ECUADOR: South American republic, so called because it is crossed by the equator; area about 120,000 sq. m.; population about 1,400,000, of which 700,000 are Indians, 500,000 of Spanish descent, and 200,000 negroes and of mixed blood; there are only 100,000 pure whites in the country. The established religion is Roman Catholicism, which is recognized by the constitution of the republic, to the exclusion of every other confession. However, toleration is shown to foreigners of other confessions; but these, few in number, have never founded an independent congregation. The Church is organized into the archbishopric of Quito (bishopric 1545, archbishopric since 1848), the six bishoprics of Cuenca (1786), Guayaquil (1837), Ibarra (1862), Loja (1866), Porto Vecchio (1871), and Riobamba (1863), and an apostolical vicariate at Nopo. The entire territory is divided into 350 parishes, in which are also the cloisters of ten different orders of monks and eleven orders of nuns. The relations of Church to State are regulated by the concordat of 1862, as changed in 1881, which also regulates the receipts of the Church in the several provinces. In general, education, though nominally compulsory, is neglected. Besides a fair number of elementary schools there are nine national colleges, five girls' schools conducted by nuns, a number of seminaries of the clergy, and an old and unimportant university at Quito, with branches at Cuenca and Guayaquil. The Indians in the east, among whom many missions were established by the Jesuits, also by the Franciscans, prior to the separation of South America from Spain, have been allowed to relapse completely into their original state of barbarity. Their religion is fetishism of the crudest variety.

WILHELM GOETZ.

 

Bibliography: On the country: T. C. Dawson, The South American Republics, part 2, New York, 1904; A. Simson, Travels in the Wilds of Ecuador, London, 1887; T. Wolf, Geographía y geológia del Ecuador, Leipsic, 1892; W. Sievers, Amerika, ib. 1893. On the relations of the Church of Rome: El Concordato i la esposicion del concejo cantonal de Guayaquil, Guayaquil, 1863 (Concordat between Pius IX. and President Moreno); Nueva version del concordato de 1862 . . entre . Leon XIII. y el presidente . . . del Ecuador, Quito, 1882. Consult also J. Lee, Religious Liberty in South America with Special Reference to Recent Legislation in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, Cincinnati, 1907.