Decade of Progress

Surrounded by countries that are having economic and financial difficulties, tiny Ecuador (pop. 4,000,000) is a striking exception. It has an annual trade surplus, a currency more solid than the dollar, an economy growing by an average of 9% each year. Last week Conservative President Camilo Ponce Enriquez. 47, dedicated 13 more miles of blacktop road through virgin farmland, rushed ancient Quito's $10 million face lifting (a jet airport, a new congressional palace), timed for the eleventh meeting of the Pan American Union next year. "Our people are working,'' says Ponce. "Our soil is flowering."

At the base of Ecuador's boom is a ten-year record of political stability, starting with Galo Plaza Lasso, 53, onetime University of California fullback, who won the presidency in 1948. The secret ingredient is democracy, both of thought and action. Coupled with the brains to take advantage of Ecuador's rich soil, it brought the boom. As the dread Panama disease, a killing blight, ravaged older banana plantations through Central America, Galo Plaza spent every dollar his government could spare to open up the virgin coastal plain, where rich topsoil lay three feet thick. In ten years Ecuador built 1,600 miles of road. United Fruit opened a 7,000-acre plantation. Poor settlers from the highlands joined in and got 124 acres of government land free. Now Ecuador is the world's biggest banana exporter, with shipments of $70 million last year.

"Crops are as sure as a blue-chip stock,'' says a Quito attorney. "You plant bananas for quick returns, and a second crop--either coffee or cocoa--for the long term. In five years your annual income equals your original investment." As the second crops came to fruit, Ecuador's coffee exports jumped from $3,000,000 to $25 million, cocoa from $6,000,000 to $20.5 million.

Realists point out that one reason why Ecuador moved ahead so fast was that it had far to go. Per capita income, though it almost doubled in a decade, is still only $164 a year. Too much business and industry is run as an old family affair, grossly inefficient, protected by high tariffs. Yet Galo and his successors down to Conservative President Ponce Enriquez have brought hope for the future and, above all, freedom. Almost daily one paper or another roasts Ponce for "fraud, deceit and treason." The President ignores them all. "Neither calumny nor insult disturbs me," he says. "I have given the press free rein."

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