Alfonso Ugarte

Alfonso Ugarte Vernal (Iquique, July 13, 1847 - Arica, June 7, 1880) was a mining businessman, merchant, agrarian businessman, Peruvian military volunteer and hero of the War of the Pacific. He rose in the military ranks to the rank of colonel EP and was head of the Eighth Division in the defense of Arica during said war. In the battle of Arica, on June 7, 1880, he was under the command of Colonel Francisco Bolognesi. He died fighting in the battle of Arica. Several accounts indicate that he launched himself mounted on his horse from the top of the Arica hill, taking with him the flag of Peru, to prevent the enemy from taking it as a trophy.

Biography

Alfonso Ugarte was born in the city of Iquique, province of Tarapacá. His baptismal certificate, as recorded in the book No. 26th century of the parish of San Lorenzo de Tarapacá, is dated July 13, 1847. As this certificate does not mention the time elapsed since his birth, it is assumed that he was born that same day. His parents were rich merchants from Tarapacan: Narciso Ugarte and Rosa Vernal Carpio. He studied in his hometown and in Valparaíso, where he graduated as an accountant. In 1876 he returned to Iquique, where he worked managing his family's nitrate companies, and in the public sector he became mayor of Iquique in 1876, a member of the local Charity and one of the founders (December 1870) of the Fire Company. of Iquique, one of the oldest in Peru, becoming its third lieutenant.

At the beginning of the War of the Pacific, Ugarte was preparing to travel to Europe on business for the firm Ugarte Zeballos y Compañía that he himself had created. However, he decided to stay in his hometown to personally contribute to his defense. He organized a battalion with his own money, a battalion made up of workers and artisans from Iquique, which he named the "Iquique No. 1" Battalion. This battalion was made up of 429 volunteers and 36 officers, whose command Ugarte assumed.

He participated in the battle of Tarapacá. In this, after putting the Chilean cavalry to flight with the fire of his battalion, he was shot in the head. Despite being wounded, he continued to fight and toured the field to prevent the passing of the fallen from taking place. After the victory he refused to be taken to Arequipa for his cure; when he contracted malaria he also did not want to ask for health leave. He withdrew together with the Peruvian army and the Tarapacan population towards Arica.

Death in the battle of Arica

In the plaza of Arica, he became Commander of the Eighth Division of the Army of the South and participated in the two War Meetings called by Colonel Francisco Bolognesi, in which the agreement was reached to defend the plaza "until the last burn cartridge".

Ugarte kneeling from the Morro of Arica. Painting by Lodovico Marazzani.

He died fighting in the battle of Arica. Several accounts indicate that he launched himself mounted on his horse from the top of the Arica hill, taking with him the flag of Peru, to prevent the enemy from taking it as a trophy, dying crashed among the rocks. As proof of how early this version was, on June 21, 1880, just 15 days after the battle of Arica, the Lima newspaper La Patria described Ugarte's death as follows:

The last act of the short but interesting career of Alfonso Ugarte reveals how much that truly great soul was capable. Harassed by countless enemies, already defeated at the summit of the historic Morro, witnessing the mutilation of the fallen, the desecration of those sacred relics of heroism, wanted to plunge into the enemy hands and nailing the spurs in the despises of his horse, he plunged into space from that immense height to fall off the rocks of the seashore.

Limeño newspaper The Homeland June 21, 1880.

This testimony must have been transmitted by eyewitnesses and it is also said that for many days the skeleton of a horse collapsed at the foot of the hill. Historian Clements R. Markham also records this version in his historical work on the War of the Pacific. However, although in the Peruvian reports on the battle of Arica Ugarte is mentioned as one of those who fell in the hill next to Colonel Bolognesi, none of them mentions his being thrown into the sea on horseback. However, it must be taken into account that at that time it was not customary in reports to give details of the manner of death of a combatant.

A witness to the event was a Chilean officer who fought on the hill in Arica, who, in a letter published by Chilean author Pascual Ahumada in his book Pacific War: Official Documents, states that Alfonso Ugarte, as an enemy, seemed to him to be fleeing, since he was not giving up a fight and he saw him fall off the cliff.

Immediately the tranquillity was restored, we were in the aid of the fourth, which attacked the Morro, for in the other strong the enemy made very little resistance and repleted it; but in the Morro the resistance was loosed by the discouragement that had taken over our enemies, so in a few moments remained in the power of the fourth is formidable work of nature. There the bravo Bolognesi, Major Moore, Colonel Ugarte, perished. Argentinian colonel Sáenz Peña and Colonel La Torre were injured.

Letter from a Chilean officer of the 3rd fighter in the Moor of Arica, published by Pascual Ahumada.

Later, the Chilean journalist Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, when describing the redoubts or defenses of Lima in 1881, recognized the death of Alfonso Ugarte as having occurred by falling off a cliff from the top of the hill, rectifying what he had published in a previous work, this is, that his corpse was thrown into the sea.

On December 17th, the dictator [Piérola] had also arranged that the fortress of Miraflores closest to the sea was given the famous name of Alfonso Ugarte, in memory of the bizarre mozo that, like La Rosa in Iquique, had been depicted into the ocean from the summit of the Moor of Arica.

Chilean journalist Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna (1881).

Ugarte's corpse was found at the foot of El Morro, as recorded by the parish priest of Arica, José Diego Chávez, in the burial book, dated June 15, 1880, the body being placed in a niche in the local pantheon.

The body identified as that of Colonel Alfonso Ugarte was brought to Lima in 1890, together with the remains of other fallen combatants in the war. In the July 10, 1890 edition of the Lima newspaper El Comercio, it is mentioned that before his repatriation, his box was opened in Arica and "fractions of the body and a thread sock with the mark of the name of he". A group of illustrious Tarapaqueños carried the remains in a funeral procession to the mausoleum of Marshal Ramón Castilla.

Sarcophagus of Alfonso Ugarte in the Cripta of Heroes in the Presbyter Cemetery Master Matías in the City of Lima.

Years later, these remains were deposited in the family mausoleum that the hero's mother had built in the Lima Cemetery. Later it was transferred in 1908 to the Crypt of the Heroes of the War of 1879, in the Presbítero Maestro Cemetery, where it currently rests, on the third level, inside a sarcophagus.

Trying to elucidate the controversy over the hero's corpse, Geraldo Arosamena Garland obtained in 1979 –in his capacity as president of the Center for Historical-Military Studies of Peru– the authorization to open the supposed tomb of Alfonso Ugarte, finding, effectively, his remains and part of his uniform wrapped in a Peruvian flag. They were in good condition, especially the skull and face.^{[citation needed]}

Testament

The holographic will of Colonel Ugarte was notarized in Arequipa on July 8, 1880, given that Iquique, the city where it had been signed, had been occupied by the Chilean army during the Tarapacá campaign, the document consisting of 15 pages and contains the last patrimonial and personal dispositions of the hero of Arica.

(p. 1) In Iquique on the four days of the month of November of 1879 I, the undersigned Alfonso Ugarte, do my first and perhaps last testament on the occasion of finding myself as Colonel of the "Iquique" battalion of the National Guard and having to face the danger against the Chilean armies that today invade the holy soil of my homeland and to whose defense I am willing to lose my life with the strength of my command. I declare that I am a Christian, that I profess and believe in the Catholic Religion and that I live and die in such a belief...(p. 15) If in something I am unfair here; if I have forgotten any duty, I beg you all to forgive me, for at the time when I write this I find myself in a hurry, with my military duties and business and my mood completely annihilated by thinking that I can disappear in this campaign and abandon my mother and sisters who need my support. Iquique, November 6/1879. Fdo. Alfonso Ugarte

Testament of Colonel Alfonso Ugarte.

Ugarte in art and literature

In the midst of the war, theater productions about the battle of Arica began; In this regard, a Chilean poster has been discovered where Alfonso Ugarte is seen throwing himself from Arica's hill on his horse and pursued by five soldiers who fly the Chilean flag. In the illustration, Ugarte does not have the Peruvian flag in his hands.

There are two famous paintings that represent the hero carrying the Peruvian flag and jumping on horseback from the Morro de Arica. One is the work of the Lima painter Juan Lepiani and the other is by the Italian artist Count Lodovico Agostino Marazzani Visconti in 1905. The latter is exhibited at the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History of Peru, located in Bolívar Square in Pueblo Libre, Lima.

Literature and poetry have also endorsed the popular version of Ugarte's death. The poet José Santos Chocano, in his famous "Epopeya del Morro", versifies the hero's death as follows:

Suddenly, in his corcel, between the tumult
that throws the invader, quickly advances
Alfonso Ugarte: Tear me a meteor.
Such in the shadows of occult pain
sometimes shines a ray of hope...

It is white its corcel (golden shells)
and pupils of the Sun). Rasga the bruma
as a swift arrow; and upon the high
erected top in two feet, foam splash
And then jump!

He crashed at last on the shore;
and the wave when kissing it hurts
He wrapped it in the back of his foam:
while one moment, one alone,
stopped his fragor the federation;
everyone, with a surprise sum,
They seemed to look between the bruma
the lightning still of that fast race...

Even a Chilean author has novelized the hero's epic sacrifice:

(p. 279, volume 3)... To the nervous gallop of his horse, serene as in a manoeuvre, Alfonso Ugarte left the protective reduct and turned around, to go to the gunmen and riflemen behind the barracks, on the edge of the morro that gives to the sea. To a voice of his, all the rifles shook, and the soldiers, when they returned, were able to contemplate the proud print of the Iquican colonel, cut in the vertex of the rock against the backdrop of the ocean. They also saw him how, with a resolute gesture, he got rid of his goat and threw it on his horse's head. Then, as he went, on the threshings, he shouted with all his soul, "Live Peru!" and stinging spurs he plunged into the void. With a cry of strangled stupor in the gorges, Peruvians and Chileans, they saw the elative rider fly, as on a winged horse and describing an impressive parable, going to stare at the pointed rocks in the foam of the sea that whips the feet of the bull.

Jorge Inostroza C.