page_title: Policarpa Salavarrieta
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Policarpa Salavarrieta / Early years
caption_attribution_description: Policarpa Salavarrieta
context_page_description: Policarpa Salavarrieta, also known as "La Pola," was a Neogranadine seamstress who spied for the Revolutionary Forces during the Spanish Reconquista of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. She was captured by Spanish Royalists and ultimately executed for high treason. The Day of the Colombian Woman is commemorated on the anniversary of her death. She is now considered a heroine of the independence of Colombia.
context_section_description: Without being titled or of the hidalgo class, Policarpa's family were apparently respectable and well-off, judging by her childhood home in Guaduas, now a museum. The Salavarrieta Ríos family moved to Bogotá between 1796–1798, living in a small house in the Santa Bárbara 
  In 1802 a smallpox epidemic broke out in the capital, killing thousands, including Policarpa’s father, mother, brother Eduardo and sister María Ignacia. After the tragedy, the family fell apart: José María and Manuel joining the Augustinian order, Ramón and Francisco Antonio traveled to Tena where they found work on a farm. Catarina, the oldest surviving child, decided to move back to Guaduas around 1804, taking her younger siblings Policarpa and Bibiano with her. They lived in the houses of their godmother Margarita Beltrán and their aunt Manuela until Catarina married Domingo García, again taking her two siblings with her.
  There is little information about this period in Policarpa's life. What is known is that she worked as a seamstress, and is also believed to have worked as a teacher in a public school.
  At that time Guaduas was an important rest stop on the most important road through New Granada, a stretch of land from Bogotá to the Magdalena River communicating with the north of the country and out to the Caribbean Sea: soldiers, nobles, artisans, farmers, insurgents, Spaniards and Grenadines of all walks of life passed through Guaduas, making it both a centre of commerce and of news and information.  During the war, Policarpa's family were involved on the Revolutionary side: her brother-in-law, Domingo García, died fighting alongside Antonio Nariño in the Southern Campaign, in which her brother Bibiano also fought.
  According to legend, after the Revolution broke out, the Viceroy Antonio José Amar y Borbón and his wife María Francisca Villanová, fearing for their lives, were smuggled out of Bogotá by the mayor José Miguel Pey de Andrade. They stopped in Guaduas, where the Vicereine, María Francisca Villanová, is supposed to have gone to Policarpa's house and foretold her imminent destiny and death.
caption: Watercolor by José María Espinosa
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