What was Colombia’s “black Christmas” (and what did Simón Bolívar have to do with it)

It may sound strange after two centuries, but at a certain point indigenous, black and mestizo colonized southern Colombia and the so-called royalists (defenders of the Spanish monarchy) had a common enemy: Simón Bolívar.

And that confrontation ended in a massacre that is remembered to this day in the city of Pasto, a few hours from the Colombian border with Ecuador.

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It began on December 24, 1822 and is known as “Black Christmas”, when almost half a thousand local residents were killed and more than 1,000 were recruited or expelled from their homes and their city.

The days of horror that the population lived through were the work of patriotic or republican troops under the command of the Marshal of Ayacucho, Antonio José de Sucre, and by direct orders of Bolívar.

For historian Felipe Arias, it is “an episode of violence that did not occur in any other part of New Granada (a territory that would become Colombia after independence) and for this reason it remained within the cultural identity of the Pasto people.” .

“Pasto is not singular for having been realistic, because so were other populations. What makes his case unique is that what happened is a very important part of the city’s historical memory,” the expert, who is part of a research team on the Colombian bicentennial, explained to BBC Mundo.

In fact, Arias maintains that this collective memory has not been lost in that region, but has been strengthened over the years.

Grass

It was not a secret in the second decade of the 19th century that some territories in the south of the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada opposed the efforts for the republican and independence cause to prevail.

What’s more, Pasto was not only faithful to the royalist side: he determinedly defended the Spanish King and the Catholic religion.

Those sympathies, added to the mountainous characteristics of the region, led troops aligned with the Spanish crown to shelter there before the siege and the victories of the patriots in the surroundings,

As if that were not enough, militias of local residents dealt a few blows to the republican forces during the independence battles.

That is where one of the local figures who is still remembered in Pasto, the Hispanic caudillo and military man, becomes relevant. Augustine Agualongo.

Pastuso by birth, the man enlisted in the royalist ranks in 1811 and was one of those responsible for turning his region into a real obstacle for the anti-colonialist forces that tried to control that land to continue their advance towards the south.

Bolivar he knew well that Pasto and the difficult geography that surrounded it was a complex stumbling block for his intentions of taking his campaign to the towns below the line of the Equator.

Agualongo, for his part, was recognized and respected by local blacks, indigenous people, and mestizos who joined his military actions.

Why was there opposition to independence?

For the historian Arias, the Pasto society of that time had incorporated indigenous people on the condition that they recognized the colonial authority and existing hierarchies.

“In the conflict there were both royalist and pro-independence indigenous communities, as it happened with the Americans, the Creoles, the blacks and the mestizos. In Pasto there is opposition to independence because it implied the disappearance of a monarchy that protected their collective properties against the historical abuses committed by Creole landowners who sympathized with the republic”, explains Felipe Arias.

The mountains that surround Pasto made that town a difficult area for the Republican army.

The expert adds that what leads Pasto to episodes as violent as “Black Christmas” is an accumulation of situations in which the geographical position of the population and the conditions of its orography have a lot to do with it.

“The case of Pasto, throughout the entire independence war, is a scene of battles for 15 years. Due to its difficult access, the independentistas fell several times, but it was not the only realistic population”, maintains the historian.

Bolívar and Sucre bring the dynamics of “war to the death” to Pasto land between 1821 and 1822 due to their experiences in Venezuela, where there were very violent battles.

“The Pasto uprising was so strong that the ‘Black Christmas’ episode occurred, to impose authority and force with cruelty,” he concludes.

“Black Christmas”

Bolívar had achieved the capitulation of the royalists of Pasto in the first half of 1822, but he did not count with the uprising of Agualongo and the Hispanist colonel Benito Boves.

His rebellion in the form of guerrillas and militias came to put the patriot troops in trouble, but the republican reinforcements were not long in arriving.

The Mariscal de Ayacucho, who triumphed and became the benchmark of the Ecuadorian independencewas summoned to lead his troops to the area.

The continuous military victories led by Antonio José de Sucre left Pasto almost defenseless and on the verge of a nightmare that would begin on Christmas Eve.

“Bad night instead of Christmas Eve, it was for the royalist Pasto that of December 24, 1822. House by house, the city was taken by the patriots. The guerrillas were falling by the dozens every minute,” reports the Señal Memoria project, from the Colombian public media network.

The portal, which rescued historical narrations about the episode made in the last century, recalls that “the Pastusos began to surrender, but the Republican troops had no mercy. It was the war to the death”.

“They took relentless revenge. Some surrendered, others wounded, all were killed. Entire families disappeared”, continues the story of the series “Colombia yesterday, Colombia today”, presented on radio in 1970.

“They entered the church of San Francisco on horseback and killed all the refugees, including women and children,” the narration continues.

Some have linked the traditional Black and White Festival in Pasto – which begins on December 28 – to the Black Christmas massacre. In any case, in these festivities allegorical floats have been presented to that fact. (GETTY IMAGES)

Bolívar arrived on January 2, 1823. The deaths and looting were not enough, but hundreds were recruited for the liberation campaigns in Peru and others were expelled to the territories of Cuenca or Quito.

Different historians point out that the rupture of the capitulation at the beginning of 1822 was Bolívar’s excuse to annihilate the Pasto rebellion.

Even reviews point out that the Liberator made all decisions such as confinement and massive recruitment so that “Black Christmas” would never be remembered again in Colombia.

If that was really his wish, it didn’t come true.

“When the rifles entered” (the battalion commanded by Sucre was called “Rifles”) is the phrase with which the episode that began on that Christmas Eve of 1822 was remembered for decades.

A Christmas that in Pasto will never be forgotten.

Source: Elcomercio