Liberal Era (Ecuador)

After the foundational reforms of the early Liberal Era in Ecuador, such as the separation of church and state and the construction of the Guayaquil-Quito railroad, the ruling Liberal Party achieved few subsequent accomplishments of similar magnitude. In the Ecuadorian sierra, the entrenched system of debt peonage known as concertaje came under government regulations, although these proved to be weak. Imprisonment for debt, a key part of the system, was formally outlawed in 1918 under President Alfredo Baquerizo Moreno.

However, these and other limited social benefits for indigenous Ecuadorians and the coastal montuvio working class were overshadowed by two major crises in the early 1920s. A ruinous economic decline, triggered by the collapse of the global cacao market that was central to Ecuador's economy, caused widespread hardship. This was compounded by the severe repression of the nascent labor movement by the Liberal government, most notably in the massacre of striking workers in Guayaquil on November 15, 1922.

The Liberal period was marked by internal divisions within the Liberal Party and by the political influence of coastal banking and agricultural elites, which limited the development of democratic institutions. Political instability was frequent during this era; the Liberal Revolution began with a coup in 1895, and its leader, Eloy Alfaro, came to power again through force in 1906, reflecting the continued reliance on military interventions and extra-constitutional transfers of power.

During the first year of Eloy Alfaro's presidency, which began in June 1895, Ecuador was ravaged by a bloody civil war. In this conflict, clergymen frequently incited their Catholic followers to rebel against the "atheistic alfaristas," a pejorative term for Alfaro's anticlerical supporters. In turn, the clergy often became victims of repression by the alfaristas. This early resistance was led by the foreign-born Bishops Pedro Schumacher of Portoviejo and Arsenio Andrade of Riobamba, whose leadership was primarily ideological and organizational. The conflict between the clergy and the Alfaro government was ultimately de-escalated by the historian and Archbishop Federico González Suárez. He successfully urged the clergy to abandon direct political opposition, a move that is credited with preventing a more prolonged and violent war.^[1]^[2]

A major cause of the political instability of the period was the lack of unity within the ruling Liberal Party (PLR). For nearly two decades, General Eloy Alfaro and fellow military leader General Leónidas Plaza Gutiérrez maintained a bitter rivalry for control of the party, a conflict that pitted Alfaro's radical faction against Plaza's moderates.

Following Alfaro's first presidency, Plaza was elected to a full constitutional term, serving from 1901 to 1905. However, in 1906, only months after Plaza's chosen successor, Lizardo García, had taken office, Alfaro launched a coup d'état and returned to the presidency. Alfaro, in turn, was overthrown on August 11, 1911, after attempting to prevent his own hand-picked successor, Emilio Estrada, from taking office by citing the latter's poor health.

Less than four months into his presidency, Estrada died of a heart attack on December 21, 1911. His death precipitated a brief civil war that brought the rivalry between Alfaro and Plaza to its violent climax. Summoned by his supporters, Alfaro returned from exile in Panama to lead the rebellion from Guayaquil against the interim government in Quito, whose army was commanded by General Plaza.

The rebellion was defeated within weeks. Alfaro was captured and transported to Quito as a prisoner on the very railroad he had championed and completed. On January 28, 1912, a mob stormed the prison in Quito, an act widely seen as enabled or instigated by the government. Alfaro and six of his top commanders were murdered, their bodied dragged through the streets and publicly burned in an event known in Ecuador as the "Barbaric Bonfire." A subsequent, multi-year uprising by his supporters in Esmeraldas province, known as the Concha Revolution (1913-1916), was eventually crushed by government forces.

Following a period of civil unrest, Plaza was inaugurated for his second presidential term on September 1, 1912. His presidency began a series of four consecutive, constitutional transfers of power, a period of rare stability that continued with Alfredo Baquerizo Moreno (1916–20) and José Luis Tamayo (1920–24). The final president in this sequence, Gonzalo Córdova (1924–25), had his term cut short by a military coup on July 9, 1925.

During this era, the latter half of Ecuador's Liberal period, true power was held by a plutocracy of coastal agricultural and banking interests. This group was popularly known as La Argolla (the ring), and its linchpin was the Commercial and Agricultural Bank of Guayaquil, led by Francisco Urbina Jado. The bank cemented its influence by loaning vast sums to a government engaged in significant public spending and was so powerful it was even authorized to issue its own currency.

The bank's control was pervasive. According to Ecuadorian historian Oscar Efren Reyes, it was influential "to the point that candidates for president and his ministers, senators, and deputies had to have the prior approval of the bank." Many of the bank's private loans were directed to members of the Association of Agriculturists of Ecuador, a private organization of powerful cacao growers. This same association received government funds, ostensibly to promote an international cacao cartel, but these funds were reportedly used to enrich its own members instead.

All members of La Argolla were staunch defenders of the ruling Liberal cause. However, their financial activities victimized not only the political fortunes of the Liberal party but the entire national economy. The practice of private banks, chiefly the Commercial and Agricultural Bank of Guayaquil, printing vast sums of unbacked money to cover government deficits triggered runaway inflation. The severe economic problems during the final years of Liberal rule were also partially caused by factors beyond the politicians' control. The spread of fungal diseases, specifically "Witches' Broom" and "Monilia" pod rot, ravaged Ecuador's cacao plantations. This, combined with growing competition from British colonies in Africa like the Gold Coast, abruptly ended the favorable conditions that had made Ecuador a leading cacao exporter for over a century. The nation's already weakened cacao industry then fell victim to the sharp decline in global prices and demand during the Great Depression.

Ecuador's economic crisis of the early 1920s was especially devastating to the working class and the poor, whose purchasing power collapsed. In response, workers organized a general strike in Guayaquil in November 1922, followed by a peasant rebellion in the central Sierra in 1923. While both actions were intended to improve wages and working conditions, they were brutally suppressed. The Guayaquil strike ended in a massacre on November 15, 1922, where government troops killed hundreds of protestors, and the peasant rebellion was similarly crushed by the military.

President Gonzalo Córdova, who was closely tied to the banking interests of La Argolla, had come to office in a widely denounced fraudulent election in 1924. Popular unrest, the ongoing economic crisis, and a president weakened by a severe heart condition laid the background for a bloodless coup d'état on July 9, 1925. Unlike all previous military interventions in Ecuadorian politics, which were typically led by a caudillo, the 1925 coup was carried out in the name of a collective group. The members of the "League of Young Officers" who overthrew Córdoba came to power with a modernizing agenda. They sought to implement a wide variety of social and economic reforms, such as creating a central bank and a progressive income tax, while replacing the sterile Liberal-Conservative debate and ending the rule of the Liberals, who were seen as decadent and corrupt after three decades in power.

Liberal Era (Ecuador)

Liberal Era

References

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