Juana Azurduy de Padilla (July 12, 1780 – May 25, 1862) was a guerrilla military leader from Chuquisaca, Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (now Sucre, Bolivia). She fought for Bolivian and Argentine independence alongside her husband, Manuel Ascencio Padilla, earning the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. She was noted for her strong support for and military leadership of the indigenous people of Upper Peru. Today, she is regarded as an independence hero in both countries.
In 2015, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a statue of Azurduy replaced the one of Christopher Columbus in front of the Casa Rosada, causing some controversy.
Biography
Early life
Juana Azurduy was born on July 12, 1780, in Chuquisaca, Upper Peru, a territory of the Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. Her father, Don Matías Azurduy, was a white Spaniard of Basque origin, patrón of an hacienda in Toroca. Her mother, Doña Eulalia Bermudez, was a chola (a woman with a mestizo and an indigenous parent) from a poor family in Chuquisaca. Her family was unusual under the strict casta system of Spanish colonial rule, under which Juana was considered mestiza. She had an older brother, Blas, who died in infancy, and a younger sister, Rosalía. After the death of her mother in 1787, she developed an especially close relationship with her father. Despite the staunchly Catholic and conservative gender roles of colonial society, Don Matías taught her to become a skilled rider and sharpshooter, and she accompanied him to work the land alongside indigenous laborers. As well as her native Spanish, she became fluent in Quechua and Aymara, the languages of the local indigenous people, and she was known to spend days at a time in their villages.
In her early teens, the death of their father left the Azurduy sisters orphans. They became wards of their aunt Petrona Azurduy and her husband Francisco Días Vayo, who administered the properties left by Don Matías to the girls upon their adulthood. Doña Petrona found Juana's unconventional behavior both undesirable and difficult to control. A tutor was hired to provide her both academic and social instruction, but failed to tame Juana's frequent rebellious outbursts. When Juana rebelled against her aunt's control, she was sent away to the prestigious Convento de Santa Teresa de Chuquisaca to become a nun. During her time there, classmates remember Azurduy idolizing the warrior Saint Joan of Arc and declaring her aspirations for the battlefield. Due to her rebellious temperament and clashes with the Sisters, Azurduy was expelled from the convent at the age of 17.
In 1797, Azurduy returned to live on her father's hacienda, spending her days with the indigenous people who lived on his land. She witnessed the brutality of their work in Spanish silver mines, and became a passionate ally to the indigenous revolutionary movement. In 1805, Azurduy married her neighbor and childhood friend Manuel Ascencio Padilla, a fellow revolutionary who left a Royalist law school to join the independence movement. Their marriage was remarkably progressive, with Padilla standing alongside his wife on and off the battlefield. Before their military engagements began, the Padillas had two sons. Both would die tragically young due to disease and malnutrition in military camps.
Military life and career
On May 25, 1809, Azurduy and her husband joined the Chuquisaca Revolution, which ousted the governor of the Real Audencia of Charcas, Ramón García de León y Pizarro, and in September 1810, established a governing Junta de Buenos Aires. The revolutionary government was forced out of Chuquisaca in 1811 by royalist troops, but across the Viceroyalty, rebels maintained control of a patchwork of republiquetas, or independent territories. In the fighting, Azurduy was captured and held prisoner in her home by Spanish soldiers, but Padilla killed her guards in a successful rescue. The Padilla couple escaped Chuquisaca in 1811 to the republiqueta of La Laguna, where they continued to organize rebel forces.
In 1811, the couple joined the Army of the North under José Castelli and Antonio Balcarce, sent from newly independent Buenos Aires to fight the Spanish occupation of Upper Peru. They attempted to block invasion of Upper Peru by the Spanish army of the Viceroyalty of Peru, but were outnumbered and eventually defeated, in the June 20 Battle of Huaqui. The hacienda properties of the Padillas were confiscated and Juana Azurduy and her sons were captured, though Padilla managed to rescue them, taking refuge in the heights of Tarabuco.