Word: plazas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Before the eyes of diplomats, generals and other men of distinction gathered in Quito's ornate Sucre National Theater last week, Manhattan-born Galo Plaza Lasso took off his yellow, blue and red presidential sash. For the first time since 1924, a constitutionally elected President of Ecuador had served out his full four-year term and was passing the emblem of office to a constitutionally elected successor. The sash had fitted husky ex-Athlete (University of California) Plaza a lot better than it fitted bony Scholar (international law, political theory) Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, Ecuador's new chief...
There was sharp contrast, too, in the two men's speeches. Plaza spoke briefly, sat down smiling. Velasco soon wiped the genial smile off Plaza's face. In a rasping 14,000-word oration, he declared that he was taking over "a country in very bad shape," and directly or indirectly accused Plaza & Co. of corruption and incompetence. He called for price controls, public works, aid to agriculture, and virtually unlimited authority for himself...
Velasco's speech was enough to stir disquieting memories. His ill-timed, ungracious attack on Plaza's administration and his naked demand for special power sounded like the crotchety, irascible, impatient Velasco of old. In two earlier terms as President (1934-35, 1944-47), Velasco swung bewilderingly between left & right, flouted constitutions, railed unceasingly at "politicos with mouse minds" who "put banana peels in my way." He got the permanent nickname el loco (the loony), and finally made so many enemies that he was driven from office and packed into exile both times...
...gibbet has long since given way to a graceful fountain, but Pizarro's spirit still inhabits the Plaza de Armas. His mummy, bones protruding through dark yellow skin, lies in a glass case in the cathedral. Lima's charter, kept in the city hall, shows the double loop the illiterate conqueror used as a signature. The fig tree he planted at the palace still lives. In 1935, there was added a 22-foot statue of Pizarro on horseback, which dominated the plaza from a lofty pedestal rising out of the cathedral's steps...
...palace, created a small park plainly in need of embellishment. So they simply sent around a crane which plucked the 6½-ton statue of Pizarro from its old base and set it in the park. The conqueror's bronze eyes are still within eyeshot of the plaza he founded, but, as one of his defenders indignantly protested, "they have shoved him from the parlor to the basement...