of the canton. The eastern fringes of the canton are part of the Podocarpus National Park.

The canton is 1,895 km² in size and had in 2010 a population of 214,815. While accounting for only 17.2% of the province’s total area, it concentrates 47.8% of the province’s total population.

Loja City

Vilcabamba

El Cisne sanctuary which contains a statue of the Virgin from the sixteenth century and is the center of an annual pilgrimage

Demographic statistics

The four urban parishes of Loja had in 2010 a combined population of 180,617, accounting for 40.2% of the province’s total population, of which 170,280 lived in what is described by the INEC as urban areas (because, so-called urban parishes often include large stretches of sparsely populated rural lands). I haven’t find the surface of each urban parish but density is probably the highest in El Sagrario, where the city’s downtown is located.



Loja is currently the ninth largest city in Ecuador. In 1950 (first national census), it was the eighth one, between 1962 and 2001 the twelfth one and, between 2001 and 2010, the eleventh one.

The city of Loja has experienced a steady growth since 1950, when it had only 15,399 inhabitants, fueled by rural exodus. The presence of two universities, including a national university, has also attracted numerous students making the city a quite dynamic and young place with a median age of 28.04. Conversely, the rest of the canton (except Malacatos and Vilcabamba) lagged well behind in term of population growth with some rural parishes having even seen their population significantly decrease. This is the case of Santiago parish whose population has declined from 2,220 in 1990 to 1,373 in 2010.



12.4% of the population of the four urban parishes of Loja is born outside the province. Predictably, this rate is much more lower in the rest of the canton, especially in the northern part. A special case is that of Vilcabamba (6.3% of foreign-born population) and San Pedro de Vilcabamba (6.2% of foreign-born population): the Vilcabamba valley indeed gained an international fame after several US popular magazines made articles about the supposed spectacular longevity of its inhabitants, with several cases of people over 120 being reported. Turned out it was largely a myth (according to the 2010 census, there were four centenarians in San Pedro de Vilcabamba and three in Vilcabamba), but the valley has nonetheless attracted numerous foreigners (including many American nationals), some of them having settled there, notably some hippies who came in the valley to experiment the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi), very abundant in the area. As a gateway for the Podocarpus National Park, the Vilcabamba valley continues to attract a large number of foreign tourists.

In 2010, the parish with the highest birth rate was San Lucas (17.8‰) – which is also the youngest parish with a median age of 25.14 years – followed by urban Loja (17‰).

Ethnic make-up



Ethnic composition of the Loja Canton is the following: Mestizos (90.2%), Whites (3.5%), Indigenous (2.6%), Afro-Ecuadorians (2.5%), Montubios (1.1%). The map of ethnic self-identification reveals that all parishes but two are overwhelmingly populated by Mestizos. San Lucas stands out again as the only parish with an indigenous majority (80.5%) while, predictably, Whites are mostly to be found in the Vilcabamba valley and in the urban part of the canton.

Then, there is the very special and revealing case of Chuquiribamba, the only parish where a majority (72.9%) of the population self-identified as Montubio, a social ethnic group (white/mestizo rural laborers partly of indigenous and/or black ancestry) whose homeland is located far away from Loja Canton, in the coastal provinces of Manabí, Guayas and Los Ríos. I struggled to find an explanation of the presence of an important Montubio community in a remote and unattractive area of the Loja Canton until I discovered the truth: they are not ‘fake’ Montubios. It has been actually explained that inhabitants of Chuquiribamba, feeling abandoned by the government, self-identified as Montubios in protest and, probably also, with the hope it would help them to obtain some of the ‘benefits’ (better legal recognition of their traditions and of their land titles, notably for communal lands) associated with the status of a legally recognized minority group.

More generally, it seems that the ethnic background of the northern part of the Loja Canton is more complicated with the indigenous population being actually underreported – like in many other parts of Ecuador – for reasons ranging from social stigma associated with the indigenous identity, prestige linked to the mestizo status (especially true in Loja Province), general distrust of indigenous people toward the predominantly white/mestizo census agents to the long tradition of census avoidance among indigenous dating back from the Spanish colonial era when censuses were conducted in order to determinate who must be, as an indigenous, submitted to tribute and forced labor.

Going deeper into the indigenous topic, here is a map of the various legally recognized indigenous peoples in Loja Canton. In Ecuador, there are fourteen nationalities and eighteen peoples officially recognized; nationality status is associated with the speaking of a non-Spanish, non-Kichwa language while the people status is attributed to Kichwa- or Spanish- speaking communities. Well, it’s a bit more complicated as several of the languages associated to the nationalities are actually moribund or even extinct and as the Amazonian Kichwa constituted a distinct nationality, but I will elaborate on that later.



In any case, there are no nationality in Loja Province but two indigenous peoples belonging to the wider community of the Kichwa de la Sierra: the Saraguros and the Paltas. They are almost exclusively found in the cantons of Loja and Saraguro (north to Loja).

Saraguros are an indigenous community of 17,000 which has kept a strong cultural identity as, unlike the majority of the Sierra indigenous, they remained outside of the hacienda system (in which a white landlord had full authority over indigenous peasants working on his lands in exchange of a very small plot of land) and had never had to work in the obrajes. While not historically documented before the Spanish era, Saraguros claimed to be the descendants of mitmakuna (also called mitimaes – populations forcibly relocated by Incas from one place of their empire to another one – who were deported either from southern Peru either from northern Bolivia. There is actually no evidence to support such a claim (nor to totally disprove it) as present-day Ecuador experienced huge population displacements during the colonial era, especially in the decades immediately following the Spanish conquest. The claims of a pre-Inca, Inca, or mitmakuna ancestry and of a continuous occupation of their homelands since before the Spanish conquest are very common among indigenous communities of the Sierra as it permits to legitimize the ownership of their lands against white/mestizo pretenders.



A people of cattle-raisers in search of new pastures for their cows, the Saraguros have, since the beginning of the twentieth century, began to move out of their home Saraguro and Loja cantons to settle in the neighboring Oriente province of Zamora Chinchipe.

Saraguros play a prominent role in the indigenous movement, especially in the CONAIE, having provide this organization one of its most famous chairmen, Luis Macas (also a Pachakutik presidential candidate in 2006).

According to the 2010 census data, 59.6% of the Saraguros are Spanish monolingual, 17.3% are indigenous (Kichwa) monolingual and 18.7% are Spanish/indigenous bilingual. 16.2% are unable to read and write and 71.7% have a level of education not higher than primary education; 10.5% have not received any education at all. 22.9% of the Saraguros are employed as field crop and vegetable growers, 10.2% as livestock and dairy producers and 13.0% as mixed crop and animal producers. 61.2% of the Saraguro working population is self-employed, 14.0% is employed as peon or day laborer; 8.2% is public sector employee and 7.2% private employee.

Unlike the Saraguros, the Paltas have a shaky ethnic identity and are currently undergoing a so-called ‘cultural reconstruction and re-appropriation process’. They are named after a pre-Inca population who lived in present-day Loja province and was exterminated in the early decades of the Spanish conquest. The connection between the two groups is uncertain and impossible to prove as we know next to nothing about the pre-Inca Paltas and as their language quickly became extinct after the Spanish conquest. In any case, the Palta identity seems to have only reemerged in recent years as a consequence of the development of indigenous movement. The Paltas have however maintained some distinctive traits like the organization into comunas (comunes).

The Paltas are supposed to live all over the Loja Province but, if we believe 2010 census data, the 424 self-identified Paltas are actually to be found almost exclusively in the two parishes of Gualel and El Cisne, in the Loja Canton.

85.8% of the Paltas are Spanish monolingual, 4.9% are indigenous (Kichwa) monolingual and 6.4% are Spanish/indigenous bilingual. 12.9% are unable to read and write, 68.3% have a level of education not higher than primary education with 10.3% having received no education. 36.9% are employed as field crop and vegetable growers and 5.3% as livestock and dairy producers. 49.7% are self-employed, 16.0% are peons or day laborers, 9.1% are public sector employees and 10.2% are private employees.

Finally, there are 145,000 indigenous (14.2% of the indigenous total population) who don’t know to which nationality/people they belong to. 51.7% of them live in an urban area, the only indigenous group with a majority not living in the countryside.

Among the reasons explaining such a high number of indigenous unaware of which subgroup they belong to are geographic distance from their native communities, loss of cultural identity, but also problems with the classification adopted by the Ecuadorian government and the INEC to categorize indigenous individuals: I will elaborate a bit when I will discuss indigenous self-identifying as Kichwa de la Sierra but, in short, the classification adopted by the Ecuadorian administration is the one used by the CONAIE and, as such, isn’t always recognized by other concurrent indigenous organizations. Worth mentioning about the indigenous living in urban areas that they are neglected not only by white/mestizo governmental institutions but also by the main indigenous organizations whose base is predominantly rural.

In San Lucas, the low number of indigenous unable to tell to which indigenous subgroup they belong to or self-identifying as Kichwa de la Sierra is an indication of the strong influence of the CONAIE over the indigenous communities living there. I don’t have many information about the indigenous living in Vilcabamba.

[Sir John Johns]

Languages




Map of languages shows that Kichwa language is spoken by almost a third of population in San Lucas, the only parish with a Saraguro majority, while being nearly extinct in the rest of the canton, including the areas with a Palta minority. Foreign languages (presumably mostly English) are, unsurprisingly, predominantly spoken in the Vilcabamba valley and in the city of Loja.

Industry of Employment



The main industries of employment in Loja Canton are: trade (20.4% of the employed population excluding non-respondents and a category named trabajador nuevo I don’t understand what it is), agriculture, forestry and fishing (13.3%), construction (10.7%), education (10.5%), manufacturing (8.4%), public administration and defense; compulsory social security (7.6%), transportation and storage (6.2%), accommodation and food service activities (4.1%) and human health and social work activities (3.9%).

While the tertiary activities are concentrated in the urban part of the canton, the northern parishes remain dominated by the agriculture sector while the southern part of the canton has a more diversified economy due notably to tourist activities.

The 2010 census database provides further details about the various branches of activity, going until third level of classification of the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC, Revision 4). Here for example, the share of the total employed population (minus once again non respondents and trabajadores nuevos) working in the various sub-branches of the agriculture sector:



The most important agricultural products cultivated in Loja Canton and falling into the ‘cereals (except rice), leguminous crops and oil seeds’ category are peas, beans, maize and barley.

The main agricultural products cultivated in Loja Canton but also in the whole Ecuador falling into the ‘tropical and subtropical fruits’ category are obviously bananas and plantains.

‘Beverage crops’ includes here two important productions in Ecuador: cocoa and coffee. The former isn’t produced in Loja Canton unlike coffee, which is cultivated in Vilcabamba valley and is predominantly organic or/and of high quality.

‘Growing of spices, aromatic, drug and pharmaceutical crops’ doesn’t employed many people but I still include it due to the historical importance of quinine production in the history of Loja Province. There is a small company producing and selling medicine herbs in Taquil.

The ‘other animals’ category includes, as far as Loja Canton is concerned, guinea pigs (raised to be eaten) and rabbits.

So three main areas can be distinguished: northeast (especially San Lucas) where cattle and guinea pigs raising and mixed farming is predominant; northwest where the agriculture sector is dominated by cultivation of crops for domestic market; finally south where there are a non-negligible share of lands are dedicated to the cultivation of crops (sugarcane, coffee) for export.

Detailing other economic sectors by sub-branches is probably not particularly interesting except perhaps for manufacturing:



Excluding bakery, joinery and carpentry, and small-scale production of metal parts, the only semi-relevant manufacturing activities are sugar production in Quinara and handicraft production of a quite renowned ceramics in Taquil.

Occupation groups



The maps of the various occupation groups in agricultural sector show that it is dominated in Loja Canton by growers and producers (part of the ‘skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers’ category) over laborers (classified in the ‘elementary occupations’ category).

Occupation categories



However, the maps of categories of occupation in agricultural sector reveal a north/south divide with day laborers and peons playing a more important role in the southern part of Loja Canton.

Education

The following maps deal with the level of education. Since an education reform, elementary level has been replaced by the so-called basic education and secondary level with middle education; I’m not sure they totally match one another but whatever. I didn’t map ‘literacy center and basic alternative education’ (maybe should I have conflate it with primary or elementary level) nor something which is called ciclo postbachillerato corresponding apparently to post high school non-university education.



In any case, three distinct areas once again stand out: the northern part of Loja Canton is less educated compared to the southern part while Loja city, seat of two universities and dubbed as Ecuador’s cultural capital for the numerous writers and artists it provided to the country, distinguishes itself by the high share of people with a superior or post-graduate level of education.

Poverty

Finally, some maps dealing with poverty and living standards.



The four first maps are pretty self-explanatory; I have managed to find so (quite old) data for the four urban parishes: not totally sure what incidence of poverty exactly is, but, quite logically, the wealthiest parts of the city of Loja are located in El Sagrario. The Gini coefficient is interesting to compare: it was around 0.46 in 2001 and was 0.36 in 2011, a huge change that could be explained by the expansion of social programs under Lucio Gutiérrez and Rafael Correa and by the end of the economic crisis which badly hit the country in the mid-1990s and forced numerous Ecuadorians to emigrate.

The 2010 census provides numerous information about housing conditions, notably the type of dwelling. The most widespread types of dwelling are ‘houses and villas’ followed by apartment in house or building. Other types of dwelling are considered as inappropriate for optimal living conditions:
- cuarto de inquilinato (single-tenancy bedroom without individual bathrooms or toilets), mostly found in the urban areas
- mediagua (a single floor building with no more than two rooms whose walls are made of stones, adobe, bricks or wood and roof is made of thatch, asbestos or zinc)
- rancho (rustic building with a roof made of palm leaves or thatch, cane walls and a floor made of wood, cane or earth)
- covacha (building made of rustic materials like branches, carton, asbestos debris, cans or plastic with a floor made of wood or earth)
- choza (building with adobe or thatch walls, floor made of earth and roof made of thatch)

Mediagua is the predominant type of dwelling in Loja Canton after ‘houses and villas’ but 10.6% of the households live in a choza in Santiago parish.

[Sir John Johns]

I’m afraid the maps I have already posted will be insufficient to understand electoral patterns in Loja Canton, but at least I will give it a try. In any case, it will illustrate the insane level of electoral volatility and political fragmentation that have characterized Ecuadorian politics, especially between 1978 and 2006.

So firstly, maps showing how Loja Canton had voted in national elections since 2002. Important note concerning urban parishes: even if that doesn’t seem the case for Loja, in some urban areas (in Guayaquil for sure) voters of most populous parishes lacking of infrastructure (stadiums, schools or university campus) to host voting stations are bused to voting stations located in downtown parishes; their votes are mixed with those cast by resident voters of the hosting parish, leading to somewhat bizarre results. So, in short, results in urban parishes must be taken with a grain of salt.

2002 Presidential Election

A brief description of the candidates and their parties is perhaps necessary at this point:
- León Roldós: brother of former populist and quite progressive president (1979-1981) Jaime Roldós; ran on a mildly populist center-left platform as the candidate of the Socialist Party-Broad Front (PS-FA), officially a Marxist – but actually rather opportunist – party.
- Lucio Gutiérrez: former military officer of indigenous ancestry (but not self-identifying as indigenous) who led a coup that ousted President Jamil Mahuad in 2000 but landed thereafter in jail. Ran on a very left-wing populist platform (with some observers comparing him to Hugo Chávez) as the candidate of his personal vehicle, the Patriotic Society Party (PSP); also supported by the indigenous Pachakutik movement (MUPP-NP) and the far-left MPD, which is linked to the country’s largest teachers’ union
- Rodrigo Borja: a former president (1988-1992) who ran as the candidate of the Democratic Left (ID, social democratic)
- Álvaro Noboa: banana tycoon who ran as the candidate of his personal business/party, the Institutional Renewal Party of National Action (PRIAN) on a very demagogic platform (less taxes, building of billion of housing units).
- Xavier Neira: the candidate of the right-wing Social Christian Party (PSC), a party closely associated with the Guayaquil big business which didn’t prevent it from taking somewhat demagogic stances. If you want a relatively pertinent comparison, the PSC used to be fund in the 1980s by the CSU-associated Hanns Seidel Foundation while its big political then, the Popular Democracy, was funded by the CDU-associated Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
- Jacobo Bucaram: the brother of former populist president (1996-1997) Abdalá Bucaram, who lived then in exile in Panamá, he ran as the candidate of the Ecuadorian Roldosist Party (PRE), probably the most demagogic political party in Ecuador. The various PRE administrations invariably ended in an orgy of corruption and incompetence.
- Jacinto Velázquez: former member of the PSC running on a pro-business platform under the banner of the Independent Social Transformation Movement (TSI)
- Ivonne Baki: the only woman, running as the joint candidate of her own Hope, Transformation and Action Movement (META) and of the old ‘center-right’ Ecuadorian Radical Liberal Party (PLRE).
- Osvaldo Hurtado: a former president (1981-1984) of Ecuador and a former member of the DP, he left this party to found the Solidarity Fatherland Movement (MPS), without much electoral success.
- César Alarcón: the candidate of the pro-business Freedom Party (PL).
- Antonio Vargas: the first indigenous presidential candidate ever in the country, he took an active role in Gutiérrez’s 2000 coup. He was then the candidate of the indigenist and evangelical Independent Amauta Jatari Movement (MIAJ).

1st round results (in bracket national results)
León Roldós (PS-FA) 27.7% (15.4%)
Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP) 27.7% (20.6%)
Rodrigo Borja (ID) 13.6% (14.0%)
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 12.9% (17.4%)
Xavier Neira (PSC) 6.7% (12.1%)
Jacobo Bucaram (PRE) 5.5% (11.9%)
Jacinto Velázquez (TSI) 2.7% (3.7%)
Ivonne Baki (PLRE/META) 1.4% (1.7%)
Osvaldo Hurtado (MPS) 0.8% (1.1%)
César Alarcón (PL) 0.5% (1.2%)
Antonio Vargas (MIAJ) 0.2% (0.9%)



Gutiérrez received 37.4% of the rural vote but only 26.1% of the urban vote, a persistent pattern for the PSP. Another candidate who overperformed with rural voters was Neira who received 11.0% of the rural vote but only 6.0% of the urban vote. Conversely, Roldós, Borja and Velázquez got their best results with urban voters, respectively 29.3% (against 18.5% in rural parishes), 14.2% (against 10.1%) and 3.1% (against 0.4%). Gutiérrez received his best result (54.5%) in the only indigenous majority parish, San Lucas.

Runoff results (in bracket national results)

Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP) 60.9% (54.8%)
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 42.2% (45.2%)



Once again, Gutiérrez got his best results in the rural parishes (75.1% against 57.8% in the urban parishes).

2006 Presidential Election

Candidates:
- Álvaro Noboa, once again running as the candidate of the PRIAN
- Rafael Correa: a former finance minister running as the candidate of his own Proud and Sovereign Fatherland Movement (MPAIS) with the support of the PS-FA.
- León Roldós, once again running, this time as the candidate of his own party, the left-wing Ethics and Democracy Network (RED) with the support of the ID, which had renounced to field a candidate.
- Gilmar Gutiérrez: the PSP candidate, running as a proxy for his brother, Lucio, who was then ineligible. Once elected, Lucio had dramatically drift to the right, supporting a ‘neo-liberal’ agenda and close links with the US; this led to the departure of his administration of his allies, the MPD and the MUPP-NP. After various attempt to build short-lived coalitions (with the PSC, then with the PRIAN, the PRE and the PS-FA), he was removed from office in 2005 and briefly landed in jail.
- Cynthia Viteri: the young woman was the candidate of the PSC, which then attempted to get rid of their reputation of a party of old rich aristocratic oligarchs. Back in 2005, the PSC had led the charge, with the ID and the MUPP-NP, to oust Gutiérrez.
- Marco Proaño: a veteran politician who ran as the candidate of the Movement for Democratic Vindication (MRD), a split from the PRE
- Luis Macas: a Saraguro-born indigenous activist, running as the candidate of the MUPP-NP, which had become very critical of the PSP and of other white/mestizo political parties.
- Marcelo Larrea: the brother of Gustavo Larrea – Correa’s campaign manager – he ran on a far-left platform as the candidate of the Third Republic Alliance (ATR), also called Bolivarian Alfarist Third Republic Alliance (ALBA).
- Fernando Rosero: the rather inept candidate of the PRE, which had been hurt by its support to the Gutiérrez administration and by the MRD split.
- Jaime Damerval: a former interior minister who ran as the candidate of the populist and ideology-free Concentration of Popular Forces (CFP), once the ruling party under President Jaime Roldós but, by then, a minor party.
- Luis Villacís: the head of the ill-fated MPD/MUPP-NP/PSP alliance that propped Gutiérrez at the head of the country in 2002; ran as the candidate of the by-then isolated MPD.
- Lenín Torres: far-left activist who was notably politically active in Chile in the early 1970s, he ran as the candidate of the chavista Revolutionary Movement of Popular Participation (MRPP).
- Carlos Sagnay: a vaguely center-right economist who claimed to know about the evils of both communism and capitalism because, back in the 1970s and 1980s, he was a student in Baku and then in Thatcher’s England. Wanted to bring back death penalty (abolished in 1906). Ran as the candidate of the Alfarist National Integration (INA).

1st round results (in bracket national results):
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 29.9% (26.8%)
Rafael Correa (MPAIS/PS-FA) 29.7% (22.8%)
León Roldós (ID/RED) 17.6% (14.8%)
Gilmar Gutiérrez (PSP) 7.3% (17.4%)
Cynthia Viteri (PSC) 6.0% (9.6%)
Marco Proaño (MRD) 2.6% (1.4%)
Luis Macas (MUPP-NP) 2.3% (2.2%)
Marcelo Larrea (ATR) 1.4% (0.4%)
Fernando Rosero (PRE) 1.2% (2.1%)
Jaime Damerval (CFP) 1.1% (0.5%)
Luis Villacís (MPD) 0.7% (1.3%)
Lenín Torres (MRPP) 0.2% (0.3%)
Carlos Sagnay (INA) 0.2% (0.2%)



Noboa, Gutiérrez and Macas had better results with rural voters, winning respectively 31.4% of the rural vote (against 29.9% of the urban vote), 10.7% (against 7.3%) and 4.9% (against 2.3%). Conversely, Correa and Roldós both overperformed in urban areas, winning respectively 29.7% (against 25.8%) and 17.6% (against 13.4%).

Predictably, Luis Macas won the San Lucas parish but, otherwise, results seem all over the place compared to 2002 with huge losses for the PSP (-49.9 percentage points in San Lucas, -38.7 in El Cisne, -35.1 in Chantaco, -34.6 in Chuquiribamba), except in the southernmost part of the canton (-0.2 in Quinara, -2.1 in Yangana) and for Roldós – granted the coalition supporting him had changed between the two elections (-22.9 in Quinara, -20.2 in Malacatos, -11.8 in San Sebastián) who managed however to increase his share of vote in several northern parishes (+6.3 in Chuquiribamba, +5.1 in Gualel, +6.0 in Santiago). Support for Noboa increased everywhere from rural (+20.9 in Jimbilla, +18.9 in Malacatos) to urban parishes (+20.2 in Valle, +19.2 in Sucre), excepted in the two northwestern parishes of Chuquiribamba (-0.9) and Gualel (-7.7) which was Noboa’s third best parish in 2002. The PSC vote also dropped almost everywhere with a huge collapse in Jimbilla (-19.2). The PRE vote collapsed everywhere but in El Cisne (+0.3) and was almost totally annihilated in Quinara (where it dropped from 13.7% to 1.7%) and Gualel (11.0% to 2.5%). In that latter parish, the CFP candidate received, by far, his best result (18.5%).

Runoff results (in bracket national results):

Rafael Correa (MPAIS/PS-FA) 62.1%
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 37.9%



Rafael Correa received a more important share of the vote in the rural parishes (66.5%) than in the urban parishes (61.2%).

2009 Presidential Election

Candidates:
- Incumbent president Rafael Correa ran for reelection as the candidate of the MPAIS. His opponents were either largely discredited either irrelevant.
- Lucio Gutiérrez ran as the candidate of the PSP and received more or less the reluctant support of the main right-wing party, the PSC.
- Álvaro Noboa ran for the fourth time for president, again as the candidate of the PRIAN. He had been however severely hurt by his inability to defeat Correa in the 2006 runoff and to prevent a large share of the PRIAN deputies elected that year to defect to other parties, including the AP.
- Martha Roldós, the daughter of León, ran as the candidate of various left-wing groups (but not the MUPP-NP) disillusioned by the Correa administration. She was nominated by his father’s party, the RED, and by the Democratic Pole Independent Movement (MIPD)
- Carlos Sagnay ran again, this time as the candidate of the irrelevant Thousandfold Victory Movement (MTM)
- Melba Jácome, an evangelical pastor, was the candidate of the irrelevant Fertile Earth Movement (MTF)
- Former PS-FA deputy Diego Delgado ran as the candidate of the far-left Social Integration and Transformation Movement (MITS)
- Former ID deputy Carlos González ran as the candidate of the left-wing anticorruption Independent Justice and Solidarity Movement (MIJS)

Single round results (in bracket national results)
Rafael Correa (MPAIS) 58.3% (52.0%)
Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP) 21.1% (28.2%)
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 12.0% (11.4%)
Martha Roldós (RED/MIPD) 4.9% (4.3%)
Carlos Sagnay (MTM) 1.7% (1.6%)
Melba Jácome (MTF) 0.8% (1.4%)
Diego Delgado (MITS) 0.6% (0.6%)
Carlos González (MIJS) 0.6% (0.5%)



Correa had better results in the rural parishes with 65.0% against 57.1% in the urban parishes. Surprisingly enough, Gutiérrez received this time a very similar share of the vote in both rural and urban parishes. For his part, Noboa clearly underperformed in rural areas, winning there 6.6% of the vote against 12.9% in urban parishes.

Compared to 2006 first round, the Correa vote significantly increased everywhere with, however, a much more limited growth in urban areas (+21.0 percent points in El Sagrario, +26.5 in San Sebastián, +28.2 in Sucre, and +27.9 in Valle) and in Jimbila (+26.5) and Yangana (+29.1). The PSP candidate improved his results everywhere but Malacatos (-0.8 ) with his most significant increases in the urban areas (+18.7 in El Sagrario, +13.8 in San Sebastián, +13.2 in Sucre, +15.6 in Valle) and in Gualel (+15.8 ), Jimbilla (+17.2) and San Lucas (+18.9). The Noboa vote collapsed in every single parish.

2011 Popular Consultation

Various questions were then put to vote by the Correa government. All of them passed but the question 9 (proposing the creation of a media watchdog) was barely approved with only 51.7% of the voters approving it, an indication of the growing unpopularity of the AP.

Results (in bracket national results)

Yes 44.1% (51.7%)
No 55.9% (48.3%)

For the first time, the AP received a lowest share of vote in Loja Canton than its national average.



2013 Presidential Election

Candidates:
- Incumbent president Rafael Correa ran for reelection as the candidate of the AP.
- Guillermo Lasso ran as the candidate of the newly founded right-wing pro-business Creating Opportunities (CREO), which could be considered as the political successor of the old DP. Lasso received the support of the PSC.
- A former MPAIS speaker of the Constituent Assembly, Alberto Acosta was the candidate of various left-wing and far-left parties opposed to Correa, including the MPD and the MUPP-NP.
- Mauricio Rodas, a former head of the PSC youth wing, was the candidate of the moderate center-right United Society More Action Movement (SUMA).
- Lucio Gutiérrez once again ran as the PSP presidential candidate.
- Álvaro Noboa made his five hopeless attempt to become president of Ecuador under the banner of the PRIAN
- Norman Wray was the candidate of the left-wing Ruptura 21, putting notably an emphasis on social liberal themes like same-sex marriage, legalization of abortion and drug use
- The PRE fielded as its candidate Nelson Zavala, a crazy homophobic evangelical pastor who, among other things, promised to prevent the entry into Ecuadorian territory of Marilyn Manson and Madonna.

Single round results (in bracket national results)
Rafael Correa (AP) 42.6% (57.2%)
Guillermo Lasso (CREO) 32.1% (22.7%)
Alberto Acosta (MUPP-NP/MPD) 7.7% (3.3%)
Mauricio Rodas (SUMA) 6.0% (3.9%)
Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP) 4.9% (6.7%)
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 4.7% (3.7%)
Norman Wray (Ruptura 21) 1.3% (1.3%)
Nelson Zavala (PRE) 0.6% (1.2%)



Some important rural/urban divides:

Rafael Correa (AP) 46.2% / 42.0%
Guillermo Lasso (CREO) 20.6% / 34.1%
Alberto Acosta (MUPP-NP/MPD) 14.7% / 6.4%
Mauricio Rodas (SUMA) 3.0% / 6.6%
Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP) 9.5% / 4.2%
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 4.3% / 4.7%

Correa vote collapsed everywhere with the less important decreases being in Yangana (-8.9 percent points), Taquil (-10.7), Vilcabamba (-10.8 ) and El Sagrario (-11.8 ); conversely, the AP candidate got his most important losses in San Lucas (-30.1), Chantaco (-27.6) and Chuquiribamba (-27.0), all of them being parishes located in the northern part of the canton.

2017 Presidential Election

Candidates:
- Lenín Moreno, the handpicked successor of Correa, was the AP candidate.
- Guillermo Lasso ran again, this time as the candidate of the CREO/SUMA alliance
- Cynthia Viteri ran as the candidate of the PSC, which had refused to endorse Lasso this time
- Former Quito mayor and military officer Paco Moncayo was the joint candidate of the anti-correista left, running under the banner of the alliance between the resurrected ID, the MUPP-NP and Popular Unity, the successor party of the MPD.
- Dalo Bucaram, the son of Abdalá Bucaram, ran as the candidate of the arch-populist Fuerza Ecuador, the successor of the PRE
- Seeing a new presidential candidacy would be hopeless, Lucio Gutiérrez decided to run instead for a parliamentary seat (he failed to get); consequently, the PSP ran the little-known Patricio Zuquilanda, a former foreign minister under Gutiérrez
- Iván Espinel ran as the candidate of the ideology-free populist Social Commitment Force Movement (MFCS)
- Washington Pesántez, a former attorney general under Correa, was the candidate of the ideology-free Ecuadorian Union (UE)

First round results (in bracket national results)

Guillermo Lasso (CREO) 47.0% (28.1%)
Lenín Moreno (AP) 27.8% (39.4%)
Cynthia Viteri (PSC) 11.4% (16.3%)
Paco Moncayo (ID) 8.3% (6.7%)
Iván Espinel (MFCS) 2.3% (3.2%)
Dalo Bucaram (FE) 1.9% (4.8%)
Patricio Zuquilanda (PSP) 0.6% (0.8%)
Washington Pesántez (UE) 0.6% (0.8%)



Rural/urban divide:

Guillermo Lasso (CREO) 42.9% / 47.7%
Lenín Moreno (AP) 29.4% / 27. 5%
Cynthia Viteri (PSC) 9.1% / 11.8%
Paco Moncayo (ID) 12.8% / 7.6%

Compared to 2013, the AP vote dropped in every parish with the most important losses happening in the southern part of the canton (-19.4 percent point in Malacatos, -19.3 in Quinara, -24.4 in San Pedro de Vilcabamba, -22.5 in Vilcabamba, -22.9 in Yangana) and in Chuquiribamba (-23.5) and Taquil (-24.1). Conversely, the support for Lasso increased everywhere, with the most significant increases in the northern part of the canton (+30 in Chantaco, +32.9 in Chuquiribamba, +30 in Jimbila, +30.9 in San Lucas, +29.6 in Santiago, +32.7 in Taquil).

Second round results (in bracket national results)

Guillermo Lasso (CREO) 64.7% (48.8%
Lenín Moreno (AP) 35.2% (51.2%)



Rural/urban divide:

Guillermo Lasso (CREO) 62.4%/65.2%
Lenín Moreno (AP) 37.6%/34.8%

2018 Referendum

In February 2018, seven questions were put to referendum, most of them dealing with controversial policies set up by Correa. President Lenín Moreno, now at odds with his predecessor, CREO, the PSC, the MUPP-NP all called for a ‘yes’ to all questions while supporters of Correa called for a ‘no’. Here are results for question 2 about reinstating term limits thus preventing Correa from returning to the presidency.

Results (in bracket national results)
Yes 77.9% (64.2%)
No 22.1% (35.8%)



Interestingly, the ‘yes’ vote was stronger (80.7%) in the countryside than in the urban parishes (77.4%).

Next to come: maps of the most recent municipal races.

[Sir John Johns]

I have only complete data for Ecuadorian local elections since 2004 but I was lucky to find some (incomplete) stuff about mayor elections in Loja canton since 1984.

A mayor election was held in 1978, as part of the process to return to democracy, and saw the victory of the Conservative Party of Ecuador (PCE, right-wing and clerical) candidate Eloy Torres Guzmán over the DP (technically running as the CFP) candidate José Bolívar Castillo. I can’t find more about this election. Torres Guzmán and Castillo would be both elected to Congress in 1984.

1984 Election

Results:
Bolívar Guerrero Armijos (PD) 28.1%
Clotario Espinoza Sigcho (PLRE) 17.6%
Ramiro Correa Muñoz (ID) 15.5%
Flavio Paz Ramírez (PCE) 15.3%
Miguel Severo Andrade (MPD) 11.1%
José Beltrán Beltrán (DP) 5.3%
Luis Orlando Astudillo (FADI) 4.8%
Luis Francisco Quezada (FRA) 2.2%

The PD is the Democratic Party, a centrist outfit which split from the Ecuadorian Radical Liberal Party (PLRE, center/center-right, historically anticlerical). Alfarist Radical Front (FRA) was another split of the PLRE and a party with populist stances. The Broad Left Front (FADI) was the electoral vehicle of the Communist Party. Don’t have much more details about this election but, if you compared to 1978, the-then two largest parties (PCE and DP) shrink respectively to fourth and sixth place, an indicator of the strong electoral volatility.

1988 Election

Results (in brackets results in urban parishes; results in rural parishes)
José Bolívar Castillo (ID) 41.2% (43.7%; 31.5%)
Fausto Moreno Sánchez (MPD) 21.1% (21.9%; 18.1%)
Luis Samaniego (DP) 12.3% (12.0%; 13.4%)
Flavio Fernández (PSC) 10.3% (8.9%; 15.4%)
Guillermo Mora (PD) 7.0% (6.1%; 10.2%)
Erique (PRE) 5.5% (4.6%; 8.7%)
Eduardo Rafael Armijos Valdivieso (PSE) 1.5% (1.5%; 1.2%)
Fanny González (FADI) 1.2% (1.1%; 1.4%)



Well, once again the incumbent party was severely defeated in its attempt to be reelected. I haven’t found the first name of the PRE candidate.

1992 Election

Results:
Jorge Reyes Jaramillo (MPD) 26.1%
Bolívar Guerrero Armijos (FRA) 21.6%
Jorge Nabas (PCE) 10.0%
César Augusto Correa Jaramillo (ID) 7.8%
Antonio Bolívar Mora Naranjo (PSC) 7.6%
Jorge Bailón (PSE) 7.0%
Vinicio José María Suárez Burneo Franz (UR) 6.8%
César Eduardo Briceño Toledo (PRE) 6.4%
Luis Samaniego (DP) 5.9%
César Augusto Illescas Espinoza (FADI) 0.4%
Jorge Luis Ruiz Armijos (PAB) 0.3%

The UR was the Republican Union, a short-lived split of the PSC led by Sixto Durán Bailén, who was elected president in the concomitantly held presidential poll. The PAB was the Assad Bucaram Party, a split of the CFP led by crazy populist Avicena Bucaram; it quickly fell into irrelevancy.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found the results by parish.

1996 Election

Results (in brackets results in urban parishes; results in rural parishes)
José Bolívar Castillo (DP) 49.1% (52.7%; 28.3%)
Carlos Burneo Arias (PSC) 18.3% (17.1%; 25.1%)
Guillermo Mora (PLRE/FRA) 12.5% (13.0%; 9.8%)
Clodoveo Chamba (PRE) 9.9% (9.2%; 13.4%)
Wilson Guzmán (CFP) 6.4% (4.4%; 18.1%)
Wilman Merino (MPD) 2.6% (2.3%; 4.0%)
Flavio Armijos (PS-FA) 1.2% (1.2%; 1.2%)



The incumbent party, the MPD, was almost completely annihilated. Guillermo Mora, who ran as the PD candidate in 1988, ran this time as the candidate of the PLRE/FRA alliance. Only three votes were cast in the newly created parish of Quinara.

Huge shifts happened compared to 1988. Castillo’s vote became increasingly urban with support for El Chato growing of 9.5 percent point in El Sagrario, 10.3 in Sucre, 12.3 in San Sebastián but only 3.8 in the popular parish of Valle. While he made inroads in the southern part of the canton (+10.0 in San Pedro de Vilcabamba, +2.8 in Vilcabamba, +9.2 in Yangana) and in Chuquiribamba (+16.0), he saw his support declined in the rest of the rural parishes, especially in Jimbilla, his best parish in 1988 (-45.9), in El Cisne (-4.4), in Gualel (-9.0) and in San Lucas (-6.2).

2000 Election

Results
José Bolívar Castillo (DP) 35.7%
Manuel José Vivanco Riofrío (PSC) 25.7%
Fredy Bravo (PRE) 13.0%
Cecilia Inés Benavides Celi (CFP) 11.9%
Vicente Hernán Gahona Celi (ID/MUPP-NP) 10.5%
Luis Emilio Veintimilla Ortega (MPD) 3.2%

Unfortunately, I haven’t the results by parish. Nothing more to add, except that the DP under El Chato was the first incumbent party to win reelection (however Castillo would left the party few months later) and that Fredy Bravo, after having defected to the PRIAN, is currently the provincial head of the PSC.

2004 Elections

Results (in brackets results in urban parishes; results in rural parishes)
Jorge Bailón (ID/CFP/PRE/PS-FA) 42.0% (41.4%; 45.0%)
José Bolívar Castillo (MIR/PSP) 31.6% (35.0%; 13.3%)
Wadie Mahauad (PSC/DP) 15.4% (13.4%; 26.3%)
Milton Andrade (FAR/MUPP-NP) 6.1% (5.6%; 8.6%)
Servio Rodríguez (MPD) 3.6% (3.5%; 4.1%)
Ignacio Lima (PRIAN) 1.4% (1.1%; 2.7%)



Jorge Bailón, the PSE candidate in 1992, was supported by a broad alliance, the so-called Megalianza grouping together the ID, the CFP, the PRE and the PS-FA, created by the merger of the PSE and the FADI. The FAR was the Revolutionary Action Front, which, as its name indicates, was a far-left party.

2009 Election

Results (in brackets results in urban parishes; results in rural parishes)
Jorge Bailón (PS-FA) 37.4% (36.0%; 46.6%)
José Bolívar Castillo (ARE) 34.1% (37.1%; 14.2%)
Oswaldo Burneo (RED) 22.6% (21.9%; 27.0%)
Eduardo Aguirre Valladares (PSP) 2.7% (1.9%; 7.8%)
Fernando Valdivieso Mora (PRIAN) 2.0% (1.8%; 3.2%)
Geronimo Ruiz Loaiza (MSR) 1.3% (1.3%; 1.2%)



MSR was a the far-left Revolutionary Socialist Movement (MSR). While being held the same day that the presidential election, the election of mayor of Loja was clearly distinct from the presidential race with both PSP and PRIAN largely underperforming comparing to the results obtained by Gutiérrez and Noboa; similarly, the RED candidate for mayor had a much more higher percent of the vote than Martha Roldós. Hilariously, the arch-enemies Bailón and Castillo both claimed to have the support of the Correa administration.

2014 Elections

Results (in brackets results in urban parishes; results in rural parishes)
José Bolívar Castillo (ARE) 30.3% (33.3%; 12.5%)
Jaime Villavicencio (CREO/Convocatoria) 27.0% (26.4%; 30.6%)
Jorge Bailón (APLA) 21.4% (20.5%; 26.6%)
Marcelo Torres (AP) 12.8% (11.9%; 18.2%)
Paulo Arrobo (SUMA/PRIAN/PSC) 6.6% (6.5%; 7.4%)
Freddy Altamirano (PS-FA) 2.0% (1.5%; 4.7%)



Incumbent Jorge Bailón had left the PS-FA to join a local party called Latin-American Popular Alliance (APLA). Convocatoria is also a local party, led by Nivea Vélez, a deputy who was elected in 2009 thanks to an alliance between the ARE and the APLA, only to immediately became an independent and seat in the same caucus than the MUPP-NP and other left-wing groups; yet she allied herself later with CREO. Marcelo Torres, a former governor of Loja in Correa administration, was the official candidate of the AP.

[Sir John Johns]

Recall referendum in Loja

With 66.9% of the vote counted, it is

Yes 70.4%
No 29.6%

El Chato is out. Dogs and pigeons must be relieved

[Sir John Johns]

Final results:

Yes 70.9%
No 29.1%



The map shows a huge urban/rural divide: support for the recall of El Chato was 68.8% in urban parishes against 82.9% in rural parishes. In addition, a social cleavage seems apparent: the poorest parishes of the canton, located in the north, voted for the ‘yes’ in a landslide (87.6% in Chuquiribamba, 85.3% in Chantaco, 83.4% in San Lucas, 87.5% in Taquil); similar pattern is noticeable in the urban parishes of Loja: the ‘yes’ received its strongest support in the popular parish of Valle (74.6%) and its weakest support in the more affluent parish of El Sagrario (62.3%).

So, José Bolívar Castillo is out of office and he had been succeeded by one of his ally, Vice Mayor Piedad Pineda (ARE), who thus became Loja’s first female mayor and will head the canton until next year’s local elections. However, there is a legal challenge ongoing to contest the legality of her appointment as Vice Mayor; former Vice Mayor Franco Quezada (elected in 2014 under the AP banner, now the leader of something called ‘Strength, Hope and Respect’), dismissed in 2017, claimed he had been illegally removed from office and that he should be the legitimate new mayor of Loja. An administrative dispute tribunal should rule on the matter on July 9.

As I previously said, I plan to make maps of demographic/socio-economic features and recent electoral results for every province and major city. Don’t have yet decided in which order I will do that so if people have a special request I can firstly do it.

[Sir John Johns]

Ecuadorian justice has ruled in favor of Piedad Pineda who has been sworn as Loja's first female mayor.

Meanwhile, two Ecuadorian celebrities with no previous political experience have announced their intention to run in the upcoming local elections.

Jefferson Pérez

The first one is Jefferson Pérez, the only Ecuadorian athlete to have won Olympic medals (notably, gold medal in the 20-km walk event in 1996). Pérez has announced he would ran for mayor of Cuenca, the third largest city of the country, under the banner of the recently registered Renace (‘Rebirth’) Movement, a local party. A former shoeshine boy who is now earning a master’s degree in public administration, he’s be far from being a complete idiot and is actively seeking the support of several influencial politicians, notably the vice prefect of Azuay, an indication that his candidacy is probably serious and that he may have a chance.

Delfín Quishpe

Totally different is the candidacy of Delfín ‘Hasta el Fin’ Quishpe, an incredibly terrible singer who achieved international fame and became an Internet meme because of his completely WTF music clips, notably the hilariously bad En tus Tierras Bailaré (‘In your lands, I will dance’) – in which he celebrates Israel land and people with two godawful Peruvian singers – and the awkward Torres Gemelas (‘Twin Towers’) videos in which he very clumsily mourned the death of his (fictive) girlfriend in the 9/11 New York attacks.

Quishpe is running as a pre-candidate for the post of mayor of his native canton of Guamote (Chimborazo, central Sierra), located in a remote and depressed indigenous-populated area. He had apparently received the support of the local branch of the Indigenous Movement of Chimborazo, itself a member of the main indigenous federation in the highlands, the ECUARUNARI (one of the three regional components of the CONAIE).

Not sure if Quishpe sincerely desires to improve the life conditions in Guamote as he said he’s running for, or if he just seeks publicity but, in any case, saying that he doesn’t look prepared to hold an elected office would be the understatement of the year. The only previous ‘foray in politics’ of Quishpe was his endorsement of Lenín Moreno in the 2017 presidential election he made public in, you guess it, another abominable clip. I strongly hope he will be defeated because the last thing Ecuador needs is another clown in politics.

Singers, TV-personalities or athletes entering politics isn’t a recent phenomenon in Ecuador: already in 1978 Antonio Hanna Musse, a stage actor, journalist and radio and TV-presenter, was elected mayor of Guayaquil (this didn’t ended well as Hanna Musse landed in jail for corruption); TV journalist Freddy Ehlers made two presidential bids in 1996 and 1998. However, the trend has intensified since the early 2000s with the collapse of the old party system and the quality of the star candidates has sharply declined: Hanna Musse was, among other things, a news anchor and the brother of a party leader while Ehlers was a serious journalist who made reports about environment causes and had a solid election platform, now we’ve got half-illiterate soccer players, dumb comedy actors, presenters of mindless TV programs and vulgar misogynist rappers running for elected offices.

For those interested by Quishpe 'music':

En tus Tierras Bailaré clip (beware, may cause brain damage and epilepsy):

Torres Gemelas clip:

The clip in which he supported Moreno (this one is really for masochists and is strongly not recommended for epileptic people):

[warandwar]

Perez appeared w/ Abdala at his 1996 inauguration, I believe..