The land in the province of Los Rios and Guayas was uncommonly fertile. There, the river which stretched out parallel to the ocean, and the immense estuary of the gulf of Guayaquil, created unique conditions of irrigation for the plantations. The largest port of the Pacific coast became a trading town and also and important shipyard. But the region was also hot and marshy; life there was difficult. Since 1860, the kings of cacao had tended to hand over the management of their lands to agents, and to spend their time in Europe. Almost all of them chose Paris, where they set themselves up in houses and mansions in the elegant quartiers. Some of them put down roots – which caused one of the descendants of the Manzano family to remark, much later: “It was cacao that made us French”.
In Paris this was the belle époque. The industrial epic dynamised the century and intoxicated its contemporaries. Ostentatious entertaining was the order of the day, with voyages in wagon- lits and steamships, which were at the height of their opulent luxuriousness. “Polite society” was all- powerful, and, although the nobility of Europpe was quietly opening up to the new American “aristocracy”, during the Second Empire, Paris continued to dictate fashion.
