Guayaquil

Santiago de Guayaquil, or just Guayaquil, is the most populous and largest city in Ecuador, as well as that nation's main sea port city. Guayaquil is on the right margin of the Guayas River, which flows into the Gulf of Guayaquil in the Pacific Ocean. Guayaquil is at 2.21°S 79.90°W, about 250 km south-southwest of the capital of Ecuador, Quito. According to the most recent census (2001), its population was 1,985,379.

Guayaquil is the capital of the Ecuadorian province of Guayas and the seat of Guayaquil Canton. (In Ecuador, a cantón (canton) is a second-order subnational entity below a first-order province.)

Some of Guayaquil's main universities are:

• Universidad de Guayaquil [1] (http://www.ug.edu.ec)
• Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil [2] (http://www.ucsg.edu.ec)
• Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral [3] (http://www.espol.edu.ec)
• Universidad [Laica] Vicente Rocafuerte [4] (http://www.ulaicavr.edu.ec)
• Universidad [de Especialidades del] Espíritu Santo [5] (http://www.uees.edu.ec)

Guayaquil has many religious buildings of various denominations, including a Roman Catholic cathedral and a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The city is the center of Ecuador's fishing and manufacturing industries.

The city's airport, Simón Bolívar International Airport (IATA abbr.: GYE), has undergone renovations in the past years.

Famous people from Guayaquil include poet José Joaquín de Olmedo, scholar Benjamin Urrutia and tennis player Pancho Segura.

History

Guayaquil was founded on July 25, 1531 with the name Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Guayaquil by Conquistador Francisco de Orellana. Even before it was founded by the Spanish, it already existed as a native village.

In 1600 Guayaquil had a population of about 2,000 people; by 1700 the city had a population of over 10,000.

In 1687, Guayaquil was attacked and looted by English and French pirates under George d'Hout (English) and Picard and Groniet (Frenchmen). Of the more than 260 pirates, 35 died and 46 were wounded; 75 defenders of the city died and more than 100 were wounded. The pirates took local women as concubines. Quito paid the ransom demanded by the pirates with the condition they release the hostages and not burn Guayaquil.

In 1709, the English captains Woodes Rogers and Etienne Courtney along with 110 other pirates, looted Guayaquil and demanded ransom; however, they suddenly departed without collecting the ransom after an epidemic of yellow fever broke out.

In October 9, 1820, almost without bloodshed, a group of civilians supported by soldiers from the "Granaderos de Reserva", a Peruvian battalion quartered in Guayaquil, overwhelmed the resistance of the Royalist guards and arrested the Spanish authorities . Guayaquil declared independence from Spain. José Joaquín de Olmedo was named "Jefe Civil" of Guayaquil.

In 1822 José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar held a famous conference in Guayaquil to plan for the independence of Spanish South America.

The city suffered from a major fire in 1896 which destroyed large portions of the city.

The city's mayor (alcalde or gobernador de la ciudad) nowadays is Jaime Nebot , a well-known member of the Ecuadorian political party Partido Social Cristiano, and one of the political rivals of former Ecuadorian president Abdalá Bucaram.

Nebot began a campaign of construction projects for the city in the late 1990s to attract tourism. One of the projects was called Malecón 2000 , the renovation of the breakwater (malecón) along the Guayas River with the addition of a boardwalk in 2000. Another project was the creation of the Nuevo Parque Histórico, a park in a housing development area that is called Entre Ríos because it lies between the Guayas and Daule rivers, in a mangrove wetland area. The park cost the city about 7 million dollars. It is a refuge for fauna and a zone of historical-architecture preservation, and has a traditions-and-history exhibition center. The idea of the creation of this park came from Ecuador's central bank in 1982, as part of their "Rescate Arquitectónico" ("Architectural Rescue") program.

See also

• List of urban parishes in Guayaquil

Guayaquil in modern Fiction: Much of the setting of the novel "Galapagos" by Kurt Vonnegut is set in Guayaquil. The novel contains one major factual error: Vonnegut claims that Guayaquil is entirely Roman Catholic. Actually, the city is home to a great number of denominations and religions.

References

• M.I. Municipalidad de Guayaquil :: (http://www.guayaquil.gov.ec) official Web site in Spanish
• http://www.guayaquil.com/
• , JPEG map of north and cemtral Guayaquil from a secondary Web site of the municipality
• Guayaquil Information  (http://www.inguayaquil.com/)
• Photographs of Guayaquil (http://www.ecuador365.com/)de:Guayaquil

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