The history of the Republic of Ecuador from 1830 to 1860 begins with the collapse of the nation of Gran Colombia in 1830, followed by the assassination of Antonio José de Sucre and the death of Simón Bolívar from tuberculosis the same year. Heartbroken at the dissolution of Gran Colombia, Bolívar is quoted to have said shortly before his death, "America is ungovernable. Those who have served the revolution have plowed the sea." These words would seem prophetic during the chaotic first thirty years of Ecuador's existence.
General Juan José Flores became the first President of Ecuador, ruling from 1830 to 1834. In 1834, facing a rebellion, he co-opted its presidential choice, José Vicente Rocafuerte y Rodríguez de Bejarano, and supported his presidency, while retaining considerable power as the commander of the military. In 1839, Rocafuerte retired, and Flores regained the presidency. In 1845, the Marcist Rebellion forced him into exile.
The next fifteen years saw much turmoil, as various factions struggled for supremacy. Matters came to a head in 1859, the "Terrible Year" in Ecuadorian history. Then President Francisco Robles faced several opposition movements. Neighboring Peru, under President Ramón Castilla, began negotiating with all factions and imposed a blockade. On Castilla's suggestion, the four competing Ecuadorian governments selected General Guillermo Franco to negotiate with him. When the various factions realized that Franco had betrayed them, they banded together. At the Battle of Guayaquil, fought between September 22–24, 1860, Franco was defeated, and a new conservative era of government was ushered in.
Beginnings of the Republic of Ecuador
Independence did not bring revolutionary liberation to the masses of Ecuadorian peasants. On the contrary, as bad as the peasants' situation had been, it probably worsened with the loss of the Spanish royal officials who had protected the indigenous population against the abuses of the local criollo elite. These criollos, who had spearheaded the struggle for independence, were to be its principal beneficiaries.
The early battle for control of the new state was fought, to a great extent, among the various factions—Ecuadorian and foreign, military and civilian—of this elite. General Juan José Flores, the "Founder of the Republic" and first President of Ecuador, was of the foreign military variety. Born in Venezuela, he had fought in the wars for independence with Bolívar, who had appointed him governor of Ecuador during its association with Gran Colombia. Although of humble origins with little formal education, Flores married into the Quiteño elite, gaining acceptance, initially at least, within the local criollo upper class. As a leader, however, he appeared to be primarily interested in maintaining his power. Military expenditures, from the wars of independence and from an unsuccessful campaign to wrest Cauca Province from Colombia in 1832, kept the state treasury empty while other matters were left unattended.
In 1833, four intellectuals who had begun publishing the newspaper El Quiteño Libre to denounce the "pillaging of the national treasury by foreigners" were killed by the authorities at a time when Flores was absent from Quito. Although not directly responsible for the killings, Flores inevitably became associated with them, and criticism of his regime grew. In 1834, opponents staged a rebellion in an effort to place José Vicente Rocafuerte y Rodríguez de Bejarano, a member of the Guayaquil aristocracy who had recently returned from fourteen years abroad, in the presidency. The effort failed; Flores then co-opted his opponent and sponsored Rocafuerte as a presidential candidate. For four years following this Machiavellian political move, in effect the nation's first coup d'état, Flores continued to wield considerable power behind the scenes as commander of the military.
President Rocafuerte's most lasting contribution was to begin the development of a public school system. Although he had previously condemned Flores's violations of civil liberties, Rocafuerte argued that "the backwardness of Ecuador makes enlightened despotism necessary." At the end of his term in 1839, Rocafuerte returned to his native Guayaquil as provincial governor, while in Quito Flores was again inaugurated as president. After four years in office, Flores summoned a constitutional convention that wrote a new constitution, dubbed "the Charter of Slavery" by his opponents, and elected him to a new eight-year term of office.
After 1843, opposition to Flores often manifested itself in unpleasant ways: in reference to the dark skin of Flores and his fellow Venezuelan and Colombian soldiers, Rocafuerte (by now exiled in Lima) wrote that "the white oppressors of the peninsula were less oppressive than the Negro vandals who have replaced them." A young student named Gabriel García Moreno—later to become the most infamous of all of Ecuador's nineteenth century dictators—tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Flores.
The Marcist Revolution Discontent had become nationwide by 1845, when an insurrection in Guayaquil forced Flores from the country. Because their movement triumphed in March (marzo), the anti-Flores coalition members became known as marcistas. They were an extremely diverse lot that included liberal intellectuals, conservative clergymen, and representatives from Guayaquil's successful business community.
On March 6, 1845, the people of Guayaquil revolted against the government of General Flores under the leadership of General António Elizalde and Lieutenant Colonel Fernándo Ayarza. The people took over the artillery barracks of Guayaquil along with other military and civilian supporters, including the guard on duty. Flores surrendered on his plantation, La Elvira, near Babahoyo and agreed to terms that included his leaving power and rendering all his decrees, laws, and acts void and null, ending fifteen years of foreign domination of Ecuador. Flores received 20,000 pesos for his property and immediately left the country for Spain. The country was then governed by the triumvirate composed of José Joaquín de Olmedo, Vicente Ramón Roca and Diego Noboa.
In 1846 the child Agustín Muñoz de Borbón, the half-brother of queen Isabella II of Spain, became a candidate for the throne of Ecuador.Ralph W. Haskins, "Juan José Flores and the Proposed Expedition against Ecuador, 1846-1847"The Hispanic American Historical Review 27, no. 3 (August 1947): 467-95. Camilo Destruge, La expedición Flores: Proyecto de monarquia americana, 1846-47 (Guayaquil: Impr. de el Tiempo, 1906). The proposal was made by Flores, former President of Ecuador, and consisted of two parts: the first one was declare Agustín as King of Ecuador, with his mother and Flores as Regents, and then as Restorer of the monarchy in Perú and Bolivia, converting him in the monarch of the tentative United Kingdom of Ecuador, Perú and Bolivia. While at first the proposal received some support from the Spanish and British governments, it collapsed.
The next fifteen years constituted one of the most turbulent periods in Ecuador's century and a half as a nation. The marcistas fought among themselves almost ceaselessly and also had to combat Flores' repeated attempts from exile to overthrow the government. The first marcista president was businessman Vicente Ramón Roca, who served a full four-year term. The most significant figure of the era, however, was General José María Urbina, who first came to power in 1851 through a coup d'état, remained in the presidency until 1856, and then continued to dominate the political scene until 1860. During this decade and the one that followed, Urbina and his archrival, García Moreno, would define the rivalry between liberals from Guayaquil and conservatives from Quito that remained the major sphere of political struggle in Ecuador into the 1980s.
Liberalism under Urbina took on anticlerical, ethnic, and regional dimensions. In 1852 he accused a group of Jesuit priests—admitted by his predecessor, Diego Noboa, only a year earlier—of political meddling and expelled them. Urbina freed the nation's slaves exactly one week after his coup of 1851, and six years later, his successor and lifelong friend, General Francisco Robles, finally put an end to three centuries of annual payments of tribute by the native peoples. Henceforth, liberalism associated itself with bettering the position of Ecuador's non-white population. Urbina and Robles also favored Guayaquil businessmen over Quito landowners.
1857: beginnings of renewed conflict with Peru
The early years of the Republic of Ecuador were spent under debt moratorium on the international financial market. The debts had been incurred during the Gran Colombia era, and had been assumed by President Flores in 1837.St John, p.59 The debt owed to Great Britain, known as the Deuda inglesa ("English debt") exceeded 6.6 million pounds sterling, of which Ecuador owed 21.5 percent, or 1.4 million pounds. As the Ecuadorian government had done at least twice previously, President Francisco Robles attempted to settle this debt by transferring title over part of its territory; the lands would go to the creditors represented by the Ecuador Land Company, Ltd.
Relations between Ecuador and neighboring Peru had been cut off since 1855, but were reestablished by August 1857. In November, Peru formally claimed its right to the lands that were to be sold to the British creditors. Attempts at diplomatic resolution resulted in another breakdown of relations, and in October 1858, the Peruvian government authorized President Ramón Castilla to go to war with Ecuador if necessary to resolve the matter. A blockade of Ecuador's ports began in November.
1859: the Terrible Year
By 1859, known in Ecuadorian history books as the "Terrible Year", the country was poised on the brink of a leadership crisis. President Robles, faced with the threat of the Peruvian blockade, moved the national capital to Guayaquil, and charged General José María Urbina with defending it. In the wake of this unpopular move, a series of opposition movements championed by regional caudillos were formed.Avilés Pino; Hoyos Galarza, p. 60 On May 1, a conservative triumvirate, initiated by Dr. Gabriel García Moreno, Pacífico Chiriboga and Jerónimo Carrión (Robles' vice president), formed the Provisional Government of Quito. On May 6, Carrión separated himself from the triumvirate, and formed a short-lived government in the city of Cuenca; he was deposed the next day by forces loyal to Robles.
General Urbina promptly set out for Quito to subdue García Moreno and his movement. The Provisional Government was no match for Urbina, and fell in June. García Moreno fled to Peru, where he requested the support of President Castilla; the Peruvian leader supplied him with weapons and ammunition to subvert the Robles regime. Believing that he had the support of the Peruvians, in July, García Moreno published a manifesto in a July edition of the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, calling on his countrymen to accept Peru as their ally against Robles, despite the territorial dispute and blockade. Shortly afterwards, García Moreno traveled to Guayaquil, where he met with General Guillermo Franco, General Commander of the District of Guayas and third in the Urvinista caudillo hierarchy, after Urbina and Robles. García Moreno proposed that they disavow Robles' government and declare free elections. While Franco accepted, he also aspired to the presidency of the republic, and would prove to be willing to betray his country to satisfy his desire for power.