Most of the literature about Caudillismo in Latin America places great stress upon the question of charisma—that is, the extent to which a leader’s “spiritual qualities” or sense of mission embodies the aspiration of his followers and thereby serves as a basis of popular support. The emphasis seems proper, since there can be no doubting the importance of any dictator’s charismatic qualities. At the same time, little attention has been paid to the fact that popular conceptions of dictatorial legitimacy (and illegitimacy) have undergone a number of significant changes since the early 19th century. Since they reveal important shifts in the bases of power for authoritarian regimes, an understanding of these trends is fundamental to a thorough comprehension of charisma and caudillismo. In an attempt to trace some of these changes, the following essay will explore the Latin American “image” of Ecuador’s Gabriel García Moreno as it has evolved from his own lifetime to the present.

The methodology is simple. The major works about García Moreno have been placed in their historical context, and then analyzed according to the way in which they justify or dismiss the legitimacy of the morenista dictatorship. Most of the writings are by Ecuadorans, although some other Latin American works have been included.1 Through its emphasis on the background of each book, this technique provides some insight into the political mentality of the Ecuadoran intellegentsia2 as it has shifted with cultural circumstances. Thus by concentrating on the image of a single dictator this essay employs the tools of historiography to analyze the development of political attitudes in Ecuador over the last hundred years.3

The facts of García Moreno’s life are generally well known. Born in Guayaquil in 1821, he married a middle-aged aristocratic quiteña after a brilliant academic career. Named to the presidency by a conservative junta in 1859, when the country was ravaged by anarchy, García Moreno tried to consolidate his power through an abortive agreement with General Ramón Castilla of Peru (then at war with Ecuador), and then he wrote some letters to chargé d’affaires Émile Trinité which suggested that the country should become a protectorate of France. He finally resorted to a military campaign whose victory was climaxed by the convocation of a national assembly which, in 1861, drew up a new constitution and elected García Moreno president. It was during this administration that he executed a number of famous political prisoners, and led Ecuadoran troops to humiliating defeats at the hands of Colombia. He also replaced the traditional Patronato with the Concordat of 1862—thus surrendering the State’s time-honored control over the ecclesiastical business of the Church—and started an ambitious program of public works.

After resigning from office in 1865, García Moreno accepted a short diplomatic assignment to Chile, but a barracks revolt lifted him to the head of another provisional regime in 1869. Once again he called a convention that passed a new constitution and elected him president of Ecuador. While the construction of roads, schools, and hospitals was continued, the most outstanding feature of this regime was its ecclesiastical policies: the constitution stipulated that a person had to be a Catholic in order to be a citizen of Ecuador, missionaries (notably Jesuits) were invited to run the nation’s schools, García Moreno publicly protested Victor Immanuel’s seizure of the Vatican City in 1870, and the republic was dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1873. Exasperated by his almost theocratic rule, liberals assassinated García Moreno on August 6, 1875.

I. The Contemporary Controversy

It comes as no surprise that García Moreno—as a dictator—meant different things to different people. Particularly during the second administration, his strongest pillar of support was the Roman Catholic Church. Clerics generally regard him as a gallant champion of justice and virtue. “What a heroic spectacle he made,” marvelled one priest, “detested by scoundrels [‘los malos’], worshipped by the people, denounced by the enemies of good and defended by all men of good will: the beloved son of the Great Pontiff, the only supporter of justice in this world.”4 In the Catholic view, García Moreno’s dictatorship was practically synonymous with the City of God. But his unique ecclesiastical policies not only lent prestige to the Church ; they also altered the balance of political power in Ecuador by securing its almost unqualified support for the president himself.

The upper classes also approved of the morenista regime. Generally Catholic and jealously proud of its relative limpieza de sangre,5 the landowning oligarchy supported García Moreno’s administration because it combined political stability with economic progress. The Sociedad Patriótica de Quito, for example, proclaimed that the president was “the first to establish the foundations of national prosperity,” and pointed to the highways and new schools.6 Similarly, the Manifiesto del Azuay endorsed his candidacy for reelection in 1875 by rejecting the clerical notion that García Moreno was some kind of evangelical administrator, and concentrated on his merits as a gentleman, scholar, and patriot. He had married into an aristocratic family, balanced the national budget, and stimulated material progress. Property was secure and order was enforced. In terms like these, the morenista dictatorship was exalted because it stood for both peace and prosperity.

Though he has been widely regarded as a “civilian” caudillo, García Moreno also counted heavily on the military. Administrative reforms and changes in personnel did not constitute a wholesale rejection of the army, only a readjustment that suited the president’s personal and political needs. Both of his presidential coups, in 1859-1860 and 1869, succeeded because of military support. Throughout both administrations, García Moreno’s most trusted aide was General Juan José Flores. His only nominee for the presidency during the convention of 1869 was General Secundino Darquea. The presidential message of 1871 conspicuously praised “the loyalty and valor of the army and the national guard.”7 Military expenditures also increased : in 1862, when the country was at war with Colombia, 333,000 pesos were spent on the army; in 1873, when the country was at peace, 381,383 pesos were assigned to the “national defense.”8 While the military expressed no clear-cut opinions of García Moreno, it seems probable that it supported his policies largely because he satisfied at least part of the army’s own desire for influence and power.

A group of liberals, on the other hand, were outspokenly discontented. Deeply influenced by the writers of the European Enlightenment,9 for example, Juan Montalvo wrote a famous pamphlet called “La dictadura perpetua,” which bitterly assaulted the morenista regime for its ineptness and moral turpitude. Under García Moreno’s leadership, said Montalvo, the entire society was sick: “The soldier over the civilian, the friar over the soldier, the executioner over the friar, the tyrant over the executioner, the demon over the tyrant, all floundering in a sea of evil darkness!”10 Fanaticism bred intolerance and ignorance led to crime. There was no progress at all.

Furthermore, Montalvo objected to the existence of dictatorship on any basis whatsoever. Scoffing at the contention that “circumstances” required the perpetuation of García Moreno’s authoritarian rule, he went on to assert that no conceivable amount of material progress could justify dictatorship. To prove his point he offered the fictitious example of a benevolent despot in the Americas:

Once upon a time, in the new world, there was a people whose king was the sovereign, the judge, the father of the family: nothing was done without his approval: he controlled the nation, preached in the temple, made decisions in the courts, and guided domestic life. He knew everything and he criticized everything. The king was not a tyrant, and the nation underwent a great amount of material progress. There was a highway, for instance, the likes of which Rome had never seen, and which connected the two capitals of the empire: historians called it another wonder of the world. And with all this, the people lived in sadness, because they were not free, and because happiness is not compatible with despotism. How could it be that such a great amount of material progress was not enough to satisfy the people, and bring them out of barbarity? [Because] the people had not made any moral progress, and for this reason they were barbarians in the midst of material greatness.11

Though a dictator was not necessarily a “tyrant,” he could never propagate moral progress. To Montalvo, occupied with questions of virtue and morality, dictatorship itself was thoroughly intolerable. Democracy was the only legitimate form of government. Not surprisingly, the pamphlet concluded with a call for revolution. This was the message, apparently, that inspired a group of young citizens to assassinate García Moreno in August of 1875.

II. The Liberal Perspective

The liberals were delighted by the news of the dictator’s death. In exile when he heard of the event, Montalvo was exultant: “my pen,” he cried, “has killed him!” Even after the flush of excitement had passed, he continued to praise the conspiracy. To his mind, the assassination had saved the national honor. “If García Moreno had died in his bed, the Ecuadoran people would have always been stamped with the mark of a slave; now that he’s been killed, the country that he victimized can become one of the free nations of the world.”12 Having undergone a political catharsis, Ecuador could finally assume her rightful place as a republic among the Americas. García Moreno’s death had opened the way for democracy.

Montalvo’s prophecy was not borne out by the course of events. Most of the dictator’s personal supporters were removed from positions of power, but it was doubtful if the country’s political climate had changed a great deal. The new president, Antonio Borrero (whose newspaper, El Centinela, had strongly opposed the morenista regime), did nothing to change the constitution of 1869: the State, as Montalvo saw it, was still the slave of the Church. As Montalvo complained in El Regenerador, Ecuador needed an entirely new constitution; otherwise there might just as well have been no assassination at all.

Then in September of 1876 Ignacio Veintimilla launched a barracks revolt that swept him into the presidency. He promptly abolished the Concordat and reinstated the Patronato, but soon abandoned all pretensions of popular legitimacy by suspending the constitution and proclaiming himself “dictator” of Ecuador. Clericalism, it seemed, had given way to militarism, and Montalvo was driven to fury. Though he made passing references to García Moreno in Las catilinarias, the brunt of his attack was directed against Veintimilla. In fact this new dictator was so inept, wrote Montalvo, that he could not even be a genuine tyrant. “Ignacio Veintimilla neither has been nor will ever be a tyrant: his mind is virtually that of a beast. His heart doesn’t throb, it grovels in piles of slime. His passions are primitive and insane; his motives are inspired either by greed or by the devil.”13 Such criticism found fault with the dictator himself, rather than with the authoritarian structure of his government. Previously, Montalvo had objected to the mere fact that García Moreno was a dictator. Now he was taunting Veintimilla because he lacked the strength to maintain a strict rule.

This change in emphasis revealed a subtle (though incomplete) shift in Montalvo’s attitude towards dictatorship in general. For in the midst of his despair, he began to exhort “a man” (‘un hombre’) to lead the way from chaos to liberty. Under present conditions Rousseau’s General Will could never assert itself; the people needed a leader, a charismatic figure who could embody their hopes and their needs. Anarchy was not democracy, and a strong government—even some kind of benevolent dictatorship—might pave the way to order and freedom. At any rate, Montalvo had some nagging second thoughts about García Moreno’s assassination. “In view of what has happened in Ecuador since the death of García Moreno,” he confessed, “I would gladly have let the great tyrant live.”14

One of Montalvo’s most intimate companions during these years was Roberto Andrade, who had taken part in the assassination. At first Andrade gloried in the praises of Montalvo, but he was soon upset by widespread indignation against the conspiracy and bewildered by the nation’s failure to press for a program of democratic reform. Feeling partly responsible for the brutality of the Veintimilla regime, Andrade then attempted to prove to the world (and probably to himself) that the murder had been justified in a book entitled Seis de agosto, written in the 1880’s.

This book opened with the declaration that the assassins had intended to “crush tyranny in the person of the tyrant, in the name and under the authority of the Fatherland.”15 Their only purpose had been to make it possible for the people to establish their own government. Given the circumstances in 1875, Andrade argued, García Moreno’s death was indispensable. He had betrayed the country in his dealings with Castilla, in the letters to Trinité, and in the Colombian wars. He had humiliated the nation by placing it under the control of the Pope. He had suppressed all opposition with inhuman brutality. All Ecuadorans hated him. There was no other choice but to kill him.

Having linked the conspiracy to the popular will, Andrade then pinpointed the reason for the absence of a democratic revolution after the dictator’s death: General Francisco Javier Salazar, García Moreno’s Minister of War, who ran the government in the months immediately after the murder. According to Andrade, Salazar had secretly agreed with Colonel Sánchez (one of the members of the conspiracy) to keep the army loyal to the government during the assassination. García Moreno would be killed, Salazar would come into power, and Sánchez would get control of the army. In this way Salazar used the liberal plot for the sake of his own designs : the army followed his orders, the president was killed, and Sánchez was shunted off to obscurity. Salazar thus betrayed the revolution, and anyone could see the disastrous results: “Ecuador is dying,” muttered Andrade, “smothered in excrement.”16

In 1895, however, the liberal Eloy Alfaro won the presidency from Luis Cordero in a brutal military campaign. A new constitution banished all religious orders and drastically curtailed the privileges of the Church. To Andrade this meant the end of García Moreno’s oppressive “Jesuitism” and the beginning of a new era for Ecuador. “The inchoate revolution of August 6, 1875, in Quito,” he wrote, “has just been consummated on June 5, 1895, in Guayaquil.”17 History had vindicated the assassination of García Moreno.

Yet the political malaise that followed the Alfaro revolution left Andrade uncomfortable, and in 1922 he published an article which disclosed a “hitherto unknown” crime of García Moreno’s.18 The story maintained that the dictator had poisoned his first wife, Rosa Ascásubi, with an overdose of laudanum. The motive was provided by García Moreno’s incestuous love for Rosa’s niece, Marianita, whom he married after the funeral. In a proper tone of shock, Andrade concluded that such a nefarious act could only have been conceived by a perverse criminal mind. “His features weren’t those of a man of the world, or those of a thinker or philosopher; they were those of a practised criminal. . ..”19 The man was practically insane. By implication, of course, this warped psychology had much to do with the evils of the morenista dictatorship.

Throughout his writings, Andrade referred to García Moreno’s political rule as a “tyranny.” Though he never clearly defined the term, it is evident that he first identified it with the formal structure of an authoritarian government. At the time of the assassination, his justification for tyrannicide was essentially the same as Montalvo’s: by overthrowing the dictatorship, it would unleash the pent-up forces of democracy and lead to the establishment of a free republic like the United States. In time, however, Andrade came to see the impracticality of pure democracy in Ecuador and began to espouse the leadership of a junta run by the intelligentsia (‘la clase sana’). As he lost his preoccupations about the notion of centralist government, he started to associate “tyranny” with García Moreno’s person and his policies rather than with the fact of one-man rule. It was not so much the concentration of power that bothered Andrade, it was the arbitrary use of that power.

García Moreno not only silenced the press; he prohibited any free thinking; he converted colleges into convents; he turned soldiers into petty monarchs; he corrupted the nation by placing its education in the hands of corrupt people; he systematized robbery by calling it confiscation; he and his men were bandits, but they went unpunished and even paid; he cursed the enemies of tyranny by calling them pagans, and persecuted them, executed them, exiled them, tormented them, and confined them to pestilent deserts; he quaffed down the blood and tears [of his victims] : such was the government of García Moreno in the fifteen years that he ruled Ecuador.20

In this ease “tyranny” was identified with the ruler himself, not the dictatorial structure of his government.

In a similar manner, Pedro Moncayo—who had been one of García Moreno’s most obstinate opponents in Congress—became increasingly indifferent to personalistic rule itself. In his Historia del Ecuador de 1825 a 1875, for instance, he simply accepted dictatorship as a fact of the national life. The chief significance of García Moreno’s rule was that it only consummated the nation’s political ills. “A frenetic and bloodthirsty tyrant,” he had ushered in a new era of violence and oppression: “To speak of independence was ironic, to speak of liberty a crime.”21 García Moreno’s worst sin had been the negotiation of the Concordat, whose hypocritical piety lent a semblance of method to despotic madness. Vengeance hid behind sanctity, tyranny was practised in the name of God: surely, said Moncayo, this was the beginning of the end.

All in all, Moncayo’s attitude towards the illegitimacy of García Moreno’s dictatorship was ambivalent. He undoubtedly felt that the sheer brutality of the man disqualified him from the right to rule. But to some extent Moncayo was also concerned with questions of constitutional procedure, and seemed to feel that a proper respect for the distribution of authority might well have avoided some of the national pitfalls. Looking back on his days as a senator, for example, he suggested that a strong congress might have stilled the chaos of 1859. Thus a non-dictatorial government would have been more effective than the authoritarian regime of García Moreno. As Moncayo saw it in the early 1890’s, the morenista dictatorship was illegitimate not only because of its inherent injustice, but also because of its inefficiency.

The liberals’ growing tendency to identify the evils of this dictatorship with the leader himself instead of with the structure of his government was also revealed by Jacinto López’ “La muerte de García Moreno,” an article which appeared in 1922. In general the essay praised the assassins and their deed, but it also disclosed another “hitherto unknown” episode which accounted for Faustino Rayo’s eager participation in the murder. García Moreno, went the story, had tried to seduce Rayo’s wife. The good lady resisted and told her husband all about it when he returned from the Oriente. The men then became deadly enemies. Rayo leaped at the chance to join the plot, and was the first to take a hatchet to the tyrant’s head.

In spite of his thesis that García Moreno was the author of his own undoing, López also maintained that the very fact of dictatorship merited his assassination. The mere concentration of power in the hands of a single person—apart from his use of it—seems to have constituted oppression. “If there had never been any desperate ferocity, unbridled and insatiable as it was; if there had only been pure and simple oppression, a bloodless tyranny without any savage atrocities, [García Moreno] would have deserved to die as he did. . ..”22 Dictatorship, in this case, was synonymous with tyranny. López took the same kind of stand that Moncayo did: dictatorship was a bad thing, and García Moreno made it worse.

Up to this point liberal thinkers revealed an essentially dualistic conception of the morenista dictatorship. At first the whole idea of one-man government was so thoroughly abhorrent that authoritarianism of any kind was illegitimate ipso facto. After García Moreno’s death, however, his rule became increasingly identified with himself, instead of with the structure of his government. This shift in emphasis was incomplete, and by the turn of the century the illegitimacy of García Moreno’s rule was determined by varying combinations of these two factors. Part of this ambivalence was no doubt due to the difficulty of distinguishing between dictators and dictatorships : since the political form of such a government was defined by the existence of an omnipotent leader at the top, a discussion of either was bound to lead to a discussion of the other. Men like Montalvo, Andrade, Moncayo, and López, furthermore, had grown up under the influence of the Enlightenment. They were not likely to ignore the admonitions of Locke and Rousseau about the evils of centralized government: form, as well as function, was important.

The tendency to identify oppression with the person instead of the political structure was clear, nevertheless, and was partly due to the workings of historical perspective. As Moncayo’s Historia . . . showed, the basic task of the historian was to expose and assess the facts of the past rather than to speculate about alternative possibilities. The fact of dictatorship was a given quantity: thus liberals were drawn away from posthumous questions about political structure, and forced into an evaluation of García Moreno’s government as it actually was. A discussion of the relative merits of democracy and authoritarianism would only have involved these writers in endless and pointless polemics.

Another explanation for this trend lies in the declining influence of the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century European liberalism. To many people, the confusion that reigned after Alfaro came to power in 1895 demonstrated that the General Will (if such a thing existed) was not the only key to political progress. Locke’s notion that men were instinctively peaceful also lost relevance in a country where ruler after ruler bulled his way into the presidency at the point of a bayonet. Positivism began to encroach on idealism, and men began to think about governments in decidedly unromantic terms: anything, they said, for order and peace. Furthermore, a national self-consciousness grew up, hand-in-hand with a disillusionment about the United States. Ecuadorans no longer wanted a polity that would be only a pale imitation of the American model, they wanted one that was their own. It might not be a dictatorship (or it might), but at least it would be different. For these reasons, liberals became increasingly unconcerned about the injustices inherent in dictatorship.

The debunking of García Moreno’s personality reached its peak in Roberto Agramonte’s Biografía del dictador García Moreno, published in 1935. The book’s avowed purpose was to interpret the dictator’s career from a psychoanalytical point of view, and the Cuban doctor (who later became one of Fulgencio Batista’s most prominent opponents) managed to discover that García Moreno had almost every mental disease available. Great emphasis was placed upon his boyhood life: fear of thunderstorms reflected his latent neuroses, and parental beatings led him to a precocious sadism. From his mother García Moreno inherited “hyperthyroidism, vitality, nervous energy, epileptiform tendencies and certain traces of schizophrenia, with exaggerated impulsiveness and irritability.”23 Poverty had left him in an ambivalent world, one of harsh reality and another of far-flung dreams. Since he had never had any real childhood, his entire life had been abnormal.

Agramonte used this same method to explain the facts of García Moreno’s political life. Peace and stability were totally incompatible with a mentality of this kind, since “the schizoid is the perpetual hero of a continuous conflict; his life is an assortment of tragedies, motivated by a sense of danger.” Such tendencies also accounted for his clerical reforms, as the only reason that García Moreno promulgated such a program was that “he wanted to convert his individual condition into a general law, a categorical imperative.”24 The dictator’s fanatical piety was due only to the fact that he regarded himself as another Christ, destined by God to redeem mankind. By the same token, public works were interpreted as self-idolatry, a kind of vicarious narcissism.

According to Agramonte, it was the uncontrollable urge for domination that accounted for García Moreno’s dictatorship. He first pointed out that any political leader was affected by power, and could be seduced by its temptations. If this was the case with normal men, an eccentric would be driven to insanity: “sensuality leads to orgy, coldness to crime, mysticism to fanaticism; adulation becomes narcissism, and pride becomes megalomania.”25 Though it is evident that Agramonte disapproved of dictatorship, he never really treated it as a political phenomenon. His conclusions were exaggerated, but his approach was clinical and apolitical. Dictatorship was not so much a means of government as a mental disease.

Part of the reason for Agramonte’s failure to consider the strictly political aspects of the morenista dictatorship lay in the fact that he was a Cuban, and therefore somewhat detached from issues and events in Ecuador. Benjamín Carríon, on the other hand, has always been deeply involved in the problems of his country. One of the nation’s leading intellectuals, and a flaming liberal, he was undoubtedly dismayed when the conservatives made deep inroads into liberal strongholds in the elections of 1944 and 1948. From that time on, the traditional doctrinal difference between the two parties took on renewed importance: liberals continued to insist on the complete separation of Church and State, while the conservatives stoutly held out for an accommodation of interests. The bitterness increased until Camilo Ponce Enríquez, a clerical rightist, won the presidential election in 1956. Partly in response to these events, no doubt, Carrión came out in 1959 with one of the most scathing attacks on García Moreno since the era of Montalvo: García Moreno, el santo del patíbulo.

In this book Carrión adopted many of the techniques that Agramonte had used some twenty years before. Amid lengthy discussions of the dictator’s personal character, special attention was paid to García Moreno’s isolation from the busy life of Guayaquil, where he grew up as a child. While the streets of Guayaquil were bubbling with the spirit of independence from Spain, said Carrión, the boy was sheltered inside his mother’s sad and impoverished home. Thus Gabriel never had any contact with the common people of Ecuador or with the ideology of revolution. “Here,” claimed Carrión, “was the first contradiction in the life of Gabriel García Moreno. Between his house and the street. Between his mother and the masses. Between himself and the rest of the world.”26

In this way the author established one of the principal points of his book : that, in spite of his influence on the country, García Moreno was by no means typical of Ecuador. This idea was closely linked to Carrión’s own sense of nationalism. As he pointed out in the prologue, the genuine founders of Ecuador were great Indian chieftains like Atahuallpa and the rebels of August 10, 1809. For Carrión, it was imperative to assert that García Moreno was not one of the great heroes of Ecuadoran history, but a villain of the national past. For the central theme in García Moreno’s political life, he maintained, was treason. The accession to power in 1859-1860, for instance, was marked by a series of betrayals, including the agreement with Castilla and the letters to Trinité. Once in office, too, the dictator promptly “delivered the national spirit to a group that was foreign, totally foreign [notably the Jesuits].”27 In modern parlance, García Moreno was simply un-Ecuadoran.

Carrión also argued that García Moreno’s influence accounted for many of the country’s contemporary problems, since he had left the people with the obstacles of ignorance, feelings of inferiority and a legacy of shame. But the worst heritage of all was tyranny. For the dictator’s executions of political prisoners marked the beginning of a tradition of brutality that had continued practically down to the present. These actions also revealed García Moreno’s persistent disregard for constitutional procedure, since they indicated that his fundamental purpose was not to maintain public order but to consolidate his personal power. Unfeigned nepotism, pseudo-religious fanaticism, and terroristic methods all betrayed the dimensions of García Moreno’s egotistical ambitions. This lust for power, said Carríon, explained the cuartelazo of 1869. The ensuing constitution was even worse, since it made García Moreno “a dictator de jure” as well as de facto.28

Yet Carríon made no explicit statements about the illegitimacy of dictatorship itself. He denied that García Moreno’s programs for reform and public works could justify his rule, since they never gave him the right “to tyrannize the people and deprive them of their essential liberties.” But the basis for this opinion was the contention that García Moreno’s projects were neither effective nor progressive, and that his policies were treasonous besides. For in the prologue, Carríon seemed to concede that beneficial programs might justify dictatorship. Though “harsh and dictatorial,” for example, “Pericles liberated the people and spirit of Hellas.”29 Therefore not all authoritarian governments were necessarily bad. Carríon seemed to object to García Moreno more because of his tyranny and lack of patriotism than because of the fact that he was a dictator.

Thus the liberal attitude towards García Moreno and his dictatorship underwent a significant evolution. Most nineteenth-century observers, especially before the assassination in 1875, objected to the whole idea of dictatorship. Tempered by historical perspective and nationalism, this view gradually gave way to the feeling that authoritarianism itself might not be inherently evil. Then Agramonte totally ignored the political implications of personalistic rule, and Benjamín Carríon seemed to admit that dictatorship could be beneficial in disinterested hands. In spite of this change, liberals were steadfast in their opposition to García Moreno. Their invective was always harsh: its emphasis was simply shifted from the formal centralization of power to the person who employed it. As time passed, the liberal image of García Moreno evolved from the conviction that he was bad because he was a dictator to the observation that he was just a bad dictator.

III. The Conservative Reaction

Conservatives were shocked by the news of García Moreno’s death, and hastily set about to glorify their hero. The afternoon of August 6, 1875, a pamphlet entitled “Día nefasto” spread throughout Quito, mournfully announcing that “the noble blood of the Regenerator of the Fatherland has just been shed by miserable and faithless assassins. . ..” The paper vowed that García Moreno’s death would not bring a revolution, and that his martyrdom would perpetuate the conservative order : inspired by his memory, responsible citizens would strive to maintain “the reign of true progress, which his wise and indefatigable spirit has founded in this country.”30 Ennobled by his death, the dictator had journeyed directly to Heaven. By killing García Moreno, the assassins had only martyred him.

As praise was heaped upon the president’s memory from all corners of the nation, it became apparent that some conservatives regarded the assassination as a liberal attempt to seize control of the government—a misguided political coup that could only unleash the forces of chaos. Dictatorship, they felt, was necessary for the preservation of civic order. But the majority felt that the issue had been joined in a very different way. In their view the assassination did not represent any popular distaste for the political aspects of García Moreno’s rule, but an impious scheme to overthrow his Catholic and apostolic polity. The question was not dictatorship or republicanism, but piety or heresy. It is within this dualistic value framework that most of the conservative images of García Moreno have been conceived.

R. P. A. Berthe’s García Moreno: presidente de la república del Ecuador, vengador y mártir del derecho cristiano, published in 1887, was the first full-length biography of the dictator. It was also the most ecstatic. In the French Redemptorist’s view, García Moreno’s private virtues were impeccable, a shining demonstration of the Christian spirit. The letters to Trinité were no real cause for consternation (especially in a Frenchman’s opinion!), and political executions were simply matters of national urgency. But the padre’s greatest praise was reserved for García Moreno’s establishment of a Catholic state, founded upon the principle that the Church should control the government. The Concordat of 1862 made García Moreno the greatest statesman since St. Louis, and the constitution of 1869 gave ample proof that there was at least one dedicated Christian ruler in the nineteenth-century world. In order to exhalt his subject, Berthe also emphasized the backwardness in Ecuador’s national past: Simón Bolívar, Juan José Flores, Vicente Rocafuerte, and José María Urvina had only retarded the country’s development. Into the midst of this corruption and decay charged the resplendent figure of García Moreno: alone, “a Christian Hercules,”31 he struggled against the forces of chaos and impiety.

This book also argued that García Moreno had acquired a popular mandate for his authoritarian rule. Berthe carefully described the dictator’s election to the presidency in the convention of 1860, and then pointed out that he had accepted a second term—after the barracks revolt of 1869—only because of popular demand and “the imperative duty of defending his religion and his country.”32 An even more important sanction, however, was provided by the idea that García had come into power through the special guidance of God. Implicit throughout the whole biography was the notion that providential design had selected García Moreno to propagate the message of Christ on earth. Thus he had not seized power for personal reasons, but because of a sacred mission. In this case questions about the authoritarian structure of his government were irrelevant, since it was impossible for a near-saint to be a tyrant.

Berthe’s eulogistic biography touched off a heated controversy in Ecuador. Liberals charged that he had glorified a despot at the expense of an entire people, and Antonio Borrero rattled off a massive Refutación . . . del libro titulado: García Moreno, presidente . . . del Ecuador, vengador y mártir del derecho cristiano (1889) in an effort to salvage the national honor. In a posthumous volume published in 1904, Juan León Mera—who had been one of the dictator’s closest associates—countered Borrero’s argument with the contention that liberals were actually debunking Ecuador’s reputation whenever they berated García Moreno. Borrero might have corrected some factual inaccuracies in Berthe’s work, said Mera, “but patriotism . . . has not altered the essential fact that the refutation has done much more to harm the name of the country than the [original] book in question.”33 In this view, García Moreno’s personal image was so closely identified with that of the nation in general that praise of the ex-dictator was practically synonymous with praise of the country itself.

Though it objected to the portrait of the dictator as a demigod, Mera’s García Moreno was similar to Berthe’s biography in many ways. He maintained that the president had died a martyr to his faith, and insisted that other national leaders—mainly Flores, Rocafuerte, and Urvina—were either unscrupulous or inept. Yet the conclusion that he drew from this material was more political than that of the French Redemptorist, since Mera claimed that the answer to demagoguery and dissension lay in dictatorship as well as in the Gospel. “What could the remedy possibly be,” he asked, “other than energetic and persistent action, inspired by an enlightened patriotism, free judgment . . . and a solid morality which does not waver one iota from Christian doctrine?”34 These were the convictions behind García Moreno’s policies: therefore the regime was both an historical and a moral necessity.

Mera’s chief addition to the conservative logic was an explicit refutation of the liberal doctrine of popular sovereignty. In the conventional Thomist manner, he postulated the existence of an eternal divine law, expressed in reality through natural law and finally interpreted by mankind as human law. Government existed as an instrument of God, not of the people, and political structure (as conceived by the mortal minds of Locke and Rousseau) should never be regarded as an end in itself. It was not the democratic or dictatorial shape of a polity that mattered, it was the actual moral content:

Therefore the forms of government, the manners of exercising sovereignty, are variable; but the divine principle or moral law respecting order, harmony, control and conservation is not subject to change in the slightest bit: the principle of sovereignty emanates from God and for that reason is unchangeable. Man, individually or collectively, only puts this principle into practice, in the manner that seems most convenient; and here lies the danger of error, since the attempt to implement this principle on the basis of liberty becomes subject to the passions and caprice of mankind.35

In this sense García Moreno’s dictatorship was absolutely justified, since the unpredictability of the General Will suggested that the centralization of power was necessary to good government. Even so, a ruler’s legitimacy was ultimately determined by the consistency of his policies with the moral laws of God: if anyone had met that test, said Mera, García Moreno had.

The year 1921, the centennial of García Moreno’s birth, ushered in a predictable amount of praise. Tracts and sermons were dedicated to the memory of “The Catholic Regenerator,” and poets addressed the erstwhile president in a number of passionate odes :

The eternal passage of time
Has not dimmed the greatness that is thine,
And never will, in all surety,
Leave in darkened obscurity
The brilliant glory of your life sublime!36

Most of these writings simply versified Berthe’s image of García Moreno as an impeccable demigod. Written almost exclusively by Catholic priests, these eulogies never really dealt with the question of García Moreno’s political legitimacy. Generally speaking, in fact, Catholic authors responded to the centennial in terms of religious dogma. They favored his government because of his allegiance to the papacy and canonical law, rather than because of its efficiency and justice. Very little attention was paid to the question of governmental structure : as Mera had shown, the mechanics for the distribution of authority made little difference, since it was morality that really mattered. Besides, men who were subject to the rigid hierarchy of the Mother Church, and who recognized the spiritual infallibility of the Pope, were unlikely to dispute the secular legitimacy of one-man rule.

In keeping with these ideas, the Rev. Tomás Alvarado wrote a pamphlet entitled “García Moreno, heraldo del reinado social de Jesucristo,” in 1921. Its basic purpose was simply to praise the martyred hero for his private and public virtues. Like Moses (‘el caudillo de Israel’), the Ecuadoran president had liberated an entire people from pagan ignorance, anarchy, and destruction. Passing reference was made to the impious doctrine of the separation of the Church from the State, and the dutiful priest assured his readers that García Moreno’s dictatorship was absolutely necessary “for the social reign of Christ to be impressed upon a people subjugated by liberalism.37 Yet his primary attention was not devoted to the political legitimacy of such rule, but to its Catholic principles.

In the same vein José Le Góuhir y Rodas’ elegy of Un gran americano (1921) praised the dictator for his piety. One of the most interesting aspects of Le Gouhir’s book, though, was its distinction between the forces of good and evil. In his view a worldwide struggle was taking place between the “Revolution” (which included socialism, as well as the liberal doctrines of the French Revolution) and the “Reaction” (which advocated the Thomist notion of Catholic order). Inspired by the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire, the Revolution was attempting to establish political justice without any regard for moral justice: under universal suffrage, a faithless social order would be governed by the laws of arithmetic rather than by the laws of God. The Reaction, of course, stood for moral justice and divine authority. Thus García Moreno derived his chief importance from being the champion of the nobler cause. By mere definition, therefore, anything “antigarciana” was necessarily “anticristiana.”38 Again, his legitimacy as a dictator was provided by divine rather than popular sanction.

Paradoxically enough, however, Le Gouhir also made a guarded attempt to point out that a Catholic polity actually incorporated all the noble precepts of the misguided Revolution. Liberty, fraternity, and equality were in fact “the very pillars of the Christian state, which itself is based upon the double foundation of authority and faith.”39 Freedom was meaningless without order, he argued, and order demanded religion. In this manner, the ecclesiastically oriented morenista regime pointed the way to the goals of revolutionary democracy.

This attempt to identify García Moreno’s dictatorship with liberal doctrine was undoubtedly a response to the politics of Ecuador. Eloy Alfaro’s military coup in 1895 had given the liberals a virtual monopoly on governmental power, and the conservatives were defeated at the polls for decades on end. Yet it was clear to most observers that the liberals’ popularity was due to their promises rather than to their performance. Public works were faltering, Brazil and Colombia both won control over disputed border territories, and the mighty crash of a cacao boom left the economy at a standstill. Presidential successions were still punctuated by violence, and in the early 1920’s the executive mansion was occupied by the undistinguished José Luis Tamayo. These tumultuous circumstances clearly defined the conservatives’ political strategy: if they could identify themselves with the grandiose goals of the liberals, then the superiority of their governmental policies as a means to reach those ends would readily assert itself.

In this context, Pablo Herrera’s Apuntes biográficos del . . . Señor Gabriel García Moreno (1921) was calculated to make one point: that the conservative morenista regime had actually been more progressive than any of the so-called “liberal” administrations. In calling the convention of 1860, said Herrera, the dictator had established the principle of representation by population rather than by district. This change, along with the convocation of such an assembly in the first place, represented “two liberal innovations” that were promulgated “not by the liberal school but by those who upheld the principle of liberty based on justice, religion and morality.”40 Significantly, the writer did not mention the fact that García Moreno reverted to the principle of geographical representation in the elections for the assembly of 1869.

Herrera envisioned two kinds of “liberalism”: one, as preached by Montalvo and practised by Alfaro, was utopian and anarchic; the other, as executed by García Moreno, was just and realistic. In this view the self-styled “liberals” represented the essence of impiety, since their opposition to García Moreno emanated from their hatred of the Church and not from any genuine objection to his political actions. The morenistas, on the other hand, were dedicated to the cause of order and progress; violence was only a natural part of the struggle against the forces of evil and reaction. In these terms, authoritarian rule should be regarded not as oppressive reaction, but as a rational approach to change. It was out of sheer embarrassment, Herrera concluded, that “secret societies” began to plot the president’s death. “For they could not tolerate the existence of any government which inspired prosperity, civilization and progress, not on the basis of impious liberalism but on the hardened rock of the Church, in the shade of Catholic principles and under the sanction of God’s law.”41 García Moreno had simply out-liberalized the liberals themselves.

Although Alfaro’s party was still in power some twenty years later, the nation was far from stable: between 1931 and 1941, for instance, fourteen presidents shuffled in and out of office. Economic and social crises multiplied, as the presence of foreign investment capital sparked chauvinistic demonstrations of protest, and anti-Semitic riots broke out in 1938. Carlos Arroyo del Río ushered in a period of relative peace in 1940, but the nation was still split between Quito and Guayaquil, the Indians and the whites, the rich and the poor. As Gabriel Cevallos García maintained in Entonces fué el Ecuador, published in 1942, the country’s history was one of continuing “folly” (‘erranza,’). He also predicted that this situation would persist until the Ecuadoran people had become integrated into a single national entity. In this way, Cevallos García revealed the purpose in his study of García Moreno: “ to derive lessons of nationalism from the life of an Ecuadoran, the supreme Ecuadoran. . ..”42

In sharp contrast to previous eulogistic works about García Moreno, this book did not praise the dictator for his sense of piety and order. As Cevallos saw it, García Moreno’s most distinguishing characteristic was “violence.” By this term the author did not mean brute force or passionate vengeance, but a capacity for action. It belonged only to heroes, men of will and determination: he frequently compared his subject to Prometheus, defying the gods of anarchy and decay. Violence opposed all the habitual evils of the common man: by its very nature, it waged a continual war against bureaucracy, ineptitude, laziness, prejudice, and immorality. It was essentially a cathartic agent. “Ecuador will be saved,” warned Cevallos, “only when it can commit violence.”43

Thus García Moreno was neither a conservative nor a counter-revolutionary, but a full-fledged revolutionary. The essence of his revolution lay in the fact that he had imposed a political and social system on Ecuador that fitted the traditions and needs of the country. Under his rule, Ecuador had thrived as a unified nation from 1861 to 1875. Implicit in this analysis, of course, was the idea that García Moreno’s charismatic qualities had entitled him to rule as a dictator. On one level, the problem of political legitimacy was solved by the mere fact of personal superiority, since García Moreno was an exceptional individual who had succeeded in creating a national entity out of chaos. It would have been ridiculous (if possible) to dilute this powerful influence with the circuitous processes of representative democracy. The dictator’s unique relationship with the people and the country, in fact, transcended all the customary norms of political procedure. In this sense there was simply no question of legitimacy.

At the same time, Cevallos took special pains to assert the relative merits of dictatorship and democracy. As he put it, strong government was not necessarily despotic. History had shown that, despite occasional bloodshed, “one-man governments have been good governments.” Democratically elected leaders, on the other hand, have hidden their failures under the mantle of popular sovereignty: they were not so completely responsible for their policies as dictators were. Thus dictatorships were generally more efficient (and probably less corrupt) than democracies, and the form of a government did not matter nearly so much as its policies. “If García Moreno ruled as a tyrant,” wrote Cevallos, “History has absolved him.”44

In the meantime, Manuel Gálvez’ intense Argentine nationalism was leading him to seek a solution to his country’s problems in authoritarian government. In 1942 he discovered the archetype for political leadership in La vida de Don Gabriel García Moreno. Indeed, the Ecuadoran dictator had embodied an heroic sense of life. Though Gálvez made no attempt to portray García Moreno as an impeccable individual, he regarded the ex-president as a consummate patriot—and this was his dominant virtue. From his boyhood days, supposedly, his only mission had been that of saving the nation. Furthermore, his ultimate goal was a moral one, since Catholicism would be the basis of a spiritual regeneration. Because of the specific exigencies in Ecuador, therefore, García Moreno had drafted an essentially Catholic constitution.

But for Gálvez as for Cevallos García, the virtue of this action was derived not so much from its compatibility with the teachings of Holy Mother Church as from the fact that he had erected a polity that was indigenous to his homeland. In spite of all the references to sanctification, García Moreno was praised more as a patriot than as a Catholic. Thus the problems of nineteenth-century Ecuador justified the morenista dictatorship. “Despotism was exercised in matters of morality,” admitted Gálvez, but “the despotism of Don Gabriel, fatherly and sympathetic to the people, was intended to impose virtue and religion. For this sacred end he was not afraid to resort to violence and threats: he was a terrorist for God.”45 As a means, therefore, dictatorship (even a violent one) was justified by the nobility of its ends.

Ecuador underwent a number of significant changes in the years that followed Gálvez’ work. As a member of the postwar world she became conscious of the problems of economic development. Improved communications brought part of the Oriente into contact with Quito and Guayaquil, and students started to clamor for wholesale social reform. These fundamental changes were reflected by a gradual shift in the balance of political power. Led by Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, conservatives made steady gains in the election of 1944 and 1948. Even after Galo Plaza’s highly successful term, Camilo Ponce Enríquez was elected to the presidency in 1956. Now confident, conservatives began to boast of their hero—Gabriel García Moreno.

Writing in the early 1950’s Severo Gomezjurado, a Jesuit, boldly announced his intention to defend the dictator in ¡¿Mártir García Moreno?! (1952). The book justified political executions, exalted García Moreno’s role in the wars against Colombia, and even argued in favor of the French protectorate. In short, Gomezjurado resorted to the same line of reasoning that Berthe had employed three generations before: García Moreno had never done anything wrong. Somewhat as Herrera had done, the Jesuit argued that material progress under the morenista regime had so mortified liberals all over the world that they started an international conspiracy against him (led by none other than Otto von Bismarck). The victim of this dastardly plot, García Moreno sacrificed his life in defense of the Holy Church. He was undoubtedly a martyr, and the only valid question was whether or not he should be canonized. As though to still his own doubts, Gomezjurado concluded his book with an account of some twenty miracles that had been attributed to García Moreno.

In the midst of these ecclesiastical concerns, Gomezjurado dealt quite specifically with the issue of dictatorship. He flatly stated that governmental structure must be defined by the political and cultural needs of the country. “In effect, the government is for the nation, and the nation is not for the government. As a result, the governmental form must be adapted to the cultural state of the country, with regard to religion, civics, economics, international affairs, in order to acquire the most benefits and to avoid as many evils as possible.”46 National demands could make no concessions to political purism. Late nineteenth-century Ecuador needed a strong and Catholic government, and García Moreno provided it in the form of a dictatorship. In this view there was nothing inherently wrong with dictatorship or any other form of government. Gomezjurado’s only stipulation was that it should come in the right place at the right time.

From its stunned horror in 1875 to its measured opinion of the 1950’s, therefore, the conservative image of García Moreno changed in significant ways. While there was never any serious question about the political legitimacy of his government, the grounds upon which it was justified varied a good deal. Secular writers like Cevallos García argued that one-man rule was demanded by the political conditions of the time; Catholics generally agreed, but many priests maintained that the erection of a Catholic state would have justified dictatorship under any circumstances. During the 1920’s, too, some nimble minds went so far as to identify the morenista means with the liberal ends. But in general, no one disguised the fact that García Moreno had been a dictator. On both ecclesiastical and temporal grounds, however, conservatives forcefully maintained that he had been a good one.

IV. Conclusion

Probably the most striking aspect of this entire controversy is the absolute and continuing irreconcilability of the liberal and conservative attitudes towards García Moreno. In the course of its development the debate took on varied forms: “patriotism” was a rhetorical device employed by both sides, which steadfastly insisted that their respective arguments led the only possible way to national salvation. Questions of historiography were also raised: conservatives exalted their hero by disparaging Ecuadoran life before and after García Moreno’s reign, and liberals turned this interpretation upside down by praising Rocafuerte and Alfaro at the expense of García Moreno. Occasionally, someone like Luis Robalino Dávila chose to regard the dictator as a vital force in the national past which deserved as much praise as the writings of Juan Montalvo.47 But such exceptions were rare. For the most part, Ecuadoran and other Latin American writers who have dealt with García Moreno fell into one of two categories: either they worshipped him or they hated him.

One reason for the intensity of this controversy lies in the absolute difference in the values and perspectives of the two sides. Liberals thought in essentially political terms, as their principal goal was the equitable distribution of justice and civil liberty. Catholic conservatives, on the other hand, praised García Moreno not so much as a president as a messenger of Christ, the founder of the City of God: his opponents were not rivals or rebels, but sinners and heretics. In this sense, liberals and conservatives were speaking entirely different languages. There could be no meaningful dialogue when objections to dictatorial legitimacy were answered in terms of providential design.

Nor have the lines of political opposition in Ecuador changed a great deal. Ever since García Moreno’s lifetime, the major doctrinal difference between liberals and conservatives has been the relationship between Church and State. The former group has constantly advocated the complete separation of spiritual and temporal powers, while the conservatives have persistently argued that the Church should have some voice in governmental affairs. Because of his ecclesiastical policies, García Moreno has always been the symbolic figurehead of the conservative cause. Thus any discussion of his own merits becomes immediately involved in the contemporary politics of Ecuador; to some extent his memory is an issue in itself.

In sum, this analysis strongly suggests that the popular “image” of a dictator—that is, both the basis and the content of his charismatic appeal—varies according to the political circumstances of the time. When liberals were out of power, they tended to object to dictatorship as a governmental form; after years of near-chaos under their own presidents, they started to shy away from that conviction. Similarly, when the conservative party had reached its nadir in the early part of this century, its members made noticeable attempts to associate themselves with the goals of liberalism; during the rise of conservative power after the Second World War, Catholics proudly reasserted the supremacy of the morenista polity. By the same token, the wide divergence between the two parties’ views of García Moreno is an indication of the deep fissures in recent Ecuadoran politics. For this reason, of course, this study of Ecuador does not pretend to be a “model” for the evolution of the dictatorial image in other Latin American countries—where specific circumstances are naturally different—but it does yield two conclusions. First, in historiographical terms, a dictator’s memory is only a function of the existing political situation. Second, any analysis of a caudillo’s popular or charismatic appeal must consider its particular context, since the recognized bases of dictatorial legitimacy are subject to significant change.

1

Since he is not a Latin American, Richard Pattee’s Gabriel García Moreno y el Ecuador de su tiempo (Quito, 1941) is not considered in this study.

2

The scope of this study is limited by the fact that the intelligentsia is only one of several socio-cultural groups, but its rôle as an “opinion-forming elite” gives its political attitudes broad significance.

3

Though for different purposes, similar techniques were employed by David Donald in his chapter on “The Folklore of Lincoln,” Lincoln Reconsidered (New York, 1956) pp. 144-146, and by John William Ward in his study of Andrew Jackson, Symbol for an Age (New York, 1955).

4

Quoted in Wilfrido Loor, García Moreno y sus asesinos (Quito, 1955), p. 226.

5

For a biting description of the nineteenth-century Ecuadoran oligarchy see F. Hassaurek, Four Years among Spanish-Americans (New York, 1867), p. 122.

6

Quoted in B. P. A. Berthe, García Moreno: presidente de la República del Ecuador, vengador y mártir del derecho cristiano, tr. by Francisco Navarro Villoslada, II (Paris, 1892), 115.

7

García Moreno, Escritos y discursos, ed. by Manuel María Pólit Laso, II (Quito, 1923), 323.

8

See Pattee, pp. 398-399.

9

The Enlightenment seems to have had a profound influence on this generation of Ecuadoran liberals. Montalvo frequently referred to the works of Bentham, Montesquieu, and above all Rousseau, while the notion of the General Will pervaded the whole of his political thought. For example, see El Cosmopolita (Quito, 1894), pp. 248-250. Although Montalvo visited France in the 1850’s, it is also clear that the Enlightenment affected those who stayed and studied in Ecuador. The influence of Locke, Renán, Condillac and others is referred to in Loor, pp. 11, 20, 38.

10

Quoted in Roberto Andrade, Seis de agosto (Portoviejo, 1896), p. 42. This book contains an unabridged version of “La dictadura perpetua.”

11

Ibid., pp. 42-43. The italics are his.

12

Quoted in Gustavo Vasconez Hurtado, Pluma de acero (México, 1944), p. 156.

13

(Quito, 1906), p. 34.

14

Quoted in Vasconez Hurtado, p. 182.

15

Andrade, Seis, p. 2.

16

Ibid., p. 393.

17

Ibid., p. 407. These words were apparently written between Alfaro’s seizure of the presidency and 1896, when the book finally went to press.

18

Andrade actually acknowledges the fact that Montalvo alluded to this incident in “La dictadura perpetua.”

19

“Los matrimonios de García Moreno,” Reforma Social, XXIII (July, 1922), 240.

20

Montalvo y García Moreno (Quito, 1925), p. 166.

21

(Quito, 1907), pp. 253, 263.

22

Reforma Social, XXIII (May, 1922), 19.

23

(Havana, 1935), p. 20.

24

Ibid., pp. [55], 92.

25

Ibid., p. 116.

26

(México, 1959), p. 42.

27

Ibid., p. 454.

28

Ibid., p. 678.

29

Ibid., pp. 690, 9.

30

Quoted in Severo Gomezjurado, ¡¿Mártir García Moreno?! ([Cuenca], 1952), pp. 158-159; and in Loor, pp. 219-220.

31

García Moreno, I, 67. Although Berthe was a Frenchman, his book is included in this study because it has played such a large part in the subsequent controversy over García Moreno. Furthermore, it is highly probable that he obtained most of his information from the clergy in Ecuador and therefore represents a “Latin American” point of view. This work was first published in French.

32

Ibid., II, 57.

33

García Moreno: libro inédito de Juan León Mera (Quito, 1904), pp. 128-129.

34

Ibid., p. 75.

35

Ibid., pp. 105-106.

36

Quoted in José Le Góuhir y Rodas, Un gran americano: García Moreno (Quito, 1921), p. 384. This verse was written by a Jesuit, José Luis Velasco, and the translation is mine. Also see poems by Antonio Rodríguez, A García Moreno (Quito, 1921).

37

(Cuenca, 1921), pp. 3, 8.

38

Le Góuhir y Rodas, pp. 43, 45.

39

Ibid., p. 249.

40

(Quito, 1921), p. 24. The italics are his.

41

Ibid., p. 85. The italics are his.

42

(Cuenca, 1942), pp. 29-30.

43

Ibid., p. 33.

44

Ibid., p. 129.

45

(Buenos Aires, 1942), p. 352.

46

Gomenzjurado, p. 6.

47

Orígenes del Ecuador de hoy: García Moreno (Quito, 1949), especially p. 641.

Author notes

*

The author is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University.