Pedro Manuel Valencia Tejada. Member of the history academy of Valle del Cauca. Furniture donor for the Cañasgordas museum.
Don Pedro Manuel Valencia Tejada is a Caleño who was born in 1945, from the Payanes family he lived all his life in the old Hacienda de San Fernando, he is an electromechanical engineer from the Universidad del Valle, he worked in the Cali Chamber of Commerce and worked in Business development. He is currently retired and dedicates part of his time to the Valley’s history academy, generationally it has been like that in his family, he is also part of the Freemasonry lodge in the south west of Colombia.
About the descendants of the Royal Ensign.
I have been working on the genealogy and it shows us that here for many reasons the vallunos, raizales of Popayán, Cali and Buga, we are relatives, for example the Caicedo, almost all the Caicedo that there are in the region come from Popayán on the part of the conqueror Francisco of Caycedo and almost all are related, but the vast majority do not know. On the origin of Joaquín de Cayzedo and Manuel Cayzedo, they also come from Francisco Caycedo the conqueror.
Sobre la Hacienda Cañasgordas.
I know the Hacienda Cañasgordas in all its times, when I was a child my father was for many years a member of the council and the departmental assembly, he also liked history a lot and from school it was like something cultural of all Caleños and of all Valle del Caucans, learn about the history of the Royal Ensign; We always went to the Hacienda Cañasgordas with my father, but they abandoned it completely and it was sad how it was for a while.
But I think that with many people we made great efforts to rebuild itself as it is doing now, this place is part of our history as the writer García Vásquez says; The Hacienda Cañasgordas has a strong impact on the time of independence, an immense influence led by Don Manuel and Joaquín de Cayzedo and all the Cayzedo, but it is not known in depth, some historians have deepened it. There are many unknown places in the history of the south west, but now is the time for the hacienda to finish rebuilding physically, but also to rebuild and spread that rich and interesting story of how the Caycedo gentlemen in their participation influenced the culturalization of independence in Colombia.
¿The Hacienda may have the value that, for example, the Boyacá bridge has?
You have to give it to them, anywhere where there is a hero, they magnify him, they make him statues, they do a lot of propaganda, publicity, the people of Cali have lacked publicity. Cali is seen as the city of salsa, as a city of soccer, the Cali of America, rather than as a city that has many cultural roots and has had many important characters for the country. What I am saying does not mean that expressions such as salsa must be set aside, but it does mean to give it the value that our entire history deserves.
Numerous monuments have been erected in the surroundings to commemorate the historic victory of the independentists on August 7, 1819, known as the Battle of Boyacá, which granted independence to Colombia. The small bridge was built in the early 18th century and declared a National Monument of Independence in 1920.
The Hacienda of San Fernando.
My family, on my mother’s side, perhaps more than 200 years ago bought what was the Hacienda de San Fernando, where my grandparents’ grandparents lived for three decades, who had a well-known hacienda and the name of the neighborhood is due to that hacienda. In the same way, the San Fernando club and the San Fernando church. This hacienda was a place of passage for all the independence troops, later it was urbanized and only the old hacienda house remained, with a block of land around it, my father who was a lawyer for a company that built that urbanization, in payment From that urban work, he asked that they leave him that house that had belonged to my grandparents’ grandparents and thus he came back to the family.
San Fernando neighborhood street, January 2009
Donations for the Hacienda Cañasgordas museum.
That house, the Americans wanted to destroy it, my parents in the 30s “tried to preserve it and give it the architectural form that it had had many years before, for that they began to get different types of furniture, for example some French beds, which my father had brought from France, very fine beds with very fine wood carvings that were preserved as a relic, there were other Spanish iron beds, (someone made the mistake of putting casters on it hahaha but you have to take them off) there were some very old trunks that were made of wood lined in leather, and well my parents had that as an ornament, but with all modernism and all these elements are part of museums. In this case, for the Museo de la Hacienda Cañasgordas, those are very narrow beds for just one person, (now people have a King bed, super King hahaha with very special mattresses). All that went out of style and was cornered, we always tried to preserve with a view that some entity would give it true appreciation, surely one gives them to the collector and he does not even know what a museum is about instead, having given him proper preservation does give it significant value.
In addition, Cañasgordas has other times, for example a Singer cooking machine, one of the first that came to the valley, an extremely old one, we sent him to fix the furniture and it is also part of history.
The Invitation then is for people to donate, I believe that in Cali we have many articles and elements that were part of the independence and of all times, if you look in Cali, the Avenida de las Americas was designed around 1930 a man French, the royal lieutenant’s building, the national palace, for many Caleños that does not have the slightest meaning, so I believe that all those architectural jewels must be given value that at the same time are in some way a summons to history ; We have to give it the true meaning of everything that was lived, as the complex of the church of La Merced, San Antonio and all that area of downtown Cali has done, highlighting the house of the society of public improvements.
In conclusion, all of us who have quantities of objects, elements, can donate them, to contribute to the rescue of history.
(Cali, October 24, 1850- Bogotá, February 29, 1924) was a Colombian military and politician. Head of the Liberal Party, candidate for the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia in 1922. One of the greatest icons of the Liberal Party in the Thousand Day War, which lasted until 1902.
“Cali is not just salsa”.
I think that all of us from Cali should help, salsa is very important from a cultural point of view, sport is also important, but we have abandoned the artistic and historical part of Cali. The same hospital in Sanjuán de Dios that was managed by Dr. Rodrigo Guerrero’s father, also has a history that comes from the colony.
Benjamín Herrera and the thousand-day war.
Almost no one knows who Benjamín Herrera is, we have made a museum in his name, we got a rifle from 1874, we have a chair where peace was signed in The Thousand Days War, we have the general’s stirrups; They are elements that must be gathered, they are not easy to gather but in this way we do a little history so that it is known who Benjamin Herrera was.
¿Don Pedro Manuel, what does he do today?
I still live in San Fernando, in the same block where I was born, this is the great western lodge of Colombia, it includes the western and southern territory of Colombia, here we are committed to improving ourselves and improving society in a very quiet way, that we do and try to set an example of those correct, hard-working and dedicated people to help society, to improve in every way. I also write at the history academy and the genealogy academy.