IX. THE PICTURE OF A FOUNDER

Patronal efgies of the town in miniconography. Lack of physical pictures of Eastern Colombia. There is no descendency from attorney Leonardo Currea de Betancur. A Dominican discovered his picture in Lima.

Before discovering the physical characteristics of one of the founders who was a rich, knowledgeable jurist who wrote the petitions, capitulations and processional incidences of the foundation we should sketch the “patrons” of the town. But all had known oil paintings. King Don Carlos II the Bewitched reigned happily in Spain in the middle of the seventeenth century. King Don Felipe IV died without leaving succession, which originated a war for the throne occupied by Felipe de Anjou of the Borbonic Dynasty and grandson of the famous Louis XIV of France. The foundation of San Gil took place during the Presidency of Don Diego de Villalba y Toledo who governed the New Kingdom of Granada from August 10, 1666 to July 2, 1671. Gil de Cabrera y Dvalos governed the New Kingdom of Granada from 1686 to 1703 when the earthquake made this period famous as “the time of the noise” and the imprisonment with shackles of Padre Riera S.J. who rebelled against his superiors(29) A biographical sketch of Don Leonardo Currea de Betancur was given to me recently by the zealous writer Padre Roberto Prada Rueda O.P. who took it from a pencil picture in Cuzco Provincial Library, described by the Peruvian historian Vivanco. It is highly strange that the chroniclers of Indias did not do the biographies of many of the founders and the principal inhabitants of the towns and cities of the kingdom, much less their physical and moral sketches. Iconography was very scarce. We have found some small biographies of captains and founders from chroniclers from the eighteenth century. Doctor Tulio Enrique Tascon (30) gives data from Western Colombia, but from Eastern Colombia, data does not exist. The nding in Peru of the picture of “attorney Leonardo Currea y Betancur Colonizer of Cuzco and the Province of Giron of the New Granada”, according to the legend underneath, indicates that after founding San Gil, Currea de Betancur left to Peru. in an adventure not of conquest but of colonization. No other historical document states the itinerary or purpose of the founder from New Granada.It is curious that there is no trace of his permanence in the town of San Gil after the arrival of the documents conrming the foundation, not even of the names Currea y Betancur. It is difcult to accept that the mentioned sketch was not homonymous of the illustrious Spaniard we have occupied ourselves with.
In the pencil drawing (31) Don Leonardo has a rash, spandrel gure, of elongated head, lively little eyes, and slovenly mustache, as in the gure of Don Alonso Quijano, with little frontal hair and with wide and prominent jaw, as in the Habsburgs. His neck, the base of the cranium and his ears are covered with a gracious and abundant lace similar to an embroidered coat of mail. Two deep frowns between his cheek and his thin lip commissures give a note of greater austereness to the rostrum if you notice carefully the thick eyebrows and insignicant nose. Such are the great features of one of the founders of San Gil, of the knowledgeable, litigious and very Catholic knight who built with his own money the church for the cult of the Holy Cross. The probable physical picture brought by the Dominican Prada Rueda for the maiden effort of this monograph constitutes the only one I have found of the founders. From the Ruedas there is nothing.