The regional geography. Its rivers and cliffs, the bridges and the “Los Pozos” Airport. Treatise of the Culona ants: the historian, clergyman Pedro Simon was its first panegyric and the first one to name them. The official hymn and flag of the city. San Gil’s sister. Laureano Gomez’s work on foreign quotcaciquismquot (from Cacique, Indian chief), and death of people’s civism.

San Gil’s position, according to geographic coordinates, is: 6 33’ 21” North Latitude and 6 56’ 37” East of the Bogot Meridian. It has an average altitude of 1,095 meters above sea level and a territorial extension of 200 square kilometers. It is among the thirty smallest municipalities of the Department. It has an average temperature of 24 Centigrade and a population of 30,000 inhabitants. The Municipality of San Gil is between the inter-Andean Valley between the rivers Fonce and Surez. The first one bathes the lands of the Amansagatos Cordillera to the west and the Santa Clara Cordillera to the East. The Fonce River has its origin in the latter Cordillera. It is formed by the union of the Rivers Tquiza and Pienta near the town of Charal. After running through the ferocious Charalentildea lands, and the municipalities of Ocamonte and Valle, it receives as affluent the Monas River and the Curiti Brook. It flows, from the south to the west, into the Surez River. and forms a big delta on the outskirts of San Gil named Gallineral or Bella Isla Natural Park, well known in the country. The following brooks are tributaries of the Fonce: La Laja, La Afanadora, La Seca, La Paloblanco and La Cuchicute. All the Fonce River Basin is densely populated and cultivated. The land is mostly calcareous and sandy, good for the cultivation of maize, yucca, sugar cane, coffee, sisal, tobacco, grasses and cereals of the template zones. Its deep depressions end in small clamorous and ardent valleys.The vegetal layer is scarce and stony because of the geological formation eminently erosional. Above the Fonce River layers, to the top, there are numerous varieties of stratums and fossils from the worms to the trilobites from antediluvian periods. The flowing is abundant during the winter. The vegetation is scarce except for ceibas, but there is an abundance of bushes, palms and cactuses. The Fonce crosses the Guanentina lands from its origin in the Santa Clara Cordillera from the Rivers Tquiza and Pienta. The first river originates from two small lakes near the Peak of Tura, the second one in similar lakes near the Municipality of Encino. The Tquiza runs in a westerly direction enlarged by the waters of the Chagre, Coromoro and Riachuelito Rivers. The Pienta advances in a southwestern route, to join, as I explained earlier, with the Tquiza in the City of Charal, forming the proper Fonce River. The basins of these two rivers are fertile its affluent irrigates the picturesque valley of Charal. Its ferocious lands of agriculture and cattle form the main wealth of the municipality.The mentioned rivers are very torrent. The Fonce has, characteristically, abundant and clear waters. The Fonce advances in the northerly direction through the municipalities of Pramo, Valle de San Jose and Ocamonte. At the Valley, it receives the waters of the Mona River formed by the Mogoticos, the Cuchiquira, the Tubuga and the Guabre Rivers. In this sector, there are numerous cultivations of sugar cane, yucca and maize. The basin of the river is narrow on the right margin with difcult escarpments. The left margin is fed with numerous brooks, some of them forming beautiful cascades. The Fonce enlarged with the Mogoticos’ waters, takes the northwesterly direction with notorious falls, impetuous flow and a stony bottom which shows the relative youth of the river and its potent force. This is a good section for damming, irrigation and electric power production.
When the Fonce arrives to San Gil, it receives the waters of the Curiti Brook, and forms a natural pool called “Pozo Azul”. After passing in front of San Gil, the river takes a westerly direction. Its course has enormous rocks and its basin forms peculiar terraces in the areas of Pinchote and Cabrera. The highest peak is the Paramo of Onzaga. In the immediate area, the Fonce has its deepest canyons until its flow into the Surez River. There are many caves in this areas formed by the erosions.

MINERALOGY
There are mines of carbon, lime and copper. The high quality lime is used in the Hercules Cement Factory, one of the biggest in the country, with Sangilentilde capital and workers. The copper production in Macaregua has been since 1925. Maestro Antonio Naranjo has done some sculptures. In 1897, Froiln Cubillos made the two famous major bells of the San Gil Cathedral with copper from the Macaregua mines. In the National Archives (107), there are curious data: Jose Vsquez de Valbuena applied for a license to work in the “La Aguada” Mine in the jurisdiction of San Gil, in 1735. In 1764 Vsquez de Valbuena asked for another license to exploit the copper mine of the “EL Curo” heights. In 1890, Mariano Joaquin Naranjo and Rueda requested licenses to exploit two copper mines of “Chocoa” and “Potrero”.in San Gil. The mines’ discoverer, Marcelo Diaz (108), claims that he cannot continue to explore the copper and silver mines because of lack of funds, and that he should continue to explore the gold mine “El Espinal” near the Surez River. This indicates a great deal of mining activity in the region. Mario Galn Gomez (109), states that southeast and southwest of San Gil, there are carbon deposits in layers of 80 to 90 meters which could be used as a combustible in homes.

OFFICIAL HYMN OF SAN GIL

Finding it necessary to give the city an official hymn, to foment civic spirit, tradition and glories, I wrote some verses ten years ago with the good intention to serve as a hymn. I contracted Maestro Gino Aronna to create a score for the hymn. I presented them to the Municipal Council for its consideration. After the Council heard it played by a children’s chorus and a band, the Council gave its unanimous approval. Chorus: “You were a town of rough blazons with shields of noble heredity your heroes gave their hearts to history and the immortal motherland. You are the Pearl of the Fonce, Comunero pennon of Galn, as Guanent’s untamed, and hurried cry engraved in bronze.
You are known as Noble and Loyal and proud of your royal lineage, the torrent river, the Gallineral and your ancestors of the great Baeza. When the trumpet called for the country, life, blood and pain were offered by Antonia, Alcantuz, Molina and Fermin the first ones in the ght of honor. Raise youth flags and voices, invoking to the old town, that the altar of your guarding gods are here protecting your heredity”. Explanations: Perla del Fonce, the known name of the city. Fonce, the river that divides the city and bathes its lands. Comunero, revolutionary movement initiated in the province. Galn, captain of the Comunero revolution and name of the extinguished Department. Guanent, name of the Cacique who governed the Indian Confederation of the lands that today form the south of Santander. Noble and Loyal, Title given to the town of Santa Cruz and San Gil by King Carlos II of Spain. Gallineral, name of the natural park, pride of Sangilentildes (name given to the people from San Gil) . Baeza, Patronal Spanish City which gave its Royal Arms to San Gil for its Shield, according to royal command. Antonia, first name of the Sangilentildea heroine sacriced for liberty at the Main Plaza of Socorro. Alcantuz and Molina, last names of the Comunero Chiefs from the Guanent Province executed in Santa Fe de Bogot in 1782 and whose heads were displayed, as punishment, in San Gil. Fermin, first name of the Sangilentilde Father of the Country who fought in the country and foreign lands for our independence.

THE OFFICIAL FLAG OF THE CITY

With the existence a of the city hymn, it was necessary to give her an official flag too. Thus, it was, in my position of town Burgomaster that I dictated the Decree 20 Bis of 1960 to give the city a flag. The disposition states: “The Mayor of San Gil in use of his legal attributions and considering, decrees: Article One: To adopt as emblem of San Gil, a flag formed by bands of three colors of the same conventional width and longitude, to symbolize her official foundation, her New Granada License, and her Royal Conrmation. Those colors are: Blue to symbolize her river, Green to symbolize her agricultural wealth, and Red to symbolize the blood spilled by her martyrs.
Article Two: This Flag will be raised on May 3 of every year, on the anniversary of the foundation of the city in all the public buildings. On this date, the educational establishments of the municipality will render homage to the heroes and the Fathers of the City and Members of the Center of History of San Gil or a Municipal Functionary will exalt the glories of the land to increase the civic spirit in the student generation of the town.
Article Three: All the athletic and sport competitions, fairs and expositions, and all the artistic and cultural events celebrated in the city must have the National Flag and The City Flag on its side.
Article Four: To obtain a sum from the budget, for three flags made out of cloth with destiny for official use of the Municipality”.

THE FAIRS

In the locality there were fairs or public estas with farm animals. These events came and went according to the enthusiasm of the people. Businessmen Carlos Rueda Parra, Gonzalo Chacon Rueda, Pedro Plata Mujica, Jose Dolores Rodriguez Arenas, Samuel Vesga Tristancho, Armando Garcia, Pedro Porras, Jorge Ordontildeez, Rodolfo Gonzlez, Antonio Maria Vesga, and Luis Jose Noriega formed the Organizing Board with the Mayor as its Honorary President.
The first elected queen of the First Agriculture, Cattle and Industrial Fair was the enchanting lady, Miss Cecilia Gomez Olarte, who with the first National Tobacco Queen Dontildea Gloria Laurens formed an aristocratic binomial of seigniorage and distinction. Those first fairs had millions of pesos in commercial transactions, linking them with the most important and industrial rms of Eastern Colombia and the best cattle of the region of the breeds Zebu, Brown Swiss, Holstein, Red Poll, Guernsey, Blanco Orejinegro, Hereford, Jersey, Normandy and Santandereano Chinese.

THE SISTER CITY OF SAN GIL

Two years ago, an event was published by radio and the local press which is ignored today. The City of San Gil has a sister city in Venezuela, in the Trujillo State. It is the beautiful city of Valera with 25,000, a community between San Cristobal and Caracas, the same way that San Gil is between Cucuta and Bogot. By reciprocal decree of the Mayors of Valera and San Gil, the two cities were declared sisters to foment cultural and touristic interchange. The San Gil Mayor’s Ofce had the initiative through the Venezuelan Consulate in Bucaramanga to increase the transit of Venezuelans in Santander, extending it to San Gil and Socorro. The Sangilentilde Burgomaster was invited to Valera by his colleague. Touristic cards printed in San Gil were distributed to hotels in Venezuelan cities. In 1960, the Curiti Brook was declared a National Park in an extension of twelve kilometers. The law declared the Gallineral Park as a National Park for its natural exotic beauty. Bella Island sounds less bird than Gallineral, but it could also be called “Payanderal” because of the Payande tree of the island. The beautiful stone of the main plaza was transferred there. And from there it was sent, without a funeral, to rest in peace in the cemetery. There is another stone near the principal bridge which has a plaque with the engraved dates when Simon Bolivar passed through San Gil. There is another beautiful stone on the other side of the bridge which was donated to the Municipality by the Sangilentildea Lady Elvira de Silva.
THE HOUSE OF SANTANDER
Due to the need to create an organization in San Gil to keep the traditional values and the study and diffusion of our rich historical and cultural background, a project was presented for consideration to the City Council of a cultural institution similar to the “Casa de Bolivar” in Bucaramanga or the “Casa de la Cultura” of Socorro. It was agreed on the “Casa de Santander” (House of Santander), of San Gil. This official entity was installed in a historical old house. On its old entrance, one of the town’s Shields was placed. In its main patio, a small park was built with a bronze bust of General Francisco de Paula Santander. The institution was solemnly inaugurated on August 7, 1959, date of the Sesquicentennial of the Republic, with the Municipal Public Library created on July 20, 1920, with the books of Carlos Martinez Silva, Nepomuceno Navarro, Presbyter Luis Domingo Mantilla, and Carlos Parra, the Guanent Museum, a hall destined to become the Academy of Music directed by Professor Gino Aronna and another room for the Center of History of San Gil.
The latter institution was founded by the author of this book. The Academy of History of Santander accepted it as a lial center, by Resolution 1 of 1959. According to its rules, there were two honorary members, twenty number members and forty correspondent members. The first Board consisted of the author as its President, Alberto Rueda Amorocho, as Vice President, Alonso Gutierrez as Secretary, and Ms Lucy de Gonzlez as Treasurer. Its inauguration was attended by personalities of the Department, a Commission of the Academy of History of Santander, the Municipal Council, the Bishop, the Vicar General of the Diocese, the Governor of the Department, the Secretary of Education of Santander, the Magistrates of the Superior Tribunal of the Judicial District, the Rectors of the Education Institutes, the Municipal Band played the official Hymn of San Gil, and at the same time an exposition of Sangilentilde painters was inaugurated in which the painter Durn Naranjo obtained the first prize. The Centro American Ambassadors Jose Manuel Arce y Valladares and William Barquero Montiel, and the poets Maya Lopez, Hugo Salazar Valdez, and Omar Miranda pronounced unforgettable conferences and recitals.
The Secretary of Education of Santander, Gustavo Vargas Martinez, designated a departmental employee as a permanent functionary of the institute. And the Governor Mario Latorre Rueda made an appropriation for the functioning of the Cultural Center which, according to the former President of the Republic Eduardo Santos, “Saves the glorious spiritual tradition of San Gil”.
I extract the following paragraphs of the speech pronounced that day by the President, founder of the “Casa de Santander”:
“These stone masonry walls, these old roofs and these brick halls are like the alma mater, like the spiritual cradle of the city. Because here, the grandparents of the people learned the alphabet, the catechization and the elemental norms of civism. These titles are sufcient to make this the natural and proper home of the good things, of the beautiful things and the noble things which may have been forgotten. The most ancient chronicles and traditions of the town, like this colonial building which is the most ancient property of the municipality, have the privilege of being the witnesses of memorable and patriotic deeds linked to the pride and value of our people.
With the prestige of my good will, I can assure you, that this house, in the seventeenth century, was Seat of Taxes, of Customs, of the tributes to the Spanish Crown from the Indians and Creole, the home of the Royal Ensigns and the Generals of the Army during the war.
Here, during the time of the Comuneros, in 1781, were the Royal Arms and the Edict that Lorenzo Alcantuz ripped, to light the Comunera Revolutionary spark. On March 27, 1781, Captain Jose Antonio Galn, took this town with 200 Charalentildes, Onzaguentildes, Mogotanos, Curitentildes and Valleros with machetes. They imprisoned the Ordinary Mayor in this house, while Captain Isidro Molina attacked the tobacco and brandy storage and destroyed the weights and measures. The following day Galn named the cited captains, Ignacio Fernndez Saavedra and Melchor de Rueda, to head the Sangilentildes. Here in 1810, the Spanish Authorities met to plan the violence executed in Cali and Pamplona on 3 and 5 of July and other plazas, but two individuals, Entralgo and Martin communicated to Miguel Tadeo Gomez that he was going to be decapitated as the Act of Socorro states.. From this home, the voice of alert for independence left, and it is good that this happened that way. The old Guanentina chronicles state it was the obligated stop of the town for all the cavalry, notable statesmen and warriors on campaign in Eastern Colombia. Thus, it happened that General Santander stayed here, in San Gil, in June 1829. The same happened with Bolivar and Mosquera who directed important missions from this house.
Another incident which links this house with history is that General Leonardo Canal, Chief of the Revolutionary Government, designated San Gil, Capital of the Provisional Government of the Santander State on September 8, 1860. Later, the Capital was transferred to Socorro by General Eustorgio Salgar. Here, the Guanent University was installed. Here, I had the documents to deliver to the Center of History signed by Generals Antonio Narintilde and Francisco de Paula Santander which established the lectureships. In these rooms, the anatomic dissections for the School of Medicine took place with cadavers from the Ensayadero Hospital. And, I still can hear the physician Guillermo Leon, professor of the school, teaching his disciples the Nebrija lessons in verse. I would like to thank the Municipal Treasurer, Luis Jose Ordontildeez, for his cooperation in making this house the reality of today. He is a great Sangilentilde and he put all his efforts in this house of the good Sangilentildes. I would like to include a beautiful page of the illustrious Colombian statesman and writer, Laureano Gomez, entitled “El Cacique”: “Maeterlinck states in his Life of the Bee, the peculiarity of certain ants that carry, habitually, a sort of lice, proportionally big, the size of the head of the ant, which head is proportionally twice the size of the human’s. Such parasites install themselves on each side of the ant’s abdomen, in order to maintain the animal’s equilibrium. The ant initially rejects them but, after a while, does not ght them. Who is, asks Maeterlinck, the martyr of our holy legends, who has carried without complaining, throughout their entire existence, such a heavy and bothersome weight? The rough ant of the fable carries them and feeds them as if they were its own kind. The naturalists ignore the benet to this ant of this permanent sacrice.
Something similar occurs in our political and administrative entities. In certain Colombian regions, I have had to carry the weight of some Caciques. In order not to disturb the equilibrium, each party supplies a specimen from each Cacique who accommodates over the budget of the municipal entity. They make some effort to locate on them, but when they achieve it, they are indenitely secured, and the municipality hugs them and feeds them, and takes upon itself to feed them with better resolution than to attend to any of the needs of the community. The end of the Cacique’s activities is personal dominion and and the adequate distribution to his band of the positions and scal privileges. Then, the Cacique declares that he is in the best position from his stingy point of view. After he secures his installation over the laborious ant, the Cacique does not suffer of any spiritual or material worry. Under his hand are all the registries of the activity of the respective community. The leaves of the trees cannot move without his will, neither can the limbs and minds of men. In those populations dominated by “Caciquism”, paralysis reigns. One of the saddest spectacles which a thinking man can see in Colombia, is the inert quietness of the provincial life. To return after several years to villages that we knew very well, we nd them older, the trees badly treated, the streets with the same grass on which we used to play as children, in the elds the same rudimentary cultivations and the same stones, as if the town lays in a fateful enchantment. Works and institutions are less important or die. From the closed homes there is not a single rumor.women carry their clothes or rewood in silence. A youth shoots down a bird with a slingshot. In the brandy stable, six or eight patrons of the town stay until they break for meals and smoke. The fat municipal Cacique roams around with the holy piety of a cemetery cross. The thin ass of the Mayor, or Council Member, or Municipal Judge crosses the plaza and shares with the Cacique the dominions and feels “owner of everything”. That conglomerate of men, which by euphemism can be called citizens, vegetate in complete ignorance of the country and the world. They do not know anything of the preoccupations, worries and triumphs of the human spirit. It is a deep hole where life has two inexorable imperatives: slavery and cruel exaction.
How many times passing through these martyr towns, the spirit covers with shadows. That is the country. The center of ‘Caciquism’ is so dense that there is no light. The rural Caciques are federated and provide electoral support to the Departmental Caciques with feedback support. This double game continues up to the highest level of the state. This is a reaction impossible to change, like a tropical anemia of the collective will, which permits these parasites their indenite work of decadence and weakness”.