Camilo Ponce Enriquez
Camilo Ponce Enríquez (Quito, January 31, 1912-Quito, September 13, 1976) was a jurist and prominent Ecuadorian politician. He was President of Ecuador from 1956 to 1960.
Biography
Camilo was born in Quito on January 31, 1912, to Mr. José Ricardo Ponce and Mrs. Ana Luisa Enríquez Vélez.
His primary studies were at the prestigious Borja Pensionado in his hometown and his secondary studies at the San Gabriel School in Quito, run by the Jesuit fathers.
He began his career in jurisprudence at the Central University of Ecuador and completed it at the University of Chile, where he received his law degree with great honors.
He also did postgraduate studies at the University of Southern California.
Marriage and offspring
Around 1940 he married the restorer and art collector Dolores Gangotena y Jijón, who would give him five children:
- Camilo Ponce Gangotena. divorced from Adela de Jesus María de la Paz Tobar, with descent.
- Enrique Ponce Gangotena.
- Margarita Ponce Gangotena.
- Inés Clara Ponce Gangotena.
- Dolores Ponce Gangotena.
Political activity
From a very young age he embraced a political career and devoted himself to public life. The political vocation was not foreign to his family, since his paternal grandfather, Camilo Ponce Ortiz, was a leading figure in the Ecuadorian conservative party in the century XIX, in which he was several times minister, legislator and twice a candidate for the presidency. In 1939 Ponce Enríquez was founder and general secretary of the National Front that fought for the implementation of free suffrage in Ecuador and later also of the Ecuadorian Democratic Alliance (ADE), of which he was one of its main leaders, who led the Revolution of May 28, 1944 known as "La Gloriosa", which put an end to the government of Dr. Carlos Alberto Arroyo del Río, which was totally discredited by the territorial debacle of 1941, and put Dr. José María Velasco Ibarra in the Presidency for the second time. The latter appointed the young Ponce Enríquez (32 years old) as his Chancellor and as such he had the honor of signing, on behalf of Ecuador, the Charter of San Francisco that created the United Nations Organization.
With a growing political image, he had previously been elected Vice President of the Municipal Council of Quito, in 1946 he was elected deputy for the Province of Pichincha to the Constituent Assembly, which appointed him Vice President of the same. He was briefly minister of public works in the government of Mariano Suárez Veintimilla and in 1951, together with Sixto Durán Ballén and other young politicians and professionals of Christian orientation, they founded the Christian Social Movement (MSC), which would later become the Christian Social Party. (PSC). He was elected functional senator for agriculture, but given his political standing and presence, Velasco Ibarra appointed him government minister during his third term (1952-1956), which thanks to Ponce Enríquez is the only one of the five that Velasco Ibarra appointed him. culminates without being overthrown. As a government minister, who in reality was equivalent to a prime minister, Ponce Enríquez accuses a closed opposition of liberals and socialists who challenge him politically in the National Congress on two occasions.
He was a candidate for the following presidential elections, in which he narrowly won the young liberal Raúl Clemente Huerta, in the 1956 Ecuadorian presidential elections.
Presidency
His mandate (1956-1960), despite the skepticism of many, would try to be an example of tolerance and citizen freedoms until shortly before the end, when it would be marred by the sad events of June 1959, in which the repression would leave a tragic balance of several hundred dead in Guayaquil. It was also an administration that left the country considerable public works. Ponce administered the country with austerity and promoted its development at all levels. His legacy in infrastructure and public works is visible to this day: the buildings of the Legislative Palace, the Chancellery, the Social Security Institute, the Hotel Quito, the university residences, the airports of Quito and Guayaquil, the restoration of the Palace of Government and the chapter house of San Agustín, the Maritime Port of Guayaquil (buildings, docks, docks, warehouses), considered upon completion as the best on the Pacific coast of South America, the Model Stadium, the beginning of the National Unity Bridge, the Las Juntas bridge, the Agoyán tunnel, the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL), etc.
It provided the Armed Forces with buildings, bases and equipment. He was tireless in the road work of roads, bridges, tunnels and in telecommunications and ports. And in the social sphere he promulgated unemployment insurance for private employees and workers. A social transformation could not be expected from him; but he covered the mouths of his adversaries with operational efficiency, the separation of Church and State and a government that attempted to balance the influences of the regional oligarchies of the Sierra and the Coast. He consolidated the institutions of formal democracy, gave air to political parties and knew how to appear greater than the opposition of locals and strangers.
At the end of his term, he constitutionally handed over power, to close a period of democratic stability that the country had not had in many years and he stayed away from politics for a few years, until he returned to oppose the military dictatorship that took place. established in 1963. He actively participated in the return to democracy and intervened again as a presidential candidate in 1968, in which after a close campaign, he was defeated by a few votes by Velasco Ibarra. From then on his personal political activity declined, but his doctrinal and ideological legacy would remain through the Social Christian Party, which would be a decisive electoral force in the years that followed the democratic return of 1979. Camilo Ponce Enríquez died in Quito on December 13. September 1976. His tomb is located in the National Pantheon of Heads of State.
Student massacre of 1959
Ponce's black November occurred in June of his third year in office. After the suicide of the conscript Pablo García Macías as a result of the mistreatment meted out by Captain Galo Quevedo, the people of Portoviejo revolted and lynched the captain. The people were repressed. It was May 28, 1959. Banana exports had dropped and there was unemployment. Guayaquil students declared a solidarity strike with Portoviejo on June 2, in which they asked for the resignation of several government officials. The demonstrations turned violent and were vehemently repressed. Several students died on the spot, most of whose bodies were hidden by the police force. This generated more popular outrage. University students and unemployed people joined the cause, attacking and killing several police officers between June 2 and 3. Looting also began, starting with the mayor's house. On June 3, after the bodies of six of the murdered students were rescued and buried, the protesters tried to set fire to the Model Police Barracks and then the security headquarters, the core of the Poncista investigation. Meanwhile, infiltrated criminals who took advantage of the situation looted the pawnshop and aggravated the chaos in the city. President Camilo Ponce then decreed Martial Law, after which the Army tanks that had gathered in Guayaquil the day before, supported by the Navy, received the order from Colonel Luis Ricardo Piñeiros, transmitted by the president himself, to open fire against the crowd. The military artillery had anti-aircraft machine guns that fired at everyone in the streets. The shooting lasted several hours. Official data spoke of 16 dead and 89 injured, however eyewitness sources affirm that the dead were several hundred, between 500 and 800, depending on the sources.
Another testimony captured in a letter written to Alejandro Carrión, director of La Calle magazine, by the brother of a deceased person, Julio Enrique Plúas Manzano, it is confirmed that the army's action was brutal.
- Mr. Carrión, one thing is to relate the facts and another, to have seen them personally. Hundreds of corpses, collected in army trucks as simple things, my being is shaken by remembering the mortal chanting of machine guns mainly the “El Sol” shopping center. A tank was parked on the corner of 10 August and Morro (Almacén Internacional) and the death was sown; seventy or eighty bodies, the shells drilled and crossed the walls of the warehouse. The corpses were buried in mass graves in various places, others dumped into the water cutting the belly. All these data are true and are not the work of fantasy or passion. On the night of the 3rd from 9am, I walked all over the place of the tragic events, with a military pass signed by Captain Colon Alvarado and other times uniformed firefighter and saw between 500 to 800 corpses.
Ponce later stated:
"... Guayaquil was on the verge of destruction.... I... had to face them, deserving the applause of the most representative of Guayaquil and the justification of the Congress... I ordered the public force to save Guayaquil... and I would do it again in analogous circumstances.".
He also stated that those killed during the police action were "thugs and prostitutes". About these events, little has been revealed from reliable sources. Ponce Enríquez himself positioned the facts in this way before public opinion, thus closing all possibilities for any type of investigation. The real number of deaths was never known, nor were their names, much less those responsible.
If the version that states that the dead exceeded 500 is taken, the 1959 massacre would become the worst massacre perpetrated by the State in all of Republican history. It would surpass in victims the Massacre of workers of November 15, 1922 and that of Aztra in 1977, being only surpassed by the Liberal Revolution. Several academics and historians marvel at how these events have been silenced by the media.
Ministers of State
Other activities
Ponce Enríquez stood out as an important farmer and promoter of initiatives such as Editorial La Unión, which would publish the newspaper El Tiempo, with important circulation for several decades in Ecuador. He was also a professor of Constitutional Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador.
Decorations and merits
- Gran Collar de la Orden Nacional de San Lorenzodesignated as Grand Master of the Order of highest rank in Ecuador, presided by the president of the Republic of turn and that he himself reacted. In fact, during his presidency the Order of the Great Cross of San Lorenzounder the name of National Order of San Lorenzo as part of the commemorative celebrations at 150 years of the pregnancy of August 10, 1809. This decoration was restored by executive decree N°1329 of 10 August 1959, and was published in the Official Register N°923 of 19 September of that same year, acknowledging also the first ones decorated by the Government Board chaired by Montúfar.
| Predecessor: Carlos Arroyo del Río |  (Invoice Government) 28 May 1944 - 1 June 1944 | Successor: Velasco Ibarra |
| Predecessor: Francisco Guarderas | 31 May 1944 - 30 July 1945 | Successor: José Vicente Trujillo |
| Predecessor: José María Velasco Ibarra | 1 September 1956 - 1 September 1960 | Successor: José María Velasco Ibarra |
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