José María Urbina Viteri, President of Ecuador.
From that moment Ecuador was treated as a conquered country. Thefts, pillage, sacrilege, murders, became the order of the day. The “Tauras,” a guard of mamelukes whom Urbina called his “canons,” armed with daggers, went up and down the country, attacking inoffensive men, insulting women, and assassinating all who would not be robbed without a struggle. Urbina in the meanwhile gave himself up to every sort of excess, exhausted the public treasury, and then exacted fabulous sums from private individuals. The smallest opposition or even remonstrance was met by imprisonment, exile, or death—one man alone there was who could not remain silent and coldly watch the destruction of his country. In a poem entitled an “Ode to Fabius,” he exposed with merciless severity the whole public and private life of Urbina. “No vice, no crime, is unknown to him,” he exclaimed. “Treason, perjury, swindling, brigandage, savage cruelty, perfidy, nothing is wanting. His ignoble life is written bit by bit in the penal code.”
Painting by Eugenio Lucas Velázquez
After describing the effect of his rule on his miserable countrymen, he concludes with the words: “I know well the fate which is reserved for me. The chalice of suffering must be drunk to the dregs—the ball of the villain will pierce my heart. But if my country, delivered from the horrible tyranny which crushes her to the earth, be once more allowed to breathe freely, joyfully I will go to my grave.”
It is difficult to imagine the effect of this satire on the inflammable nations of Ecuador. Often (as we have seen) had García Moreno made use of his powerful pen to expose vice and incite to virtue. But this time it was with the solemnity of a great judge pronouncing sentence on an infamous criminal. Urbina was furious, but so great was the effect of the pamphlet that he did not dare at once provoke an insurrection by the exile or death of the patriot. A month later García Moreno started a weekly paper called La Nación (The Nation), the first number of which appeared on March 8, 1853. “It is time,” he declared, “to tear down the veil and to show the people that under this Radical Government, the constitution is a lure, the sovereignty of the people a chimera, and all legal guarantees ridiculous fictions. You talk of progress and civilization. Where is the social progress when misery devours the whole population and revolutionary cunning alone enriches the few? What kind of civilization is that which tramples underfoot all moral law, and extinguishes the light of Divine Revelation?
