Juan Maria Montalvo, Ecuadorian Political Activist and Writer

On April 13, 1832, Ecuadorian author Juan Maria Montalvo was born in the provincial town of Ambato.  Montalvo was a leading liberal polemicist who challenged dictators in his native country.  (A polemicists is a person with argumentative and controversial views; in the 21^st century he would be a talk show host on MSNBC.)  When one of the dictators was hacked to death by a vengeful, machete wielding assassin, Montalvo exclaimed that, “My pen killed him.”  Under political pressure, Montalvo spent a number of years in exile, until his death in Paris in 1889.