The Llaneros, the inhabitants of the plains, are fierce horsemen who first fought for the Spanish royalists and then for the Venezuelan and Colombian rebels during the . During independence, they crossed the Cordillera Oriental with Simón Bolívar, and surprised the royalist army on the plains of Boyaca on the 6th of August, 1819, which cleared the way for the taking of an abandoned Santa Fe de Bogotá the next week.