Erik Visits a (South)American Grave, Part 1,675
By This is the grave of Juan José Flores.
Born in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela in 1800, Flores was the illegitimate son of a wealthy Spanish merchant. That isn’t really how he rose to power though. It wasn’t necessarily uncommon for a father to support an illegitimate son from the colonies, but that’s not what Flores’ father did. He abandoned the woman and his son and went back to Spain and they were very poor. When he was 14, his mother him in a military school, but that was to work, not learn. The next year, Flores enlisted in the Spanish Army as a private. He was a good soldier and rose relatively quickly, becoming a sergeant by 1817. That year, he was taken captive by the rebel forces led by Simón Bolivar. He got out of his captivity by joining them.
Flores was a very good soldier. Known for both extreme bravery and loyalty (despite changing sides I guess), he rose quickly under Bolivar, who came to know and respect him. He played a key role in the Battle of Carabobo in 1821 that was a resounding victory for Bolivar’s forces and basically freed Venezuela from the Spanish. By 1823, he was a colonel in Bolivar’s army. Then he was promoted to commandant general of the city of Pasto, which is now in southern Colombia.
Of course, the Gran Colombia vision of Bolivar was by no means sustainable. Once you open the box of revolution, it’s hard to close it again. This new gigantic country had too many divisions. Flores played the internal infighting political game as well as anyone. He became friendly with other leaders in what is today Ecuador. In 1830, that area broke away from Gran Colombia. Flores was named the first president of the country. It was by no means a stable thing. This was a civil war. So most of his four year term was spent dealing with rebellions. One tried to keep Ecuador in Gran Colombia. Another was from the leader of the nation’s Congress, who wanted a coup so he could take power. In the latter, they made a deal. Flores would serve his four years, then the other guy would take over and Flores would lead the military. Then the Colombians invaded Ecuador twice and Flores commanded troops in defeating them.
Flores did step away in 1835, but he wasn’t really going anywhere. He was in the Senate and then he came back to power in 1839. The first few years of this term were pretty chill compared to the first. But he was just as committed to military adventurism as the people who opposed him. So in 1842, he got involved with the internal politics of Nueva Granada, which was Colombia + parts of Central America going up into modern Costa Rica. That led Colombia to invade Ecuador again and everyone blamed Flores.
Flores then tried to cheat to win another term, claiming fraud when he lost the election for another term in 1842. So he simply annulled the Constitution and stayed in power. He even welcomed the return of the Spanish to the nation if it would allow him to be in charge. And by in charge, this meant he wanted a return to monarchy, with him in charge. This of course caused a civil war and he was overthrown in 1845. Like a lot of these 19th century caudillo types, he had no commitment to democracy and believed that only monarchy could stop chaos. It would just be a slightly different kind of monarchy than what the Spanish had offered.
In terms of policy, perhaps the most interesting thing about Flores is that he quite sympathized with the Native inhabitants of Ecuador, at least for a rich guy of his time. He tried to relieve them of tax burdens and forced labor. In fact, part of the rebellions against him had to do with furious whites and mestizos who could not believe he would take away their privileges over the savages. This is the thing about a lot of these conservatives versus liberals battles that dominate 19th century Latin America–you today might want to sympathize with the liberals, but they were very much 19th century classical liberals who didn’t like the church and wanted a market economy but who also wanted a white supremacist society completely dominating indigenous or Black people. The conservatives had more than share of problems too of course, including the whole really wanting monarchy back deal, but there was at least some limited space in their worldview for some kind of humane treatment of the poorest members of society, as there often was through the Catholic Church. Let’s not overstate Flores here though. He could have moved toward immediate emancipation of slaves, but did not, going with a gradual emancipation that left some people in slavery as late as the 1850s.
As a conservative, Flores also mostly let the church do whatever it wanted. If you think there are problems with priests and impropriety today, well, let’s just say it is not a new thing. This was a major reason why the liberals mostly won out over time. Many priests had concubines, engaged in gambling, and completely ignored the rules of their religious orders on issues of sex. Flores just let it go because he did not want to alienate his core ally for power.
Flores remained the scheming bastard that he always was, but never again reached power and was more an internal knife fighter than a leader. He was exiled for several years but returned to the nation in 1855. During this time he went to Spain and used his considerable charms to try and get Queen Mother Maria Cristina to support his plans. He succeeded in that too, but the scheme never really got that far off the ground. He tried to retake power in 1859, still as fervent a believer in monarchism as ever. The man simply wanted to be king. This led to another period of real tension in the nation, which ended with Gabriel Garcia Moreno as president, who had many of the same beliefs as Flores and he was fine with that. So long as those damned liberals stayed out of power.
Flores died in 1864, probably of kidney failure. He was 64 years old.
Juan Jose Flores is buried in Quito Cathedral, Quito, Ecuador.
If you would like this series to visit other foreign leaders, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. I’m not going to name any–you can choose! Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.