On the threshold of the 21st century, Ecuador was hit by a series of diverse events, the cumulative effects of which plunged it into the darkest economic period in the history of the republic. As a result, 300,000 Ecuadorians officially left their country between 1998 and 2000. This migratory 'earthquake' reached even the most rural areas which might have been expected to be spared. Such was the case of the remote Andean highland valley of Cañar, where the suddenness and extent of emigration seemed at the time to foreshadow a rural exodus that would leave arable land abandoned to nature. What were the socio-historical forces that lay behind such a vast wave of migration? What motivated the decision of hundreds of peasants to emigrate? And what has been the ultimate impact of these events on local agriculture, communities and the natural environment? This research paper sets out to tackle these questions using a systemic analysis approach. We argue that despite the profound changes seen over the last half-century in this mountain highland region, which is poor and predominantly agricultural, nothing has fundamentally changed in actual methods of development. This migratory 'earthquake' resulted from, and at the same time aggravated a profound crisis in peasant farming - a crisis itself rooted in social structures which were introduced in the early days of Spanish colonization. Hence, any study of this area's agrarian development and its dialectical interplay with the fact of migration, must involve consideration of its future, not just in relation to its own history, but also in relation to the history of globalization with which it is intrinsically linked.
