Isidro Ayora

Statue of Isidro Ayora Cueva, Ecuador

Isidro Ayor as a stamp motif

Isidro Ayora Cueva (born August 31, 1879 in Loja , † March 22, 1978 in Los Angeles ) was an Ecuadorian doctor and politician . He was head of state of Ecuador from 1926 to 1931, first as a member of a civil provisional government junta, then as transitional and from 1929 to 1931 as constitutional president.

Life

Training and activity as a doctor and medical professor

Ayora attended a Catholic school in his hometown and in 1897 passed the Abitur ( bachillerato ) in humanities and literature at the prestigious Colegio Bernardo Valdivieso in Loja. He then studied medicine at the Universidad Central del Ecuador in Quito . In 1905 he received his doctorate in medicine there. At this point in time he had already received several teaching positions and worked as parliamentary secretary. After completing his studies, he received a scholarship from the Plaza Government to study in Europe. There he studied gynecology and obstetrics at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin ( Charité ) and in the Royal Women's Clinic and Midwifery School in Dresden with Christian Leopold . In 1909 he returned to Ecuador, where he was appointed professor of obstetrics at the Universidad Central and director of the gynecological clinic, which today bears his name as Hospital Gineco-Obstétrico Maternidad Isidro Ayora . He held both offices for almost 20 years until the beginning of his presidency. In 1917 he became dean of the medical faculty and in 1925 rector of the Universidad Central.

As early as 1911, he and his colleagues founded their own surgical clinic parallel to his university activities. From 1924 he was chairman of the Ecuadorian Red Cross. He was married to Laura Carbo Núñez from Guayaquil from 1917 until her death in 1946.

Presidency

“July Revolution” and provisional government juntas

Ayora came to power on July 9, 1925 as a result of the " July Revolution ", a coup d'état against President Gonzalo Córdova welcomed by broad sections of the people, parts of the press and state institutions . The term “July Revolution” encompasses the entire period from the coup of July 9th to the overthrow of the new constitutional President Ayora on August 24th, 1931. After the overthrow, a junta made up of mainly civil dignitaries took over the government and tried in particular to defeat the government To limit the influence of the military and ex-president Leonidas Plaza Gutiérrez and the banker Francisco Urbina Jado on politics.

The junta was disbanded on January 11, 1926 under pressure from Plaza-friendly military officials and replaced by a new one that now included Ayora. He had political experience as he was first elected to the Ecuadorian parliament for the province of Loja in 1916 and was a member of the Quito City Council from 1918 to 1919. Since 1924 he was again a member of the city council and the city government. He was particularly committed to improving the drinking water supply and sanitation. Membership in the second provisional government junta was offered to Ayora, as he was, among other things, personal physician of the wife Plazas and confidante of the liberal politician Humberto Albornoz , who initially took over the leadership of the new government junta. He only accepted after he had been given a promise that his previously failed political projects to improve health care would be implemented. Ayora initially served as Minister of Social Affairs, Labor and Agriculture.

Ayora as a dictator and modernizer

On March 10, 1926, the Supreme Military Junta deposed the second provisional government junta and surprisingly declared Ayora President with extensive powers, who had now practically become a dictator. Ayora was independent of the country's parties and was only supported by the military, from whom he in turn asked not to intervene in his politics.

Ayora's policy was aimed at the centralization of the country and the restoration of governability. He restricted the freedom of the press , closed numerous newspapers that protested against the dictator and the lack of consideration for their political camps, and had some of the country's leading newspaper makers expelled. The popular Conservative politician Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño , who had previously returned from exile, was re-exiled like other Conservative Party leaders . Other political opponents were taken to the Amazon lowlands or the Galápagos Islands or severely punished. The victims of the repression also included leaders of the labor movement and the Socialist Party , which rose against the government on November 15, 1926. Rural areas in northern Ecuador have been occupied by the military in the name of fighting alleged socialist uprisings. Under the Ayora government, the exiled plaza was able to return to Ecuador.

Ayora pursued a policy of budget consolidation and implemented a tough banking policy, including freezing and confiscating the precious metal stocks of the previous issuing banks on June 16 . The formal reason was debts they owed to the state. These reserves formed the basis for the new national bank , Banco Central del Ecuador , which was founded on June 23, 1926 under the name Caja de Emisión y Amortización (German issuing and amortization fund). However, the policy of confiscation had already been initiated by Luis Napoleón Dillón , Minister of Finance in the first provisional government junta. However, the reserves were deposited in England and the USA. The sucre was devalued by 41% and set to parity of 1: 5 against the US dollar. New coins with the likeness of Ayora and his wife were put into circulation. The state budget was relieved by the confiscations and showed a surplus. The state bureaucracy was expanded in the service of administrative centralization.

For the further modernization of the state, the Ayora government received a mission between October 1926 and March 1927 under the direction of the American economist and professor at Princeton University , Edwin Walter Kemmerer . In the following two years, the Ayora government founded or transformed numerous institutions, some of which still exist in the Ecuadorian state: the General Prosecutor's Office, the State Audit Office , Directorates for State Revenue and State Assets and State Procurement, the Standing Budget Commission, and the Customs Authority Dirección General de Aduanas , the banking supervision, the pension and pension fund as the core of the current social security institution Instituto Ecuatoriano de Seguridad Social , the Banco Hipotecario (today Banco Nacional de Fomento ) for the promotion of farmers and the Instituto Geográfico Militar .

Constituent Assembly and Constitutional Presidency

In August 1928, Ayora convened a constituent assembly which initially elected him as interim president and, after the new constitution was passed, on April 17, 1929, as constitutional president with a term of office until August 31, 1932. In contrast to Ayora's earlier reign, the new constitution, which was passed on March 26, was based on the rule of law and contained, among other things, habeas corpus rights, introduced women's suffrage and improved the legal status of illegitimate children. She introduced functional representatives in the Senate of the Ecuadorian Parliament for the press, school education, high school and university, as well as for agriculture, industry and indigenous people.

On August 10, 1929, the National Congress began its first session since 1925. In 1930, a tourism promotion law was passed for the first time, but this was later not followed up. The Ayora government devoted many resources to improving the water supply, particularly the Guayaquil sewers .

Overall, the July Revolution was in part institutionalized, in part the causes that triggered it were not eliminated. The social problems were not resolved, poverty increased due to stagnating exports, problems in cocoa production and even after the Great Depression in 1929. In August 1931, in the midst of the economic crisis, Ayora lost military support. War Minister Carlos Guerrero had asked senior officers to sign a declaration against Freemasonry . The officers rose in their barracks, whereupon their leader was removed and replaced by another, but who was captured by the officers of the barracks. Ayora then lost support in almost all units. He resigned and designated his recently appointed Interior Minister Colonel Luis Larrea Alba as his successor.

After his fall

Ayora initially returned to the medical profession and his private clinic. After acquiring the Hacienda San Antonio in Uyumbicho , he also became the founding president of the Holstein-Friesian Association of Ecuador, which later became the powerful association of commercial agriculture as a cattle breeders' association under the leadership of Plaza Gutiérrez's son Galo Plaza Lasso . After the death of his wife, he lived with his daughter in the San Fernando Valley in northern Los Angeles from 1946 to 1952 . He then returned to Ecuador, worked again in his private clinic and in 1957 was again director of the state obstetrics and gynecological clinic in Quito. In 1955, the Free University of Berlin awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 1966 he formed a "commission" with Galo Plaza Lasso and Camilo Ponce Enríquez , which Clemente Yerovi recommended as transitional president after the military government. Then he withdrew completely into private life.

Today the cities of Isidro Ayora (formerly Soledad ) in the province of Guayas and Puerto Ayora on the Galápagos Islands bear his name.

literature

• Plutarco Naranjo, La Revolución Juliana y el Gobierno de Ayora , Comisión Nacional Permanente de Conmemoraciones Cívicas, Quito 2005 (= Cuadernos de Divulgación Cívica 22); Full text (PDF, 62 pages) ( Memento from January 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
• Celín Astudillo Espinosa, Prof. Dr. Isidro Ayora. Médico innovador y presidente de la República , Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito 1983.

Web links

• Rudolfo Pérez Pimentel, Isidro Ayora Cueva , In: Diccionario Biográfico del Ecuador , Guayaquil 1987–, Volume 1, pp. 99f. (Spanish).
• Simón Espinosa Cordero, Isidro Ayora (1879-1978) , in edufuturo.com, the educational portal of the prefecture of the Pichincha province (Spanish).
• Humberto Oña Villarreal, Dictadura del Dr. Isidro Ayora Cueva , on the website of ExploRed , an information portal of the daily Diario HOY (Quito) (Spanish).

predecessor	Office	successor
Julio Enrique Moreno Chairman of the Provisional Government Junta	Head of State and President of Ecuador 1926–1931	Luis Larrea Alba on an interim basis