Copyright by William Thayer Epps 2009 The Dissertation Committee for William Thayer Epps certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Maintaining the Empire: Diplomacy and Education in U.S.-Ecuadorian Relations, 1933-1963 Committee: ______________________________ Mark Atwood Lawrence, Supervisor ______________________________ Frank Costigliola ______________________________ Francis J. Gavin ______________________________ Michael B. Stoff ______________________________ Ann Twinam Maintaining the Empire: Diplomacy and Education in U.S.-Ecuadorian Relations, 1933-1963 by William Thayer Epps, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2009 For Richard William Epps (1942-1992) Acknowledgments This project began nine years ago when I entered graduate school at the University of Connecticut. During that time, I have incurred many debts to colleagues, friends and family. Without their support, I never would have finished this dissertation. Funding from the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Department of History at the University of Connecticut allowed me to study Spanish and conduct initial research in Ecuador. Thanks to generous funding from the Department of History and the Graduate School of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin, I completed my research and writing. The guidance of Pablo Nuñez Endara and the rest of the staff at the Foreign Ministry Archive in Quito proved invaluable. I never expected to receive such access and support. I extend similar thanks to the staff at the National Archives II who helped me to navigate that extraordinary collection. At Connecticut, I would like to thank first and foremost Frank Costigliola. Frank introduced me to the study of international relations, and his encouragement pushed me to pursue a Ph.D. I would also like to thank Blanca Silvestrini, Karen Spaulding and Elizabeth Mahan, all of whom helped guide me in my explorations of Latin American history. Without these formative years at the University of Connecticut, I doubt that I would have been as successful at The University of Texas. At Texas I owe my greatest debt of gratitude to Mark Lawrence. As a professor, the chair of my dissertation committee, and a true mentor, Mark constantly pushed me to dig deeper in my analysis and to polish my writing. I also wish to thank Mauricio Tenorio v who helped me to further my understanding of Latin American history. Michael Stoff has also served as a true mentor in terms of both my writing and my teaching. I would also like to thank Ann Twinam and Frank Gavin for serving on my dissertation committee and providing invaluable comments and advice. In addition, I could not have finished this project without the friendship and support of Matt Gildner, Karl Brown and Margaret Peacock. Finally, I wish to thank my family. Mom and Ted, your support and encouragement have sustained me for these past nine years. McClain, your love and understanding helped me to finish this project. You, Nathan, and Lainy are the reasons that I do this. vi Maintaining the Empire: Diplomacy and Education in U.S.-Ecuadorian Relations, 1933-1963 William Thayer Epps, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2009 Supervisor: Mark Atwood Lawrence Historians today continue to explore the maintenance of the U.S. Empire in the Third World. Some argue that coercion was the driving force. Others suggest that consent played a role. Settling this debate is difficult given the unbalanced state of the historiography, which is overloaded with analyses of interventions. Analyzing U.S.-Ecuadorian relations offers an instructive addition to the literature. Negotiation and compromise, not coercion, were central to these interactions. The Ecuadorians who shaped these relations the most typically shared some core assumptions with their U.S. counterparts. Policymakers in Washington therefore developed educational exchange programs to expand this pool of pro-U.S. Latin Americans. Using documents from archives in the United States and Ecuador, this study explores how policymakers used diplomacy and education to maintain the U.S. Empire in the Third World from 1933 to 1963. This process began with the Roosevelt Administration‘s Good Neighbor Policy. Ecuadorian threats to nationalize U.S. businesses operating in Ecuador, however, challenged the rhetoric of cooperation championed by Roosevelt. The Japanese attack on vii Pearl Harbor halted these challenges. Two days after the attack, policymakers in Washington accepted Ecuadorian offers to establish bases in Ecuador. This marked the solidification of hemispheric solidarity, and a more robust U.S. hegemony in Latin America. A growing number of Ecuadorian students and intellectuals studying in the United States under scholarships awarded by their government strengthened this solidarity. The U.S. government soon began funding both these exchanges as well as American Schools throughout Latin America in the hopes of maintaining this unity in the future. Beginning in 1950, disputes over fisheries threatened the wartime cohesion. Ecuador attempted to force Washington to accept a 200-mile limit on territorial waters. Negotiations failed to resolve the issue. The discontent evident throughout Latin America continued to build, until, in 1962, President John F. Kennedy discovered that the government of Ecuador would not support his administration‘s plan to exclude Cuba from the Organization of American States. Despite these setbacks, policymakers continued to promote educational exchange through the Foreign Leader Program and the Fulbright Program. They hoped above all else to expand consent to U.S. hegemony. viii Table of Contents Introduction 1 I. Good Neighbors, 1933-1939 26 1. Economic nationalism 27 2. The Educational Exchange Programs 65 II. Hemispheric Solidarity, 1940-1948 87 3. Military Bases and Anti-Fascism 88 4. The American School of Quito, and the Buenos Aires Convention 116 III. The Cold War, 1949-1957 155 5. The 200-mile Limit 156 6. The Foreign Leader Program 208 IV. Towards a New Hegemony, 1958-1963 246 7. Testing U.S. Hegemony at Punta del Este 247 8. Student Challenges and the Fulbright Program 275 Conclusion 303 Bibliography 309 Vita 318 ix Introduction On 12 December 1941, thirty-five U.S. Marines arrived in Ecuador to establish military bases on Seymour Island in the Galápagos and in the coastal town of Salinas.1 Japan had recently bombed Pearl Harbor, and policymakers in Washington wanted these bases to defend the Panama Canal from Japanese attack. This was not the first time that the U.S. military had landed on foreign shores in the name of security. In Latin America alone, such invasions had occurred in Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, to name a few, as far back as the 1890s. The arrival of the Marines on Ecuadorian territory in 1941, however, was different. Unlike previous episodes when the Marines were used to enforce the will of Washington and protect the interests of Wall Street, this time the U.S. soldiers had been invited by the democratically elected president of Ecuador, Alberto Arroyo del Rio. This was the era of the Good Neighbor Policy when the United States promised to cooperate with the nations of Latin America instead of interfering in their domestic affairs. The success of this new model of inter-American solidarity depended on the support of pro-U.S. elites in Ecuador and elsewhere. One of these elites, Galo Plaza Lasso, had a long history of supporting the United States. After studying at the University of Maryland, Berkeley, and Georgetown, Galo Plaza served as an assistant at the Ecuadorian embassy in Washington during the late 1920s, and later as the Ecuadorian ambassador to Washington. Two years before the 1 Jorge W. Villacres Moscoso, Historia Diplomatica de la Republica del Ecuador, tercer tomo (Guayaquil, Ecuador: EQ. Editorial, 1989), 269. 1 attack on Pearl Harbor, Galo Plaza, who was then Minister of National Defense, offered the use of the Galápagos to President Franklin Roosevelt because he recognized the strategic value of the islands, and he wanted to help the United States protect shipping approaches to the Panama Canal. As president of Ecuador from 1948 to 1952, Galo Plaza also strengthened U.S.-Ecuadorian economic relations by opening national territory to banana production by the United Fruit Company. Throughout his political career, Galo Plaza evinced a pro-U.S. attitude that helped him maintain strong U.S.-Ecuadorian relations. Yet despite his pro-U.S. credentials, toward the end of his administration Galo Plaza reformed Ecuadorian fishing regulations in ways that led directly to the detaining and fining of U.S. fishing vessels operating off the coast of Ecuador. These actions, especially the shooting of a U.S. fisherman by an Ecuadorian serviceman, sparked outrage among California fishing companies. Company owners urged their union leaders to pressure their congressmen to force the State Department to intervene. The strength of U.S.-Ecuadorian relations seemed to be at risk, in part due to the Presidential Decrees of Galo Plaza. What had happened? Had Galo Plaza and other pro-U.S. elites within his administration stopped supporting the United States? Were the tensions in U.S.- Ecuadorian relations over territorial waters an isolated episode, or was there a broader, global context? Put simply, no, Galo Plaza had not suddenly turned against the United States; nor was the debate over fishing and territorial waters an isolated episode limited to bilateral relations between the United States and Ecuador. Instead, the invitation to 2 establish U.S. military bases on Ecuadorian territory, the dispute over territorial waters, and other episodes in U.S.-Ecuadorian relations explored in this dissertation, reflect in microcosm the ever-shifting nature of the U.S. Empire in the Third World2—an empire maintained less through coercion and intervention, and more through cooperation with local elites.