Eloy Alfaro

This article is about Eloy Alfaro, President of Ecuador. For the city named after him in the province of Guayas see Durán .

Eloy Alfaro

José Eloy Alfaro Delgado (born June 25, 1842 in Montecristi , Manabí , † January 28, 1912 in Quito ) was an Ecuadorian military and politician. He was twice (1895-1901 and 1906-1911) President of Ecuador . He is considered the outstanding liberal politician in the history of Ecuador and a central figure in political life at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1878 he founded the Partido Liberal , the Liberal Party of Ecuador, which under various names played a central role in the Ecuadorian party landscape of the 20th century.

Origin and politico-military activities before 1895

Alfaro came from a wealthy family. His father was a politically exiled Spaniard who was an exporter of Panama hats , his mother a native Indian.

The young Eloy also initially devoted himself to trade before turning to politics and the military opposition to conservative governments at a young age. He had been in contact with the poor farm workers in his region since his youth and stood up for the improvement of their living conditions and against the quasi-feudal ownership structures, especially on the cocoa plantations. This secured him strong support in his homeland for his entire political and military career. As a liberal, he fought from 1864 against the conservative President Gabriel García Moreno , who ruled until 1875, but was forced to spend most of his time in exile in Panama . There he married the local Ana Paredes Arosemena in 1865, with whom he had nine children with names such as Bolívar , Esmeraldas , América and Olmedo .

In 1876 he returned to Ecuador and after the coup d'état of the liberal General Ignacio de Veintemilla (president from 1876 to 1883) against Antonio Borrero, he joined his newly formed government. Shortly afterwards, however - disappointed by Veintemilla - he went into exile again in Panama, from where he returned in 1878 to fight Veintemilla militarily. Alfaro was captured and exiled again the following year.

In 1882, Alfaro secretly returned to Ecuador to fight Veintemilla. In 1883 he was proclaimed Supreme Leader ( jefe supremo ) in his home province of Manabí and united with other usurpers in the fight against Veintimilla, who resided in Quito. They managed to drive Veintemilla out of the capital in January 1883. In July 1883, Veintemilla resigned. After a provisional government and then two interim presidents ruled, the liberal Catholic José María Plácido Caamaño became president at the end of November . Alfaro did not agree with his government and rose from Manabi. After the military defeat in a sea battle off Jaramijó , he fled to Peru. He then traveled across America in search of financial and ideological support in the struggle for liberalism in Ecuador.

“Liberal Revolution” and Alfaro's presidency

overview

Eloy Alfaro

After the coup d'état of June 8, 1895, which ushered in the stage of the Liberal Revolution in Ecuadorian history, Alfaro was proclaimed head of state ( jefe supremo ) in Guayaquil and returned to Ecuador one more time to exercise the office. In 1897 a constituent assembly elected him constitutional president; his first term lasted until 1901 . Leonidas Plaza Gutiérrez , a supporter of Alfaro's Liberal Party, who was elected with Alfaro's support , had become estranged from Alfaro during the preparations for the election, but largely governed in Alfaro's favor. In 1906, Lizardo García, supported by Plaza, was elected president and overthrown by Alfaro shortly afterwards after a brief military campaign. Alfaro was then again proclaimed head of state and in 1907 elected president by a new constituent assembly, which also passed a liberal, Ecuador secularizing constitution (the twelfth in the country's 77-year history).

Political program

During his reign he brought about the Liberal Revolution , an upheaval of the Ecuadorian state from within, which was maintained during the tenure of his first successor, Plaza Gutiérrez. Alfaro ensured the definitive separation of church and state, confiscated church property on a large scale, secularized the education system and introduced religious freedom and civil marriage . He abolished the death penalty . Alfaro also gave the decisive impetus for the completion of the railway connection between Quito and Guayaquil, which began under García Moreno (which reached as far as Lake Colta in his first presidency and was completed in 1908), founded various educational institutions, and devoted himself more than his predecessors to the Indian population. and the women's question and improved the legal position of both groups.

Fall 1911

At the end of his second term, Alfaro proposed Emilio Estrada as a presidential candidate, who was also elected in 1911. Alfaro wanted to force him to resign before he took office so that he could be proclaimed head of state again. Estrada refused this request and military units in Quito supported him and brought about the overthrow of Alfaro on August 11th. Alfaro fled to Panama again. After a brief transitional presidency of Senate President Carlos Freile Zaldumbide , Estrada was sworn in in September.

Another attempt to take power, capture and death

When Estrada died unexpectedly in December 1911, Alfaro went back to Ecuador to regain power. He was arrested and detained in a Quito prison. On January 18, 1912, violent demonstrators broke into the prison and killed Eloy Alfaro and four of his associates (including his brother Medardo). They dragged his body to Ejido Park, where they burned him in public.

Afterlife

The city, canton and parish of Durán near Guayaquil officially bear the name Eloy Alfaro, as does a canton in the Esmeraldas province . The Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí in Manta and the secondary military school Escuela Superior Militar Eloy Alfaro in Quito are named after him. In addition to the numerous streets and squares in Ecuador named after him, a square in New York City (Jackson Heights, Queens ) has also been named after Eloy Alfaro since August 2006 .

In addition to the successor parties of the Partido Liberal, the liberal party Frente Radical Alfarista , which was founded in 1972 and , with Fabían Alarcón Rivera in 1997/98, leaned on his name and ideas, as did the guerrilla group Alfaro Vive, which operated in the 1980s , ¡ Carajo! .

In 1991, the Ecuadorian Navy acquired the British frigate of the Leander class (Type 12) HMS Penelope and named it in his honor in Presidente Eloy Alfaro to.

On September 26, 2003, Eloy Alfaro was named the national hero of Ecuador by decree of the then Vice-President Alfredo Palacio .

On November 27, 2005, the Ecuadorian TV broadcaster Ecuavisa announced that Eloy Alfaro, in the Ecuadorian version of the TV format broadcast as our best in Germany, was voted “best Ecuadorian” with 33.39% of the 157,000 votes cast. He placed himself in front of Olympic walker Jefferson Pérez , writer Juan Montalvo , ex-President José María Velasco Ibarra and women's activist Matilde Hidalgo de Procel .

From November 2007 to July 2008 , the Constituent Assembly of Ecuador met in the Ciudad Alfaro , a building complex in Alfaro's hometown of Montecristi .

Web links

Commons : Eloy Alfaro  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Humberto Oña Villarreal: biography and presidencies of Eloy Alfaros: 1st term of office 2nd term of office (Spanish)
• La Revolución Liberal de 1895 y el legado del Grail. Eloy Alfaro . - Special from El Universo newspaper (Guayaquil), June 5, 2004

predecessor	Office	successor
Vicente Salazar provisionally as Vice President	President of Ecuador 1896 - 1901	Leonidas Plaza Gutierrez

predecessor	Office	successor
Lizardo García	President of Ecuador 1906 - 1911	Carlos Freile Zaldumbide provisionally as President of the Senate