Jose Francisco Vergara

José Francisco Vergara Echevers (Colina, October 10, 1833 - Viña del Mar, February 15, 1889) was a Chilean civil engineer, military officer, firefighter, writer and politician. He recognized for his participation in the construction of the railway from Santiago to Valparaíso. He was considered a war hero after his role as a cavalry commander in the Battle of Pampa Germania, with this fame he was appointed Minister of War and Navy and participated in the combats of Chorrillos and Miraflores. At the end of his career in the Chilean Army, Vergara led and organized the founding of the city of Viña del Mar north of Valparaíso, where he lived in what is now known as Quinta Vergara, as a Firefighter he also led the founding of the First Company Viña del Mar Fire Department. His political life was carried out in the Radical Party of which he would be its president, as well as a senator of the Republic, minister of the interior and presidential candidate in 1886. In addition, as an active member of Freemasonry he came to be Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Chile. He passed away at the young age of 55.

Family

Son of José María Vergara Albano, who was an assistant to Bernardo O'Higgins, reaching the rank of sergeant major in 1818 and later appointed mayor of Colchagua by Manuel Bulnes; and Carmen Echevers and Cuevas.

Grandson of José Francisco Martínez de Vergara y Rojas-Puebla, nephew of Pedro Nolasco Vergara Albano, cousin of Diego Vergara Correa, José Bonifacio Vergara Correa and uncle of senators and representatives Ismael Valdés Vergara, Francisco Valdés Vergara and the literary critic and Undersecretary of War and Navy Pedro Nolasco Cruz Vergara.

He married on August 8, 1859, Mercedes Alvares Prieto, granddaughter of Francisco Alvares and Dolores Pérez Flores. They had two children, Salvador married to Blanca Vicuña Subercaseaux; and Blanca married to Guillermo Errázuriz Urmeneta.

Studies

He completed his primary studies in private schools and secondary schools in the National Institute. On April 12, 1853, he was appointed Internal Inspector of said institute. Later he entered the University of Chile, getting the degree of surveying engineer in 1859, at the age of 26.

Vina del Mar Foundation

In 1853, at the age of 20, he began working on the train line that would link the city of Santiago and Valparaíso. During this job he met Mercedes Alvares Pérez, daughter of the owner of the Viña del Mar hacienda, whom he married on August 8, 1859.

On December 24, 1874, he presented the project for the formation of the population of Viña del Mar to the mayor of Valparaíso. On February 29, 1875, the project was approved and the respective founding decree was issued. Vergara in 1875 donated the land for the construction of two schools, a chapel, a slaughterhouse and a hospice. The foundation of the city of Viña del Mar, is in the lower part of the hacienda of said name, which Vergara administered since the death of his in-laws in 1873.

On May 31, 1881, the decree that gave rise to the Municipality of Viña del Mar was promulgated. This decree was signed by President Aníbal Pinto Garmendia and José Francisco Vergara was elected part of this council.

Political career

Deputy and Senator

In his youth, Vergara joined the Radical Party, being elected deputy on May 30, 1879.

He was a member of the Reform Club and elected Grand Master of the Lodge of Chile in 1881. From 1882 to 1886 he held the position of senator for the province of Coquimbo representing the Radical party. In the Senate, he accuses the government of Domingo Santa María of abuses committed.

Minister of State

He founded the newspaper El Deber.^{[citation needed]} He was Minister of War and Navy under Aníbal Pinto Garmendia and Minister of the Interior under Domingo Santa María González, whose successor he would be, but the president changed his opinion due to Vergara's statements about electoral freedom and his chosen one was the future president José Manuel Balmaceda.

"Severo Perpena" It was the name used by Vergara to challenge Santa María for his authoritarianism and his political derailments, with this pseudonym, Vergara published multiple articles in the newspaper La Libertad Electoral in 1886.

Pacific War

José Francisco Vergara was appointed by the President of Chile, Aníbal Pinto, secretary to the then Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Justo Arteaga.

There were two positions that were represented, one by the Government of Pinto, at that time Minister Belisario Prats, and another by the Armed Forces, Navy and Army, represented by Admiral Juan Williams Rebolledo. The former thought that it was necessary to declare war and, on the same day, bombard the Peruvian fleet that was known to be undergoing repairs in Callao, thus leaving the road to Lima open. The latter thought that it was necessary to go slower, first blockade Iquique and then harass the inhabitants of Tarapacá, in such a way that it would escalate step by step until it reached Lima.

Since the head of the northern army, Justo Arteaga, did not accept advice, except that of his sons, Vergara spent his time studying the area and deducing a plan of operations. His plan was recognized by Domingo Santa María as the only reliable one. Vergara also warned the government of the lack of plans and decision in the military command, that is, Arteaga, which motivated the government to send Domingo Santa María north to analyze the situation and seek the prompt mobilization of the army.

Both the Minister of War, Rafael Sotomayor and his replacement, José Francisco Vergara, had to direct the course of operations considering the position of the uniformed officers.

Disembarkation and capture of Pisagua

J. F. Vergara was secretary to Minister Rafael Sotomayor and after the landing he offered to lead a force of scouts that had to reconnoiter the surroundings of the (only) railway line that left Pisagua to Agua Santa. The reconnaissance found stores of food, fodder, wells and water pumps, and working locomotives that allowed the landed army to survive long enough to establish supplies by their own means. During the exploration, his detachment defeated an allied cavalry column in the Combat of Pampa Germania. Due to his achievements, Vergara was appointed chief of staff of the forces (6,000 men) stationed in Dolores.

On November 19, 1879, the Battle of Dolores took place, in which Vergara imposed his strategic criteria over that of Colonel Emilio Sotomayor Baeza, brother of the Minister. This fact prevented a catastrophe for the Chilean forces, but produced a definitive rupture, which was about to be solved with the sword, between Vergara and Sotomayor. On November 27, 1879, came the battle of Tarapacá, which spelled disaster for the Chilean army and the subsequent request by Minister Sotomayor to Vergara to embark for Chile for the responsibility, which according to the army and public opinion, concerned him. Regarding this, Gonzalo Bulnes quotes from some of Vergara's personal pages:

Everything advised me to return and terminate my military career and to do so in order to do so I put myself to cover with the ordinance asking permission to leave the service, which did not cost me work to get.

By his own experience he had known how difficult it is to make an ideal even if it is of self-denial and sacrifice. He had taken the weapons in the mature age, in the age of egoism and calculus, to give the example of what can be done when the deep and pure love of the Father is kept in the chest. Seven months later he returned tacit and deconsolate as the vanquished of destiny, thinking of the insufficiency of human abilities that are not enough to help the vehement desire to do something useful, even if he puts himself to achieve a tenacious will and a work carried to his extreme limits.

Thus I came to my country and to my home in December 1879, giving for fail my conceptions about patriotism and the moral sense of men, and for all time my public life initiated so disastrously for my soul.

The press was not benign with me. Except El Mercurio, La Patria and El Coquimbo, all the other newspapers dedicated me hard of ours when not ruins slander. Wounded, but holding like the Spartan to not reveal the soreness of the sore, I spent a busy whole month of business and fieldwork.

Vergara Echevers left immediately, staying however for a short time in Viña del Mar, since according to what she told her son Salvador, who was in Geneva, on January 26, 1880, that she returned to the front.

His view on the way to conduct the war was pessimistic:

Our war is in a complete rest. After Tarapacá's hard fighting, there has not been a single fact of important weapons, because the excursion to Moquehua was a fact without consequence. The offensive must have been taken for a long time, but nothing is done, due to a lack of skills in the chiefs and the inactivity that characterizes Minister Sotomayor, who still remains in his position. I surrender to the Army on 31 this month to take my post as Secretary-General, with instructions from the Government and all their confidence in the operations to be undertaken.

Minister of War and Navy

After the sudden death of Rafael Sotomayor Baeza during the Tacna and Arica Campaign, José Francisco Vergara assumed the position of Minister of War and Navy on July 15, 1880, unleashing a wave of indignation in the Army. Manuel Baquedano wrote to President Pinto:

The appointment of Don José F. Vergara for war minister has caused in the Army the effect of the explosion of a bomb i has come to deeply disturb the tranquility that we were enjoying.

He participated as a representative of Chile in the unsuccessful Arica Conference in October 1880 that was to end the war.

Vergara organized the expedition to Lima from Arica. He installed a dock and on the day of departure he watched each and every move. His gaze, a mixture of pride and satisfaction, saw the launches leave with food, baggage, ammunition, fodder, etc., of the 8,800 men who would define the war. It would be difficult for another man to have carried out the occupation of Lima without having the multifaceted personality of Vergara.

In 1881 he participated in the battle of Chorrillos on January 13, the battle of Miraflores on January 15 and finally in the occupation of Lima on January 17.

Death

He will return to Viña del Mar having a hectic public life and also immersing himself in the personal care of his gardens. He died on February 15, 1889, pruning some laurels, a symbol of glory that has sometimes also been pruned from his historical figure. He was buried in the mausoleum of his wife's family in Valparaíso Cemetery No. 1.

Diego Barros Arana describes it:

It places it in the ranks of the most illustrious children of this Chilean homeland, whose glory and prosperity consecrated all the intelligence of a privileged head and all burying and all the activity of a great character. Vergara deserved in life the affection of his fellow citizens and will deserve in history the respect and applause of posterity.

Francisco Antonio Encina describes them:

The most disconcerting note of Vergara's personality is the conciliation of some features that are always divorced even in the best gifted brains. His mental breadth was simply astonishing, his abilities ranged from the skilled businessman to the strategist, from the mathematician to the writer of powerful literary temperament, from the most delicate sensibility to the most impetuous thrust of the will. And yours was an authentic brain amplitude, the antithesis of charlatan, good for everything and fit for nothing.

Tributes

His name has been commemorated in various ways, including:

• Quinta Vergara Parque de la comuna de Viña del Mar where was the residence of José Francisco Vergara (Palacio Vergara)
• Logia."José Francisco Vergara"No. 105 of the city of Viña del Mar (Gran Logia de Chile)
• First Fire Company of Viña del Mar, of which he was a founding member on August 20, 1884, which after reorganizing on April 13, 1913 became "Bomba José Francisco Vergara".

The mysterious case of Blanca Vergara

In 1995, his name came to the fore again due to an interview on the TVN program Y si fuera verdad?, with his great-granddaughter Blanca Vergara, where he recounted the strange case of his son Sebastian, two and a half years old. The boy had unusual habits for his age, such as sitting in his grandfather's rocking chair, whom he did not know, since he had died in 1971, as well as showing a special fascination for the snails in his garden and for clocks., especially for a specific time, 06:45.

However, what really intrigued her mother is that one day, while she was drawing with other children, she handed over the sheet with a turn-of-the-century monogram XIX. as he endlessly repeated letter, letter, letter. Blanca, who was going through a serious economic crisis because she negotiated with unscrupulous people who scammed her, was surprised, but everything began to change when Sebastián was diagnosed with leukemia and had to be hospitalized. One day he began to feel very bad, and that day, the snails in the garden mysteriously died and the boy's nurse disappeared. That day he passed away.

Four years later, Blanca visited a public auctioneer who gave her some letters, and one of them had the signature of José Francisco Vergara. When he compared the lines with his son's drawing, he realized that he had the mission of going to the Judicial Archive, and after a laborious search, he found a document of effective possession that allowed him to prove that the properties that had belonged to him their ancestors.

To this day, Blanca believes that her son was the reincarnation of José Francisco Vergara, who took the form of a child to let her know that, even from the afterlife, her ancestors would prevent the unscrupulous from harming her, since that from there, several irregularities were discovered that allowed him to recover the properties that had been stolen from him due to negligence and misappropriation carried out by his father's lawyers and administrators, who took advantage of his naivety.