The Plaza of San Gil is one of the most beautiful of Colombia and the world, according to the writers Calibn and Germn Arciniegas. “La Pola”, and establishment without equal. The Park of Liberty. The restoration of the temple had an old architect and ornamenter: Bishop Leonidas Medina. It was consecrated Cathedral by Pius XII’s Bull. The Priest Rios and the Bell ringer Roso personages linked to the temple half a century and to the public appreciation.

The Major Plaza is now a park. It had stones and a pila stone in the middle for animals to drink. It was surrounded by the same two story houses of today, where traditionally the richest families of the town lived. Some houses had a family coat of arms sculpted in stone. The Comunero Revolution nished this. “It is one of the most beautiful Plazas in the world”, according to writers Germn Arciniegas and Calibn. The same green cupola of its ceibas covered the plaza. Those ceibas would have their flowers, periodically, for bees during the day and for bats during the night. They would throw their seeds with a blinding mote, used to ll pillows. In the summer, millions of giant cicadas would arrive with a monotonous and deafening ballad. There were mangos which every year would give free fruit to the school boys. After the Saturday markets, the plaza would smell to wild ferns and cow dung. Vultures would look, from the ceibas, at the numerous dogs watching the unsold beef. A cloud of pigeons and hymenopterans of all species would invade the plaza looking for leftovers. There was the drunkard left to be arrested while the sweepers cleaned among clouds of dust. Gentlemen would seek refuge at the Lino Hormiga and “La Pola” stores. The first one disappeared thirty years ago, and the second one has been in the same place for over half a century.
At the Lino’s, constant credit was given despite the sign which prohibited it. There was everything, from a nail to a mousetrap, from a sisal bag to resinous gum, from a sweet fruit to a fountain pen. The store would smell like masses at church, when sh was sold. A big counter would serve as a seat for customers. “La Pola” was a sui generis store. Everybody would walk in as in their home and would self-serve anything wanted and drop the money at a “money box”. Nobody would mix up a penny. Today, it is converted into a bar with its roof perforated by bullets from the billiards and bohemians.
Under the plaza ceibas, the Duitama peasants would sell their apples, peaches, eggs and cheeses. In other areas, oxen would carry wood and mules sugar cane. All of this occurred during the fall of the Conservative hegemony and the boys would play and fall on the stone streets.
On Saturday, the shoes were shined with Shinola, because during the week it was done with cayenne flowers. The country people would come with their clean sisal espadrilles, and the deals would come and go on silver platters. Such autochthonous spectacles of the markets in the plaza have been erased from the cities. Bucaramanga, San Gil, Barichara, Piedecuesta and Socorro do not have them. Some villages which pretend to be cities still have them: Velez with sweets, arracach and cartridges, Zapatoca with sacks of yucca, plantains and straw hats, Charal, a little bit of everything and Wilches with sh and coconuts. In many villages, the market begins when the order is given through a loudspeaker from the burgomaster’s ofce. Now, the San Gil Plaza has had the efgy of Carlos Martinez Silva since October 1931. In front of the efgy, schools and colleges of the locality make votive on July 20th. a faith with bands of musicians. Those beautiful palm trees which adorn the plaza were planted the day my father took possession of the city government, and ordered by decree to whiten all homes and to clean the streets of shrubs and dogs prior to the Presidential Visit of General Pedro Nel Ospina. The Sangilentildes permanently occupy the stairs of the park, to murmur about anybody who crosses it, about coffee prices and the latest automobile models that run around the park called “La Libertad”, illuminated as the main avenues. One day someone told me: “Why don’t you write about San Gil and publish it in a book?”. I answered with a mimicry but I was influenced. Perhaps that is the reason to publish this book. As a child I ate dirt and I found it tasty, as Jose Maria de Pereda says : “The flavor of our earth”, or the reason for Virgilio’s exclamation “Roma me fecit”. To walk those childhood steps, remembering those hours which will not come back, is most pleasant, to walk them in the slow motion of writing thanks to the Santander Bank. Those happy days included hunting yellow jack wasps, taking their stingers out and then sending them, with sadistic emotion, to fly with pieces of paper attached, to hunt turtle doves which would be eaten with cornbread, and to steal fruits to give them to girls. As Carlyle says about Mohammed’s Koran: “It is a book from one heart which shall penetrate other hearts”. Sunday was a day of rest at the Plaza Mayor under the park ceibas, people, especially the girls of “high” (class) would show their new dresses to the few available bachelors. Those Sundays had an hour for the sighs and the dreams. Our hearts would try to come out of our mouths and our skins would get goose bumps when the band would start the National Anthem and the notes of “paso dobles”. The palms and the church pigeons would stop in suspense with the hurricane of sounds and songs. Nobody would play better than Maestro Carlos Monroy. Nobody would play the flute better than the Cubillos, or maestro Santos. The echoes of the cymbals and drums would leave the plaza and hit the surrounding legendary hills and the corn and tobacco elds and mix with the Fonce River’s murmur to the four cardinal points.
Then the town would sleep under the insatiable cicadas’ ballad. The electric lights would dismiss Sunday leaving in the air the songs and the smile of a neighbor girl The principal plaza of a town says a lot of the idiosyncracies of a people. From the four corners the streets can be seen until they reach the countryside. Some high streets reach public lands and the corn elds. These same streets send, during the winter, yellowish and lime white water torrents from the hills’ blue lines and green tobacco elds. Against the warm blue sky and the Fonce’s breeze, the carnations and mosses rock on the high streets as in an Agelvis’s picture. From the Plaza Mayor under the ceibas, the cicadas make a pause as the heat advances in the summer, through the long streets and the Royal Roads of Mochuelo, Antigua, Altos de la Cruz, Vejaranas, Puente de Arco and Montesitos clogged sometimes by the thickness of pines or the big lime stones.
Through the high windows, a shy woman looks. The old houses and their balconies of the Plaza Mayor can be seen at a distance. Over there are the Rueda’s with its stone fountain, the Silva’s with its arches, Ordontildeez’s, Garcia’s and Parra’s converted in commercial locales, the Bishop’s and others called today palaces and from the Cathedral fly the pigeons and the swallows.
Ah! There is the Plaza Mayor with ceibas and palm trees, where we learned how to spin the top and a girl’s love, where we used our first long trousers and where we pronounced our first public speech or said good bye to our dear ones. As my friend and poet Jose Morales, a great Santandereano troubadour, states: “Through your tranquil streets my youth ran through you, I learned to love for the first time”. And from the Plaza Mayor it was easy to see the bent old trees of the “Bella Isla” (Beautiful Island), and the warm Fonce’s river banks where clothes were washed, children bathed naked and cattle drank. From La Libertad Park the colonial temples and the big Spanish balcony homes can be seen where one time we signed a Municipal Agreement which prohibits their demolition. I would like to see the statue of Galn or Bolivar in this park, as well as the bust efgies of Alcantuz, Molina, Martinez Silva, Antonia Santos or Pedro Fermin de Vargas. Of the latter, Caracas and other Latin American and Colombian Cities have erected statues and busts even though he is a Sangilentilde Father of the Country. We should obtain copies of the statues of Bolivar and Vargas from the Venezuelan Government to plant them in the empty park. In the Plaza Mayor or Libertad Park, as it has been called by Sangilentildeas generations, great events have happened which have been sung by poets and writers. On its wooden banks people have met to tell and retell the local gossip. I remember Monsignor Ocampo y Berrio, Bishop of San Gil, telling his well celebrated jokes. On these banks, the souls of the great events of the country ran from mouth to mouth, the city’s traditions and legends, the Indians with their mysterious myths, the Conquest with its adventurous captains, the Colony with its witches and phantoms, the Republic with its epic legends smelling to powder and its men and women without fear or censure born for sacrice and glory. At the end of 1967, I read delicious pages from three Colombian writers about our towns’ formation of cult, civic mindedness and nationality. Armando Solano states, to justify writing a book about a native town: “The village keeps the secret of happiness. Only there, simple estas, country trips or noisy cavalcades break the ice of resentments and forget the major offenses. Only in that ingenuous atmosphere people’s kindness surfaces, translated into music, singing and jokes. There, the simulated espionage of the social formulas does not exist,
the dresses and the adornments which convert in tragedy the collective exhibitions of the great centers. The people go from the village to the river, in happy groups, with life’s joyful rites, to reconstruct, to defend and to maintain life in the villages. To describe and praise this life, to relate and glorify its history, to remember the principal men, to praise its beauties and to consider its virtues are the most comprehensive and patriotic ways to serve the country”. Finally, our great writer Enrique Otero D’Costa describes what it means for a determined land, a book like this one which, you, my friendly reader, have been reading with patience and generosity. He states:
“Centuries will pass, architectural works will crumble, bridges will fall, roads will disappear, but the spiritual building, the book, will challenge eternity, serving as a testimonial of what a people did, of what an epoch or a generation gave, and the name of that people will never disappear from the annals of humanity”. I will also remember December and Christmas time, those traditions and customs of Nativity which transform in its formula, but not its essence. I remember the carols, the perfumed cards, the presents, the Nativity scene, the colorful lights, the castles of gunpowder or “crazy cows”, the immaculate night of December 8, the reworks and the bands of clowns whose noise would almost break eardrums. I will never forget Remigio Prada’s Nativity, the most complete of the country which all youngsters would help to build, Christmas when we would wait to the day and hour, the trips to Alto de la Cruz, Fonce River and Curiti Brook, to the natural park “El Gallineral”, to gather moss, and sand for the “beach” and to imitate the roads and deserts which the Three Wise men would cross, to visit other homes’ Nativities with their corresponding hot chocolate and cookies made by Dontildea Emiliana and “tamales”, (ground meat, pigs ears, snouts, feet and maize wrapped in maize or banana leaves),
rice pudding, cinnamon sweets, marmalades, all deliciously made by friends, sisters or girlfriends to rejoice the heart. What I most remember are those December vacations in the countryside riding horses, bareback, drinking warm freshly milked milk and seeing the castration of bulls and goats. We would go down to a lake to bathe and spend the nights under a petroleum lamp, listening to guitar concerts and listening to stories of scary assaults by bandits. We would play, scare people, kill pigeons and climb trees. I also bring up a newspaper article entitled: “Christmas in San Gil”, which I wrote twenty years ago and was published in the Rumbos Magazine directed in Bucaramanga by the notable correspondent Efrain Orejarena Rueda it states:
“I woke up in San Gil on a clear morning, almost cold, but adorned with a summer yellowish sun of December. I walked through one of the avenues near the Fonce River full of palm trees. Peasants with hats and trousers raised to their knees, and girls with black skirts would come through the roads with their guitars, to attend church and to listen to the Priest’s stories of Bethlehem and the Wise men. Then, they would come out to burn reworks, to drink a liquor flavored with anise and to wait for Christmas. The city was ready to celebrate Christmas the stores would exhibit the Nativity and the Jerez and Burdeos wines were mixed with the local ones. The cookie jars were adorned with articial snow and silver paper. In the Sangilentildea oligarchy homes, I saw Christmas pines in the living rooms and gardens, made of wire and green paper, illuminated by colorful lights and little lanterns exposed to the Fonce’s breezes.
From somewhere among the trees, the echo of old Castilian carols accompanied by brass notes or a girls chorus could be perceived so much democracy of music could be heard together.
The restaurants offered stuffed turkeys and “tamales” to please the taste. In the bars, foreigners and strange people would drink their anise flavored drinks without the infantile faces seen in the bars of bigger cities. In the clubs there was the champagne from the happy and heroic France for the rich city men to drink among beautiful women.
There, a human wave would dance to the rhythm of the orchestra among reworks and confetti, the Sangilentildea Christmas had started. Others had another program, less brilliant and more rustic waiting for the mass with their beloved ones. To them reached the notes from the club, the noise of the reworks and its smell of powder burnt by the blind Martinez.
Outside, the brilliant night, carols and paths of yellowish lights lead to the countryside of prayer perfumed by the rose gardens that flourished in December. To the working elds, the symbol of Bethlehem gilds the corn, browns the coffee and irrigates its lights through the royal roads. To the rocky hills, the murmur of the live waters flow into the bridges to the silver moss beards of the Gallineral Park that rock with the wind. Outside, Christmas dawn, with its beautiful ecstasy in the sky, which illuminates minute by minute, hides the stars like a miracle”. That is the story. The San Gil Cathedral is a beautiful monument of engraved stone, with richly ornamented interior. The stony outside has resisted ugly innovations. It is a seventeenth century temple. Its first stone was laid on the ruins of Santa Barbara Church. It was consecrated Cathedral in 1935 by the Papal Nuncio Paolo Giobbe, when San Gil was constituted Episcopal See through the Pontiff Pius XII’s Bull. It has solid, wide and heavy towers with old and discolored pillars and panels, with balustered lintels and worn out cornices from the patina of time. The high towers and cupola combine old religious colonial art. A rich wooden altar covered with gold leaves shows the Baroque of the times. The three temple naves and its lateral chapels were object of great reforms by Bishop Leonidas Medina, and the wide Sacristy was due to clergyman Pedro Salazar. In 1875 a big bronze statue was placed between the towers. It was donated by the patrician Pedro Silva Otero. It has the legend: “You are the glory of our people”. And, Timoleon Rueda gave the clock which told the time to the Parishioners for a long time. In 1892, lightning destroyed the western tower and nave. Their reconstruction ended in 1915. One eyewitness of the destruction, the well known Guanentino chronicler, Camilo Forero Reyes, relates what occurred in an article titled: “History of a Scintilla”.(101)
“On the corner of the San Jose de Guanent College, there was a group of curious people looking stupeed at the towers of the Parochial temple. I observed with astonishment the damage caused by such scintilla to one of the temple’s towers. The formidable electrical discharge tumbled down the stones of the tower breaking it in two throwing some stones to the plaza. I went to the temple and upon closer examination, I determined that the damage had been caused by a scintilla. Its numerous sparks had traveled in all directions, but the main ones, after causing the damage already mentioned, descended the tower’s wall to the baptistery window, darkened the altar’s bowtels and ran through the navel’s floor leaving a black streak, breaking into numerous fragments the brick pavement. Such was the terrible scintilla which obligated the Sangilentildes to reconstruct, in another style, the towers of today’s cathedral”. But if I have expanded into little chronicles of parochial flavor, I will recall the one of the cathedral clock. A priest changed the clock for the one from the Zapatoca Church. The other one had a melodious sound to accompany the following stanza: “Three quarters to three has told the Zapatoca clock, and what I most admire is that, as a clock, it has to tell the hours without interest”. In 1940, due to the progressive spirit of Bishop Medina, the cathedral was reformed. The capital columns were covered with golden leaves, and the roof was covered with artistic raised works, and statues made by a local artist. Candelabrum, Via crucis and ornaments were imported. The major altar and organ were the only parts of the temple which were not modied. Today, the San Gil Cathedral is considered one of the most richly ornamented of the country.It was such the activity and zeal of Bishop Medina, that even in his condition as “The oldest Bishop of the world”, he would climb the stairs to direct the work.
The entire citizenship participated in the construction of the cathedral, like a Hindu Pagoda or a Mexican Pyramid it is collective architecture. There were parties of free workers of all social classes, from the most illustrious to the humblest, from designing to carrying stones.
In the Cathedral interior, the wax candle lights, the organ notes and the incense perfume with the sunlight create an unreal environment to place man in another world. That was the aim of the anonymous architects, to elevate the faithful from the earth to the religious dream of an articial paradise with the brilliant golden leaves and wax candle lights. When describing this monument of Sangilentildea religiosity, it is important to remember Monsignor Eliodoro Rios, the virtuous Parish Priest of San Gil for over a quarter of a century. To him, it is owed the spiritual formation of a whole generation of Sangilentildes. From his doctrinal lips and the respectful example of his life of priesthood, the San Gil society learned a multitude of home virtues. His talent, sanctity, candor of his customs, civility and austerity are the territory region’s debts. He became the Pontifex Maximus’ Secretary and a motive of perennial exaltation. Today, his mortal remains are the longings of the last generations of the town.We cannot forget in these pages Roso Prada Uribe, the bell ringer of the cathedral for half a century. “Rosito”, as he was called, because of his small stature, was one of those personages sufcient for the chronicle of a people. In his profession, he was insuperable. His bell ringing was famous around one hundred leagues. Many would travel to town to listen to them. And to many, Roso Prada Uribe played “The Immaculate Conception” on their baptism, weddings and to announce the painful news of their deaths. One most singular Sangilentilde tradition consists of ringing the two major bells of the cathedral at 2 p. m.. They are also rung during a funeral. The only explanation I have found of this is the following: Last century, a Mr. Rueda was a registrar of the Circuit of San Gil. This individual would sleep the siesta with a loud snoring. Sometimes, he would wake up in the afternoon, during his occupation, clients and witnesses. And since his home was near the bell tower, and because of the lack of alarm clocks, he proposed to ask the bell ringer to give a couple of rings at 2 p. m. which started a perpetual beautiful San Gil tradition. In exchange, he gave a donation to the church and the Pious Society of San Vicente de Paul. Since then, whether it is raining or lightning, and despite the eternal sleep of the inspirer, the Sangilentildes have heard the major bells of the cathedral at 2 o’ clock. I remember those unforgettable times, when hiding from the bell ringer Rosito: Rafael Rivero Silva, a triumphant lyric tenor in Europe and North America, Jorge Noriega, a popular singer, Navy Captain Narciso Durn Naranjo, the physician Hugo Franco Camacho, a priest, whose name I voluntarily omit and I would climb the bell towers to do mischief, such as throwing fruit peels to people entering the temple once we threw a cat with a can tied to it or we hunted pigeons until Monsignor Rios would make us come down pulled by our ears.
Another amusement was to grease the ropes,so that it became difcult to play the bells, or sometimes we would play them and then run but we got scolded by Bishop Medina. We also collaborated with Daniel Silva’s steps of the Holy Week processions and with Mr. Remigio Prada’s famous and monumental Nativity Scene. We would bring moss from the Gallineral Park, flowers for the table, and play the role of living angels and virgins.