Qualla: San Francisco, Cundinamarca

San Francisco, Cundinamarca: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Camooley, CC BY-SA 3.0. The story is almost too neat to be true. In January 1857 a commission arrived at a scattering of twenty thatched houses on a mountain plain 52 kilometers northwest of Bogotá. They had come to decide whether this place deserved to be a municipality. The patron saint of the day, because it was January 29, was Saint Francis de Sales. The couple who had donated the land were named Francisca and Francisco Convers. The coincidence struck everyone present. By evening the village had a name: San Francisco de Sales. The parish had a patron. And a Cundinamarca town was born in a convergence of three Francises on a single afternoon.

Image: Camooley | CC BY-SA 3.0

San Francisco, Cundinamarca: Before the Name

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LVCALDERONA, CC BY-SA 4.0. Long before any Francises arrived, the mountain plain was a borderland. The Panches - a Carib-language people - lived on the hot western slopes. The Muisca, Chibcha-speakers of the high savanna, held the eastern flanks. On what is now San Francisco's southeastern edge, where it b...

Image: LVCALDERONA | CC BY-SA 4.0

San Francisco, Cundinamarca: Chinga Fría, Chinga Caliente

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AmiGueko, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the conquest, an encomienda - a grant of indigenous labor - was assigned to a Spaniard named Juan de Vera, who named his property Chinga Fría. The naming is darkly funny in hindsight: in later Mexican Spanish chinga became a crude word, but in the 16th-century Chibcha sense...

Image: AmiGueko | CC BY-SA 3.0

San Francisco, Cundinamarca: One Afternoon in January

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AmiGueko, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1855 Father Santos María Camero was made parish priest of nearby La Vega. Not long after his appointment, he was called up over the pass to Chinga Caliente to give last rites to a dying man. When he crested the ridge and the plain opened below him, he saw what he later describ...

Image: AmiGueko | CC BY-SA 3.0

San Francisco, Cundinamarca: Building a Town

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AmiGueko, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Archbishop of Bogotá formally created the parish by episcopal decree on August 15, 1857. On November 21 of the same year, the Cundinamarca State Assembly approved the new municipality, ordering the land expanded to nine hectares and the construction of public offices and a ja...

Image: AmiGueko | CC BY-SA 3.0

San Francisco, Cundinamarca: El Jardín Encantado

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AmiGueko, CC BY-SA 3.0. Fifty-two kilometers from Bogotá, at about 1,500 meters elevation, with an average temperature of 20 °C and a páramo bajo climate - cool mornings, gentle afternoons - San Francisco has become a destination for one particular reason: the hummingbirds. El Jardín Encantado, the Ench...

Image: AmiGueko | CC BY-SA 3.0