José Eloy Alfaro (1842-1912) was an Ecuadorian revolutionary leader and president. He is the great hero of Ecuadorian radicals.

José Eloy Alfaro was born on June 25, 1842, in Montecristi in the coastal province of Manabi. His father, Manuel Alfaro, was a Spaniard who came to the town as a buyer of straw hats and settled down to live with Natividad Delgado, a girl with mixed white, Indian, and African ancestry. They had eight children, and their common-law marriage was legalized through a church wedding in 1863.

Eloy Alfaro was 22 years old when he started his revolutionary career by taking prisoner the governor of the province. From then till 1889, he was constantly engaged in efforts to subvert the successive governments of Ecuador, either as an independent guerrilla leader, as an officer in a bigger revolutionary movement, or as the backer of other revolutionaries. His originally successful business ventures in...