Firavitoba is a town and municipality in Sugamuxi Province, a subregion of the department of Boyacá in Colombia.
Before Spanish colonization, Firavitoba was part of the Muisca Confederation of the Chibcha people in the highlands of the Eastern Cordillera of the Colombian Andes. Firavitoba belonged to the Iraca or Suamox state which, uniquely, did not observe a hereditary leadership system but elected its ruler alternately from Firavitoba and Tobasá, two of its many tribes.
Firavitoba is distinguished by its neo-Gothic church, the third biggest in Colombia. Nuestra Señora de las Nieves (Our Lady of the Snows) was built between 1873 and 1976, entirely of stone sourced from nearby Sogamoso's Pedregal district.
Etymology The name Firavitoba derives from the Muysccubun language of the Muisca people. One etymology gives the root words as fiba ("air"),Uricoechea 1871, p.106 and faoa ("clouds").Uricoechea 1871, pp.173-174
Geography Firavitoba is located on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, at an altitude of metres above sea level (m a.s.l.). It borders the municipalities of Paipa and Tibasosa in the north, Iza and Pesca in the south, Sogamoso in the east, and Tuta and Toca to the west. - accessed 28-04-2016 It covers an area of , in part on the plains and in part mountainous. Its highest point is the hill of Guática, at a.s.l. It is bounded by the Chiquito River, one of the tributaries of the Chicamocha River.
Firavitoba is from the departmental capital of Tunja, and from the provincial capital, Sogamoso.
History
Pre-Columbian period The original, lakeside-dwelling inhabitants of the territory may have been the Chibchan-speaking Arhuaco people, according to Spanish archaeologist José Pérez de Barradas. Tribal migrations had slowed and settlement had been stable in the area for some time prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. The local community had organized its social structure around a hilltop site subdivided into a number districts that provided multiple vantage points. This settlement, Guática, "song of the fenced the mountain", later became the town of Firavitoba.
The Muisca, also a Chibcha people, arrived in the central highlands of the Colombian Andes, the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, in the ninth or tenth century. They came up into the mountains from the Llanos Orientales, or Eastern Plains of the Orinoquía region.Suescún 1998, p.28. The early Spanish chronicler, the bishop Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita, believed that the Muisca Confederation of the highlands originally founded its state in the eleventh or twelfth centuries, centred on Hunza, capital of the ruler Hunzahúa, now the city of Tunja.Suescún 1998, pp.207, 208.
Some seventy years before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Altiplano region had separated into four independent Muisca states: Hunza, Bacatá, Tundama, and Iraca or Suamox (present day Sogamoso). Each state comprised a number of tribes, which formed its primary administrative and territorial units. These tribes, brought together by cultural affinity, geographic proximity or shared military and defensive interests, organized under a common legal and political framework and sovereign leadership.Suescún 1998, p.219. Of the two principal states in the Muisca's Altiplano territory at the time of the Spanish conquest one, in its southern area with its ceremonial capital in Bacatá (now Bogotá), was ruled by a high priest called the zipa, and the other was in its northern area, and ruled by the zaque from Hunza.Bushnell 1993, p.6.
Firavitoba was a tribe and settlement of Iraca or Suamox, the smallest of the four states, whose high priest and leader was the iraca or sogamuxi. Uniquely among the Chibcha states, it did not observe the usual hereditary leadership structure of succession by the ruler's nephew, oldest son of his oldest sister.Bushnell 1993, p.7. Instead the iraca was elected by a council comprising the caciques of four of its twenty main tribes, the Pesca, Toca, Gámeza and Busbanzá. If the election process failed to achieve a result, the cacique (or tundama) of the Tundama tribe also voted.Suescún 1998, pp.214–217. Tradition held that the sovereign ruler was to be elected from the settlements of Firavitoba and Tobasá alone, in strict alternation and to the exclusion of all other population centres.Suescún 1998, p.225. This custom continued until the Spanish conquest.
Spanish colonization
Six expeditions by Spanish conquistadors led to the founding of the New Kingdom of Granada over much of the territory of modern Colombia, Venezuela and Panama. It was the exploratory expedition led by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada which rapidly overcame the Muisca states of the Altiplano and colonized the region.Avellaneda 1990, p.33.Avellaneda 1990, pp.49–50. Jiménez de Quesada departed on April 5, 1536, from Santa Marta, on behalf of its governor Pedro Fernández de Lugo, leading a mainly military force of some 600 land troops and several hundred sailors manning brigantines for river navigation. The third stage of the land route took them up the Cordillera Oriental of the Andes into Muisca territory. The expedition suffered heavy losses from disease, and several times stopped for periods of weeks or months to rest and regain strength along the way.Avellaneda 1990, pp.44–48.
By 1537 they had explored as far as the site of the future city of Bogotá and the beginning of the eastern plains (Llanos Orientales) of the Orinoco watershed, covering much of the Muisca's Altiplano territory, including its salt and emerald mining areas. By August 1537 they had seized the treasure of the Tunja zaque, a month later they conquered Suamox, and shortly after that killed the Bacatá zipa and his successor.Avellaneda 1990, pp.49–50. While the chroniclers of the rapid conquest and colonization of the region did not record the wars against its inhabitants, or the mistreatment of their rulers, in great detail, archival documents held in Seville and Bogotá trace the course of events. It is known that many caciques were tortured, the leader of Firavitoba among them.Avellaneda 1990, p.167.
New Kingdom of Granada
The 1536-1538 expedition led by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada founded the city of Santa Fé de Bogotá (Bogotá) and gave the name El Nuevo Reino de Granada, the New Kingdom of Granada, to the region. The Royal Audiencia of the New Kingdom of Granada was established in Santa Fé de Bogotá in 1549. Its governor was dependent on the Viceroyalty of Peru in Lima.
In 1547, one of the soldiers of the German adventurer Nikolaus Federmann, Luis de Sanabria, had been granted administrative responsibility over the territories of Firavitoba, Cormechoque and Sichacá in the form of an encomienda, so becoming the first encomendero over the communities there.
His successor was Martín de Rojas, who assumed the role on marrying his daughter, Catalina de Sanabria y Macías, in 1577. The office passed to their son, Gerónimo Donato de Rojas y Sanabria. It was inherited by his son in turn. This son, Gerónimo de Rojas y Niño, married Josefa de Fonseca y Alarcón in 1629, but conflict quickly developed with her maternal relatives, among them Tota encomendero Pedro de Alarcón. This came to a head at a gathering in Tota of local encomenderos on the occasion of the visit of Royal Audiencia judge (oidor) Juan de Valcárcel to the region in 1636; Gerónimo de Rojas was ambushed and murdered in nearby Iza by several brothers of de Alarcón. His son, Martín de Rojas y Fonseca, took over the encomienda of Firavitoba.
Tunja was one of the main centres of a first cycle of gold production in the region, from 1550 to around 1620. The gold-mining workforce came essentially from the indigenous population.
The municipality of Firavitoba had the status of indigenous village (village of Indians) or religious district (head of doctrine), with a chaplaincy founded in 1633 by Catalina de Rojas and Sanabria.
The last encomendero of Firavitoba, Lorenzo de Rojas, gifted several large buildings on the main square of Tunja, and his own large estate (hacienda), to the Society of Jesus in 1661. Gonzalez Mora 2004, p.125, Note 38. Situated between Firavitoba and Iza, this Jesuit estate of over 300 fanegadas (1 fanegada = 6,400 m2, 0.64 ha, or 1.6 acres) was known as the Hacienda La Compañía, Firavitoba or de Sogamoso. Gonzalez Mora 2004, p.125, Note 38.
Viceroyalty of New Granada
In May 1717, the Spanish Crown established the independent Viceroyalty of New Granada, with jurisdiction over the territories of modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela. Its administrative centre and audiencia were in Bogotá, which joined Lima and Mexico City as a major seat of Spanish authority in the New World. A second cycle of gold production in the region, from 1680 to 1820, was focused principally on departments of Chocó and Antioquia, rather than on earlier centres such as Tunja.
The original church of Firavitoba was destroyed in a disaster the details which are no longer known. It may have burnt down. It was refounded in 1718 with the name Nuestra Señora de las Nieves.
Until 1729, only baptismal registers exist for Firavitoba. The first recorded entry was signed by the priest Francisco Antonio Velez Ladrón de Guevara. The first pastoral visit recorded in the books was made by Antonio Claudio Álvarez de Quiñones, Archbishop of Santa Fé de Bogotá, in 1730.
The Jesuits occupied the Hacienda La Compañia estate in Firavitoba until their expulsion from the possessions of the Spanish crown in the Americas and the Philippines in 1767. It was then subdivided and sold, but sections of walls of the old estate remain. Gonzalez Mora 2004, p.125, Note 38.
In 1781, the encomienda came to an end when Firavitoba was granted the higher status of parish (parroquia), with a mayor and a priest in residence. The indigenous inhabitants were transferred to Nobsa to serve out the remainder of their encomienda obligations, but were returned before the popular uprising against the Spanish authorities in the Viceroyalty of New Granada known as the Revolt of the Comuneros, from May through October of that year, although they lost some of their land.
Independence
Several years after the revolt and Colombian Declaration of Independence on July 20, 1810, in Santa Fé de Bogotá came the Spanish reconquest of New Granada in 1815–1816, under General Pablo Morillo. In 1816, the priest in Firavitoba, Carlos Suarez, was imprisoned for preaching freedom. The liberation campaign of 1819 peaked with the battles of Vargas Swamp, at Paipa, very close to Firavitoba, and of Puente de Boyacá (The Bridge of Boyaca), at which Firavitoba freedom fighter Cayetano Avella was killed. These two battles led to the full independence of New Granada and the creation of Gran Colombia in August, 1819. Gran Colombia was dissolved in 1830, with the region becoming part of the Republic of New Granada, formed in November 1831.
Although several public primary schools were established in Firavitoba before 1832, during the Republican era the importance of the municipality diminished and it passed largely unremarked in national affairs. Earthquakes in 1826 and 1827 caused serious damage to the church, but the local governmental authorities did little to make repairs.
In 1869, a new parish priest arrived in Firavitoba, and the situation began to improve. Father Ignacio Ramón Avella proposed the building of a new and imposing church in the town, Nuestra Señora de las Nieves (Our Lady of the Snows). It was to be based on the model he had brought back from Paris of a European church, and built of stone carted from the Pedregal district of Sogamoso.