Policarpa Salavarrieta Biography
💥Policarpa Salavarrieta💥
Birth: 26 de enero de 1795, Guaduas, Colombia
Death: 14 de noviembre de 1817, Bogotá, Colombia
Occupation: Maestra de escuela, costurera
Nickname: La Pola
Brothers: Catarina Salavarrieta, Bibiano Salavarrieta, MÁS
Parents: Joaquín Salavarrieta, Mariana de Ríos
💫Biography: 💫
Better known as La Pola, she was a heroine who spied for the Creole independence forces during the Spanish Reconquest. She is considered a heroine of the Colombian independence and was, together with Agueda Gallardo, one of the two women heroes of that period. She was executed in the Plaza Mayor of Bogota.
She is one of the few women recognized as having actively participated in the processes of independence in Latin America. Policarpa, also known as Pola, was a spy, revolutionary and died a martyr in her battle for freedom.
Her date of birth is January 26, 1795. Her first name varies in different versions, some say she was called Apolonia, Polonia or Policarpa. It is known that she was born in the municipality of San Miguel de Guaduas, Viceroyalty of New Granada. Her baptismal certificate has not been found, but it is believed that she was baptized in the municipality of Tenjo according to some parish manuscripts.
Policarpa Salavarrieta Ríos grew up in a well-to-do family, which had enough and was respected in the town of Guaduas, but did not possess any nobility status. The will of his father, don Joaquín Salavarrieta, shows him as a man of regular fortune, who had undertaken agricultural and commercial businesses. In the will of his mother, Mrs. Mariana Ríos, there are abundant clothes, expensive jewelry and not scarce household goods. She was the fifth of seven siblings. The house of the Salavarrieta Ríos family in Guaduas, which is still preserved, converted into a museum, is not the most elegant, sumptuous or well built of the town, but it is neither small nor miserable.
The Salavarrieta Ríos family moved to Bogotá in 1797. They settled in a low house of wall and tile in the Santa Bárbara neighborhood. In 1802, a smallpox epidemic spread in the capital, which killed Policarpa's father, mother and two siblings: Joaquín and María Ignacia. After this tragedy, the Salavarrieta Ríos family was dissolved: José María and Manuel entered the Augustinian community; Ramón and Francisco Antonio traveled to Tena and went to work on a farm; Catarina, the eldest sister, decided to move back to Guaduas, around 1804, with her two younger brothers: Policarpa and Bibiano. They settled in the house of the godmother Margarita Beltrán, sister of Manuela, until Catalina married Domingo García, and her two brothers went to live with the new couple.
There is little information about the time that Pola lived in Guaduas, it seems that she worked as a seamstress and some say that she taught in the public school. Guaduas is then a place of obligatory transit between the capital and the Magdalena River, the backbone of the country; notable travelers, shippers, products and news of all events constantly crossed the town. In these times of war, Policarpa Salavarrieta shared with her family the patriotic spirit. Her brother-in-law, Domingo García, died fighting at the side of the hero Antonio Nariño in his Southern Campaigns, and her brother Bibiano was a veteran of the same.
There is also no clarity about her full and precise name. In this respect there are several sources: her father called her Apolonia when granting the power of testament, and with that same name the presbyter Salvador Contreras made her appear when formalizing the will, on December 13, 1802. However, her brother Bibiano, the closest in affections and her companion in Santafé, called her Polita. Policarpa called her Ambrosio Almeyda, who conspired with her and received her protection. Doña Andrea Ricaurte de Lozano, in whose house she lived and in whose company she was at the time of her imprisonment, also called her Policarpa. In her false passport, issued in 1817, she was called Gregoria Apolinaria. Contemporaries of hers, such as Almeyda himself, Don José María Caballero, José Hilario López or Don Francisco Mariano Fernández, simply called her La Pola. However, the name by which she is best known and as she has subsequently been called in all posthumous tributes is Policarpa Salavarrieta.
Policarpa Salavarrieta participated in the independence cry of July 20, 1810 at the age of 15. Later on, her activities during the independence period were especially linked to the patriot army of the plains: she received and sent messages, bought war material, individually convinced young people and helped them to join the patriot groups. An expert in espionage, Policarpa quickly became indispensable to the patriot cause. She always worked alongside a compatriot like her brother Bibiano, but her most important workmate was Alejo Sabaraín. Sabaraín had already fought alongside Nariño in the south, and had been captured in 1816. The following year he was pardoned and, free, dedicated himself to espionage. Policarpa's activities might not have been suspicious for the royalists had it not been for the escape of the Almeyda brothers, who were captured with documents that compromised La Pola, as well as the denunciation of Facundo Tovar, an infiltrated Venezuelan grenadier sent by the Spanish,5 who further compromised La Pola and his fiancé Alejo Sabaraín after learning of the recruitment of soldiers for the Liberation Army.
👾Historical significance:👾
During this period, Policarpa Salavarrieta is considered the most representative woman of the Colombian independence revolution. In her time, the execution of a young woman for a political crime stirred the population and created great resistance to the regime imposed by Juan Sámano. While many women were similarly murdered during the Spanish occupation, the case of La Pola captured the popular imagination. Her death inspired poets, writers and playwrights to immortalize her story, always highlighting her bravery and courage.
On November 9, 1967, by virtue of Law 44 of the Congress of the Republic of Colombia and signed by President Carlos Lleras Restrepo, declared in its second article, November 14, Colombian Women's Day in honor of the commemoration of the death of our Heroine, Policarpa Salavarrieta.
👽Tributes:👽
Policarpa's image has been used several times on Colombian banknotes and coins, and she is one of the only female historical personalities to appear on them. In 2016 she cedes her place on the 10 000 Colombian peso banknote to anthropologist Virginia Gutiérrez.
⦁ Statue of La Pola of Dionisio Cortés
⦁ Policarpa municipality in the department of Nariño.
⦁ Policarpa a neighborhood in the Antonio Nariño district of Bogota, and a station of the Bogota Mass Transit System.
⦁ A housing development in Medellín.
⦁ A neighborhood called "La Pola" in Ibagué, in his honor.
⦁ A neighborhood and a school: the Policarpa Salavarrieta Educational Institution.
⦁ Policarpa Salavarrieta was depicted on the 5 peso coin from 1980 to 1988, and on the 10 000 Colombian peso bill, printed from 1995 to 2016.
Efemeride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9wQSiHPxh8
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