Belisario suarez

Manuel Belisario Suárez y Vargas (Arica, Peru, September 22, 1833 - Lima, July 19, 1910) was a Peruvian military man and politician.

"Heavy and dark-haired, with light eyes and an energetic figure, he wore a short mustache and a goatee, spoke little, slowly and as if listening to himself”, Luis Alayza and Paz Soldán describe him this way..

He was elected a member of the Constituent Congress of 1867 for the province of Jauja during the government of Mariano Ignacio Prado. This congress issued the Political Constitution of 1867, the eighth that governed the country, and which was only valid for five months from August 1867 to January 1868

He was elected substitute deputy for the province of Tarata in 1886 and re-elected in 1889. It should be noted that General Belisario Suárez was Mayor of Miraflores at the beginning of the 20th century.

Pacific War

After the Battle of Iquique, where the armored car “Independencia” was lost, Colonel Belisario Suárez, head of a division stationed in Iquique, was close to shooting the second commander of the frigate “ Independencia”, frigate captain José Sánchez Lagomarsino, as soon as he arrived at Punta Gruesa. Subsequently, according to Guillermo Thorndike, General EP Mariano Ignacio Prado ordered the immediate trial of the ship's captain + AP Juan Guillermo Moore Ruiz, for the loss of the “Independencia”, in Punta Gruesa.

The start of Chile's land campaign finds him in Iquique as Chief of Staff of the Army of the South. On November 2, 1879, he received the telegram transmitted from Pisagua by Division General EP Juan Buendía to send the Hussars and the “Vanguard” Division to Pisagua: the Chilean invasion of Peruvian territory had begun.

Suárez was left at a crossroads, since the Supreme Director of War, General Mariano Ignacio Prado, had issued precise orders before the landing and these were to concentrate the allied troops and once the terrain was chosen, launch them into a single decisive battle. Now, Buendía asked him for the best of the allied troops for an isolated counterattack. This would disperse the allied troops, contradicting the orders of the Supreme War Director, so he decided to consult with General Prado. Prado replied to General Buendía that if he was not sure of successfully holding the position, it was better to concentrate the forces to give a final battle. Hours later, Colonel Suárez received another telegram from Buendía in Iquique:

"BAND TO SUREZ

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Before November 2, 1879, Colonel Suárez had explored south of Iquique, making a deep incursion. There he understood that the Chilean invasion would arrive by sea, since Chile would spare its battalions the sufferings of a trek through the desert to Peru. In that exploration, he took prisoners, captured weapons and ammunition, and did not lose a single man. And he was also Chief of Staff of the Allied Army of the South, when at the end of that November 2, 1879, Pisagua changed ownership and received the last communication from Division General Juan Buendía:

"He was in luck. ROPA, BOTAS, CHARRETERA, FAJA, HOUSE OF IQUIQUE IS LOST IN THE INCENDIRE; IF HE WILL BE SUERTAIN, THAT DANCOURT WEARS MY EQUIPMENT AND FEELS HOW IT IS MY FAMILY"

In the march through the feared Tamarugal towards San Francisco, Colonel Belisario Suárez commanded the Second Echelon, made up of the First Division of Colonel Velarde and the Villamil Division (Bolivian), apart from twelve cannons with the Chief of the Artillery, Castanon.

On this journey to San Francisco, Colonel Belisario Suárez, attacked the Chilean cavalry of Captain Barahona, the same one that had “reviewed” the Peruvian horsemen of the “Húsares de Junín” Regiment commanded by Sepúlveda and had abandoned them in the desert to serve as food for the vultures; Of this squadron of Peruvian hussars, only the Chinchano soldier Tarsilio Ramírez remained alive but seriously wounded.

After the setback in San Francisco, Colonel Andrés A. Cáceres, asked Colonel Belisario Suárez to use the cavalry to reunite the dispersed, to which Suárez replied: “...I can't, the 262 horsemen and all their leaders abandoned the army to its fate. It evaporated, the same as the “Vanguard” Division, even General Buendía has disappeared. Frankly inconceivable, Mr. Cáceres” (Guillermo Thorndike, “El Viaje de Prado” p. 140).

During the battle of San Francisco, the Peruvian cavalry, under the command of Colonel Ramírez, had spurred their way to Arica and the nearly four thousand Bolivians, from the “Olañeta” and the “Illimani”, framed in the Allied Army of the South, they had abandoned the battlefield back to Oruro (Bolivia), “leaving on the pampas scattered supplies, ammunition and good remingtons” (Guillermo Thorndike, “El Viaje de Prado”). The army of the wayward President of the Republic of Bolivia, Hilarión Daza, did not even attend the meeting in San Francisco.

For the second time, since the Chilean invasion of Peruvian territory began until the Battle of San Francisco, Colonel Belisario Suárez was in command of the Army of the South, in the absence of General Juan Buendía. Guillermo Thorndike in "El Viaje de Prado", tells us:

“... (Suárez) He called a war meeting while the sun was sinking. Colonel Velarde has disappeared but his battalions were regrouping under the command of Colonel Alejandro Herrera… ”.

“Colonels Bolognesi, Fajardo, Cáceres, Herrera, Ferrando, Dávila and Castañón form a circle outside...”

“I see no other solution than to retire to Arica, says Bolognesi”.

On November 27, 1879, in the Battle of Tarapacá, the then Chief of the General Staff of the Army of the South, Colonel Belisario Suárez, imposed his authority and his coherent orders against the contradictory orders of General Juan Buendía, to organize the withering Peruvian counterattack, which the civil guard Mariano de los Santos complied with to the point of snatching from a Chilean, the banner that was the pride of the Zouaves.

After the Battle of Tarapacá and the arrival in the city of Arica, of the ragged Army of the South, Admiral Lizardo Montero Rosas, Political-Military Chief of the South, dismissed Colonel Belisario Suárez, replacing him with Colonel José de la Torre, doing the same with General Juan Buendía and placing him under arrest.

Despite Colonel Belisario Suárez being dismissed and being put on trial, due to the setback in San Francisco, Admiral Lizardo Montero Rosas, at that time Supreme Commander of the First Army of the South, had some deferences towards him and gave him command of the Third Division of the First Peruvian Army of the South.

In the Battle of Alto de Tacna, he was wounded in the leg and his horse was killed. This battle was lost not because of lack of courage of the Peruvian troops, but because of the overwhelming number of Chilean troops of infantry, cavalry and superior artillery, leaving the way free for the Chileans to Arica, Arequipa and Lima.

The worst thing about the defeat is that while the Second Army of the South remained immobilized in Arequipa, under the command of Colonel Segundo Leiva, in Lima, the Dictator Nicolás de Piérola, cut off his brains, creating the "Legion of Merit" to open the “Great Book of the Republic”. In this book, the history of Peru would be written.

He disliked the subject of the battle of Dolores. There he had found himself at the head of the enemy, commanding troops in which emulation and anarchy reigned, and he saw himself abandoned by his own and by strangers, since the bulk of the Bolivian forces, commanded by the President of the Republic himself, General Daza, abandoned one early morning the field, while the Peruvian chiefs fought each other or against their chief, with the enemy in front.

On the other hand, he spoke enthusiastically of the battle of Tarapacá. We were in the mousetrap, he said, when we heard about the approach of the Chileans. The soldiers were exhausted by the marches in the desert, under a terrible sun in the day and a freezing fog at night; without food or water. After the setback at Dolores we prepared to march to Arica, where my people would repair their forces.

Tarapacá is at the bottom of a ravine with flanks difficult to climb, almost inaccessible, and the Chilean army came from the north through the heights. Then they understood that only audacity could save them, and they decided to become attackers from being attacked. Colonel EP Andrés Avelino Cáceres, climbing the hills and beating the enemy in a few hours, taking prisoners, cannons and banners, and opening the way for Colonel Belisario Suárez to march to Arica in search of food and ammunition. He did not complain about the misfortune that followed him. For the last time, luck was against them in the battles of San Juan and Miraflores, where, victim of the wrong command orders and martyr to military discipline, he would pay for the faults of others.

His remains rest in the Crypt of Heroes in the Presbítero Maestro cemetery in Lima.