ABSTRACT
Political participation in Ecuador has been restricted to a tiny fraction of the population. However, social and demographic changes, begun during the cacao boom and accelerated by the banana boom, built pressures for an expansion of participation. By the early 1930s, however, in spite of structural obstacles to mass participation, the economic dislocation caused by the cacao crisis and the ensuing world depression created the conditions needed to break the hegemony of the traditional parties. On July 11, 1963, the military overthrew the government of Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy. Superficially resembling populist movements elsewhere in South America in their charismatic leadership and their appeal to sectors of the population excluded from electoral participation, Ecuadorian populist movements are distinguished by their development in a political system with highly restricted participation and by their relative absence of reformist policies. The military junta that assumed power in 1963 was the first institutional intervention since 1925.
