Americanos by John Charles Chasteen;

Author:John Charles Chasteen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2008-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Nariño Goes Back to Jail

The next day, in New Granada, the aging revolutionary Antonio Nariño was captured by Fernando VII’s supporters while leading the Army of Cundinamarca against Pasto. This time Nariño almost didn’t survive capture.

The Pastuzo people had proved to be among the toughest, most loyal, and most determined of Fernando’s subjects in América. Pastuzo society was heavily indigenous, with a high-Andean flavor. Along with the local Pastuzo clergy and the city’s elite of españoles americanos, the mestizo townspeople and Indian peasantry of Pasto were steadfastly royalist and had no wish to join a new republic that had renounced obedience to Fernando VII. Pastuzo loyalty responded to a native conservatism, no doubt, but also to the ancient rivalry between Pasto and Quito. Among the ideas that occurred to the first Quito junta had been to attack Pasto. The second Quito junta also failed to endear the Pastuzos to the cause of América when it captured and briefly occupied their city. In mid-1814, Pasto stood as the stubborn bastion of New Granada’s royalist south—a royalist south into which Antonio Nariño vowed to introduce the benefits of liberty, whether the people there liked it or not.

Popayán, the chief city of southern New Granada, not far from Pasto, fell to Nariño’s army by the first of the year. While his army rested in Popayán, Nariño wrote letters to the Pastuzos explaining that americanos shouldn’t fight americanos, and that Bogotá had Pasto’s best interests at heart. But the Indians collected round stones the size of grapefruit for their slings and placed boulders along cliff edges above the roads on which Nariño’s armies would have to pass. The townspeople of Pasto likewise participated enthusiastically in the defense, which was fought in a string of holding actions as Nariño’s force advanced toward the city. Finally, practically on Pasto’s doorstep, the city’s determined inhabitants scattered Nariño’s forces and, on 14 May 1814, captured Nariño himself without knowing who he was. Nariño understood how the Pastuzos felt about him, so he dissimulated, claiming not to be Nariño but to know Nariño’s whereabouts, which he promised to disclose if well treated. His captors marched him into the city to hear this information. Once safe in the custody of a Spanish general, the prisoner went out on a balcony and taunted the crowd with the information it sought: “Pastuzos! You’re looking for General Nariño? Here he is!”4

In view of this revelation, the Pastuzos favored a summary execution, but the Spanish general protected his defiant captive, whom he thanked for preventing plunder in Popayán. Besides, Nariño was a valuable prisoner. Soon he was on his way to Lima, and then to Cádiz, in chains once more. He had been out of Spanish custody for not quite four years.

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