Background
Gabriel García Moreno was born of a Spanish father and an Ecuadorian mother in Guayaquil on 24 December 1821.
Gabriel García Moreno was born of a Spanish father and an Ecuadorian mother in Guayaquil on 24 December 1821.
He went to Quito to study for the priesthood when he was 15. However, he gave up his priestly aspirations and got a law degree.
García Moreno became involved in politics in his twenties. He married into a powerful Quito family, thus establishing bases in both of the country’s major centers of power. His first participation in politics was as a supporter of Vicente Rocafuerte, founder of Ecuador’s Liberal tradition.
During the early 1850s he twice visited Europe. In 1857 he was elected mayor of Quito, rector of the University of Quito, and a national senator. During the next three years, he engaged in revolutionary activities, which finally brought him to power in September 1860. His rule was confirmed by a convention in the following year.
When his four-year term expired in 1865, García Moreno allowed the election of a successor. However, he again seized power in 1869, remaining in office for six years.
When his constitutional term expired the second time in 1875, Garcia Moreno had himself reelected once again. However, before he could be inaugurated for the third time, he was assassinated.
García Moreno strongly allied himself with the Catholic Church. His regime decreed that only Roman Catholicism could be practiced in the country and that only its adherents could be Ecuadorian citizens. He brought back the Jesuits who had been expelled by an earlier administration. In 1873 García Moreno’s administration had the country officially dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
His second administration was marked by considerable expansion of education, as well as by construction of the country’s first railway and the building of a highway from Quito to the Pacific Coast.
