Errors which have formed dogma. Big novels which have entered through the main door of history. Maestro Jose Fulgencio Gutierrez’s formidable work. The disregard of the penal proceedings against the Comuneros martyrs. Galn and his Guanentino Captains. The Comunera Revolution maximum national gest. Deformation of the phantasmagoria the twentieth of julism and the regional dithyramb. From the exclusive propaganda to the consecrated decrees. Did Manuela Beltrn exist? Did Narintilde translate the Rights of Man? Exaltation of the Comunero traitors. The infamous sentence. Life passion and death of the revolution.

There are historical errors by action or omission that through time have taken, by force of repetition, a true aspect of dogma. They have become patent with naturalization papers. Such is the case of the Comunera Revolution. By virtue of the fantasy of some historians, or the rancorous regionalism of others it has been tergiversated in its essence and in its form. Many and versed historiographers have occupied themselves about the Comuneros with the healthy purpose to reveal, by all means, the truth of what occurs in such memorable stage, trying to clarify things, some fantasizing or repeating gross errors, others bringing the truth without euphemisms. The Maestro Jose Fulgencio Gutierrez wrote a critical historical study (61) with the objective to congurate the reality of the sociological-economic phenomenon denominated “Comunera Revolution” and to unfold the historical imbroglio once and for all, getting rid of the dust and fuss. It has more than four hundred pages edited in the Printing Ofce of the Department of Santander. Such work was rewarded at a national contest celebrated in 1938. It consecrated the erudite Santandereano historian and academician as the maximum authority on the subject. The Maestro Gutierrez impugns severely the erroneous concepts of the most prestigious historians challenging them, even with documented irony, destroying their loose afrmations, for the national historical heap. He placed himself to the margin of the ponticate cenacle. It can be afrmed, without fear of exaggeration, that with the alluded work, the themes were exhausted and the dispute of the impugnated events closed. The author has not been seriously contradicted in more than twenty years. Using the same lacerating conclusions of Maestro Gutierrez and abusing of the quotation marks, I have contemplated even with my most modest investigative contribution, based on the proper original documents which repose in the National Historical Archives, in the “Sala de la Colonia” (Room of the Colony). I agree with the title which I have given to the present study that the Guanentino nucleus was the Comunero center of great magnitude in the revolution and the City of San Gil was as Comunera as none! These planned lines do not pretend to give a further step on the road to tarnish the glories or laurels badly or well obtained. They try, in the name of Justice, to remove the veil and to give to Caesar what belongs to him, as the famous Biblical phrase says.
The work of the most authorized historians about the emancipating movement contained in Maestro Gutierrez’s precious volume, surely facilitated their verdict about the Comuneros. The writings for the topic were corroborated with minutes, correspondence, proceedings, notebooks of proofs, pleas, ordinances of the above mentioned Archives. Then, the documental history about the Colombian Comuneros was made by reaction against much phantasmagoria.
Our history texts are in agreement to affirm that in 1780 the New Granada was governed by the Viceroy Manuel A. Florez. This was precisely the time when the Iberian Peninsula was in war with the pirates from the United States and of the Islands of Great Britain. Because of this reason, the Viceroy Florez had to go to the City of Cartagena de Indias with the purpose of leading its defense. While he was dedicated to the war toil, a replacement, Juan Francisco Gutierrez de Pintildeeres, was designated Regent Visitor.
This good Lord brought to the Indias, as a Crown mission, the urgent and forced arbitrage of the resources to confront the international conflict. To this he dedicated himself with unusual fervor since he brought absolute power. Let the Sangilentilde writer and attorney Jorge Otero Gomez, in a study about Manuela Beltrn, (62) tell us how the revolt started: “Mr Gutierrez de Pintildeeres, in accordance with his mandate, expedited his general instructions for the collection of taxes and duties for the Barlovento Armada on October 12, 1780, to sustain a fleet in charge of defending the Spanish Dominions from the corsairs, pirates, privateers, buccaneers and libusters to secure Spanish Commerce. These taxes which have been imposed since a long time before were collected by tax gatherers in each province and they taxed all fruits and materials. To such effect, the famous customs agents were created, with their hateful outrage, to disturb the revolutionary enthusiasm and to light the flame of liberty of Colombia on the bronzed chests of the indomitable Comuneros. The guards broke the tranquility of the period and awoke the conscience of Creole and Indians from Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. The Goddess of Liberty ran angry through all the dominions reclaiming the rights of the Colombian citizens. The first day of protest was in Mogotes October 29, 1780, later, in Charal, on December 17, 1780, then in Socorro on March 16, 1781 and in San Gil on March 23, 1781 where the crisis of the first part of the Comunera Crusade was made with the agglutination of its indignant and enthusiastic people”.
The translator will add now and i n future pages,written in italics, the following information which is not part of the original textbook:The New England writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his book entitled The Scarlet Letter mentions the name of some of the American buccaneers and privateers whom the translator discovered during a visit to Salem, Massachusetts. on December 26, 1997 that Billy Gray who owned a whole fleet and Simon Forrester, who on April 8, 1782, commanded the ship Exchange and the brig Revolt may have participated in the attacks which triggered the events narrated in this chapter. The reader is invited to read this “Penguin Classic” edition of the Viking Penguin Incorporated, reprinted in 1986, page 59.
The Viceroyship was divided into nine provinces: Santa Fe, Cartagena de Indias, Santa Marta, Riohacha, Panam, Veraguas, Popayn, Antioquia and Choco. All were ruled by governors and general commanders. “ The title of city or of town could only be given by the King himself. The title of city was given, irregularly, to Socorro in 1711, without the consent of the Monarch, from a simple Parish dependent of the town of Santa Cruz y San Gil of the New Baeza. After Cities and towns followed Parishes and Indian towns, last”. (63)
The historian Horacio Rodriguez Plata corroborated it. (64) The Viceroyship public rent yielded three million pesos during Comunero times. It barely paid for government expenses. The income came from the following: tobacco, liquor, playing cards, powder, customs, taxes, metals, paper money, stamped paper, sale of lands, tribute of Indians, employment, household belongings, salt mines, mail, ecclesiastic tithe, crossing of rivers, storage, income, about thirty colonial taxes on commerce, agriculture, mining, industry and other personal taxes. Professor Esteban Jaramillo (65) parodying the English politician Sidney Smith, stated, that you can renounce to everything but death and taxes, an old sentence which has a present application. There are taxes on everything that man wishes to see, smell, hear, taste and touch. There are taxes on heat, light and locomotion, on everything on land and under it, on everything from outside or produced inside, on all natural resources, tobacco, sisal, sauces which stimulate appetite and drugs which maintain health, salt, rich spices, cofn nails, roofs, tables, when we go to bed, when we get up, the boy who rides a taxed horse the person who dies on the doctor’s arms, the latter has paid dearly for his license to pay an attorney for the inheritance of our ancestors and only when we meet them we rest from taxes. Would the Comunera Revolt be of economic character? Were the killing of Guanes insufcient? With respect to the administration of Justice in the Viceroyship, it was integrated by the Royal Audiencia of Santa Fe, presided by a Regent, ve members of the Audiencia and two prosecutors. As supreme tribunal, it was the source of appeals of civilian judgments of great quantity, criminal cases and administrative edicts by the King. The proceedings had upsetting sacramental formalities and paper burden which have not been eliminated with the judicial reforms and counter reforms. As far as the commercial life of the Guane Region, the erudite historian Basilio Vicente Oviedo (66) states: “There was a lot of commerce for several materials in the country but there were a lot of unemployed and people with bad customs. Socorro was governed by an ordinary mayor dependent of the town of San Gil. Father Oviedo was Priest of San Gil for ten years. The Capuchin Missionary Joaquin de Finestrad (67) afrms: “Socorro was sixty years old since its foundation, when it separated from the town of San Gil. The former was a small village were the mules rest before continuing the trip”.
A historian talks of the existence of the Province of Tunja, during Comunero times, but she was only a district of Santa Fe. This District included the cities of Muzo, Velez and Pamplona which jurisdiction extended to the Oro River, the towns of Leyva, San Gil and Socorro.(68) There were no such “provinces” to state that the movement culminated in one of them. The last of the populations cited became District until 1810. There some who state that the Comunero Revolt happened in Boyac and a few that it happened in the “Province of Socorro”. It is true that the towns which led the movement depended of the Administrative District of Tunja. But nobody is authorized to state, today, that Socorro, San Gil, Mogotes, Simacota, Charal, Barichara, Galn, etc.were populations of Boyac. It would be a malicious error to call the Comunera Revolt of 1780, “Santaferentildea Revolution”, simply because Tunja belonged or depended of the Province of Santa Fe.(69)
Beginning to narrate how and when the Comunero Movement occurs, I copy from Maestro Gutierrez: (70) “To some young enthusiast occurred to adventure, one day, the beautiful afrmation that Socorro was ‘The cradle of Colombian Liberty’. He wrote it in a historical article, and the afrmation has taken shape in virtue of the repetition, the only rhetoric gure, according to Napoleon Bonaparte”. Those who affirm that “ The first cry of Liberty in Colombia” was given in Socorro in 1781, I need to remind them that in 1546, Gonzalo Pizarro rebelled against the Viceroy of Peru and took the name of “Liberator and Protector of the Peruvian People”. In 1550, Hernando Contreras proclaimed himself “Prince of Cuzco” and aspired to found a dynasty. In 1546, Hernn Cortez, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca aspired to reign over independent Mexico. Around the same time the Bolivian Indians of Sorat killed Spaniards, a total of about twenty thousand people. In 1560, The Spaniard Lope de Aguirre tried to emancipate himself and his followers, and formed the independent town of Metropoli.