Fall of a Dictator

Under the fist of her dictatorial Government, Ecuador seethed. Suave, power-loving President Carlos Arroyo del Rio had decreed a national election on June 2-3. But everyone in the little Andean republic expected it to be a fraud. The Government had carefully exiled, outlawed or imprisoned the leaders of the opposing Democratic Front. It had strengthened its Carabinero (police) garrisons in the chief cities. By hook or crook it intended to win.

Six days before the election a secret message sped across the country from the underground Democratic Front committee in Guayaquil, Ecuador's hot and humid metropolis on the Pacific Coast. The Dictator, said the message, had ordered his police to shoot any citizen who interfered with the poll. In his exile headquarters on the Colombian frontier, the Democratic Front leader, scholarly Dr. Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, pondered and schemed. Hidden in Ecuador, a spectacular family trio--the brothers Leonidas, Jose Maria and Galo Plaza--made ready to strike on Velasco Ibarra's behalf. Leonidas escaped from jail last December, ever since had been plotting the Dictator's overthrow. He did not have long to wait.

A People's Anger. The revolution broke in Guayaquil. Against the Carabineros marched the Army, using U.S. Lend-Lease tanks. With the Army marched workers and students of the Democratic Front. Some 300 Guayaquil revolutionists and police were killed by shellfire; street fighting raged for eleven hours. In other cities --Riobamba, Cuenca, Otavalo--the Carabineros surrendered or joined the Democratic Front with little bloodshed. In Quito, the sleepy capital of church bells, barefoot Indians and grand vistas, high up (9,500 ft.) in the Andes, the people poured into the streets. There, too, the Army came to their side, and the Carabineros capitulated.

Dictator Arroyo del Rio resigned, sought refuge in the Colombian Embassy. A provisional junta promptly invited Velasco Ibarra to take over. The exile promptly accepted, rode into Quito in a Lend-Lease jeep. With vivas and flowers, 50,000 Quitenos welcomed their new President. On a balcony overlooking Independence Square, Velasco Ibarra proclaimed:

"I will deliver the country to a freely elected constituent assembly so that it can have the power that belongs to the people. I don't want to be a dictator."

A People's Chance. Thus did a nation of 3,000,000 people, living in a jungle-and-mountain land as big as California, clean their house. A cynical Ecuadorian once told Author Ludwig Bemelmans: "We have a revolution here every Thursday afternoon at half-past two and our Government is run like a nightclub." But last week's uprising, which gave the country its 14th President in 15 years, was more than a nightclub brawl. A popular movement with democratic aspirations had overthrown an unpopular government with dictatorial inclinations. Velasco Ibarra still had to prove that he would be a practicing democrat. After he was elected President in 1934, Ecuador's politicians found him a difficult and somewhat messianic man who talked about despoiling grafters, pushing economic reform, and ridding the world of fascism. With Army help, they forced him to resign after a year in office.

Now, at 51, Velasco Ibarra had his chance again. Before him lay sore problems: his country's ancient poverty, illiteracy and latifundios (great estates), its wartime inflation, the ultranationalism of some of his followers.

Washington had been on good terms with Arroyo del Rio. But, unofficially, U.S. officialdom hoped for the best from Velasco Ibarra. This week he got his first inter-American nod of approval. Brazil's Dictator President Getulio Vargas, evidently unwilling to await Washington's lead, recognized the new Government in Quito.

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