Francisco Elías Guerrero, is the name of our main park. Who was this man in the history of the municipality?
He was born in Roldanillo in 1820, and his life passed normally within the town until 1840, when he enlisted in the municipality's lancers battalion and fought in the War of the Supremes, the first internal conflict of independent Colombia.
In those years, he began to study at Santa Librada School in Cali, by Julio Arboleda, the landowner who would later become president; he participated in that city in the legislature of the Political Constitution of 1853, and then entered the Major Seminary of Popayán, from which he finally returned to Roldanillo as auxiliary chaplain, ascending later.
In 1876, during the civil war, with the liberal party in power, and being a deep-rooted conservative, he took up weapons again to participate in the rebellion. In the 1880s and 1890s as the main chaplain, he led the reconstructions, caused by fires and earthquakes, of the churches of San Sebastián and La Ermita.
In 1904 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the municipality, and finally died in his homeland in 1907. In a posthumous tribute, the main square is given its name; there is no date of the event, although it may have been close to the 1920s, when the kiosk, the toilet, the fountsin were built and the wrought iron grille that used to guard it was placed.
Photo: Document "History of Roldanillo'', municipal photographic archive.
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