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Ecuador Initial Confusion, 1830-60
Independence did not occasion a revolutionary liberation of the
masses of Ecuadorian peasants. On the contrary, as bad as the
peasants' situation was, it probably worsened with the loss of the
Spanish royal officials who had protected the indigenous population
against the abuses of the local criollos. This criollo elite, which
had spearheaded the struggle for independence, was to be its
principal beneficiary. The early battle to define the political
parameters of the new state was fought, to a great extent, among
the various sectors--Ecuadorians and foreigners, military personnel
and civilians--of this elite.
Flores was of the foreign military variety. Born in Venezuela,
he had fought in the wars for independence with Bolívar, who had
appointed him governor of Ecuador during its association with Gran
Colombia. Although of humble origins with little formal education,
Flores married into the Quiteño elite, gaining acceptance,
initially at least, within the local criollo upper class. As a
leader, however, he appeared primarily interested in maintaining
his power. Military expenditures, from the independence wars and
from an unsuccessful campaign to wrest Cauca Province from Colombia
in 1832, kept the state treasury empty while other matters were
left unattended.
In 1833 four intellectuals who had begun publishing El
Quiteño Libre to denounce the "pillaging of the national
treasury by foreigners" were killed by the authorities at a time
when Flores was absent from Quito. Although not directly
responsible for the killings, Flores inevitably became associated
with them, and criticism of his regime grew. In 1834 opponents
staged a rebellion in an effort to place José Vicente Rocafuerte y
Rodríguez de Bejarano, a member of the Guayaquil aristocracy who
had recently returned from fourteen years abroad, into the
presidency. The rebels effort failed; Flores then coopted his
opponent and sponsored Rocafuerte as a presidential candidate. For
four years following this Machiavellian political move--in effect
the nation's first coup d'état--Flores continued to wield
considerable power from behind the scenes as commander of the
military.
President Rocafuerte's most lasting contribution was to begin
development of a public school system. Although he had previously
condemned Flores's violations of civil liberties, Rocafuerte argued
that "the backwardness of Ecuador makes enlightened despotism
necessary." At the end of his term in 1839, Rocafuerte returned to
his native Guayaquil as provincial governor, while in Quito Flores
was again inaugurated into the presidency. After four years in
office, Flores summoned a constitutional convention that wrote a
new constitution, dubbed "the Charter of Slavery" by his opponents,
and elected him to a new eight-year term of office.
After 1843 the opposition to Flores often manifested itself in
unpleasant ways: in reference to the dark skin of Flores and his
fellow Venezuelan and Colombian soldiers, Rocafuerte (by now exiled
in Lima) wrote that "the white oppressors of the peninsula were
less oppressive than the Negro vandals who have replaced them." A
young student named Gabriel García Moreno--later to become the most
infamous of all of Ecuador's nineteenth century dictators--tried
unsuccessfully to assassinate Flores. Discontent had become
nationwide by 1845, when an insurrection in Guayaquil forced Flores
from the country. Because their movement triumphed in March
(marzo), the anti-Flores coalition members became known as
marcistas. They were an extremely heterogeneous lot that
included liberal intellectuals, conservative clergymen, and
representatives from Guayaquil's successful business community.
The next fifteen years constituted one of the most turbulent
periods in Ecuador's century and a half as a nation. The
marcistas fought among themselves almost ceaselessly and
also had to struggle against Flores's repeated attempts from exile
to overthrow the government. The first marcista president
was a businessman, Vicente Ramón Roca, who served a full four-year
term of office. The most significant figure of the era, however,
was General José María Urbina, who first came to power in 1851
through a coup d'état, remained in the presidency until 1856, and
then continued to dominate the political scene until 1860. During
this decade and the one that followed, Urbina and his archrival,
García Moreno, would define the dichotomy--between Liberals from
Guayaquil and Conservatives from Quito--that remained the major
sphere of political struggle in Ecuador in the 1980s
(see Political Parties
, ch. 4).
Liberalism under Urbina took on anticlerical, ethnic, and
regional dimensions. In 1852 he accused a group of Jesuit priests--
admitted by his predecessor, Diego Noboa, only a year earlier--of
political meddling and expelled them. Urbina freed the nation's
slaves exactly one week after his coup of 1851, and six years
later, his successor and life-long friend, General Francisco
Robles, finally put an end to three centuries of required annual
payments of tribute by the Indian population. Henceforth,
liberalism associated itself with bettering the position of
Ecuador's non-white population. Urbina's and Robles's favoring of
the Guayaquil business classes over the Quito landowners reinforced
the regional aspect of the political dichotomy.
Opposition against Robles intensified after his signing, in
1857, of an unpopular contract aimed at alleviating the burdensome
foreign debt. By 1859--known by Ecuadorian historians as the
Terrible Year--the nation was on the brink of anarchy. Local
caudillos had declared several regions autonomous of the central
government. One of these caudillos, Guayaquil's Guillermo Franco,
signed the Treaty of Mapasingue ceding the southern provinces of
Ecuador to an occupying Peruvian army led by General Ramón
Castilla. This action was outrageous enough to unite some
previously disparate elements. García Moreno, putting aside both
his project to place Ecuador under a French protectorate and his
differences with General Flores, got together with the former
dictator to put down the various local rebellions and force out the
Peruvians. This effort opened the last chapter of Flores's long
career and marked the entrance to power of García Moreno.
Data as of 1989
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