Carlos Concha Torres was a career military officer and an Afro-Ecuadorian native of Esmeraldas Province who rose against President Leónidas Plaza in 1913, after the assassination of liberal leader Eloy Alfaro. The resulting Concha Revolution lasted roughly three years, centered on the Esmeraldas coast, and became one of the defining conflicts of early twentieth-century Ecuador. Concha was captured by government forces and died in 1915. When the airport was renovated a century later, the voters of Esmeraldas chose his name in a municipal contest over the airport's original honoree - a reclamation of local memory that the Ecuadorian government formally accepted in 2013.

The airport was inaugurated on March 25, 1940, originally named for José Enrique Rivadeneira. For seven decades it operated as a modest regional strip serving the Pacific coast. Between 2012 and 2013, the Ecuadorian government rebuilt it as part of a broader airport-modernization program meant to draw tourism and commerce to the provinces. The runway gained 200 meters of added length. A new apron, a new air traffic control tower, and a new passenger terminal rose from the site. President Rafael Correa inaugurated the completed terminal on January 14, 2014, with capacity rated for 250,000 passengers a year.

The field sits in the parish of Tachina, about three kilometers east of Esmeraldas proper, on the opposite bank of the Esmeraldas River. The layout puts the runway between the river and the coastal bluffs, with the Pacific just off the western end and the port of Esmeraldas visible across the water. On a clear day the approach offers a clean view of the river mouth, the Balao oil terminal to the south, and the string of beach towns - Atacames, Tonsupa, Same - that run down the coast toward the province's southern edge. The ICAO code is SETN, the IATA code is ESM.

International service has come and gone. For a period after the renovation, Aeroregional ran flights to Cali, Colombia, linking Esmeraldas to the Pacific commercial corridor north of the border. That route eventually ended. Domestic service is the main thing the airport does now, connecting Esmeraldas with Quito and occasionally Guayaquil. In a country where the main highway from the coast to the sierra can take five to seven hours and pass through landslide-prone terrain, a forty-minute flight is not a luxury - it is how the region stays connected to the capital.

Most airport names honor presidents, donors, or explorers. The choice of Carlos Concha Torres is quieter and more pointed. It names the main civilian gateway to Esmeraldas - a majority Afro-Ecuadorian province with deep roots in resistance history - after a man the central government once hunted down. The name is a small but deliberate act of self-definition by a province that has long existed on the edge of national attention. The terminal is glass and concrete, the tower blinks red through the coastal haze, and the runway stretches across a floodplain that Concha himself would have known well.