The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

President Rocafuerte was not only animated by revolutionary principles, imbued with liberal ideas, and a student of the best political and economic writers, but he proved to be a good administrator—practical, cautious, and sure—and earned the title of the greatest of Ecuador's reformers. His first step was to summon a constituent assembly which divided the country into provinces and parishes, outlined a rational scheme of administration, and made a substantial beginning toward substituting civil for military government. Although he did not attempt to carry into practice the dreams of radical liberals—impracticable among a population nine-tenths Indians in semi-bondage, and in a country where the clergy were dominant—he reformed the taxing system, set in order the finances, so far as his means and knowledge would permit, earnestly encouraged industry, agriculture, and commerce, repaired and built roads, promulgated a new and humane criminal code, and established schools. He set up the pyramids of the French geographers, showing that tender regard for his country's repute abroad which is rarely absent in statesmen of high character and noble aims. Under his administration Ecuador assumed the payment of her proportion—twenty-one and a half per cent., or one million eight hundred thousand pounds—of the debt contracted by the defunct United States of Colombia during the war of independence. However, this debt proved a burden too great for her resources. Interest fell behind and the principal has been scaled down repeatedly. Only in 1900 was an arrangement satisfactory to the bondholders finally reached.

His efforts made Ecuador the second South American republic whose independence was formally recognised by Spain. In religious matters he proved true to his liberal convictions, and while never persecuting the clergy always advocated religious freedom for the individual. But though he set his country's feet in the path of progress, the steps were slow, short, and uncertain. His alliance with the military element as represented by Flores, and the religious and social conservatism of the bulk of the people, hampered rapid progress. The radical liberals conspired against him, but their plots were sternly stamped out. Government remained essentially military and aristocratic, and active participation was confined to the educated and military classes. Nevertheless, a sort of equilibrium between the demands of the governing caste and the capacities of the producing masses was reached, and a certain degree of order replaced the indiscriminate exactions and tyranny which the proletariat had endured ever since the first Spaniard had landed. When Rocafuerte finished his term in 1839, Ecuador was at peace and had recovered much of the material prosperity lost during the long wars. On the plateau the Indians cultivated their wheat and potatoes in security, while on the low coast lands the cacao industry flourished, making Ecuador one of the chief sources of the world's supply of chocolate and multiplying Guayaquil's population and wealth.

ECUADOR PEON'S HOUSE.

Flores's command of the army insured him the succession to the presidency. Though his return to power meant political reaction, the beneficent effects of Rocafuerte's system had been too obvious to be entirely ignored and hastily abandoned. Flores's first measures were moderate, but his irrational ambition quickly led him into an expensive and fruitless intervention in the Colombian civil war of 1840. His financial difficulties and a return to military habits caused him to adopt measures continually more arbitrary, and he went stubbornly ahead with his schemes to make his dictatorship permanent. He forced the adoption of a new Constitution lengthening the presidential term to eight years, and caused himself to be declared elected in 1843. The conflict with the liberals became acute; Rocafuerte protested and was forced to fly for his life. The young radicals of Quito plotted the tyrant's assassination, while the villagers of the plateau arose in revolt against the gatherers of an obnoxious poll-tax. In 1845 a liberal revolution broke out at Guayaquil. Flores descended from the table-land, but the liberal army met and defeated him at the foot of the mountains, and he accepted the offer of twenty thousand dollars in cash and a pension to leave the country.

The better elements of the triumphant party were not able to keep the upper hand. A new Constitution was hastily adopted and the mulatto Ramon Roca installed as president. For four years he ruled while the gulf between liberals and conservatives widened day by day, and factional jealousies and ambitions within the dominant party became menacing. The congress of 1849 quarrelled bitterly over the presidential succession and was unable to agree on any one. Ambitious chiefs got arms and men together, and after a year of uncertainty General Urbina, of Guayaquil, issued a pronunciamento declaring Diego Noboa provisional head of the government. A convention called for the purpose adopted a new Constitution and elected Urbina's nominee president for the full term. To the consternation of the liberals he recalled the Jesuits and gave asylum to the defeated conservatives from Colombia, going so far as to send troops to the frontier to aid in their restoration. But Urbina, to whose command these forces had been entrusted, proclaimed himself dictator and exiled Noboa. He promulgated a new Constitution—Ecuador's sixth in twenty-two years,—persecuted the conservatives, and ruled for four years as an ultra-liberal. At the expiration of his term in 1856 he named his friend Robles as his successor, who maintained himself against the conservative attacks until in 1859 his government became involved in a war with Peru. When Robles and Urbina went to the Peruvian frontier the conservatives rose behind them. As a matter of fact the country was tired of the misrule of the military chiefs, miscalled liberals, whose government was a compound of oppression for their enemies and license for their friends. The clericals armed their adherents in the northern villages and marched on Quito. The partisans of the administration at the capital could oppose no effective resistance, and the insurgents entered the city, and on May 1st installed a provisional government with Garcia Moreno at its head. The latter at once pushed on south with a small force, and, though defeated by Robles, he escaped to Peru, where he received help for new operations. In spite of Moreno's temporary reverse his friends retained possession of Quito, and the Peruvian blockade of Guayaquil absorbed the president's attention. The forces under Robles soon crumbled away, and he resigned and went into banishment. Urbina, the real chief of the liberal party, had a small body of troops in Cuenca with which he tried to maintain the unequal contest, but his position soon became untenable and he followed Robles into exile.

Moreno was now master of the whole Andean region. Guayaquil, however, remained in the hands of a liberal chief; the Peruvian government had tired of its bargain to support the Ecuadorian clericals; the blockade was abandoned, and the Peruvian ships retired after making a treaty with the Guayaquil authorities. This rid Moreno of an embarrassing entanglement with a foreign power, although it left the Guayaquil insurgents free to employ all their forces against him. Descending with all the forces he could muster, his mountaineers defeated the coast troops in every encounter, and on the 2d of September, 1860, Moreno captured the great seaport, putting an end to open opposition in all Ecuador. Every successful revolutionist in those days made his own Constitution, so it is a waste of words to tell that Moreno summoned a convention which promulgated a new fundamental law for the republic. During the next fifteen years he remained the dominant personality in Ecuadorian history. His biography is typical of the careers of the higher class of Creole statesmen, and profoundly interesting to a student of South American history as illustrating the difficulties with which men of constructive minds and a passion for order have been obliged to contend. A scion of one of the oldest and proudest Spanish families, he had been proscribed in his youth, and spent the years of his exile studying in the old world. He returned with his naturally fine mind stored with the fruits of study and observation, but with his prejudices of caste and religion unshaken. The clericals set all their hopes on this brilliant young advocate, and his public life, his opinions, and his personality résumé the reactionary characteristics of Ecuador. Nevertheless it is hard for an unprejudiced outsider to study the history of his country during his time without retaining a strong admiration for his abilities and force, even if not convinced that his career made for the moral uplifting of the republic.

He found the finances in a wretched state. Salaries were unpaid, the revenue amounted to less than a million pesos, and the government was living from hand to mouth on twenty-per-cent. loans. He directed his activity principally toward effecting urgent material reforms—increasing the revenue by systematising taxation, suppressing frauds and contraband, founding a mint and hospital at Quito, building the great waggon-road from Quito to the southern provinces, and connecting that remote and mountain-locked capital by a telegraph line with Guayaquil. The whole of his own salary he devoted to the public use, the laws were better enforced, life and property became safer, and material prosperity increased. The government was centralised, the semi-independency of the departments abolished, the Jesuits recalled, the rights and privileges of the clergy restored and increased, and a Concordat signed with the Holy See which virtually freed the Ecuadorian Church from all secular control.

The Concordat was denounced throughout the continent as treason to South American independence, and his relations with European diplomatic representatives were so cordial and frank that rumours of his willingness to accept a foreign protectorate or even annexation by Spain were rife in the other capitals. The publication of his personal correspondence with a French diplomatist raised such a storm against him that other countries plotted his overthrow, and the democrats of Colombia, victorious in the civil war of 1863, sent an army to the frontier, proclaiming that their purpose was "to liberate the brother democrats of Ecuador from the theocratic yoke of Professor Moreno." His army was defeated in the battle of Cuaspud, but he stood firm and his people showed no eagerness to accept Colombia's invitation and re-enter that confederacy. Her army was unable to follow up its advantage, and the danger quickly passed. When war broke out between Spain and Peru he, like the Emperor of Brazil, refused to follow Chile's example and take sides, against the mother country. In a word, his foreign policy was a selfish but intelligent opportunism, and he was not influenced by vague sentimental considerations and blind chauvinism.