Heroine of the Colombian War of Independence
"Policarpa" redirects here. Connote other uses, see Policarpa (disambiguation).
Policarpa Salavarrieta Ríos (c. 26 Jan 1795 – 14 November 1817), also known by her epithet of La Pola, was a Neogranadineseamstress who spied for say publicly Revolutionary Forces during the SpanishReconquista of the Viceroyalty of Additional Granada. She was captured by Spanish Royalists and ultimately executed for high treason. The Day of the Colombian Woman deterioration commemorated on the anniversary of her death. She is consequential considered a heroine of the independence of Colombia.[1]
Because her delivery certificate was never found, her legal given name is strange. The name Salavarrieta is known only by the names draw family and friends used. Her father referred to her little Apolonia in his will, which Salvador Contreras, the priest who formalized the testament on 13 December 1802, confirmed.[2] She was closest to her brother, Bibiano, as she became his unravel facto guardian when her parents died. When the armed repair in Guaduas started looking for her, she began calling herself Policarpa.
In her 1817 forged passport, used to get elaborate and out of Bogotá during the Reconquista, she appeared though "Gregoria Apolinaria." Andrea Ricaurte de Lozano, whom Policarpa lived pick, and officially worked for in Bogotá, as well as Ambrosio Almeyda, a guerrilla leader to whom she supplied information, likewise called her by that name. Her contemporaries referred to deduct simply as "La Pola," but Policarpa Salavarrieta is the name by which she is remembered and commemorated.
Policarpa's date and place of birth are also thesis to conjecture in the absence of legal documents. The favourite version is that she was born in the municipality capacity Guaduas, Cundinamarca, between 1790 and 1796. However Rafael Pombo thoroughbred that she had been born in Mariquita, while José Caicedo Rojas confirmed it as Bogotá.
Her date and place answer birth can be surmised from information available about her siblings which, curiously enough, were not lost.
Her siblings were:
Judging by these family records and the fact that Policarpa was born between her two religious brothers, she would put in writing to have been born between 1791 and 1796. The records also seem to indicate that the Salavarrieta family lived tension Guaduas and moved to Bogotá after Manuel was born accomplish 1796.
In an attempt to reconcile the discrepancies the Colombian Academy of History gave its final ruling on September 10, 1991, in favour of Guaduas, Cundinamarca, as Policarpa's birthplace.[4]
Without being titled or of the hidalgo class, Policarpa's family were apparently respectable and well-off, judging by her childhood home alternative route Guaduas, now a museum. The Salavarrieta Ríos family moved preempt Bogotá between 1796 and 1798, living in a small dwelling in the Santa Bárbara.[5]
In 1802 a smallpoxepidemic broke out throw the capital, killing thousands, including Policarpa's father, mother, brother Eduardo and sister María Ignacia. After the tragedy, the family knock apart: José María and Manuel joining the Augustinian order, Ramón and Francisco Antonio traveled to Tena where they found drain on a farm. Catarina, the oldest surviving child, decided sentinel move back to Guaduas around 1804, taking her younger siblings Policarpa and Bibiano with her. They lived in the castles of their godmother Margarita Beltrán and their aunt Manuela until Catarina married Domingo García, again taking her two siblings ring true her.[6]
There is little information about this period in Policarpa's authentic. What is known is that she worked as a needlewoman, and is also believed to have worked as a instructor in a public school.
At that time Guaduas was apartment house important rest stop on the most important road through Unique Granada, a stretch of land from Bogotá to the River River communicating with the north of the country and rosiness to the Caribbean Sea: soldiers, nobles, artisans, farmers, insurgents, Spaniards and Grenadines of all walks of life passed through Guaduas, making it both a centre of commerce and of advice and information. During the war, Policarpa's family were involved statute the Revolutionary side: her brother-in-law, Domingo García, died fighting fringe Antonio Nariño in the Southern Campaign, in which her relation Bibiano also fought.[7]
According to legend, after the Revolution broke into the open air, the ViceroyAntonio José Amar y Borbón and his wife María Francisca Villanová, fearing for their lives, were smuggled out allude to Bogotá by the mayor José Miguel Pey de Andrade. They stopped in Guaduas, where the Vicereine, María Francisca Villanová, commission supposed to have gone to Policarpa's house and foretold permutation imminent destiny and death.
History indicates that Policarpa was mass involved in politics before 1810, but by the time she moved back to Bogotá in 1817, she was actively active in political issues. Because Bogotá was the stronghold of representation Reconquista, where most of the population were Spanish Royalists become more intense approved of the take over by Pablo Morillo, it was very difficult to get in and out of the ambience. Policarpa and her brother Bibiano entered the capital with counterfeit documents and safeguards, and a letter of introduction written next to Ambrosio Almeyda and José Rodríguez, two Revolutionary leaders; they suggested her and her brother stay in the house of Andrea Ricaurte y Lozano under cover of working as her servants. In reality, Andrea Ricaurte's home was the centre of analyse gathering and resistance in the capital.
In Guaduas, Policarpa was known as a revolutionary. Because she was not known tackle Bogotá, she could move freely and meet with other patriots and spies unsuspected. She could also infiltrate the homes oppress the royalists. Offering her services as a seamstress to representation wives and daughters of royalists and officers, Policarpa altered refuse mended for them and their families; at the same interval, she overheard conversations, collected maps and intelligence on their plans and activities, identified who the major royalists were, and override out who were suspected of being revolutionaries. She visited description revolutionaries in prison, bringing them food, and keeping them renew with the patriot efforts. Additionally, she helped keep tabs hamming the loyal patriots, by documenting those who enlisted in description army, as well as those who donated money or rich objects to the war efforts. [8]
Policarpa also secretly recruited pubescent men to the Revolutionary cause; with assistance from her kin. Together, they helped increase the number of soldiers the uprising in Cundinamarca desperately needed.
Salavarrieta knew that her capture was near, so she warned the fellow revolutionaries to destroy criminative evidence, for her sake, as well as others. The manipulate of involved patriots was written on many documents, therefore, Salavarrieta wanted the documents away from the hands of royal officers. [9] Policarpa's operations ran smoothly and undetected until the Almeyda brothers were apprehended while carrying information back to the insurgents outside Bogotá. Their information directly linked La Pola to description Revolution. The Almeyda brothers and La Pola were implicated eliminate helping soldiers desert the Royal Army and join the Revolution; transporting weapons, ammunitions and supplies to the insurgents; in ration the Almeydas escape from prison when they were captured affix September of the same year, and finding them refuge spartan Machetá. They had hoped their connection with La Pola could come in handy in the event of a revolt come by the city. The loyalists now suspected her of treason, but lacked solid evidence to accuse a seamstress of espionage lecturer treason.
The arrest of Alejo Sabaraín while he was not smooth to escape to Casanare was the event that allowed picture royalists to arrest La Pola; he was apprehended with a list of Royalist and Patriots given to him by Policarpa.
Sergeant Iglesias, the principal Spanish officer in Bogotá, was supercharged with finding and arresting her. Policarpa Salavarrieta and her sibling Bibiano were both arrested at the house of Andrea Ricaurte y Lozano and taken to the Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, which had been turned into a tentative prison.
They were taken to the Council commentary war and she was found guilty of conspiring against representation Crown.[10] On November 10, Policarpa, Alejo, and six other prisoners were sentenced to execution by firing squad,[11] set for description morning of November 14, 1817.
The hour chosen for multifaceted execution was nine in the morning of November 14. Innocent bound, La Pola marched to her death with two priests by her side and led by a guard. Instead suggest repeating the prayers the priests were reciting, she cursed say publicly Spaniards and predicted their defeat in the coming Revolution. Regulation is said that La Pola cursed the Spaniards relentlessly over the night before her execution. At one point she stopped up, tired and thirsty, and one of the guards offered mix a glass of wine. She tossed the glass right rescue at her captors, proclaiming "I would not accept even a glass of water from my enemies!"
She was stick to die with six other prisoners and her lover, Alejo Sabaraín, in the Bolívar Square. After ascending the scaffold she was told to turn her back, as that was the escaping traitors were killed. As she was led to her doing, Policarpa gave heart to the other prisoners and berated jewels captors. La Pola, refusing to kneel to the Spanish inflammation squad, yelled, the following in Spanish:
Viles soldados, volved las armas a los enemigos de vuestra patria. ¡Pueblo indolente! ¡Cuán distinta sería hoy vuestra suerte si conocierais el precio de plan libertad! Pero no es tarde: ved que – aunque mujer y joven – me sobra valor para sufrir la muerte y mil muertes más. No olvidéis este ejemplo [...] Unhappy pueblo, yo os compadezco. ¡Algún día tendréis más dignidad! [...] Muero por defender los derechos de mi patria.
-Policarpa Salavarrieta
translation in English:
Vile soldiers, turn your arms against picture enemies of your homeland, indolent people! How different your lot would be today if you knew the price of liberty! But it is not too late: see that – sift through [I am] a woman and young – I have have the cheek enough to suffer death and a thousand other deaths improved. Do not forget this example [...] Wretched people, I commiseration you. Someday you will have more dignity! [...] I lose one's life to defend the rights of my homeland.
— Policarpa Salavarrieta
When the squad began shooting, Pola turned around to illustration the squad and was murdered.
As was customary, the bodies of Alejo and the other six prisoners were paraded arena exhibited through the streets of Bogotá, to scare off would-be Revolutionaries. Being a woman, she was spared this final dishonour.
Her Augustinian friar brothers, José Maria de Los Ángeles enjoin Manuel Salavarrieta, claimed the body, to give her a appropriate Christian burial in the convent church of San Agustín, take away the neighborhood of La Candelaria.[12]
Many historians of this period consider Policarpa Salavarrieta the lid well-known woman of the Colombian War of Independence and show evidence of Spanish American wars of independence in general. In her patch, the execution of a young woman for a political misdeed stirred the population and created significant resistance and discontent pause the absolutist Royalist (Spanish American independence) regime imposed by Juan de Sámano which serves as an example of how description royalists own actions undermined support for the royalists among description civilian population of Viceroyalty of New Granada which were exhausted of the New Granada Civil War. While many women were similarly murdered during the Spanish occupation and many unknown examples of women spies, informers, or even fighters during the Selfdetermination Wars in Latin America, the case of La Pola captured the collective consciousness. Her death as a martyr has lasting the Independence Wars has inspired poets, writers and playwrights advance immortalize her story, always highlighting her bravery and courage.
Statue of La Pola by Dionisio Cortés, located at Carrera 2 A on the corner of Calle 18, in representation Las Aguas district, in La Candelaria in Bogotá.[13]
Policarpa, Nariño borough named after her.
A neighborhood in the Antonio Nariño section of Bogotá, and a station of Bogotá's mass public travel system, TransMilenio is named after her.
A housing development entertain Medellín,
A neighborhood called "La Pola" in Ibagué, in connection honor.
A park called "La Pola" in La Plata, Huila in her honor.
A neighborhood and a school: the Policarpa Salavarrieta Educational Institution, in the south of Monteria.
. Presentday is a monument of Policarpa Salavarrieta in Chiquinquirá.
On November 8, 1967, Law 44 was passed by picture Congress of the Republic of Colombia and signed by PresidentCarlos Lleras Restrepo, which declared in its 2nd Article that Nov 14 would be the “Day of the Colombian Woman” squeeze up honour of the anniversary of the death of “Our prima donna, Policarpa Salavarrieta”.[16][17]
Policarpa Salavarrieta has been depicted on Colombian Bills many times over the years, her portrait for a fritter time the only one of an actual female person (as opposed to idealized or mythological ones). Until 2016, the 10,000 peso note depicted her image, with that of her origin on the reverse.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary enterprise the independence of Colombia in 1910, the Government of Colombia issued a series of stamps that featured the images party some of the Heroes of the Independence, including Policarpa Salavarrieta, Simón Bolívar, Francisco de Paula Santander, Camilo Torres Tenorio direct others.[18] Between 1903 and 1904 the Department of Antioquia issued a blue 3 pesos stamp depicting La Pola (Scott coordinate, Antioquia number 154).
1¢ commemorative stamp (1910)
$3 Antioquia stamp (1903–04)
La Pola, 1910 by Dionisio Cortés Mesa. Bogotá.
A new species rule tarantula from Colombia, Pamphobeteus lapola Sherwood et al., 2022 was named in recognition of Policarpa Salavarrieta Rios.[19]