Julio Andrade was a younger brother of Roberto Andrade and brother-in-law of Abelardo Moncayo, two of the sideline participants in García Moreno’s assassination in 1875. Educated by Moncayo, his liberalism was unquestionable. After a visit to France he joined the revolutionary ranks in 1895, and was made a colonel. A little later he rose to general for his part in suppressing a Conservative uprising.
From the beginning of the Alfaro regime, Julio Andrade—together with a few such men as Luis Felipe Borja—proved that his Liberalism consisted of noble principles, and not of the ignoble lust for power or mere government sinecures. Nor did he identify Liberalism with anticlericalism. Thus it became clear from the beginning that Andrade was a decent person, but a bad politician.
Not until Leonidas Plaza reached the presidency of Ecuador did Andrade get a chance to occupy important government positions. His last assignment was Plenipotentiary in Bogotá, a position he kept during subsequent administrations, at a time when Ecuador was not even maintaining half a dozen legations abroad. His mission had special importance, due to Ecuador’s then very active boundary dispute with its neighbors. Andrade’s rôle in it may be open to discussion, but he was doubtless hampered by the way foreign relations were handled back in Quito.
By 1911 Andrade became “presidenciable” and returned to Ecuador. He was ex-president Plaza’s chief of staff during the campaign in which the constitutional forces put down the last Alfaro revolt. He seems to have had no part in the subsequent lynchings of Alfaro and his followers. As a true idealist, he then retired from active service, in order to campaign for the presidency. This left the army under General Plaza’s control. At the last moment, threatened by the placistas, the government called on Andrade. But idealist Andrade was no match for Machiavellian Plaza; and he fell, the only victim of an otherwise bloodless placista putsch. And one instinctively repeats the words pronounced over his open tomb: “El Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho y el General Andrade se dan las manos en ultratumba, unidos por las mismas virtudes y por el mismo martirio.”
This is a well written, scholarly work. Perhaps some of the longer quotations should have been relegated to an appendix. The author’s opinions are usually much more convincing than those of a number of contemporary writers he felt obliged to quote. The only point on which I disagree with him is his criticism of Alfaro’s refusing the King of Spain as Arbitrator in Ecuador’s dispute with Peru. I rather feel that this was one of the few redeeming features of Alfaro’s more than eleven years in the presidency. The projected Spanish arbitral award so clearly violated commonly accepted legal principles, that no self-esteeming government could have accepted it. It is certainly not Alfaro’s fault if thirty years later the Arroyo del Río régime settled for much less.
If I am not mistaken, this biography of Julio Andrade is the first venture in the field of history of Carlos de la Torre Reyes. Should he keep following the same path, he will be soon one of his country’s most outstanding historians.
