Gabriel García Moreno and Conservative State Formation in the Andes

Chapter Eight. Death and the Hereafter

Death and the Hereafter 209 The previous chapters have examined García Moreno’s life and times chronologically while exploring themes of nineteenth-century Andean history, especially state formation. In contrast, this final chapter will focus on the events of a single day—August 6—during the remarkable year of 1875, in which Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call, Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen opened to rave reviews, and the initial Kentucky Derby was run. A drama of Shakespearean proportions was about to be played out on the grand stage of this country straddling the equator. The upcoming play brilliantly juxtaposed characters straight from Stratford-on-Avon. We will find Iago, the most villainous villain in all of literature from Othello, in the same story as Julius Caesar’s Brutus. Even the Bard himself could not have penned such a script. The shots and machete blows that rang out across the Plaza de la Independencia not only resonated for years in Ecuadorian discourse, but also influenced the European conservative Catholic world, underscoring Gabriel García Moreno’s long-term legacy for both. Often in the study of biography, a dramatic death lends heightened grandeur to the subject’s life, and so it would be in the case of García Moreno. Both he and Ecuador’s most famous Liberal Party leader, Eloy Alfaro, suffered similarly gruesome deaths—rather remarkably, because despite its many coups, the nation’s political culture has frowned on assassinations and violence in general. Not only is the story of García Moreno’s death fascinating, replete with all the features of a fictional whodunit, but it also raises important questions about his legacy. Right up to the present, García Moreno’s supporters have argued that his brutal murder in the square, in part motivated by his religious policies, qualified him to be a martyr and might place him on the path to sainthood . His enemies, on the other hand, have characterized him as a tyrant Death and the Hereafter Chapter Eight 210 gabriel garcía moreno and conservative state formation who deserved death in order to liberate Ecuador’s people. Both images have been useful in constructing discourses about the Ecuadorian state. Martyrdom, a violent death for the sake of conviction, comes from a Greek word meaning “firsthand witness” and was initially invoked to describe the death of Socrates. Christian martyrs, of course, “bear witness” to Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice, his crucifixion at Golgotha. The term “tyrant” likewise first saw light in ancient Greece, and was used to describe a ruler who exercised absolute authority without the legal right to do so. Death and the political afterlife of Latin American leaders has recently become a subject of considerable interest.Like the cases of Eva Perón, Che Guevara, and other key figures, the usages of García Moreno’s memory and even his physical remains have contributed to his enduring political legacy.1 the elections of 1875 The election of 1875 posed an interesting question about the degree to which the political system was open and democratic or whether it had degenerated into tyrannical dictatorship. Predictably García Moreno’s adherents find the elections fair, contested, and popular—while his detractors claim they were no more than a farce and the onset of a “perpetual dictatorship .”2 Certainly his contemporary supporters hoped he would seek reelection as the Constitution of 1869 permitted, despite the economic downturn in 1874. At first, García Moreno played the role of a demure but calculating maiden, expressing no real interest but at heart wanting it to happen. To his loyalists, he responded that he “would accept the command of the people and God’s will,” despite his desire to retire. He demanded only a single condition: that the elections take place “without my intervention , direct or indirect, or frauds and intrigues of any kind.” Free elections would, in his opinion, stop his enemies’ personal attacks.3 Probably García Moreno believed that his recent policy of granting pardons and encouraging most exiles to come home had lessened his reputation for being vengeful and repressive. At the same time, now that his most extreme enemies had been expelled, he no doubt felt that he had cleansed the body politic of the toxins that had infected it in the past. The latest incursion, for example—that of Eloy Alfaro in Esmeraldas in 1871—fizzled before it caused problems.4 Yet García Moreno’s hopes...