Juan Montalvo

Born Apr. 13, 1832, in Ambato, Ecuador; died Jan. 1, 1889, in Paris. Ecuadorian writer and journalist.

Montalvo studied law at the Central University of Ecuador in Quito. After the reactionary coup d’etat of 1869, he headed the liberal opposition. Montalvo lived as an emigre in Colombia and France. He was important to Ecuadorian literature as the creator of antityrannical political prose and as a brilliant stylist. Montalvo published his works in antigovernment newspaper-leaflets, which he printed himself; for example, El Cosmopolita (1866–69), in which he condemned despotism and corruption, the military dictatorship, and the crimes of the church and the ruling classes. Montalvo’s essays Seven Treatises (1882) and Moral Geometry (published 1902), which combined militant journalism with romantic individualism, were important for the development of social thought in Latin America. Montalvo was one of the first in Ecuador to defend the rights of the Indians.