He attended high school at Colegio San Gabriel and obtained a JD (Doctorate in Jurisprudence) from the Central University of Ecuador.

Velasco Ibarra traveled through several Latin American countries, including Peru, and restored Ecuador's global image.

He stood again in the 1940 election and was defeated by the Radical Liberal Party candidate Carlos Arroyo del Río by a small margin.

Arroyo del Río lacked Velasco Ibarra's popularity and public support, which indicated that there had been a fraud.

Velasco Ibarra built his coalition using the rhetoric of moral reform, calling for the virtuous common people to rise against the corrupt and selfish oligarchy.

In 1960, he nullified the Rio de Janeiro Protocol, which led to conflicts between Ecuador and Peru, including Paquisha in 1981 and the War of El Cenepa in 1995.

This government ended abruptly on February 15, 1972, when once more he was deposed in a bloodless coup, which brought General Guillermo Rodríguez Lara to power.

The events surrounding the end of his fifth and last presidency are dealt with in Philip Agee's book Inside the Company: A CIA Diary.

In office he was not responsible for major reforms, but he used patronage effectively to maintain his largely inefficient and corrupt administrations.

Following Agustin Cueva, several authors have argued that in the midst of a hegemonic crisis Velasco rose to power on the votes of the coastal sub-proletariat, peasants who had migrated to urban centres as the cacao industry dwindled.

He decreed the law of weekly days off for workers, ordered the construction of irrigation canals, educational infrastructure, aircraft fields, and highways.