deliriouslove1970. The life & times of Gary and Denise Flanders. (Free and worth every penny. If you would like to compliment the editor, send to garytheflan@deliriouslove1970.com. If you would like to complain, call your mother.)

The Republic of Ecuador (aka Ecuador). A country in the northwest corner of South America. The Galápagos Islands are a part of this country. It is bordered by Columbia to the north, Peru to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Amerindians have inhabited this area of South America for thousands of years. The Spanish colonized Ecuador until independence in 1830.

The flag is a simple equal horizontal bands of Yellow (crops and fertile soil), Blue (Ocean and clear skies) and Red (the blood spilled by the heroes gaining sovereignty.) The final adoption of the flag was on September 26, 1860. It is strikingly similar to the flags of Columbia and Venezuela. In 1900 the official national flag added the Ecuadorian Coat of Arms in the middle.

Today is the birthday of Simone Bolivar. Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios^[c] (24 July 1783 – 17 December 1830) was a Venezuelan statesman and military officer who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Boliviato independence from the Spanish Empire. He is known colloquially as El Libertador, or the Liberator of America.

The Spanish and Portuguese had divided up all of South America and significant sections of North America into ‘Viceroyalties’.

Bolívar began his military career in 1810 as a militia officer in the Venezuelan War of Independence, fighting Royalist forces for the first and second Venezuelan republics and the United Provinces of New Granada. After Spanish forces subdued New Granada in 1815, Bolívar was forced into exile on Jamaica. In Haiti, Bolívar met and befriended Haitian revolutionary leader Alexandre Pétion. After promising to abolish slavery in Spanish America, Bolívar received military support from Pétion and returned to Venezuela. He established a third republic in 1817 and then crossed the Andes to liberate New Granada in 1819. Bolívar and his allies defeated the Spanish in New Granada in 1819, Venezuela and Panama in 1821, Ecuador in 1822, Peru in 1824, and Bolivia in 1825. Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, and Panama were merged into the Republic of Colombia (Gran Colombia), with Bolívar as president there and in Peru and Bolivia. He promoted the integration of the newly independent countries through mergers or by way of alliance treaties, in order to avoid that they could be reconquered or become the prey of stronger nations, a purpose in which he eventually failed.

Simone Bolivar still considered El Libertador of Ecuador.