José María Urvina

The fifteen years after 1845 constitute one of the most turbulent periods in Ecuador's century and a half as a nation.

The marcistas fight among themselves almost ceaselessly while also having to struggle against Flores's repeated attempts from exile to overthrow the government.

The first marcista president is a businessman, Vicente Ramon Roca, who serves a full four-year term of office.

The most significant figure of the era, however, is General José María Urvina, who first comes to power in 1851 through a coup d'etat, will remain in the presidency until 1856, and will then continue to dominate the political scene until 1860.

One of the most turbulent periods in Ecuador's century and a half as a nation are the fifteen years from 1845 to 1860.

The marcistas fight among themselves almost ceaselessly and also have to struggle against former president Juan José Flores's repeated attempts from exile to overthrow the government.

The first marcista president had been a businessman, Vicente Ramon Roca, who served a full four-year term of office.

The most signifcant figure of the era, however, is General José Maria Urvina, who had first come to power in 1851 through a coup d'etat, remains in the presidency until 1856, then continues to dominate the political scene until 1860.

During this decade and the one that follows, Urbina and his archrival, Garcia Moreno, will define the dichotomy—between Liberals from Guayaquil and Conservatives from Quito—that will remain the major sphere of political struggle in Ecuador in the late twentieth century.

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.

The highly anticlerical Ecuadorian Liberals are, of course, livid.

Former president José María Urvina organizes an invasion in 1864, which is defeated with the help, once again, of General Juan José Flores.

García Moreno is ruthless in his repression of the captured rebels, as he is commonly with less formidable opponents as well.

Nor does he hesitate to manipulate the presidential succession.

Finding his hand-picked successor deficient after two years in office, in 1867 García Moreno presides over the installation of a second puppet, whom he also overthrows in 1869, when it appears that the Liberals might win scheduled elections.

In 1869 García Moreno also formally establishes the Conservative Party (Partido Conservador—PC).

Five different presidents will govern Ecuador during the two decades of transition between Conservative and Liberal rule.

The first, Antonio Borrero, tries valiantly to return the nation to the rule of law, but, after only ten months in office, he is overthrown by the only military dictator of the period, Ignacio de Veintemilla.

Although he comes to power with the help of the old Liberal General Urvina, Veintemilla later evolves into a populist military dictator rather than a politician with any party or ideological affiliation.

He is extremely popular with his troops and able to woo the masses with employment on public works programs and large-scale public festivals and dances during holiday periods.

In office until 1883, Veintemilla enjoys a period of relative prosperity resulting primarily from increased maritime activity while Peru, Bolivia, and Chile are mired in the War of the Pacific.

José Maria Placido Caamaño, a Conservative, serves as Ecuador's president until 1888, and he remains a powerful figure during the administrations of the duly elected Progressive Party (Partido Progresista) presidents who follow  him, Antonio Flores Jijon and Luis Cordero Crespo.

Flores, who is the son of President Juan José Flores, intends progressivism to represent a compromise position between liberalism and conservatism.

The Progressive program calls for support for the Roman Catholic Church, rule by law, and an end to dictatorship and military rule.

Although neither Caamaño, Flores, nor Cordero is able to curtail the growing animosity between Conservatives and Liberals, their periods in office are, for the most part, characterized by relative political stability and prosperity.

The latter results more from favorable international circumstances for cocoa exports than from astute government policy making.

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).