Tag: Ecuador Stamp

So what to do to celebrate an eventually successful uprising against Spain 100 years before. Show the leaders, it wasn’t just a junta, it was a patriotic junta. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

We are lucky that Ecuador was nice enough to put this fellows name on the stamp. The issue marked 100 years since the uprising by a group of military men in Guayaquil. 200 years on the internet seems to have no record of him except as a street name in Quito. The problem is there was a different patriotic junta in Quito 8 years before that had their backsides handed to them by Spanish Loyalists. Well that is kind of what happened to the Guayaquil people as well. What can you do when your country’s cupboard is bare?

Todays stamp is issue A86, a four Centavo stamp issued by Ecuador in 1920. It was a twenty stamp issue in various denominations with lots of later overprints and surcharges in the shithole country style. In a few weeks Trump will leave office and we will have to revert to not calling a shithole a shithole, so lets enjoy it while we still can. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

In the Spanish colonial days the most important and richest city was Lima in Peru. As a result, the people there fought the hardest to stay Spanish. The further you got away from Lima you got the more poverty and the more luck revolutionary generals like Columbian Simon Bolivar and Argentine San Martin had.

That doesn’t mean that locals didn’t rise up in neighboring Ecuador and try to establish themselves as independence leaders. The patriotic junta of 1812 in Quito tried to send an army into Peru and was soundly defeated. In 1820, the patriotic junta in Guayaquil  immediately appealed for help from General Simon Bolivar. Bolivar responded by sending a small army that was again defeated by Peruvian Spanish Loyalists.

What to do, Lima was becoming quite the thorn in the side of the revolutionaries. General San Martin sailed up from Argentina/Chile and laid siege to Lima. Ashore he was able to send a fresh force to turn the tide against the Loyalists in Ecuador. Now it was time to divide the spoils or is it spoiled.

In 1822 there was a conference in Guayaquil where Jose de San Martin and Simon Bolivar met. Afterward there was a formal ball, perhaps even the good Senor Vivero was allowed to attend. Bolivar toasted the two most important people in South America, General San Martin and  um myself. San Martin took the hint and quickly left Peru and quite soon retired to France. He wasn’t one of the two most important men there and maybe that was for the best.

Well my drink is empty. I write these articles a few weeks ahead of when they publish and it just came to me that Biden will have assumed office when this publishes. Naturally I withdraw my dubious charge that Ecuador was a shithole. Any holes in the ground there are at least potential gold mines. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Ecuador broke away from Gran Columbia 100 years before this stamp. They hadn’t exactly set the world on fire with their success. Nature had provided to Ecuador a unique “national” cacao that was best in the world and readily exported. Well having such a national treasure perhaps justifies a country, too bad they couldn’t protect it. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

I do like the old style formal martial style of the older Latin American stamp. When they add the portrait of somebody no one has heard of  and have him dressed up like Napoleon, it adds a fun comic appeal. When The Philatelist started, I thought these stamps would be a staple, as we could research the trials and tribulations of the fake Napoleons. It didn’t work out that way, there really isn’t much info about them beyond a portrait and dates. The countries were largely illiterate and remembering the people that kept them that way was not a priority. I have had better luck when the country featured a crop or industry, because people getting something done is more worth remembering.

Todays stamp is issue A115, a five centavo stamp issued by Ecuador on August 1st, 1930. It was a 13 stamp issue in various denominations on the occasion of the country’s centennial. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Only 11 percent of the land area of Ecuador was arable. That perhaps was not considered adequately when deciding to break away from Gran Columbia, but circa 1830 the population was small and the indigenous didn’t truly count. The modern world works around issues like that by providing grains free or heavily subsidized. I wonder how often Ecuador says thank you to the USA or Japan for insuring such a program.

That does leave the arable land for export crops. The local variety of cacao pod produced the best in the world. It had a floweriness that was unmatched. The government named it ancient national and recognized it as a renewable and exportable national treasure. Unfortunately disaster struck. In 1916 the crop was hit with two crop diseases. They were called frozen pod and witches’ broom. Crop yields dropped to almost nothing. In desperation planters brought in outside varieties of cacao that seemed to have greater resistance to the diseases. The government tried to save the national variety by having it combined with the  newly added varieties to make a hybrid they named heirloom national cacao. The result was still high quality but now was instead fruity instead of flowery. Yields at least went back up.

This is where Frankenstein enters the story. A new hybrid was developed that was only one percent related to the ancient national cacao that was the national treasure. There was no longer any taste advantage or market price premium for this cacao from Ecuador. However Frankenstein upped crop yields eight fold. This has fueled a low quality export boom that mainly goes to the USA. In modern times, 70% of the land is given over to the Frankenstein hybrid and  a little less than 30 percent heirloom national. True Ancient National is less than 1 percent of todays crop. It still commands a market price eight times as much. So everybody gets cheap lousy cacao instead of just noticing that cacao from Ecuador is extra special.

Well my drink is empty. I wonder if is possible to get real ancient national sent to you? Fall is here and that means winter is coming. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Another long ago portrait of one nobody remembers, until one asks a philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

There are a ton of these stamps from 100-150 years ago. A formal portrait of a leader. As time passes and memories fade, the portrait becomes ever more of a not relatable blank state. As I am writing this, the official portraits of President and Mrs. Obama are revealed. They have a more cartoonish background and are less true to life. Some are of course mocking but I think it was an attempt to set his presidency apart from those who came before and after. Over time we will see if the result is clownish or causes later generations to give a second look to Obama.

The stamp today is issue A74, a 5 centavo stamp issued by the republic of Ecuador in 1911. It displays past President Jose Maria Urvina. It was part of a long series of past president stamps that were issued by Ecuador in the first quarter of the 20th century. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere revolted against Spain at the time Spain was invaded by Napoleon who put his brother on the Spanish throne. There was a lot of resentment from natives of the privileged position of Peninsulars in the colonies. The Peninsulars were those that could directly trace their lineage to Spain. This anger was then harnessed to fuel rebellions against a weakened and distracted Spain. Ironically the leaders of the rebellion were not from the masses but themselves from an elite.

The rebellions were imagined to end in a large powerful country that would be free of Spain and could benefit from its own output. The results were somewhat different, Region after region broke away from a corrupt Gran Columbia after the death of revolutionary leader Simon Bolivar. Among the breakaway regions was Ecuador.

Ecuador itself was far from a united place. There were liberal minded intellectuals and businessmen from Guayaquil and a much more conservative group that was mainly in Quito. The divisions saw many changes in power and with an aggressive Peru to the south there was much tumult.

Jose Maria Urvina was president for 5 years in the 1850s. He was from the more liberal group in Ecuador. He was a military man who was put in power by a coup. He had one great accomplishment in ending the practice of slavery. Slavery in Ecuador was mainly an issue among the majority indian/native population. As the 1850s went along more conservative areas  began to pay less attention to the central government and by the end of the decade some local strongmen were pledging allegiance to Peru.

I mentioned earlier how much of a blank slate these portraits become over time. A later ex president stamp issue by Ecuador changes the spelling of his name. It seems his son was a prominent banker who changed his spelling probably so not to have his politics assumed. With such a blank slate this was then retroactively transferred to the father.

Well my drink is empty so I will open up the conversation in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.