Qualla: Vargas Swamp Lancers

Vargas Swamp Lancers: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sfabarafe, CC BY-SA 3.0. Fifteen men on horseback against an empire. That is what the bronze figures frozen in mid-charge above the Boyaca countryside represent, and what makes the Vargas Swamp Lancers monument Colombia's most dramatic piece of public art. Standing 33 meters high and weighing 235 tons, the sculpture captures the moment on July 25, 1819, when Colonel Juan Jose Rondon led fourteen lancers in a charge that should not have worked, against odds that should have been fatal, across terrain that should have stopped them. It worked anyway, and South American history pivoted on a swamp.

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Image: Sfabarafe | CC BY-SA 3.0

Vargas Swamp Lancers: The Road to Bogota

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Petruss, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the summer of 1819, Simon Bolivar's campaign to liberate New Granada had reached its most desperate phase. His republican army, exhausted after crossing the Paramo of Pisba at elevations above 4,000 meters, descended into Boyaca to face the Spanish forces commanded by Colonel ...

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Image: Petruss | CC BY-SA 3.0

Vargas Swamp Lancers: Fourteen Lances in the Mud

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leidy Chiquiza, CC BY-SA 3.0. Colonel Rondon, a veteran of the Battle of Queseras del Medio and a llanero horseman who had spent his life in the saddle on the Venezuelan plains, saw the moment before anyone else did. The Spanish cavalry, pressing their advantage, had crowded onto a narrow track through the sw...

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Image: Leidy Chiquiza | CC BY-SA 3.0

Vargas Swamp Lancers: Bronze Against the Sky

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Luis Hoyos, CC BY-SA 3.0. A century and a half later, Colombian artist Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt and engineer Guillermo Gonzalez Zuleta created a monument equal to the event. Dedicated in 1970 on the 150th anniversary of Colombian independence, the sculpture depicts the fourteen soldiers and their horses ...

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Image: Luis Hoyos | CC BY-SA 3.0

Vargas Swamp Lancers: On the Ruta Libertadora

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Idaligomezmartinez, CC BY-SA 3.0. The monument stands along Boyaca's Ruta Libertadora, a designated tourism route that traces Bolivar's 1819 campaign through the municipalities of Paipa, Pantano de Vargas, and onward to the Bridge of Boyaca where Barreiro was finally defeated on August 7. Visitors who stop at the...

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Image: Idaligomezmartinez | CC BY-SA 3.0