García Moreno is the father of Ecuadorian…

García Moreno is the father of Ecuadorian conservatism and no doubt the most controversial figure in the nation's history, condemned by Liberal historians as Ecuador's worst tyrant but exalted by Conservatives as the nation's greatest nation-builder.

In the end, both appraisals may be accurate; the man who possibly saved Ecuador from disintegration in 1859, then ruled the nation with an iron fist for the subsequent decade and a half is, in fact, an extremely complicated personality.

Born and raised under modest circumstances in Guayaquil, he had studied in Quito, where he married into the local aristocracy, then traveled to Europe in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutionary uprisings and studied under the eminent Catholic theologians of the day.