STRANGE STATESMEN
The body politic
Last month we recalled a speech given by the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Márquez after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, in which he talked of the centrality of the all-powerful military dictator, or caudillo, to the life and legend of his home continent. To illustrate his point, he mentioned three of the strangest such rulers on record, whose lives we have been reviewing here. Márquez’s second autocrat was the writer’s near-namesake General Gabriel García Moreno (1821-1875), a man who, said Márquez, “ruled Ecuador for 16 years as an absolute monarch; at his wake, the corpse was seated on the Presidential chair, decked out in full-dress uniform and a protective layer of medals.” What had Moreno done to deserve such a macabre send-off?
DIARY OF A NOBODY
Unlike most caudillos, General Moreno was very much on the side of the angels. After his death at the hands of an assassin in 1875, Moreno was found to have been keeping a copy of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ
in his pocket, at the back of which had been laid out in list-form the President’s rather extreme and ascetic rules for living a good and useful life in the eyes of the Lord. Among the ways in which the deeply self-abnegating Moreno sought to imitate Christ’s character and eliminate all other aspects of his own natural temperament were the following: “Every morning when saying my prayers I will ask especially for humility… Every hour I will say to myself, ‘I am worse than a demon and Hell should be my dwelling-place’… In my room, never to pray sitting when I can do so on my knees or standing… Practise daily little acts of humility, such as kissing the ground… To rejoice when I or my actions are censured. Never to speak of myself except to show my faults or defects… To make efforts, by thinking of Jesus and Mary, to… go against my natural inclination … To be kind to all… and never to speak ill of my enemies… [To] give myself only to useful and necessary business, and to continue it with zeal and perseverance… and have no intentions in all my actions save the greater glory of God… I will never pass more than an hour in any amusement, and in general never before 8 o’clock in the evening.”
While most weak-willed moderns, even those who share Moreno’s profound Catholic faith, might find all this a little too severe, it is hard to deny that the broad aims listed in Moreno’s personal note to himself were admirable. So eager was he to bear the cross of suffering for his people that in 1873 he actually paraded through the streets of Ecuador bearing a huge cross on his back, in yet another attempt at Imitatio Christi.
WITH GOD ON HIS SIDE
An obscure figure today outside of his homeland, Gabriel García Moreno ranks as one of the founding fathers of the Ecuadorean nation. President from 1861 to 65 and 1869 to 1875, he had just won another term in office prior to being killed – something his many enemies could not stand. To some, he was a hero, donating his salary to the poor; to others, he was a cruel military dictator who repressed the rights of minorities. The dividing-line in your attitude towards Moreno came down to one thing; your parallel attitude towards Catholicism.
Raised by a devotedly Catholic mother, Moreno had once studied theology with an idea of entering the priesthood. However, after becoming an adult he abandoned this plan and temporarily left Ecuador, fleeing its anti-clerical, Liberal-type government and spending time in France, hoping there to study modern science and methods of governance and the effects of rising secularism upon the European psyche. Finding much to admire in Europeans’ higher standards of living and learning, Moreno was in other ways unimpressed by what he saw as a godless and dying civilisation.
After returning home, he joined the opposition Conservative-type party, taking on military rank and command in the forthcoming civil war of 1859/60. Installed as President in 1861, Moreno set about taming the chaos the country had descended into, building much-needed infrastructure, expanding primary education and restoring law and order. By waging war on corruption, and sacking as many useless bureaucrats as possible, he even managed to achieve the fiscal holy grail of building up the national coffers while simultaneously reducing taxation. So why would anyone want to kill him? For one thing, all those corrupt officials who had been sacked had an obvious grudge. For another, there was Moreno’s desire to avoid the slow cultural suicide of Europe by lessening the separation between Church and State established by previous Liberal governments. Wishing to create an ultraCatholic utopia, the new Constitution he introduced in 1869 made Catholicism the only legally recognised religion in Ecuador, and required that both candidates and voters be themselves Catholics in order to participate in subsequent elections, thus effectively ruling out any future Liberal governments forever. As a further repressive measure, secret societies, especially the Freemasons, were banned. This latter edict led to rumours that a global conspiracy of Masons was now out to get Moreno. In reality, many people of a secular, socialist or liberal bent wanted him dead, but the Freemasons were the local bogeymen of the day, and when he was finally killed it was they who got the blame. While the majority of Ecuadoreans, particularly the poor, supported Moreno and his anti-leftist secret
police, his critics accused him, like Milton, of being very much of the Devil’s party without knowing it. “Liberty for everyone and for everything, save for evil and evil-doers” was his mantra; but what if General Moreno’s definition of what constituted ‘evil’ was simply a synonym for ‘non-Catholic’? 4
HE INTENDED TO PARADE THE LEG BEFORE CROWDS OF ONLOOKERS
ANATOMY OF A MURDER
Having already survived six failed attempts on his life, the General was finally murdered by his enemies on 6 August 1875. Moreno’s day in the capital, Quito, began normally enough, with him receiving Communion at 6am Mass as always, then returning home to draft a speech. At 1pm he left on foot for the Presidential Palace, stopping as he climbed its steps to greet one Faustino Rayo, a leatherworker. Rayo had once been dismissed from office by Moreno for corruption, but, typically, the President had later sought to support his more honest endeavours by lending him his custom. Rayo showed little gratitude, however, and rushed forward, slicing at Moreno’s head with a machete. Missing, Rayo managed merely to knock Moreno’s top-hat off, but other conspirators on the scene shot at the General with pistols. The bullets only grazed Moreno, before Rayo severed his left arm and right hand with another machete-slice. “Die, tyrant!” Rayo shouted. “Die, Jesuit!” yelled another murderer. Moreno, expecting to be killed soon anyway, had a noble response prepared for any such insult. “God does not die,” he spluttered, through the haze of blood. “I am only a man who can be killed and replaced, but God does not die!” With that, Moreno staggered forwards and fell off the raised platform of the presidential palace where he had been assaulted, falling 12 feet to his doom as Rayo rushed down after him and rained down yet more blows, severing part of his skull. Amazingly, Moreno still wasn’t quite dead. A nearby soldier shot and killed Rayo, with an angry mob then dragging his corpse through the streets and dumping it in a cesspool. Moreno himself was taken to Quito’s cathedral, where a priest administered the last rites. Asked whether or not he forgave his killers, Moreno indicated that he did, and then promptly died, thus living up to his secret promise to “be kind to all… and never speak ill of my enemies”.
The assassins had hoped that Moreno’s murder would lead to a Liberal revolution, but the bulk of Ecuadoreans loved their pious and incorruptible leader, and a period of general mourning set in. Those who came to pay tribute to their dead caudillo’s body prior to its burial, however, would have been startled to see a surprise guest sitting there in his chair and monitoring proceedings – General Moreno himself. Instead of simply lying him inside a coffin, officials had decided to dress the patched-up corpse in full military uniform, complete with plumed hat and medals, before perching him on public display in a chair in the cathedral’s courtyard; he was protected by an honour guard of five soldiers, who were on hand to make sure no one ran off with a little bit of the president as a souvenir. However, rigor mortis had evidently set in by this point, as photos of the scene clearly show a stifflooking figure with a creepy, toothless rictusgrin on his face; he could more accurately be described as being propped up against the chair like a plank of wood rather than seated in it. In this way, Moreno remained as upright in death as he had been in life. That Sunday, he was deservedly laid to rest within the cathedral itself.
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD
The fact that Moreno expected to be killed one day is no surprise, given the six prior attempts upon his life. Immediately after being re-elected in 1875, he wrote a letter to Pope Pius IX, asking his blessing on account
of the rumour that: “Now the Masonic Lodges of the neighbouring countries, instigated by Germany, are vomiting against me all sorts of atrocious insults and horrible calumnies, now that the Lodges are secretly arranging for my assassination, I have more need than ever of divine protection so that I may live and die in defence of our holy religion and the beloved republic I am called once more to rule.” Furthermore, on 5 August, the day before his assassination, a Catholic priest had begged his way into Moreno’s office to warn him of the plot, but Moreno’s only response had been to say that, if this was so, he had better “prepare myself to appear before God”. Maybe he actually wished to be martyred and thus to suffer in a greater cause, like his beloved Christ. Another reason for Moreno’s sense of fatalism about the matter, however, may have derived from a more unexpected source – the mouth of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) herself.
In the church attached to the Conceptionist Convent of nuns in Quito stands a crowned statue of the BVM, holding both a crosier and the infant Christ. The legend told about the origins of this statue is strange indeed. In 1607 two Spanish friars travelled to Rome, seeking Papal approval for a new Holy Order they wished to form, bringing with them a statue of the Virgin which they claimed had saved them on their journey. Passing through Catalonia, the friars had met with a storm so relentless they thought they would die in it, and prayed to Mary for shelter. A light then appeared in the nearby mountains. It led to a holy cave, made of polished stone and fragrant with invisible blooms. Inside stood a mysterious statue of the BVM, just like the one now in Quito, surrounded by shimmering heavenly radiance. Taking the icon with them, the monks told their tale to Pope Paul V, who granted them the right to found their new Order, placing it under the protection of the statue, which he named ‘Our Lady of Good Success’. The effigy, afterwards displayed within the Royal Hospital of Madrid, became famous for the various miracle cures it supposedly performed. Devotion to the magic statue spread abroad with the expansion of Spain’s New World Empire, including to a group of nuns based in the Quito convent.
One of these nuns, Sister Mariana de Jésus Torres (1563-1635), a stigmatic whose apparently incorrupt body still lies beneath glass in the convent’s church, had numerous visions of religious figures, and is said to have died and resurrected – or fallen insensible in a trance-state – several times. Mariana’s first death came in 1582, when she was called before God’s Judgement Seat and given the choice of remaining in Heaven or returning to Earth to suffer in expiation for the future sins of the 20th century. She chose the latter, having been shown a vision of lapsed modernity that proved most shocking to her sensibilities. She had been having visions of the BVM since the day of her first communion, aged nine, and the two had kept in touch ever since.
One thing the BVM told Mariana out in Quito was that she should have a statue made of her after the model of the original ‘Good Success’ figure found in the Spanish cave, an instruction Mariana followed. However, the chosen artist did not finish his sculpture, the story goes, as at 3am on 16 January 1611, Mariana approached the choir loft where the incomplete statue was kept, seeing it ablaze with angelic light. Then, she saw the Archangels Michael, Raphael and Gabriel appear, together with St Francis of Assisi. They helpfully gave the statue its finishing touches, whereupon it miraculously came to life as the BVM’s spirit descended into it, singing.
Presumably we are dealing with embellished accounts of visionary phenomena here, but, if so, then some of Sister Mariana’s visions seemed to have direct relevance to the life – and death – of General Moreno. Besides warning about the central role Freemasonry would one day play in the decline of global Catholicism, on 16 January 1599 the BVM is said to have again appeared to Mariana and uttered another prophecy: “In the 19th century, there will be a truly Catholic President [in Ecuador], a man of character, whom God, Our Lord, will give the palm of martyrdom on the square adjoining this convent. He will consecrate this Republic to the Sacred Heart of my Most Holy Son, and this consecration will sustain the Catholic Religion in the years that will follow, which will be ill-fated ones for the Church.”
Seeing that this appears to be a fully accurate prediction of the coming presidency of General Moreno (who consecrated Ecuador to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1873), we are left with two options; either this was a genuinely miraculous revelation, or some kind of legend which grew up following Moreno’s assassination in order to steer his Catholic supporters through hard times.
That these were hard times for Ecuador’s Catholics is proven by the fact that, fearing his bones would be desecrated by subsequent anti-clerical governments following his death, in 1883 General Moreno’s body was secretly stolen from its grave in Quito’s cathedral and hidden away in an unknown spot by his family. It remained lost until, with the centenary of his death approaching in 1975, the Ecuadorean Conservative Party set in motion a search for his bones. One Dr Francisco Salazar was given the task of hunting for the corpse, having his first success on 8 April when he found a crystal flask containing Moreno’s preserved heart sealed within a hollow column inside a convent church. Even better, on 14 April Dr Salazar rediscovered Moreno’s complete skeleton, buried beneath floorboards within another convent church, inside a wooden coffin whose lid bore the initials ‘GGM’ in yellow nails. Moreno’s skin had long rotted away, but the velvet cap he was wearing had not, giving his recovered skull a strangely jaunty look. Beneath the cap lay a hole, showing where Rayo’s machete had done its unholy work. The displaced skull-fragment had been kept for posterity and, upon fetching it, Salazar found it fitted perfectly. The Cinderella-like jigsaw was complete and, on 6 August 1975, 100 years to the day after his brutal murder, Moreno’s remains were re-interred within Quito’s cathedral, his wandering bones rehabilitated at last.
In truth, Moreno’s countrymen had never really forsaken him. Although he has not actually been beatified as a saint by the Vatican, the peasant folk of Ecuador continued praying to his soul for decades after his death, with a number of miracles attributed to his direct intervention. Travellers would pray to him as their patron before setting out on dangerous journeys, and the sick claim he has cured them of many ailments. His ghost has also been said to have performed magic tricks, such as making a burnt batch of bread miraculously turn perfectly golden within an oven, and providing people in dire financial need with untraceable cheques from beyond the grave. He is even alleged to have caused poltergeist phenomena, as when a group of housebreakers were chased off one night by “a tremendous crash, like… the collapse of the house”, together with a portrait of Moreno flying around and re-hanging itself in another place of its own accord. Crime-fighting was another speciality of Moreno’s spirit; his apparition is supposed to have popped up and informed victims which particular miscreants had stolen their goods.11
As for his legacy today, the General would doubtless be delighted to hear that Ecuador’s current national leader bears the proud surname of Moreno, too. He might be less pleased to discover that his first name is Lenin.
NEXT TIME – ‘Better Red Than Dead’. Meet the third of Gabriel García Márquez’s surreal and sinister caudillos; the insane, ant-loving Theosophist of El Salvador who turned his homeland red with blood – and cellophane.
The main sources for this article and its quotes were Lady Mary Monica Maxwell-Scott, Gabriel Garcia Moreno: Regenerator of Ecuador, R & T Washburne, 1914 & Fr Augustine Berthe, Garcia Moreno, President of Ecuador, Burns & Oates, 1889. I have also provided more convenient online sources for this same information, though some should be treated with caution. Virtually every account of Moreno’s life available in English is essentially a hagiography, with most contemporary promotion of his cult (and that of Our Lady of Good Success) being performed by Young Pope-like ultra-Catholics of a deeply conservative bent, who enjoy depicting modernity as a Freemason-riddled Hell-pit from which only a return to the values of men like Moreno can save us.
1 Speech online at www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ literature/laureates/1982/marquez-lecture.html
2 Moreno’s full list is available in several places online; for example, www.traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/ A_022br_GarciaMoreno.htm
3 Maxwell-Scott, 1914, p.127
4 Apart from the books of Lady Maxwell-Scott and Fr Berthe, the following provide good short accounts of Moreno’s period of rule, again mostly with a positive, pro-Catholic spin; www.ourladyofgoodsuccess.com/ pages/biography-of-gabriel-garcia-moreno; www. traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_022br_GarciaMoreno. htm; www.newadvent.org/cathen/06379b.htm; www. crisismagazine.com/2012/a-statesman-after-gods-ownheart-gabriel-garcia-moreno; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Gabriel_Garc%C3%ADa_Moreno
5 www.traditioninaction.org/OLGS/A011olgsQuito_ Garcia_1.htm
6 Both quotes cited at https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Gabriel_Garc%C3%ADa_Moreno and www. traditioninaction.org/OLGS/A011olgsQuito_Garcia_1.htm respectively.
7 www.tfp.org/a-victim-for-the-twentieth-century/; www. ourladyofgoodsuccess.com/pages/history; www. michaeljournal.org/articles/roman-catholic-church/item/ our-lady-of-good-success-in-quito-ecuador
8 Cited at www.ourladyofgoodsuccess.com/pages/ biography-of-gabriel-garcia-moreno
9 Given that the BVM used terms such as ‘Freemasons’ and ‘President’ which were unknown at the time (at least in the sense in which she uses them), I would guess it was the latter. The word ‘President’ was first used to refer to a political ruler of a nation in the US Constitution of 1787, whilst Ecuador’s first known Masonic Lodge was established sometime in the 1800s, centuries after the BVM’s speech. The prophecies about Moreno are not mentioned in original editions of Lady Maxwell-Scott’s book of 1914, nor Fr Berthe’s of 1889, so quite when they originated is unclear. It would appear that General Moreno was working on a summary of Sister Mariana’s life before he died, based upon an old 1790 manuscript. After his death, Moreno’s notes and original source material were burned or hidden, but a further set of notes made from these notes by a diligent nun in 1899 stand as the main basis of the story as it is told today. As such, this nun could easily have invented the ‘prophecies’ herself, after Moreno’s assassination had already occurred. (See http://forums.catholic.com/showthread. php?t=598847 and read both pages of the discussion)
10 www.traditioninaction.org/OLGS/A012olgsQuito_ Garcia_2.htm; www.traditioninaction.org/OLGS/ A013olgsQuito_Garcia_3.htm
11 More detailed accounts of Moreno’s miracles are online at www.dolorosapress.com/Favors.pdf together with special invocatory prayers written in his name.
12 Despite his name, Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno doesn’t actually govern as a full-blown Leninist, however – although he did misleadingly campaign as being one, in many commentators’ eyes.