Historical Figures

Maria Parado de Bellido

To Maria Andrea Parado de Bellido , almost all historians consider her born in Huamanga (Ayacucho), the priest Carlos Cárdenas claims to have discovered her baptism certificate in the parish of Cangallo, where she would have been born in 1761. Her husband, Mariano Parado de Bellido, and one of his sons worked in the postal section of the district of Parás, in the province of Cangallo, and were part of the montoneras of the rebel colonel Cayetano Quirós. María Parado collaborates with the patriotic forces to the extent of her possibilities, since she was over sixty years old at the time, in addition to not knowing how to write . However, knowing that the royalist general José Carratalá was planning to send forces to Parás, she notified her husband in a letter that she had her compadre Matías Madrid write. The letter is discovered and the investigations quickly lead to María, who is taken prisoner on March 30, 1822 by Carratalá , who would also fiercely repress the rebels Cayetano Quirós and Basilio Auqui. Subjected to intense interrogations to reveal the names of those involved in the movement, María Parado de Bellido refused to give any names and is said to have replied to her captors:“I am not here to inform you but to sacrifice myself for the cause of freedom” . She is shot in the pampa del Arco on May 1 and her body transferred to the temple of La Merced where she was buried. This is how one of the heroines of the Independence of Peru was assassinated.


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