Socorro
Socorro
Socorro, a town in northeastern Colombia, 172 miles north-northeast of Bogotá, 2005 estimated population 22,807. Settled in the mid-1600s and formally founded in 1683, Socorro became an important commercial and textile-producing center by 1750, a status it partially lost over the nineteenth century. The town led the Comunero Revolt against colonial taxation in 1781, and played an active role on the patriot side in the Independence struggle, for which it suffered the rigors of the Spanish reconquista of 1816–1819. From 1821 to 1857 Socorro was capital of a province of the same name (1851 population 157,000), and from 1862 to 1885 it was capital of the much larger state of Santander. Socorro has historically been a Liberal Party bastion; in the nineteenth century it produced such notable political figures as Vicente Azuero (1787–1844) and Gonzalo A. Távera. Since the late 1800s the town has been surpassed in size and economic importance by its perennial rival San Gil, fourteen miles to the northeast.
See alsoColombia, Political Parties: Liberal Party .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Horacio Rodríguez Plata, La antigua provincia del Socorro y la independencia (1963).
John L. Phelan, The People and the King (1978).
Additional Bibliography
Palacios, Marco. Between Legitimacy and Violence: A History of Colombia, 1875–2002. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Richard J. Stoller