Ecuador's Eloy Alfaro is the outstanding standard-bearer…

Ecuador's Eloy Alfaro is the outstanding standard-bearer for the country's Liberals, much as García Moreno is for the Conservatives.

Some Marxist groups will also look to Alfaro; although his political program is in no way socialist, it does prove to be revolutionary in the extent to which it strips the Roman Catholic Church of the power and privileges previously granted to it by García Moreno.

Catholic officials and their Conservative allies do not give up without a fight, however.

During the first year of Alfaro's presidency, Ecuador is ravaged by a bloody civil war in which clergy- men commonly incite  the faithful masses to rise in rebellion against the "atheistic alfaristas" and are, just as commonly, themselves victims of alfarista repression.

The foreign-born Bishops Pedro Schumacher of Portoviejo and Arsenio Andrade of Riobamba lead the early resistance to Alfaro.

A full-fledged bloodbath may well have been averted only through the magnanimous efforts of the outstanding historian and Archbishop Federico Gonzalez Suarez, who urges the clergy to abandon the pursuit of politics.