He came to this world in 1784, son of Alejandro Gomez de la Parra Sarmiento and Josefa Durn del Villar. He was the first cousin of the Tribune Jose Acevedo y Gomez on the father’s side and a descendent of the Father of the Country Pedro Fermin de Vargas y Sarmiento on the mother’s side. He belonged to the patrician families of San Gil. He did his first studies with his brother, Diego Fernando, in San Gil. Later, he concluded them at the Nuestra Sentildera del Rosario College of the Capital of the Republic. He was named collector of taxes of the City of Socorro until he had the opportunity “to embrace the cause of liberty, giving his fortune, intelligence and time”, according to his biographer, Joaquin Ospina, in his well known Diccionario Biogrco Colombiano (Colombian Biographical Dictionary) .
Tadeo Gomez was one of the promoters of the Independence Movement., with his ancestry of patriots and in his condition as public ofcial, a key for the liberating cause He wrote and signed the Socorrana Act of Independence of 1810. He went to Venezuela with his brother Diego Fernando, to obtain arms for the revolution in a time when an error was paid with the life. The newspaper La Integridad
published in August of 1883, the names of the Signers of the Socorrana Act of Independence. They were: Jose Gabriel de Silva, Jose Manuel and Juan de la Cruz Otero, Jose Ignacio Martinez Reyes, and Jose Silva. The Father of the Country Jose Manuel Otero was later shot in Tunja. The text of the Act in reference appeared published by the illustrious historian Horacio Rodriguez Plata about his native town. “The Socorro Revolution occurred between July 9 to August 15. Its Junta was made from two representatives from both Socorro and San Gil. These members swore delity to the Constitution and obedience toward the new government, with one hand on the Bible and the other making the sign of the Cross. ‘We swear to God, in front of the image of our Savior, that we will fulll the voice of the people and obey the Constitutional Act we have just heard and read. And if we do the contrary, we will be punished, with the severity of the law, as traitors’ “. This Junta had its antecedent., the Pamplona Revolution of July 4, 1810. It was motivated by the abuse of authority of the Corregidor Juan Bastus y Falla who was dismissed, and a provisional government was instituted, headed by Clergyman Eloy Valenzuela, a great friend of Bolivar.
The Socorrana Revolt grew when during the night of July 7, 1810, Manuel Estralgo and Marcelino Martin of San Gil threatened to cut off the heads of the Ordinary Mayor Lorenzo Plata and tax administrator Miguel Tadeo Gomez. Nevertheless, Miguel Tadeo Gomez fullled his mission in Venezuela. He was an integral patriot. He died among his own, with a legacy to posterity of the benets of his work which today we remember to revalue his sacred memory.

DIEGO FERNANDO GOMEZ

This illustrious republican was born in 1786. He studied at the Rosario College of Bogot, where he became a jurist.. He taught grammar in this institution until the emancipation. He became secretary of a commission to obtain arms in Venezuela. He became Senator of the Republic from Santander and an eloquent orator for his party and the anti-federalist concept of the state. In 1816, he was condemned to prison by Morillo, but friends rescued him. After the denite liberating Battle of August 7, 1819, General Bolivar named him Governor of the Province of Socorro on August 19, 1819 until 1820. As a member of congress, he opposed the election of General Narintilde in 1821. Thomas Blossom in his book Narintilde, printed by the University of Arizona Press in 1967, gives a detailed description of the charges against Narintilde . Gomez was designated Magistrate of the Superior Tribunal of the Judicial District of Bogot. In 1823 Gomez was designated by the Vice President to write the Civil and Penal Codes.
On April 8, 1824, he was the senator representing the Boyac Department. In 1827, after the resignation of Bolivar, Diego Fernando Gomez became Magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice. He represented his land in the Ocantildea Convention. He became involved in the September Conspiracy against the Liberator. For this, Gomez was imprisoned and sent to Cartagena’s Bocachica Castle and then to Puerto Cabello and Valencia.
After amnesty, Gomez returned to Colombia to reoccupy his position in the Court of Justice, until his rebelliousness caused General Rafael Urdaneta, then President of the Republic, to imprison him, again. Later, in 1831, under General Jose Maria Obando’s Administration, Gomez occupied the Treasury Ministry. He persecuted all who attempted against the Public Treasury. Generals Joaquin Mosquera and Domingo Caicedo could not influence him in favor of the individuals prosecuted Later, he occupied his seat at the high court of justice.
The Sangilentilde historian Carlos Parra (119) narrates: “Diego Fernando Gomez distinguished himself in Parliament for his eloquence and the use of satire which injures without convincing and which does not help the orator, and makes all controversy difcult”. When representing the Department of Boyac in Congress, Gomez opposed the Pacier Pablo Morillo who sentenced Gomez to death but the list named a Diego Fernndez instead of Diego Fernando Gomez.
Gomez was an illustrious jurist who wrote the Civil and Criminal Codes of 1824. During the dictatorship of General Urdaneta, Gomez went to the opposition and to jail. Diego Fernando Gomez, as descendant of the Gomez Romano, an old Sangilentildea root, as the Tribune of the People, Jose de Acevedo y Gomez, united his life with Josefa Acevedo, the Tribune’s daughter. She was a notable writer, of exquisite sensitivity and and seigniorage of caste. Josefa was one of the greatest writers of the country. Her works include: biographies of Vicente Azuero and the poet Luis Vargas Tejada, Poesias de una Granadina, La Coqueta Burlada, Mis Ideas, Economia Domestica, Diario and Biografia de Diego Fernando Gomez, in which she narrates sparkling anecdotes of her illustrious husband describing his temper and character, because he was a character, the one, who is not seen again.

RITO ANTONIO MARTINEZ GOMEZ

This illustrious patrician was born on March 14, 1823 and died in Bogot in 1889. He was the son of Vicente Martinez Reyes and Obdulia Gomez Plata, the first one a patrician of old Sangilentildea ancestry and the second a sister of Bishop Juan de la Cruz Gomez Plata and descendant of the heroine Antonia Santos Plata and Bishop of Santa Marta Estevez Plata who administered the last rites to the Liberator Simon Bolivar at the San Pedro Alejandrino Villa in 1830. After nishing his secondary education in San Gil, Martinez Gomez graduated in Law at the Rosario College of Bogot. He started his judicial career in his province and culminated it as a Magistrate of the Supreme Court. His wife was Concepcion Silva, first cousin of the great lyricist Jose Asuncion Silva. His son, Carlos Martinez Silva, inherited his great jurist gifts. As a public ofcial, Martinez Gomez had singular civil values of administrative rectitude. He wrote a work Veinte Antildes Atrs (Twenty Years Ago). Where he describes the social and political customs of the time. When Martinez was in his hometown, he supported the Santander Conservative Party, during the Liberal Revolution of 1844, a support which was key for President Rafael Nuntildeez after the death of the Rionegro Constitution.

CARLOS MART NEZ SILVA

He was born on October 6, 1847. His parents were Rito Antonio Martinez Gomez and Concepcion Silva with a legacy of most rened civil and social virtues. He made his first literary arms at the Rosario College, after studying at San Bartolome of the Sons of Loyola. Carlos Martinez Silva became one of the best men of letters of the country. His intellectual work includes areas of teaching, journalism, diplomacy and politics. He taught at the Espiritu Santo College with collaborators Sergio Arboleda, Marco Fidel Surez, Emiliano Isaza, Jorge Roa, Ramon Guerra Azuola, Miguel Antonio Caro and Napoleon Rivera. He was professor of the Rosario College, the National University and Antioquia University.
Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo (120), a Spanish writer, stated that Martinez Silva was the first pen of Spanish America. His work La Politica del Quijote is one of the most discussed Cervantes literature. He did translations of the classics from Latin.
Among his varied works are: Notas y Comentarios al Derecho Internacional de Don Andres Bello, (Notes and Commentaries of Andres Bello’s International Law), Tratado de Pruebas Judiciale s (Treatise of Judicial Proofs), Compendio de Historia Antigua (Compendium of Ancient History), Geografia Universal, Tres Colombianos the biographies of Pedro Justo Berrio, Jose Maria Vergara y Vergara and Jose Maria Samper, Polier o el Marquesito, Puente sobre el Abismo (Bridge Over the Abyss)
, Por que caen los partidos politicos, (Why the Political Parties Fall), and others.
Our journalism owes Carlos Martinez Silva its elevation of high intellectual and moral values. In the Correo Nacional (National Mail), he presented modern, light, amusing and well-informed articles. El Repertorio Colombiano was one of the best journalistic publications of Latin America. Carlos Martinez Silva occupied several government ministries. As Minister of Public Instruction, he pointed with frankness at its deciencies. Later, he was the Republic’s Chancellor during the Marroquin Government and Ambassador to Washington and Mexico. The historian Gustavo Otero Muntildez states, in his biography of Carlos Martinez Silva, that “He was a frank and sincere citizen and fought for his political cause in the press until justice was obtained for his friends”. One of his last political acts occurred in Tunja, on February 9, 1903. He asked Marroquin for justice for the prisoners of the last revolution. This opposition conned him to San Gil to write the memoirs of his agitated public life. With the occasion of the first centenary of his birth, the Sangilentilde attorney Bernardo Vesga Arenas stated: “His patriotism and great intuition discovered the Washington plans to separate Panama from Colombia. He wrote the famous Memorandum Sobre el Canal, a voice of alert, if the indications of Martinez Silva had been proceeded immediately, the separation would not have been consummated”. Senator Alfonso Romero Aguirre, of the opposition party, honored the memory of this patriot with a law He has small monuments in his hometown and the Capital’s Independence Park. There are three plaques where he was born, died and buried and the government issued 600,000 stamps. Gustavo Rueda Prada, an essayist, states: “Martinez Diaz was of conservative ideas, a fervent and conscientious republican, with reafrmed political convictions and strict criteria which put him above his contemporaries. He is to Colombia what Rodo is to Uruguay. He symbolizes the country with his sociological and literary pages. The national spirit needs cultivation in order not to decrease its splendor”. Carlos Martinez Silva died in Tunja on February 10, 1903, the same year that the United States took Panama from Colombia leaving grief to his sons Jorge, Carlos and Hernando. Another honor from the National Government was the creation of a library in San Gil which carries his name, an idea and execution that I had the luck to realize. And nally, some of his words about his concept of the study of history: “ One of the first studies that everybody must do, who wants a solid education, is the history of the political, religious events and customs of other peoples and generations. There is rich and useful knowledge for practical life which can be derived from this study. This is a truth that requires little proof, because few do not know or understand it. In other countries, their history is the first thing they study. It is done next to the mother’s knee at the home’s replace. We do not have those romances, ballads we do not learn history from our mother’s mouth nor from our schools”. (121)

NEPOMUCENO NAVARRO

The oldest say that Nepo Navarro was born in 1834. He did his first studies at the Guanent College and completed them at Rosario College in Bogot. In 1861 he founded the literary newspaper El Tabor . Later, he collaborated with the Capital’s newspapers, La Opinion and El Tiempo. In Socorro, in 1870, he published the literary work Flores del Campo (Field’s Flowers). This is a collection of regional chronicles of exquisite popular flavor and penetrating humor: El Gamonal (Asphodel Field), El Camarada, El Zapatero (The Shoemaker) and La Estrella del Destino (Destiny’s Star). He collaborated with other writers and newspapers and wrote the biography of the General of Independence Jose Manuel Gonzlez. In 1873 Navarro was the Director of the National Library. He started lectures. In 1874, he was Representative from his province to Congress. He wrote a comedy in prose in two acts entitled: El hijo de la Costurera (The Seamstress’ Son), other burlesque pictures of custom, Las Tres Edades de la Mujer (The Woman’s Three Ages), Las Recomendaciones, etc. His pen was characterized by exalting all that would regenerate social habits. He described the defects of the institutions, the misunderstood popular virtues and how society looks at certain beings with bad luck in a prison, while great criminals avoid justice’s action. To those people whose only pleasure is money making, he wrote phrases of philosophical and moral value. In La Estrella del Destino, he deals with the discovery of the Pacic Ocean by Vasco Nuntildeez de Balboa. The Decree 138 of April 15, 1932 of the Government of Santander, ordered to publish a collection of Navarro’s work.

LUIS DOMINGO MANTILLA

The writer Luis Domingo Mantilla was an illustrious Priest whose memory lives in the glorious annals of San Gil. He did his first literary works at the Spiritu Santo College directed by Miguel Antonio Caro and Carlos Martinez Silva. In Bogot, he studied with Jose Vicente Concha. Later, he joined the Archdiocese Seminary and was consecrated Priest in Bogot by the Prime Archbishop Paul, on February 2, 1885. Presbyter Mantilla served in the Parishes of San Gil, Velez, Zapatoca, Curiti and Valle. He became Rector of the Guanent College in 1906 and 1907. He had rich prose published in various publications: Brisas del Fonce. After a trip to Europe, he published his impressions in Un Salto a Europa (A Jump to Europe). Among his works are a drama, La Muerte de Garcia Moreno (Garcia Moreno’s Death), a comedy, Taita Casimiro, a poem Los Apostoles de la Caridad (The Apostles of Charity), etc.
Luis Domingo Mantilla drank from the fountain of classic literature in Greek, Latin, Italian, French, English and the rich language of Leon and Castile, Cervantes, Santa Teresa de Jesus, Donoso Cortez and Menendez Pelayo. Most of his production papers were burnt by ignorant and profane hands, upon his death, on May 31, 1917, a day of mourning for the Church and Colombian Letters.

PEDRO SILVA OTERO

This citizen, nicknamed “Padre del Pueblo” (Father of the People), was born in San Gil in 1868 and died on June 8, 1925. He was one of the rmest pillars of the town’s progress. He served the San Juan de Dios Hospital and asylums for indigents and girls. He built, at his own expense, the enormous Maria Auxiliadora Virgin statue of the Cathedral of San Gil. He directed the construction of the building of the Consistorial House by the engineer Rodriguez in 1886. Silva Otero was the architect of the Guasca and Ricaurte Bridges, roads, electric power and aqueduct. He participated in journalism and politics with General Ramon Rueda, Apolinar Rueda, Constantino Rueda, Timoleon Rueda, Abdon Espinosa and Francisco Santos. Pedro Silva Otero controlled the Aqueduct and Energy Companies. He reduced the fares to half because he did not have the mercantile spirit. Pedro Silva Otero married Amelia Gomez Pinzon who outdid her husband in charity and generosity. They were both apostolic and charitable souls, like the great Juan de Dios, the self-denying Martin de Porres and the Presbyter Rafael Buenaventura Almanza Rueda known to Bogotano as “Father Almanza”. Silva Otero’s work was immense he gave it all, not like Epulon, but quietly he was respected and admired by the whole society; he was difficult to imitate.