Introduction

Abstract

Military intervention and rule have been recurring phenomena in the political history of Ecuador. During the early republican years, military officers arbitrated regional power struggles between factions representative of the predominantly agricultural and conservative sierra and the more cosmopolitan and commercially oriented coast. As neither faction was sufficiently strong to succeed on its own, alliances were forged with politically ambitious military officers — ‘caudillos’ — who would govern in the interests of those sectors that had sought their assistance. This pattern was reflected in the ascendancy of General Juan Jose Flores (1830–45) and his successor General Vicente Ramon Roca, predicated on an alliance with conservative sierra factions and in that of General Jose Maria Urbina and of his disciple General Francisco Robles (1852–59), both supported by coastal liberals.¹