Ecuadoran Liberalism under José María Urvina takes…

Ecuadoran Liberalism under José María Urvina takes on anticlerical, ethnic, and regional dimensions.

In 1852 he accuses a group of Jesuit priests—admitted by his predecessor, Diego Noboa, only a year earlier—of political meddling and expelled them.

Urvina had 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 puts an end to three centuries of required annual payments of tribute by the indigenous population.

Henceforth, liberalism associates itself with bettering the position of Ecuador's non-white population.

Urvina's and Robles's favoring of the Guayaquil business classes over the Quito landowners reinforceds the regional aspect of the political dichotomy.