Policarpa Salavarrieta Ríos (c. 26 January 1795 – 14 November 1817), also known by her nickname of La Pola, was a Neogranadine seamstress who spied for the Revolutionary Forces during the Spanish Reconquista of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. She was captured by Spanish Royalists and ultimately executed for high treason. The Day of the Colombian Woman is commemorated on the anniversary of her death. She is now considered a heroine of the independence of Colombia.
Because her birth certificate was never found, her legal given name is unknown. The name Salavarrieta is known only by the names her family and friends used. Her father referred to her as Apolonia in his will, which Salvador Contreras, the priest who formalized the testament on 13 December 1802, confirmed. She was closest to her brother, Bibiano, as she became his de facto guardian when her parents died. When the armed forces in Guaduas started looking for her, she began calling herself Policarpa.
In her 1817 forged passport, used to get in and out of Bogotá during the Reconquista, she appeared as "Gregoria Apolinaria." Andrea Ricaurte de Lozano, whom Policarpa lived with, and officially worked for in Bogotá, as well as Ambrosio Almeyda, a guerrilla leader to whom she supplied information, also called her by that name. Her contemporaries referred to her simply as "La Pola," but Policarpa Salavarrieta is the name by which she is remembered and commemorated.
Policarpa's date and place of birth are also subject to conjecture in the absence of legal documents. The popular version is that she was born in the municipality of Guaduas, Cundinamarca, between 1790 and 1796. However Rafael Pombo affirmed that she had been born in Mariquita, while José Caicedo Rojas confirmed it as Bogotá.
Her date and place of birth can be surmised from information available about her siblings which were not lost.
María Ignacia Clara, born in the San Miguel parish of Guaduas, 1789–1802
José María de los Ángeles, baptised in Guaduas in 1790 – became an Augustinian friar
Catarina, born in Guaduas, 1791
Eduardo, born in Guaduas, 1792–1802
Manuel, born in Guaduas in 1796 – also became an Augustinian friar
Francisco Antonio, baptised in the Santa Bárbara parish, Bogotá, in 1798
Ramón, confirmed in Bogotá in 1800
Bibiano, baptised in Bogotá, 1801.
Judging by these family records and the fact that Policarpa was born between her two religious brothers, she would appear to have been born between 1791 and 1796. The records also seem to indicate that the Salavarrieta family lived in Guaduas and moved to Bogotá after Manuel was born in 1796.
In an attempt to reconcile the discrepancies the Colombian Academy of History gave its final ruling on September 10, 1991, in favour of Guaduas, Cundinamarca, as Policarpa's birthplace.
Without being titled or of the hidalgo class, Policarpa's family were apparently respectable and well-off, judging by her childhood home in Guaduas, now a museum. The Salavarrieta Ríos family moved to Bogotá between 1796 and 1798, living in a small house in the Santa Bárbara.
In 1802 a smallpox epidemic broke out in the capital, killing thousands, including Policarpa's father, mother, brother Eduardo and sister María Ignacia. After the tragedy, the family fell apart: José María and Manuel joining the Augustinian order, Ramón and Francisco Antonio traveled to Tena where they found work on a farm. Catarina, the oldest surviving child, decided to move back to Guaduas around 1804, taking her younger siblings Policarpa and Bibiano with her. They lived in the houses of their godmother Margarita Beltrán and their aunt Manuela until Catarina married Domingo García, again taking her two siblings with her.
There is little information about this period in Policarpa's life. What is known is that she worked as a seamstress, and is also believed to have worked as a teacher in a public school.