Gabriel García Moreno and Conservative State Formation in the Andes

Conclusion

238 conclusion The heated debate between liberals and conservatives about García Moreno and his role in the formation of the Ecuadorian state continues to the present. Perhaps the best evidence of the bitterness of this quarrel can be encapsulated in the controversies over whether statues of García Moreno ought to be placed in public spaces in Quito and Guayaquil. Given his troubled relationship with many influential guayaquileños, a frosty reception to the idea of a monument there should have been anticipated. Nevertheless , during the 1950s friends of the fallen dictator hired a sculptor to carve a bust of García Moreno for display in the Americas Park, where the forces of the provisional government had defeated General Franco in 1860 to end the civil war. The mayor of Guayaquil blasted the project, however, refusing to grant the necessary permission to display the sculpture . A compromise to locate the statue at the corner of Junín Street and the Malecón, where García Moreno’s house once stood, also met steadfast opposition despite advocacy by two past presidents of the country.1 To this day, Guayaquil has no monument to García Moreno, one of its most famous sons. That liberal guayaquileños might oppose a García Moreno statue in their city makes sense, but the hostility towards such a figure in more conservative Quito seems surprising. The location of the first controversial García Moreno statue, in the little plaza at the intersection of Calles Amazonas and Jorge Washington, sees thousands of people pass on a daily basis . In the 1970s, the government decided to place busts of Ecuador’s most famous politicians (Vicente Rocafuerte, Eloy Alfaro, José María Velasco Ibarra, and García Moreno) at the street corners for passers-by to admire. Immediately the “scandal” hit the newspapers. One editorial thundered : Why are we erecting statues to two traitors (García Moreno and Conclusion Chapter Eight Conclusion 239 Velasco Ibarra)? After condemning García Moreno’s treacherous relationship with France and Peru (in the 1860 civil war), the paper catalogued the many tyrannical deeds “of the darkest figure in our history.” Most importantly , the paper argued, unveiling the statue would lead to a didactic disaster , where youths would be confused about who were the real founders of modern-day Ecuador.2 Despite the clamor, the city government eventually placed the carved images at the intersection. In 2005, a second García Moreno statue, long hidden in an obscure corner of the great basilica dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, became prominently relocated in the newly named Plaza García Moreno—a small grassy park in front of the basilica—with much less disputation. García Moreno still remains Ecuador’s most controversial figure, however, in part because the liberal-conservative debate over who laid the foundations of the modern state remains unresolved even in the twenty-first century. Certainly the struggle between liberal and conservative ideology dominated a good deal of the political rhetoric in García Moreno’s time. Although as a young student he participated in this debate, even taking arms against conservative dictator Juan José Flores, by the 1850s his thinking had changed substantially. Influenced both by a reawakening of his personal faith and the progress he witnessed while residing in Napoleon III’s authoritarian France, García Moreno’s ideas gravitated in the direction of a modern conservative vision of state formation. His chance to explore these possibilities arose after the horrendous civil war of 1859 and 1860, when the nation was nearly torn asunder by competing regional factions and an invading Peruvian caudillo. The civil war, however, exacerbated two issues related to the liberal-conservative debate. First, the praetorian army left over from the days of independence and often led by foreigners was neither patriotic nor trustworthy—prone to frequent rebellion. Second, strong feelings of regionalism forced García Moreno to strike deals with would-be autonomous elites, arrangements that proved inconsistent with his vision of state formation. The close relationship between regional interests and doctrinaire nineteenth -century liberalism dominated the debates surrounding the Constitution of 1861. Much to García Moreno’s displeasure, the delegates endorsed the states-rights version of federalism that found favor in many Latin American countries in the 1850s and 1860s. Despite García Moreno’s warnings that the system’s weak chief executive and strong local autonomy would prove unworkable, the moderate liberal coalition at the constituent [3...