In the next period (1860–75) one of Latin America’s most extraordinary experiments in autocracy occurred, during the presidency of Gabriel García Moreno. As a young man, García Moreno had witnessed the chaos in Ecuador and the selfish struggles of the various cliques. He had also seen the European Revolutions of 1848 and had developed an abhorrence of liberalism and of uncontrolled violence. A careful analysis of Ecuadoran society led him to conclude that the young country lacked unifying factors: it had no great tradition, suffered from regional resentments, and was sharply divided by class and between Europeans and Indigenous people who did not even share a common language. García Moreno concluded that the only social cement was religion—the general adherence of the population to Roman Catholicism. He felt that in time nationalism could be created and more social cohesion would emerge as a result but that meanwhile Ecuador needed a period of peace and strong government. When he became president, therefore, he based his regime on two factors—strong authoritarian personal rule and the Roman Catholic Church. He established the Conservative Party (Partido Conservador; PC), which promoted a powerful central government and a strong connection between church and state. All education and welfare, along with the direction of much government policy, were turned over to clerics. Other religions were harshly discouraged. All opposition was ruthlessly suppressed, and some leading liberals spent many years in exile.

Although many aspects of García Moreno’s regime were reactive, it did mark the first period of genuine progress for Ecuador. Roads, schools, and hospitals were built. A start was made on a Quito-Guayaquil railroad, to tie together the Sierra and the Costa. García Moreno encouraged the planting of eucalyptus trees from Australia to combat erosion in the Sierra, where the original ground cover had been cut down for fuel by the impoverished Indigenous people. Other agricultural reforms slowly raised production. By the end of his regime a strong feeling of nationalism had been created among the urban classes.

In the 19th century, however, this authoritarian, clerical government seemed an anachronism, and liberal opposition grew both at home and abroad. When García Moreno was assassinated on the steps of the government palace in 1875, the liberal intellectual and pamphleteer Juan Montalvo proclaimed from exile, “My pen has killed him.”

Shift to liberalism (1875–97)

García Moreno’s death, as he himself might have forecast, brought a period of near anarchy. Conservatives and liberals struggled for power. But Ecuador had become part of the world market; the importance of the coast slowly increased, and the liberals of that area increasingly dominated the economy.

A new liberal hero emerged from the lower classes as the leader of the coastal reaction to Sierra conservatism and clericalism. A man of great personal magnetism, Gen. Eloy Alfaro led a march against the Sierra in 1895 and after a year became constitutional president, serving two terms (1897–1901 and 1906–11). Much of the administrative structure of the García Moreno era was dismantled. The anticlerical liberals, proclaiming themselves the Radical Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Radical; PLR), gradually removed the church from state education: they instituted civil marriage and burial, proclaimed freedom of religion, permitted divorce, and eased controls on the press. The church’s tithe was abolished, and many of its large estates were confiscated by the state, some estates passing into the hands of liberal leaders.

In many ways, however, in spite of political manifestos to the contrary, the liberals of this era shared the basic ideas of the previous period. They advanced García Moreno’s road- and railroad-building programs; the Quito-Guayaquil railroad was completed in 1908, during Alfaro’s second term. Moreover, central government did not lose its authoritarian caste; Alfaro, the liberal caudillo (dictator), was as arbitrary and ruthless as his conservative predecessor. In the Sierra and on the coast, power remained unchanged. The problem of the great haciendas was not touched, and the change to liberalism meant little to the impoverished Indigenous people and peasants.

Alfaro’s overthrow, like that of García Moreno, was brought about by his stubborn attempts to perpetuate himself in office. A coalition of conservatives and dissident liberals forced him and his clique from the presidency in August 1911, but, when the next president died in office shortly thereafter, the aging and increasingly unpopular Alfaro returned from exile and tried to recapture his following. The leaders of the liberals rejected him, and, after some fighting, he was arrested in Guayaquil. He and his lieutenants were sent to a model prison in Quito, built years before by García Moreno. There, on January 28, 1912, a lynch mob broke in, dragged the prisoners through the streets, and burned their bodies.

Problems of the early 20th century

The liberals remained in office, but the real power continued to rest in the hands of the wealthy merchants and bankers of Guayaquil. During World War I and the short boom that followed it, this clique further extended its influence and diversified its capital with a view to controlling the agriculture of the coastal plain. Cacao was the dominant export crop, as in the colonial period, but sugar and rice became increasingly important.

A depression followed in the early 1920s. The price of food increased, and exports in general declined. The sucre—the national unit of currency—fell rapidly in value. At the same time, the country’s cacao plantations became infected with a fungus that causes a malformation known as witches’-broom, and production sagged. These crises brought urban discontent, the formation of trade unions in Guayaquil, riots, and massacres by the army. Hundreds died during riots and shootings in November 1922.

In 1925 the army entered this turbulent situation, claiming that it wished to restore national unity and blaming many of the country’s problems on the merchant bankers of Guayaquil. Unfortunately, the 1925 revolution brought little change to Ecuador’s social and economic structures.