Editing History of Ecuador (section)

===Ecuadorian War of Independence (1820-1822)===
{{main|Ecuadorian War of Independence}}

[[File:Jose Antonio de Sucre.JPG|thumb|250px|General Antonio José de Sucre, Commander In Chief, ''División del Sur''.]]
The second chapter in Ecuador's struggle for emancipation from Spanish colonial rule began in Guayaquil, where independence was proclaimed in October 1820 by a local patriotic junta under the leadership of the poet [[José Joaquín de Olmedo]]. By this time, the forces of independence had grown continental in scope and were organized into two principal armies, one under the Venezuelan [[Simón Bolívar]] in the north and the other under the Argentine [[José de San Martín]] in the south. Unlike the hapless Quito junta of a decade earlier, the Guayaquil patriots were able to appeal to foreign allies, Argentina and Gran Colombia, each of whom soon responded by sending sizable contingents to Ecuador. [[Antonio José de Sucre]], the brilliant young lieutenant of Bolívar who arrived in Guayaquil in May 1821, was to become the key figure in the ensuing military struggle against the royalist forces.

After a number of initial successes, Sucre's army was defeated at Ambato in the central Sierra and he appealed for assistance from San Martín, whose army was by now in Peru. With the arrival from the south of 1,400 fresh soldiers under the command of [[Andrés de Santa Cruz|Andrés de Santa Cruz Calahumana]], the fortunes of the patriotic army were again reversed. A string of victories culminated in the decisive [[Battle of Pichincha]].

Two months later Bolívar, the liberator of northern South America, entered Quito to a hero's welcome. Later that July, he met San Martín at the [[Guayaquil conference]] and convinced the Argentine general, who wanted the port to return to Peruvian jurisdiction, and the local Criollo elite in both major cities of the advantage of having the former Quito Audiencia join with the liberated lands to the north. As a result, Ecuador became the District of the South within the Republic of Gran Colombia, which also included present-day [[Venezuela]] and [[Colombia]] and had Bogotá as its capital. This status was maintained for eight tumultuous years.