Los “enganchados”. La formación de grupos armados en la Costa del Ecuador a inicios del siglo XIX

Abstract

Based on primary sources, the article offers an approach to the process of formation of irregular armed groups in the province of Manabí in the early nineteenth century resulting from the struggle for power and for control of the monopoly on violence, within the framework of construction of the new republican regime. In this peripheral region of the central state, society became violent when pressed by either state power or by local warlords purporting to be part of local power structures by means of forced recruitment to swell the ranks of militias and armed groups.