Eloy Alfaro wanted to die?

Much has been said about the barbarous events in which Eloy Alfaro and his closest collaborators were slain at the beginning of the last century. However, little is said of the previous days; of the situation that led to these unfortunate events.

This essay intends to explore briefly, but with historical support, the approach of an Eloy Alfaro who, in order to preserve his ideals over time, sees no other way out than to become a martyr.

As his friend José Peralta would say, in a speech delivered in Panama a few days after the death of the Old Fighter:

Alfaro, without the horrific martyrdom on January 28, 1912, might have been confused with other celebrities. But the same ones who longed to exterminate and annihilate the reformer and the hero, the same ones who desecrated his corpse and reduced him to ashes, have effectively contributed to the immortality of the founder of Ecuadorian liberalism.

Or as Alfaro himself preached:

The martyrs are those who have redeemed the peoples. Without martyrs, there would be no Liberators: they gather the good seed that those sowed and watered with the sacrifice of life.

In this writing we will see how through time General Alfaro talks about the concept of martyrdom and how, in his “Last Trip” he even refuses to escape from his captors when he learns that there was an operation underway to rescue him.

The days before

For those who have not had the opportunity to learn about the events that occurred prior to Alfaro's death, I will do a very brief review below.

Eloy Alfaro was in Panama, exiled. With his 70 years over, he felt physically tired and already with some ailments typical of old age, which was approaching him imminently. He slept after dinner with friends and his breathing was labored, "an obvious sign of a transcendental organic fatigue" [1]. Emotionally he was also a little disappointed and sad. The liberal movement of which he himself had been the flag was divided. To the surprise of many, it is the Liberals themselves who were in power on the date of his death and it is the Liberals themselves, to whom Alfaro had reached out in the past, who were now shouting against him.

Now, many made fun of him, as Roberto Andrade recounts:

"... he was so ill that in El Oro he went to sleep in the camp while talking to his family, and he became the mockery of his soldiers: the cause of this dream was the arteriosclerosis that had plagued him since 1908"

The liberal newspaper El Guante published in 1910 the cartoon that is exposed below, where you can see a crooked Alfaro and lacking in strength.