ECUADOR: Portrait of a People

Part serious study of historical, political and economic backgrounds; part personal experience and human interest; part travel -- and the whole a good overall picture of one of the smallest but most interesting of our neighbors to the south. The author, determined to seek his material at first hand, covers all parts of the country, traveling wherever possible in the way the natives travel, by bus, by mule, by foot, by boat, through country and jungle, over mountains and plains, to villages and towns. He shows a country of broad contrasts. He writes of the main cities --each one sharply individual. He writes of fiestas, market days, of personalities, of the tangled web of politics, and the good job the president now in power is doing in reestablishing his country's credit, in expanding her economic and industrial stability. There is a little about the German infiltration, which is not extensive; there is something of the future value of Ecuador's products to the world; there is consideration of the strategic value in the war picture of the Galapagos Islands. Good background material.