Ecuador's President Cordero, midway through his term…

Ecuador's President Cordero, midway through his term in office, falls victim in 1895 to scandal and charges of "selling the flag" over an agreement made with Chile.

Cordero allows the warship Esmeralda, which Chile is selling to Japan, to fly the Ecuadorian flag briefly in order to protect Chile's neutrality in the conflict between Japan and China.

Bribes are apparently involved and, tremendously weakened by the scandal and also challenged by the outbreak of several military rebellions, the president resigns in April.

In June the Liberals seize power in Guayaquil in the name of their most popular caudillo, General Jose Eloy Alfaro Delgado.

Three months later, "the old battler" (a name Alfaro had earned during his armed struggle against García Moreno) returns after a decade of exile in Central America and marches triumphantly into Quito.

It is the end of Ecuador's brief experiment with progressivism and the beginning of three stormy decades of rule by the Radical Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Radical—PLR), commonly referred to as the Liberal Party (Partido Liberal).