Los orígenes de la revolución de Quito en 1809

Abstract

The Quito Revolution of 1809 was not a movement for independence. Rather, it was a local reaction to the crisis of the Spanish Monarchy. The Quito movement, like those in the Peninsula and the rest of America, sought to safeguard the Monarchy from the French usurpers. This article focuses on the factors that led to the formation of the 1809 junta and its eventual demise. Quito’s eighteenthcentury economic and political decline and its failure to achieve autonomous status within the Spanish Monarchy shaped the 1809 movement. The crisis of the Monarchy provided the leaders of Quito an opportunity to form an autonomous junta that would free it from the authority of Nueva Granada and Peru. Their plan, which threatened the interests of the other provinces, let to a civil war that ended in Quito’s defeat.