Isidro Ayora
Isidro Ayora Cueva ( born August 31, 1879 in Loja, † 22 March 1978 in Los Angeles ) was an Ecuadorian doctor and politician. He was from 1926 to 1931 head of state of Ecuador, first as a member of a civilian provisional government junta, then as a transition and 1929-1931 as the Constitutional President.
Training and work as a physician and professor of medicine
Ayora attended a Catholic school in his hometown in 1897 and put the diploma ( bachillerato ) in humanities and literature at the prestigious Colegio Bernardo Valdivieso in Loja from. He then studied medicine at the Universidad Central del Ecuador in Quito. In 1905 he received his doctorate there as a doctor of medicine. Already at that time he had received several teaching positions and worked as a Parliamentary Secretary. After completing his studies he received from the Government Plaza a scholarship to study in Europe. He studied obstetrics and gynecology at the Friedrich- Wilhelms- University of Berlin ( Charité) and at the Royal Women's Hospital and school for midwives in Dresden Christian Leopold. In 1909 he returned to Ecuador, where he was nominated for obstetrics the Universidad Central and Director of the Women's Hospital, which bears today as a hospital Gineco - Obstétrico Maternidad Isidro Ayora its name to the professor. He had almost 20 years held until the beginning of his presidency Both offices. In 1917 he was Dean of the Medical Faculty and in 1925 rector of the Universidad Central.
Already in 1911 he had established parallel to his university activities, together with colleagues from their own surgical clinic. Since 1924 he was Chairman of the Ecuadorian Red Cross. He was married from 1917 until her death in 1946 with Laura Carbo Núñez from Guayaquil.
Presidency
" July Revolution " and Provisional Government Juntas
Ayora came as a result of the " July Revolution ", one welcomed by broad strata of the population, sections of the press and state institutions coup against President Gonzalo Córdova on 9 July 1925 the power. Conceptually, we group under " July Revolution" the entire period from the coup of July 9, until the fall of the new constitutional President Ayora on 24 August 1931. After the fall initially had made a junta mainly civilian dignitaries, the government adopted and in particular attempts to to limit influence of the military and ex- President Leonidas Plaza Gutiérrez and the banker Francisco Urbina Jado on politics.
The Junta was disbanded on 11 January 1926 on pressure Plaza - friendly military and replaced by a new, now Ayora belonged. He had political experience, since he was first elected in 1916 for the province of Loja in the Ecuadorian Parliament and had been from 1918 to 1919 Member of the Municipal Council of Quito. Since 1924 he was again a member of the City Council and the city government. He advocated particularly for the improvement of drinking water supply and sanitation. Membership in the second provisional government junta was Ayora offered because he was also the personal physician of the wife plazas and confidant of the liberal politician Humberto Albornoz, who first took over the leadership of the new government junta. He accepted only after the commitment was issued in that its previously failed parliamentary political projects to improve health care would be implemented. Ayora officiated first as social, labor and agriculture minister.
Ayora as a dictator and modernizer
On March 10, 1926, the Supreme Military Junta from the second provisional government junta and explained to outsiders surprisingly Ayora president with extensive powers, which had now become practically a dictator. Ayora was independent of the parties of the country and was only supported by the military, which he had solicited for his part, does not interfere with its own policy.
The policy Ayoras aimed at the centralization of the country and the restoration of governability. He restricted freedom of the press, joined numerous newspapers, protesting against the dictator and the lack of regard for their political camp, and let some of the leading newspaper publisher in the country refer. The popular conservative politicians Jacinto Jijón y Caamano, who had recently returned from exile, as other leaders of the Conservative Party exiled again. Other political opponents were brought into the Amazon lowlands or on the Galapagos islands or severely punished. Among the victims of repression were also leaders of the labor movement and the Socialist Party, which had risen on November 15, 1926 against the government. Rural areas in northern Ecuador were occupied in the name of the fight against alleged socialist surveys by the military. Under the reign of the exiled Ayora Plaza was able to return to Ecuador.
Ayora pursued a policy of fiscal consolidation and led through a hard bank policy by, among other things froze on 16 June, the precious metals of the previous investment banks and confiscate. The formal reason had debts that they had against the state. These reserves formed the basis for the new national bank, Banco Central del Ecuador, under the name Caja de emisión y Amortización (Eng. emission and amortization fund) was established on 23 June 1926. The policy of confiscation, however, had already Luis Napoleón Dillon, Minister of Finance in the first provisional government junta initiated. The reserves, however, were deposited in England and the USA. The Sucre was devalued by 41% and placed on a parity of 1:5 to the U.S. dollar. New coins bearing the likeness Ayoras and his wife were put into circulation. The state budget was relieved by the seizures and had a surplus. The state bureaucracy was expanded in the service of administrative centralization.
For the further modernization of the state, the government Ayora between October 1926 and March 1927 received a mission led by the U.S. economist and professor at Princeton University, Edwin Walter Kemmerer. In the following two years founded or transformed the Ayora government, numerous institutions that still exist to some extent in the Ecuadorian political system: the Attorney General, the State Auditors, Directorates of government revenues and state assets and State procurements, the constant Budget Commission, the customs authority Dirección General de Aduanas that banking supervision, pension and retirement fund as the core of today's social insurance agency Instituto de Seguridad Social Ecuatoriano, the Banco Hipotecario (now Banco Nacional de Fomento ) to promote the farmers and the Instituto Geográfico Militar.
Constituent Assembly and Constitutional Presidency
In August 1928 Ayora convened a Constituent Assembly, the first elected him interim president and after the adoption of the new Constitution on 17 April 1929 constitutional president with the term until 31 August 1932. The new constitution, which was adopted on 26 March was, in contrast to earlier Ayoras reign of constitutionally oriented and received, among other habeas corpus rights, led a women's suffrage and improved the legal status of illegitimate children. She led a functional representatives in the Senate of the Ecuadorian Parliament for the press, the field of education and the high-school and university system as well as for agriculture, industry and indigenous population.
On August 10, 1929, the National Congress began its first session since 1925. 1930 a tourism promotion law was first adopted, but has not pursued later term. The government Ayora used many resources on the improvement of water supply, in particular the sewers of Guayaquil.
Overall, the July Revolution was thus institutionalized in part, some were the causes that they triggered, not eliminated. The social problems were not solved, poverty grew by stagnant exports, problems in the cocoa production and after the Great Depression in 1929 even. Amidst the economic crisis lost Ayora in August 1931, the support of the military. War Minister Carlos Guerrero had asked senior officers to sign a statement against Freemasonry. The officers rose up in their barracks, after their leader was deposed and replaced by another, but was captured by the officers of the barracks. Ayora then lost the backing of almost all units. He stepped back and designate its recently appointed Minister of the Interior Colonel Luis Larrea Alba as his successor.
After his fall
Ayora returned first in the medical profession and his private clinic. After acquisition of Hacienda San Antonio in Uyumbicho, he was also the founding president of the Holstein - Friesian Association of Ecuador, which was later used as cattle breeders 'association under the leadership of Plaza Gutierrez ' son Galo Plaza Lasso the powerful association of commercial agriculture. After the death of his wife he lived from 1946 to 1952 with his daughter in the San Fernando Valley in the northern part of Los Angeles. Then he returned to Ecuador back again worked in his private clinic and again in 1957 director of the state Obstetrics and Women's Hospital in Quito. 1955 awarded in the Free University of Berlin honorary doctorate. In 1966 he formed together with Galo Plaza Lasso and Camilo Ponce Enríquez a " commission" recommended as interim president after the military government Clemente Yerovi. Then he pulled completely back into private life.
Today the cities Isidro Ayora wear (formerly Soledad ) in the province of Guayas, and Puerto Ayora in the Galapagos Islands its name.