The Jubones River, in Quechua, carries a name that translates as "devourer of men." The indigenous and mestizo settlers who tried to build a town along its banks during the late 1700s learned what that meant. Their first settlement, founded around 1760 at a place called Guaboplaya, was drowned out by the river's unpredictable risings. They moved across to Uzhcaplaya around 1780 and lasted twenty years before giving up on that bank too. Around 1800, a hundred exhausted survivors tried once more at higher ground. That third try became Pasaje. Two centuries later the canton it founded has a population of nearly 63,000 and a history of refusing to let a single river defeat it.
The story begins in 1758, when the indigenous Governor of Machala, a man named Ambrosio Gomal, went to Guayaquil to defend the land that would become Pasaje against speculators who wanted to auction it off. Captain Antonio de Argote, the land judge, struck a deal: the indigenous people from Machala could keep the territory if they built a town on it within two and a half years. If they failed, the land would revert to the Spanish crown. They agreed. Settlers moved in along an old highland footpath that descended through the Chaguana ranch and connected to a trail coming up from Pucará. Where it passed through an area called Las Nieves, "the snows," the settlement would eventually take its fuller name: Pasaje de las Nieves, the Pass of the Snows, shortened by everyday use to simply Pasaje.
In 1822, according to local tradition, Mr. Gabino Serrano - great-grandfather of a later Pasaje resident named Andrés Corsino García - hosted Marshal Antonio José de Sucre at his house as Sucre's liberating army passed through on its way north. The army was marching toward the Battle of Pichincha, fought on May 24 of that year, which would seal Ecuador's independence from Spanish rule. Two years after Pichincha, the territorial division law of 1824 declared Machala a canton, making Pasaje a parish within it. Cuencanos, Lojanos, and Zarumeños all began immigrating to Pasaje, drawn by what the records describe as "the fertility of its land and notable progress." The town grew quickly through the rest of the century.
By 1890, Pasaje wanted out of Machala's shadow. Cantonization would bring political autonomy and control over local taxes, and Pasaje had outgrown being a mere parish. But Ecuador's president at the time, Dr. Luis Cordero, carried a grudge. Pasaje had not supported him in the elections that brought him to power, and he refused to grant the designation. The breakthrough came through a priest. Dr. José Ochoa León, a deputy representing El Oro Province and a close personal friend of President Cordero, quietly worked the issue until cantonization was finally approved in 1894. It is the kind of Ecuadorian political story that repeats across the country - national politics, local slight, clergy as the intermediary, and eventually a decree signed in some distant capital that changes how a town sees itself.
Pasaje Canton sits in El Oro Province, whose name translates literally as "The Gold" - a reference to the region's long mining history. The canton's capital, the town of Pasaje, is the main population center. The rest of the canton is organized into urban parishes (Ochoa León, Bolívar, Loma de Franco, Tres Cerritos) and rural parishes (Buenavista, Cañaquemada, La Peaña, Uzhcurrumi, El Progreso, Casacay) that sprawl out into the banana-growing flatlands and the foothills of the Andes. The 2010 census counted 85.5 percent of residents as Mestizo, with smaller White, Afro-Ecuadorian, Montubio, and indigenous communities. Pasaje today is the classic Ecuadorian coastal canton - bananas and cacao in the fields, shops along the main plaza, a cathedral at the center, and the Jubones River still cutting its valley nearby, calmer now than it used to be, but not always.
Coordinates: 3.33°S, 79.80°W. In El Oro Province, southern coastal Ecuador, near the Jubones River. Nearest airport is Regional de Santa Rosa (SERO/ETR) about 35 km southwest. The Andes rise sharply to the east; Pasaje sits in the transition zone between the coastal plain and the foothills. Banana plantations are the dominant land pattern visible from altitude.