Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1920 — HAS 2 INDEPENDENCE DAYS [ARTICLE]

HAS 2 INDEPENDENCE DAYS

Republic of Ecuador Celebrates August i Tenth and October Ninth as National Holidays. The Republic of Ecuador celebrates two national holidays, and both are days,” according to the Pan-American Union. I The liberty-loving patriots had to shoot two bilts at Spanish domination before they succeeded in gaining per1 manent independence. The first time they had a quiet but determined revolution in Quito, the present capital of the republic, the patriots assembling at the house of Manuela Canizares, a brave and beautiful woman, on August 5, 1809, when they prepared their declaration of independence and chose the officials who were to compose the provisional government. That night the conspirators gathered their forces In different parts of the city and Cuptain Salinas, who commanded the two companies of regular troops that guarded the .city, went to their barracks, read to them the declaration and won them over to the cause of the patriots. They overpowered the bodyguard of Ruiz de Castilla, the Spanish governor, early on the jnorning of August 10 and thus established the first republic without shedding a drop of blood. It lasted only about a year, when Castilla succeeded in overthrowing the patriotic government and again brought the country under Spanish dominion. The fires of liberty had been kindled, however, and the Ecuadoreans kept up their heroic struggle, notwithstanding many reverses, until in 1820 the people of Guayaquil, the leading seaport of the country, succeeded in rebelling on the ninth of October. With the aid of Gen. Simon Bolivar, the great Venezuelan emancipator, and of his compatriot, Gen. Antonio Jose Sucre, the Ecuadoreans, after many bloody battles, succeeded in completely annihilating the Spanish forces and established freedom in Ecuador forever. Therefore it Is that the Ecuadoreans celebrate two “independence days," the tenth of August and the ninth of October. /