Everyone drank.
“Five months after the surrender of Pasto the rebellion broke out again, on the twenty-eighth of October, 1822, this time at the hands of Benito Boves and Agustín Agualongo. They escaped from prison in Quito, at a point when a good many people in Pasto already seemed reluctant to see further uprisings; those with something to lose, the well-off, could not afford to run the risk of remaining royalist, at least not until a reorganization of Spanish forces came into effect, which looked more than unlikely. It was the same for the middle class: they too had something to lose if they continued to oppose the republic. The common people, the soldiers who had sworn loyalty, the highlanders, the indigenous population stayed under clerical control — king and God, or the other way around: God and king, which amounted to the same thing. Curates and priests, for or against the republic, exchanged vehement edicts, sermons and letters in Latin; they excommunicated left and right, de-excommunicated when it suited them; it was a brawl among scholars who discredited themselves, bandying bits of Latin about: ‘The excommunication imposed upon all those who directe vel indirecte have cooperated with the republicans is not only unjust but illegal and reckless because it has not taken the pronouncement of the sacred Council of Trent into account and does not proceed from three canonical monitions.’ But ultimately, curates and priests were all encouraging the same thing: war, and I say this begging the pardon of those present.”
“You don’t need to beg my pardon,” the bishop broke in, “I agree with you.”
“The indigenous people remained subject to fate, and were soon fighting not for king or God, but for themselves, for survival. The war had left enough poverty for everyone, while they’d been out defending the idea of a king who did not protect them, an insubstantial king. That was the general feeling of resignation when the cry of rebellion broke from the mouths of Boves and Agualongo.”
“But who were Boves and Agualongo? Forgive me for forgetting, señores.”
“Forgiven; lovely, elegant Primavera.”
“Your adjectives are lovely and elegant too,” Primavera replied to the professor, mortified.
“No-one can remember it all,” the mayor butted in. He contributed very infrequently, but he did contribute. Now he tried to catch the bishop’s eye, as if urging him to pick up the topic. The Bishop of Pasto was just listening. He had wanted to air his views when curates and priests were mentioned, and was thankful no-one noticed his desire. He simply said, in a conciliatory manner: “Go on, Arcaín, Justo Pastor, stop interrupting each other.”
“Benito Boves was a nephew of the bloodthirsty Asturian general Tomás Boves, who had already confronted Bolívar, defeating him in Venezuela, at the head of a division he himself called ‘the Legion of Hell.’ He was, nonetheless, considerably less bloodthirsty than a number of patriots Bolívar surrounded himself with, above all those from his own country, the Venezuelans Salom, Flórez and Cruz Paredes, who would in turn take charge of Pasto, following strict orders from Bolívar, obeying his mandate of death and his suffocating decrees to the letter, much to Pasto’s misfortune.”
“And Boves the uncle and Boves the nephew came to very different ends: while uncle Boves died in battle, nephew Boves fled — right in the thick of the fighting, when he was most needed — ran off with the Spanish soldiers, his army curate and two other clergymen ‘at breakneck speed’ to the village of La Laguna, from there down the Putumayo River, then to Brazil, and no more was heard of him.”
“But let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Arcaín interrupted, “don’t make them flee when the October uprising has barely begun. The Spanish ran off at Christmas. Besides, Primavera was asking us about Agustín Agualongo.”
“He was,” the doctor began, “the man who would take charge of the resistance, alongside his own people, his compatriots: Estanislao Merchancano, who was also a learned man, Colonel Jerónimo Toro, famous warrior from Patía, Juan José Polo and Joaquín Enríquez, both reputedly invincible, José Canchala, indigenous cacique of Catambuco, the Benavides brothers, the formidable negro Angulo, leader of the Barbacoas blacks, Captain Ramón Astorquiza, Francisco Terán, Manuel Insuasti, Lucas Soberón and Juan Bucheli, among others. It was Agualongo who brought about the participation of the people, precisely because he was of the people, a noble and war-hardened Indian, nobler than any Creole, a strategist who stood out by virtue of his talent for command and his intelligence.”
“He was not the ignoramus official historians have made him out to be, even going so far as to make fun of his name, nor was he a ‘humble servant.’ He knew how to read and write, he painted in oils and, like many others, he joined the royalist ranks early on. He’d been born in Pasto, in August 1780, and was not a pure-blooded Indian, but mixed-race. If only he had been completely Indian, he would have been even more estimable.”
“He too ended up fighting, no longer for the king, but for his own people. The tricking of the Pastusos and later the barbarity unleashed upon them would ultimately become the sole motivation for his struggle, the banner he would defend until his death by firing squad. It was after his flight from Quito, in the company of Benito Boves, that he entered Pasto in order to organize the resistance. In the convent of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception he gathered his armaments together. And, to the surprise of those in Pasto who were indisposed towards the idea — the civil authorities and certain ecclesiastical ones — his army of four hundred militiamen assembled, to which around five hundred highlanders, drawn from neighbouring villages, were added; they crossed the Guáitara River, took the garrison held by Antonio Obando — the military chief Bolívar had left behind — and reconquered territory for the royalists as far as Tulcán, no less.”
“It wasn’t long before the Liberator heard what had happened; the news found him celebrating in Quito, at the beginning of a banquet in his honour, and when his aide spoke of events into his ear he erupted into profanities, as usual, and, as those around him witnessed, ‘leapt onto the table with a single bound and began kicking cutlery and crockery from one end to the other.’ In a state of shock, quite beside himself, he must have remembered fearsome men like the Pastusos only too welclass="underline" men who had already made him suffer, the same ones who, almost unarmed, had defeated him at Bomboná; he had seen them fight and decimate the Vargas and Bogotá battalions.”
“So he mustered a division of more than two thousand men, made up of the Rifles, squadrons of guías, mounted cazadores and Dragoon Guards, who were the most experienced troops in the southern army, and put at their head none other than Sucre, the victor of Pichincha.”
“But Sucre was driven back too, in Taindala on the twenty-fourth of November, by Agualongo’s army, which relied on only seven hundred fusiliers, a few lances, and palm sticks and guayacán clubs for the rest.”
“In reality, these were people armed solely with courage: they made up for the lack of rifles with sticks and stones, and sheer obstinacy. Without arms or munitions the order given before each battle was straight-forward: A club for the rider and another for the horse; the spear to the stomach.”
“Sucre withdrew to await reinforcements, which an infuriated Bolívar sent without delay.”
“And this was how the army of veterans, boosted by the Vargas and Bogotá battalions and the Quito militias, took Taindala on the twenty-third of December, descended on Pasto on the twenty-fourth, and, following isolated bloody affrays, went out onto the city’s streets to kill.”