La Victoria de Guayaquil refers to the capture of the port city in 1860 by the troops of General Flores and García Moreno. It is the starting point of the fifteen year dictatorship of García Moreno, and it was also the occasion of Ecuador’s adoption of Colombian colors to replace the white-blue-white national emblem.
Actually, the story starts with the conduct of Cavero the Peruvian envoy in Quito, which obliged the Robles government to break off relations with Peru. Marshall Castilla used this as a pretext to declare war on Ecuador and to start a blockade of Guayaquil that soon led to the city’s occupation by the Peruvian invaders. It was in these circumstances that García Moreno saw fit to deny the government’s contention that a national emergency existed and then, with a group of quiteños, to form a revolutionary government, because President Robles had dared to transfer the capital from Quito to Guayaquil. On being defeated by the governmental forces, García Moreno went to Peru to obtain Castilla’s protection; and it was on a Peruvian warship that he returned to Ecuador. These relations were broken off when Castilla gave his protection to a new satellite, General Guillermo Franco, who in the meantime had overthrown the Robles government. García Moreno then recalled his arch-enemy General Flores from his Peruvian exile, to obtain the victory of Guayaquil over Franco.
Wilfrido Loor is one of the most productive historians of Ecuador. His principal contribution has been the publication of García Moreno’s correspondence. The chief merit of the present work is perhaps that it is more than another García Moreno biography, a day-to-day account of the country’s history. It is time to forget national heroes long enough to remember the nation. García Moreno still looms large in Loor’s book, naturally enough, and to a great extent it is an unconvincing whitewash of that outstanding though imperfect, figure of Ecuadorian history. But despite his prejudices, Loor writes history. This cannot be said of a recent and well publicized García Moreno “biography” which is a remarkable conglomeration of libel, vulgarity, and historical error.
