Gabriel Garc%C3%ADa Moreno

Gabriel Gregorio Fernando Jos Mara Garca y Moreno y Morn de Buitrn was an Ecuadorian politician who twice served as President of Ecuador and was assassinated during his second term, after being elected to a third. He is noted for his conservatism, Catholic religious perspective and rivalry with liberal strongman Eloy Alfaro. Under his administration, Ecuador became a leader in science and higher education within Latin America. In addition to the advances in education and science, he was noted for economically and agriculturally advancing the country, as well as for his staunch opposition to corruption, even giving his own salary to charity.However, a contemporary account from a consortium of London publishers, The Annual Register for 1875, reports, the deceased President was a ruler more feared than loved in the Republic whose destinies he had guided for nearly fifteen years, having governed it rather as a military dictator than as the head authority of a Liberal Constitution.

Gabriel Garcia Moreno was born in 1821, the son of Gabriel Garca y Gmez, a Spanish merchant, and Mara de las Mercedes Moreno y Morn de Buitrn, a member of a wealthy aristocratic criollo family in Ecuadors main port, Guayaquil. Garcia Gomez, his father, initially had been a Spanish merchant who invested in the shipping industry of the Viceroyalty of Peru who moved to the New World in order to see his investment yield results. He died, however, when Garcia Moreno was a boy, leading his upbringing to his devoutly Catholic mother. This rearing instilled in the young Garcia Moreno a devout sense of Catholic piety which would influence his later political activity as well as as his private life. Garcia Moreno studied theology and law in the University of Quito. Thinking he had a vocation to the priesthood, he received minor orders and the tonsure but his closest friends and his own interests convinced him to pursue a secular career. Graduating in 1844, he was admitted to the bar. Starting h

Source: Wikipedia