Eloy Alfaro

José Eloy Alfaro Delgado (1842–1912), affectionately known across Ecuador as El Viejo Luchador ('The Old Fighter'), was an Ecuadorian general and statesman who led the triumphant Liberal Revolution of 1895 and served twice as President of Ecuador (1895–1901, 1906–1911). Spending thirty years in guerrilla struggles and exile, Alfaro fought relentlessly against conservative clerical dominance.

Assuming power in 1895, Alfaro secularized Ecuadorian society: separating Church and State, establishing civil marriage and divorce, creating free secular public schools, and granting women equal access to public employment. His crowning engineering marvel was constructing the Guayaquil and Quito Railway, conquering the sheer cliffs of the Devil's Nose (Nariz del Diablo) in the Andes to unite coastal Guayaquil with the highland capital Quito. Imprisoned during a reactionary military revolt in 1912, he was dragged from García Moreno Prison and murdered by an incited mob in El Ejido park.