Jose Maria Urvina y Viteri (19 March 1808 – 4 September 1891) was President of Ecuador from 24 July 1851 to 16 October 1856, succeeding Diego Noboa and preceding Francisco Robles.
Biography[]
Jose Maria Urvina was born in Pillaro, Spanish Empire in 1808. He served in the Peruvian Navy during the Gran Colombian-Peruvian War before serving as President Juan Jose Flores' aide-de-camp. He served as Ambassador to New Granada from 1836 to 1837, when he conspired against President Vicente Rocafuerte and led a failed revolt in Riobamba. Urvina was exiled until 1839, when Flores returned to power. In 1845, he acquiesced with the Marcista Revolution against Flores, and he became President of the House of Representatives in 1849. He later influenced the Ecuadorian Army to overthrow the conservative president Manuel de Ascasubi in 1849 and President Diego Noboa in 1851, seizing power as the country's radical liberal dictator. He fought off a Peruvian-backed invasion led by Flores in 1851, manumitted all slaves in Ecuador, became constitutional president in September 1852, expelled the Jesuits from Ecuador, proscribed several of Flores' supporters, banished conservative journalists, negotiated a guano concession treaty with the United States in the Galapagos Islands, and ceded power to Francisco Robles in 1856. He was exiled during the 1859 civil war and lived in Peru, from which he led two invasions of Ecuador, attempting to oust Gabriel Garcia Moreno. He was defeated at the 1865 Battle of Jambeli, but he returned to Ecuador on Garcia's assassination in 1875 and led a revolution against Antonio Borrero that empowered Ignacio de Veintimilla. He became President of the Constituent Assembly in 1878, and he died in 1891.