| “ | Gentlemen: hear this public statement. . . . Victoriano Lorenzo dies. I forgive you all. I die as Jesus Christ died.
— Victoriano Lorenzoa
|
” |
Victoriano Lorenzo was an indigenous Panamanian leader from the rural mountainous province of Coclé, along the Pacific coast. Born sometime in the 1860s or 1870s, when Panama was still part of Colombia, Lorenzo was a descendant of prominent indigenous leaders on both sides of his family, and learned to read and write in Spanish under Jesuit instruction. In 1891, he assumed the office of corregidor (local magistrate) in the town of El Cacao, where he witnessed the extreme poverty of his constituents. His attempts to advocate for the community led to the provincial prefect replacing Lorenzo as corregidor; Lorenzo and his supporters challenged the decision, leading the new corregidor, the Colombian Pedro Hoyos, to threaten Lorenzo’s life. In the resulting fight, Lorenzo shot and killed Hoyos in self-defense, leading to his imprisonment for five years.
Upon his release from prison, Lorenzo continued to serve as a local leader who worked on behalf of the cholos—a term similar to “mestizo” in other parts of Latin America, referring to individuals of mixed native and Spanish ancestry. When the Thousand Days’ War erupted between the Colombian Liberal and Conservative Parties in 1899, it quickly spread to Panama. Lorenzo joined the liberal rebels against the conservative government, since he saw the ruling regime as responsible for the neglect and extreme poverty that rural Panamanians endured.
In 1900, Lorenzo and his guerrillas supported the liberal army led by Belisario Porras (a prominent liberal and future president of independent Panama), serving as porters and local guides as well as armed combatants. Although Porras’s campaign ended in disaster with the Battle of Calidonia Bridge in July, Lorenzo continued to fight a guerrilla campaign in the Coclé Mountains through 1902. When the Colombian liberals launched a renewed campaign in Panama that year under Benjamín Herrera, Lorenzo again supported the rebel army and participated in the bloody liberal victory at the Battle of Aguadulce in February. As the intense fighting threatened the holdings of the U.S. Panama Railroad Company, U.S. Marines disembarked in Panama and compelled both liberals and conservatives to sign a peace treaty aboard the U.S.S. Wisconsin in November 1902, officially ending the war.
Lorenzo, however, refused to surrender alongside the Colombian liberals and continued his guerrilla operations in defense of his rural cholo communities. Liberal commander Benjamín Herrera ordered Lorenzo’s arrest, and he was captured in December. The Colombian government in Bogotá denied Lorenzo’s appeal for clemency and sentenced him to death even as his supporters continued to fight in the mountains. A firing squad executed Lorenzo on May 15, 1903. With U.S. support, Panama gained its independence from Colombia less than six months later, and Lorenzo’s betrayal and execution served as a key moment in the national mythology surrounding Panamanian independence.
Battle vs. Quintín Quintana (by Field Marshal Montgomery)[]
To be written
Expert's Opinion[]
Although Victoriano Lorenzo's men were dedicated to their cause and he enjoyed substantial advantages from fighting on his home turf, Quintín Quintana's forces were the more professional soldiers. The Chilean Army of the late nineteenth century was one of the best and most competent standing armies in all of the Western Hemisphere, and Quintana's men benefited greatly from the equipment, supplies, and munitions provided by the Chilean armed forces. Lorenzo's defense was passionate, but he ultimately failed to defeat the Colombian military during the Thousand Days' War—a substantially weaker and worse organized force than the Chilean Army.