Juan de Salinas (November 24, 1755 – August 2, 1810) was a Spanish officer in the latter days of the colonial period in what is now Ecuador. He played a key role in the independence movement as the first military leader of the patriotic militias. Biography Juan de Salinas was born in the town of Sangolqui, near the Ecuadorian capital of Quito, on November 24, 1755. His father was Diego Salinas, a man of Basque descent who was sent to the Americas as governor of Yahuarzongo, and his mother was Maria de Zenitagoya, from a wealthy Quito family. He studied philosophy and law at Santo Tomas University in Quito, but decided to pursue a military career, becoming an officer in President Jose Diguja’s escort. In that capacity he was ordered to pacify the area around Otavalo, which was experiencing an uprising of the indigenous peoples. Returning from this campaign around 1778, he was sent with Apolinar Diez de la Fuente, who had just opened a route from Quito to Quijos in the Amazon, to define the border with Brazil. They reached the Marañón river around April 1780, but Salinas fell ill and had to return to Pevas. Once recovered he spent the next few years exploring the Amazonian jungle, but in 1783 he became ill again and was ordered back to the highlands, where he was stationed in the military garrison of the Royal Audiencia of Quito. In that city he married Maria de la Vega y Nates in 1794. By 1801 he was commanding the military corps stationed in Quito and seemed to be very popular with the troops for his generous character and proven valor. Around 1803 he was sent on a mission that took him and his troops all the way the Isthmus of Panama, where he encountered trouble with the local authorities. On his return to Quito he found a city in conflict, divided into two factions: the capetones, or European-born Spaniards, and the criollos (American-born Spaniards). The criollo elites resented the way in which the Spanish-born were preferred for high-level bureaucratic appointments. Salinas joined the group of local criollos that espoused somewhat liberal ideas of self-government. On December 25, 1808, he went to the meeting that the Marques de Selva Alegre had arranged on his estate in the valley of Chillos. Here the "revolutionary" group decided to establish a Supreme Junta to govern the Royal