The reader is invited to see the movie AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, a 1972 German movie which was described in Leonard Maltin’s Twenty fth Anniversary Movie and Video Guide 1995 thus:” A powerful hypnotic tale of deluded conquistador who leads a group of men away from Pizarro’s 1560 South American Expedition in search of seven cities of gold. This dreamlike lm was shot on location in remote Amazon jungles”. and to read the New York Times Notable Book for 1994 AGUIRRE, THE RECREATION OF A SIXTEENTH century JOURNEY ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA, by Stephen Minta, first published in the United States of America in 1994 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
The redskin Pope rebelled thirty four cities, killed four hundred Spaniards and twenty-two missionaries. On October 6, 1740, Alvaro de Lunar rallied the Velentildes he was imprisoned and taken to Santa Fe where he was decapitated by the Judge Quesada forty years before Socorro’s events. In 1749, Juan Francisco de Leon headed a mutiny in Caracas. Once defeated, he was declared a traitor and after his head was cut off, it was buried in salt. His sons were imprisoned in Spain. In 1765, the people of Quito rebelled, protesting against scal measures, especially against customs and liquor taxes, with the cry “War to the Chapetones”, and on June 24, 1765, three hundred Indians were killed. In 1777 there were riots in Peru with occasion of the severe scal measures introduced by the Minister Oreche. The Royal troops had to submit eleven populations including Cuzco and Arequipa. The most abundant movement broke up in Peru on November 4, 1780, one week prior to the Colombian insurrection movement, not in Socorro, but, in Mogotes. It was headed by the Inca Tupac Amaru. (a movement with the same name kidnapped hundreds of people in the Japanese Embassy in Lima in December of 1996) .
The academician Jose Fulgencio Gutierrez afrms: “It is unforgivable and lack of historical modesty to keep sustaining the happy statement that the most patriotic city of Socorro is the cradle of Colombian or American liberty. Everything exaggerated is insignicant according to Talleyrand. We cannot become the clowns of patriotism ignoring most authentic and glorious acts and to occupy ourselves with loaned gala and lies. How could Socorro had been the first city to have proclaimed independence, if many years before, from 1723 to 1731, it had been a vast Comunero Movement in Paraguay headed by Fernando Mompo and Jose de Anteguera y Castro (another Castro, Fidel, led the Communist Cuban Revolution of 1959)
The first Colombian population with the honor of giving the first Comunero cry against the Iberian Lion was Mogotes of the Province of San Gil, 33 kilometers from San Gil City. Seventeen days after the Visitor Regent’s Decree was dispatched in Santa Fe, the Mogotano Mutiny occurred. Some foreign translators have called it “Bogotano”. Misery was created by the taxes even to transport a pair of espadrilles worth three fourths and the modus operandi of customs guards and tax collectors of insolence and abuses. According to Maestro Gutierrez, what happened in Mogotes on October 29, 1780 was not a tatter reaction but a virile shoot.: “Two individuals, one of them a lad, were offended by the custom guard, this date, in the Parish of Mogotes of the town of San Gil Jurisdiction. The lad was whipped with a penis of a bull used as a cowhide in front of the Mayor Castellanos, the other one was whipped with a sash and immediately the people raised up in arms. and all the guards left town afterwards convinced that the people was not ready to put up with the guard demands”. The Mogotes example was not sterile. The people of the district only awaited the opportunity, the occasion, to manifest its rebelliousness, its solidarity, with the great Guane captain. The Spanish authorities have not punished the Mogotanos insurgents. “On December 17, 1780, less than twenty days from the Mogotes Mutiny, the Charalentildes rebelled, led by Don Pedro Nieto, a bad tempered man. The mob, after notifying the authorities to stop functioning, proceeded to sell the stock in hand of tobacco to obtain resources for what they called the enterprise, a life without hateful rules”. During December 11, 1780, there was a mutiny in Barichara. Juan de la Prada and Estanislao Ortiz protested against taxes on market day. There was a circle of protest around San Gil and Curiti. In Galn, on the 24th.,people headed by Jose Encarnacion Rueda forced the doors of the repository, took the liquor, insulted and challenged the guards shouting death to the government and its agents. A young man in military service in Cartagena de Indias, since 1779, in the Regiment commanded by Colonel Jose Bernet, deserted when he found out of the revolts in his homeland. With love for liberty in his chest, he left to Charal to do his duty for the country and for his historical destiny. Later, there was a mutiny in Socorro. Jose Fulgencio Gutierrez narrates: “The insurrection gave signs of life in Socorro, on March 16 of the following year of 1781, ‘for the first time’, but on the sixth place. On a visible place of the state house, next to the home of the Ordinary Mayor Doctor Angulo y Olarte situated both on the principal plaza of the town, there was an edict of taxes. During the fair day on March 16, 1781, a blanket weaver called Jose Delgadillo presented himself in the plaza playing a drum in front of a dozen people. One of them was Ignacio Ardila alias ‘Zarco’ with Pablo Ardila ‘the lame person’, Roque Cristancho, Miguel de Uribe, a Serrano and some women. They looked like people having a good time instead of people in mutiny against the Royal Regime. They went to the house of Mayor Angulo y Olarte. He and Don Salvador Plata advised to continue being loyal vassals. A woman cigar maker, Manuela Beltrn, the heroine of the day, shouted: ‘Long live the King’, and ‘Death to the bad government’. ‘Death’ shouted the rest. Then, she went ahead of the movement to the state house next to the Mayor’s Ofce, took the tax edict and ripped it to pieces. Many hurrahs and cheers followed the woman’s audacious act, and the people continued protesting in the streets against the taxes by the Fiscal Moreno y Escandon and against the Visitor Regent”. According to Gutierrez, “ Such were the events of the famous March 16, 1781, protests and hostile manifestation to the tax system, but no break up with arms. There was no organization of a serious resistance nor election of captains, nor was a Supreme Comunero Council named. The events that day in Socorro are less important than the ones which occurred three months earlier in Charal and Mogotes. Barichara, Simacota, Galn and Curiti had already tried resistance to taxes”. Much has been fantasized about the real name of the woman who ripped the edict. Some have thought that the name of Beltrn was invented by Doctor Rito Antonio Martinez to answer Quijano Otero’s question whether the Comunera Captain was named Antonia Vargas, relative of Pedro Fermin de Vargas. There are others who add novelistic details as: “The jails were opened in Socorro, and the criminals joined the movement, declaring the taxes abolished and naming four captains”. They are not named in order to be brief.
March 23, 1781 was the turn for the town of San Gil “With a more signicant movement”, as the illustrious historian Manuel Bricentilde calls it.(71) This is how he relates the Sangilentildes events occurred: “The neighbors gathered in the plaza, shredded the edict, attacked the guards and the administrator of the state house, burned the tobacco and declared they would not pay more taxes. On March 23, 1781, the Government of New Granada had calmed the people of Socorro with false promises. The population of San Gil insurrected and protested the Viceroyalty’s vexations. In the Zipaquir Capitulations gured ve San Gil ofcials: Vicente Gomez, Melchor de Rueda, Apolinar Buenahora, Ignacio Fernndez Saavedra and Miguel Reyes”. Dr. G. Otero Muntildez (72) incorporated a published article published by Luis Alfredo Otero (73) in 1925: “Despite the preventive measures of the Audiencia, on the 23rd. of the same month, the violent acts of Socorro were repeated in San Gil with more signicant and serious character. Don Lorenzo Alcantuz grabbed and stepped on the Royal Arms, an audacious act which he paid with his life”. This citation I have seen in the interrogation exposition given in Santa Fe according to the proceedings of proofs instructed against the Comunero Chiefs hanged and which are in the National Archives of History. This cost Captain Alcantuz his head which was exposed over a peak on the corner of the Cross of San Gil where Galn named his captains. Later, adds the historian Otero Muntildez, there was a mutiny in Simacota. The administrator Diego of Berenguer was attacked, liquor was spilled, tobacco and playing cards were burned and the weights and furniture of the tax collector’s ofce were destroyed. The head of the mob ripped and stepped on the Royal Arms. This movement was one of the most important.
According to Maestro Gutierrez, “Socorro’s March 16, 1781 loses importance when it is compared with Simacota and San Gil. Also, Socorro was administratively dependent of the town of San Gil, city where there had been a break with real arms”. The prominent writer Germn Arciniegas (74) states the following: “Socorro centralizes, around the nests of revolutions. San Gil, Charal, Giron, Chima and Velez form a battalion”. Such centralization! Who was the head of the rebellion? What kind of captains betrayed Galn destroying the beautiful movement of emancipation? Where was Jose Antonio Galn? Galn was born in 1750, in the Parish of Mongui, today Charal. He escaped from the Fijo Battalion at the age of thirty-two. He was the fth son of a Galician Spaniard with a mestizo, Paula Francisco Zorro. Hilario, Dolores, Rafael and Eugenio were Jose Antonio Galn’s older siblings and Juan Ignacio, Agustin and Juan Nepomuceno, the younger ones. “He possessed, half way knowledge of reading, writing, accounting and the principal Christian Doctrine” which were a fortune considering the Village Parish of Mongui of Charal dependent of the town of San Gil. The Galns lived in the countryside and the times were not proper for intellectual perfection. Galn was never educated in the College of San Bartolome as asserted by the historian Gregorio Hernndez de Alba. Later this error was rectied. Consider that General Don Antonio Narintilde never attended Santaferentilde Colleges, and that the one who translated The Rights of Man from French to Spanish was nobody but the Sangilentilde Father of the Country, Pedro Fermin de Vargas, as it has been stated in the beginning of the book. I omit Galn’s physical and moral picture made by Constancio Franco (75) in his Novela Historica, because I am sure the best eulogy, the most faithful picture of the Father of the Country was given by the Royal Audiencia of Santa Fe in the iniquitous sentence of his death.
During the Comunero Revolt, Galn was in Socorro only in thought. There, they only knew him by name and by his Comunero victories in Puente Real, (today Puente Nacional), Nemocon, Guaduas, Honda and several other places. There, they never gave him any rank. He defeated the Spaniards at the Puente Real de Velez. There an order for his capture and detention was given. There, the only thing that Galn got was treason and defeat by the “Berberiscos Captains”. They gave testimony in the investigation not of his amusement. During the judicial proceeding, he challenged the instructor Doctor Angulo y Olarte if he had seen him in Socorro any time and the ofcer answered that he had never seen him there. There, the ordinary mayors ordered Galn’s capture and detention.
The historian Doctor Angel Maria Galn who has studied the Comunero Movement, cited by Maestro Gutierrez, stated: “Jose Antonio Galn had taken part of the Charal Mutiny where he had been named Captain with Pedro Nieto and Ignacio Calvintilde o December 17, 1780. It was the second or third population in mutiny, but the first one to give transcendental steps, to name captains, to sign an act to resist the reforms of taxes, to remove the authorities and to notify the tax collector not to sell more tobacco in the name of the government, to apply the liquor and tobacco sale taxes to the new enterprise, the revolution and to organize a militia of draftees and volunteers. This indicates a rebellion and all it needed was the re to spread. Five hundred men were under the command of the Charalentildes Captains. And when Salvador Plata, from Socorro asked for men without success, this Socorrano did not stop until Galn was imprisoned. When you compare these events with the one made by a drum in Socorro on March 16, it is difcult to understand how these first convulsive movements have been reevaluated”. The Sangilentildes Captains were designated in San Gil, not in Socorro. They were Isidro Molina, Melchor de Rueda, Lorenzo Alcantuz, Vicente Gomez, Apolinar Buenahora, Miguel Reyes and Ignacio Fernndez Saavedra, Secretary. The distinguished captains of San Gil, who accompanied Galn, are mentioned in the authentic investigation. “Berbeo was not a supreme chief but the head of treason in Nemocon. (76) By confession of the Socorrano Comunero Chiefs, they became captains by force, against their will, by intimidation of the people. Berbeo arrived late to Nemocon but on time to surrender”. The column of the Charalentildes and the rest of the Guanentinos marched in the front with Galn. They were the victors in the Puente Real, the first ones to arrive to Nemocon, on May 23, 1781 and continued to the Magdalena River, not under Berbeo as it has been mistakenly said. Not all the 23,000 Comuneros were Santandereanos. The “Supreme Chief Berbeo damned the movement of the revolutionary waters until the production of putrefaction”. It is opportune to insert a document which compares the importance of San Gil and Socorro in the revolt, between the Sangilentilde Galn and the Socorrano Berbeo. It states: “Zipaquir, May 14, 1781, to the neighbors of San Gil and Socorro: To establish the public peace in this Kingdom and to calm the spirit in the two towns of San Gil and Socorro and the Parishes under their jurisdiction, we have arrived to the town of Zipaquir, yesterday, empowered by Royal Agreement of General Junta of the Municipal Council for a hearing and judgment in the name of the King. Joaquin Vasco y Vargas and Eustaquio Galavis”.