Could Cuenca go independent again?

The United States recently celebrated 250 years of independence, which prompted the usual mixture of fireworks, patriotic oratory, a guest speech from the King of England who said that there were no hard feelings, and arguments about whether the founding fathers would have approved of the current state of the Rose Garden That’s the kind of anniversary that makes other places quietly take stock of their own independence credentials. Cuenca, as it happens, has some. Every year this city marks its own brief declaration of independence from Spanish rule, celebrated with a civic seriousness that falls somewhere between genuine pride and the mild amusement of people who know perfectly well that the experiment lasted only a matter of weeks. That the anniversary is observed at all says something about local identity. Two hundred and fifty years of unbroken nationhood impresses almost everyone. But even a short-lived republic, it turns out, is worth remembering, especially by everyone who gets the whole day off work or school. The question of what actually qualifies a place as an independent nation first occurred to me while recently watching a YouTube documentary about the Falkland Islands, which is not normally where one expects to find revolutionary inspiration. Usually people watch documentaries about the Falklands for penguins, sheep, and retired Royal Navy gentlemen explaining wind direction. Yet halfway through the program I found myself considering the possibility that Cuenca could function as an independent republic once again. The Falklands have only about 3,000 inhabitants, roughly the number of people you might find queuing at Coral Centro on a Saturday morning before a holiday weekend. The islands sit at the same southerly latitude as London sits north, which means they are cold, spectacularly windy, and subject to weather that makes British weather seem almost encouraging. They grow some vegetables under glasshouses and polytunnels, raise sheep and cattle, and pull seafood from some of the most productive waters in the South Atlantic. Lamb is a staple rather than a luxury, and there are some chickens and beef stock. Yet somehow those same 3,000 people manage to operate schools, roads, a legislature, a police force, internet services, an airport, a hospital and a functioning fisheries administration. They even maintain enough governmental structure to produce official documents, hold elections, and argue about budgets like any self-respecting nation. Admittedly, if someone develops cancer or requires highly specialized surgery, they may be flown to Britain. But then again many perfectly respectable countries send difficult medical cases abroad. Civilization turns out to involve rather more subcontracting than one imagines from patriotic speeches. Which again raises the question: How large does a place really need to be in order to qualify as a proper country? Modern people tend to imagine nations as giant entities with aircraft carriers, central banks, missile systems, and ministers of innovation who appear on television wearing expensive spectacles while explaining why your electricity bill has doubled, but historically many states were not much larger than a modern city. Athens was essentially a city-state surrounded by olive groves and arguments. Renaissance Venice was an medium-sized city in a swamp that ruled half the Mediterranean for centuries. Medieval Europe contained a bewildering collection of duchies, bishoprics, free cities, and principalities so small that one could probably walk across them before lunchtime if not interrupted by bandits. Consider Bermuda, which I know from personal experience rather than YouTube. It is 21 square miles of islands linked by a few bridges and a causeway in the middle of the North Atlantic, home to around 70,000 people, and it has built a genuinely prosperous economy on a foundation that might charitably be described as improbable: international banking, reinsurance, tourism, and cruise ships. Bermuda grows hardly any food except a few onions, and manufactures almost nothing except for souvenir bottles of pink sand and postage stamps. It simply made itself indispensable to the international financial system and then charged accordingly. The lesson, if there is one, is that a small place does not need natural resources so much as it needs a convincing reason for skimming off other people’s money. And Cuenca itself has history in this department. In 1820, during the wars against Spanish rule, local patriots declared independence and established what amounted to the Republic of Cuenca, although historians tend to prefer phrases like “Free Province” because historians become nervous whenever ordinary people appear to be enjoying themselves politically. The experiment was short-lived and Spanish royalist forces regained control after the Battle of Verdeloma, though permanent independence from Spain did arrive a few years later as the larger liberation campaigns swept through South America. So for a brief period, Cuenca really was its own republic. And to be fair, modern Cuenca already possesses many of the ingredients of nationhood: three universities, law courts, hospitals, shopping malls, a tram system, banks, a professional football club, endless pharmacies, and enough bureaucracy to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it is civilized. The city has a strong local identity, distinct architecture, recognizable cuisine, and a population larger than many independent countries that are doing perfectly well for themselves. But the real difficulty is not cultural independence, but economic independence. An independent Cuenca would immediately face the sort of question that causes finance ministers to stare moodily at spreadsheets late into the night. What exactly would the country export? Unlike the other parts of Ecuador, Cuenca does not sit atop vast oil reserves. There are no giant container ports, no strategic canals or railroads, and no immense fisheries. It does generate hydro-electric power, but, as we all know only too well,  barely enough for local use. One cannot balance international trade indefinitely by selling hornado, ice creams, Panama hats, and photographs of the Rio Tomebamba, however charming these may be. At present, Cuenca benefits enormously from belonging to Ecuador’s larger national economy. Oil revenues generated elsewhere help sustain the dollarized financial system the whole country uses. Remove that national framework and the Republic of Cuenca might suddenly discover that civilization requires rather a lot of imported diesel fuel, antibiotics, truck tires, semiconductors, and replacement parts for Chinese blenders. One suspects the first constitutional crisis would occur approximately three days after the first fuel tanker failed to arrive from Guayaquil. Still, small states survive in curious ways. The Falklands rely on fisheries and British support. Bermuda relies on finance, captive reinsurance,  and visitors arriving by sea. (However it should be said that while both are self-governing, neither are fully independent nations, as both are Overseas Territories of the Uk.) Other small countries survive through tourism, strategic geography, selling passports, or the willingness to ask no difficult questions about where money comes from. Cuenca does already possesses a somewhat unusual invisible export industry of its own: gringos. Scores of expatriates arrive every year carrying pensions and savings earned elsewhere, effectively importing foreign currency into the local economy simply by buying coffee, renting apartments, and complaining about internet speed. In a sense, gringos are a natural resource that Cuenca can mine to extract dollars. One could even imagine Cuenca evolving into a kind of Andean service republic, built on universities, medical tourism, remote workers, artisanal chocolate sold at implausible prices, and the reliable willingness of foreigners to find the frost-and-mosquito-free climate agreeable. This is not entirely absurd and plenty of modern countries survive on equally strange economic foundations. Yet perhaps the deeper point is that independence today is partly an illusion anyway. Even large nations depend heavily on global trade, imported technology, and foreign finance. A country may possess its own flag, anthem, and border guards while still being unable to manufacture essentials like insulin or computer chips. Modern civilization resembles a giant interconnected machine in which almost nobody is entirely self-sufficient and everyone depends on imports. Still, there are evenings in Cuenca when the clouds drift low across the mountains, church bells echo above the Tomebamba, and the city feels less like a provincial municipality and more like a small ancient republic temporarily borrowing the Ecuadorian flag out of convenience. At least until the Wi-Fi fails , TVs screens go dark,  and everyone remembers that the cables probably came from China. The post Could Cuenca go independent again? appeared first on CuencaHighLife.