Juan Leon Mera
Author and painter who is best known for his
1879 novel, Cumanda, and for his lyrics to the Ecuadorian National Hymn,
"Salve, Oh Patria." His other literary works include “La virgen del
sol” and Ecuadorian “Lira”. He was educated at home by a great uncle. At the
age of twenty, Mera traveled to Quito to study art. He was a political figure
as well as an artist and writer; he served as Governor of Cotopaxi and as
Secretary of the Council of State. He was born on June 28, 1832 his parents
were Pedro Antonio Mera Gomez and Josefa Martinez Vasconez. He died on Dec 13,
1894 at the age of sixty-two in Ambato, Ecuador. ASSOCIATED WITH He and Alfredo
Pareja were fellow Ecuadorian authors. He was a political conservative and
follower of Gabriel García Moreno.
Juan María
Montalvo
Juan Montalvo was born in the provincial town
of Ambato. (1832-1889). Montalvo studied in Quito (1846-1854) but dropped out of
the university without earning a degree. The connections of his brothers with
Gen. José María Urbina, a Liberal who dominated Ecuadorian politics in the
1850s, resulted in Montalvo's appointment to a minor diplomatic post in Rome
(1857). The following year he was promoted to secretary of the Ecuadorian
legation in Paris. He returned to Ecuador in 1860. By then the Liberals had
been overthrown by the Conservatives, led by Gabriel García Moreno, and
Montalvo was excluded from public employment.
In January 1866 Montalvo published in Quito
the first number of a pamphlet series against García Morenounder the title of
El cosmopolita. Three years later, on the dictator's return to the presidency,
Montalvo fled to Colombia. Montalvo spent his years in exile, he received
economic support from Eloy Alfaro. During this period Montalvo's writing
consisted mostly of vitriolic and defamatory attacks on García Moreno. When the
latter decided to stay as president for a third term, Montalvo wrote La
dictadura perpetua. The pamphlet circulated in Ecuador. Though it did not
produce the hoped-for revolution, on Aug. 6, 1875, a Colombian small group of
young drifters who had read La dictadura, hacked García Moreno to death with a
machete. Although the assassin had acted for personal reasons, on hearing of
the President's death, Montalvo exclaimed jubilantly: "My pen killed
him!"
Montalvo returned to Quito in May 1876 and
started to publish El regenerador, a pamphlet series in which he attacked
President Antonio Borrero's government.
He was back in Ipiales, where he wrote Las Catilinarias. This attack on
Veintemilla is Montalvo's outstanding polemical work.
Read more at
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/juan-maria-montalvo#bpDgtBt8Ycx4ZlzB.99
