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Ecuador accepted the Constitution of Colombia in the Cabildo Ampliado of September 21 1826, calling it <<that bud of freedom and root of the true government of the countries>>, and the government declared the province Department of the Republic with Loja as the capital and four other provinces: Loja, Zaruma, Zamora and Yaguarzongo and the three cities of Saraguro, Catacocha and Cariamanga. General don Manuel Ignacio de Carrion y Valdivieso presided the great assembly.

Three years later Peru invaded Ecuador with an army headed by Great Marshall don Jose de la Mar y Cortazar, in the tragic campaign against its liberators, which ended in the battle of Tarqui, where the Great Marshall Sucre destroyed the invader forces and saved the integrity of Colombia, invaded by Peru and without any kind of defense. General Carrion y Valdivieso, Governor of the Province, deserved the recognition of the Congress of 1830, in which the first President of the new Republic of Ecuador was elected, after the dissolution of Gran Colombia: the only vote that was not in favor of the winner, General Juan Jose Flores, was the one named by Vicente Rocafuerte in behalf of General Carrion.  One of the most cruel chapters of this war took place in the province of Loja, in the Canton of Saraguro, where the troops of Colombia and Ecuador again defeated the Peruvian army. General Luis Urdaneta defeated them and took them as prisoners at the break of the day. Pedro Fermin Cevallos, the great historian, ends his narration of this war by saying; Unfortunately, the triumph was spoiled with the burning of the small Ecuadorian city of Saraguro, ordered by General Urdaneta, with the excuse of its having favored the enemies. In the same way, the Peruvian army, first, and the Colombian one later, ransacked the province of Loja, common at the time, since it was almost impossible to maintain the discipline of the hungry soldiers after the exhausting and long war.

No province in Ecuador has suffered so much taunt, in compensation of her disinterested services to the country, as the Province of Loja. Not only, in this occasion it had been the burning of Saraguro, the robbery and the assault of small towns, but the contribution of 16,000 pesos in gold and 2,000 heads of bovine cattle which was imposed by Colombia for maintaining the army, followed by an additional one of 500 heads of cattle and 600 mules. In l94l, the province of Loja was invaded again by Peru, who was then warring with Ecuador. The invaders took for a while Macara and Zapotillo, burnt part of both towns and shot the Comissary of Macara, don Sebastian Valdivieso. Besides all this, they bombarded Cariamanga. The damages suffered during the campaign were enormous.

After the Peruvian invasion, 1859-60, and the imposition of the infamous Treaty of Mapasingue, Ecuador was in a civil war and in an anarchical situation. Administrative Power was then divided in three governments: the one of Quito with doctor Gabriel Garcia Moreno; the one of Guayaquil-Cuenca with General Guillermo Franco and the one of Loja, with don Manuel Carrion Pinzano.  This is the one we are interested in here. The Peruvian danger for Loja and its Province was considerable: the Republic already invaded, it will be a matter of time for the entry of the Peruvian army in the Province. Loja resolved the problem of her integrity and of the integrity of the Republic in what concerns her territory in a very original way: it proclaimed itself a Federal entity, an autonomous Federal Province, within the Ecuadorian state. The 18 of November of 1859 the main families met in the Town House under the presidency of doctor Agustin Riofrio and Peralta and appointed Manuel Carrion Pinzano as the Civil and Military Chief, who subsequently convoked a new Assembly on September 19th. This Assembly, presided over by Isidro Viteri in view of the fact that << this Province faces the necessity of having to govern itself by itself, because the Constitutional Government of the Republic has disappeared>>, decided to constitute itself into a federal entity. The Governor of the Province, Jose Maria Jauregui and Colonel Harris. Commander of the Army resigned and gave all powers to Carrion, who started to exercise them with a firm hand and with a clear understanding of the political moment.

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