Hear
This Thursday June 20 is a holiday and a great excuse to tell the children the history of the argentine flagsince his day is celebrated on that date.
Besides, the event It is close to the days in which schools take the oath to the national flag, a moment where the little ones take a promise to the flag that Manuel Belgrano created. The history of this hero and the banner are so linked that the date of his death in 1820 was chosen to celebrate the national symbol.
The history of the national flag It is linked to that of the cockade, since it took its colors from it. As the Government recalls, the only reliable information regarding this symbol comes from a letter sent to the First Triumvirate of Buenos Aires by Belgrano, in his position as Head of the Liberating Expeditions to the Banda Oriental, requesting a national cockade that allowed his troops to differentiate themselves from the royalists.
On February 18 of the same year, that body decreed the recognition and use of such emblem with the colors white and sky blue as the national insignia, “with the red one with which they were previously distinguished being abolished.” Although there is no certainty, it is believed that the colors were inspired by the Order of Charles III, a distinction established by that Spanish monarch, who in turn took the blue and white of the mantle of the Virgin Mary, to whom he was devoted.
Shortly after, he decided that the soldiers needed a flag before which to swear. On February 27, 1812, when he created the flag, General Manuel Belgrano wrote to the Triumvirate: “It being necessary to fly the flag, and not having it I had it made white and blue, according to the colors of the national cockade.”
The emblem was embroidered by María Catalina Echeverría de Vidal with the same colors, although different designs were tried. As mentioned, the example we know today was raised for the first time on February 27, 1812, on the banks of the Paraná. The solemn ceremony took place during the inauguration of two artillery batteries that had been installed on that coast to avoid enemy attacks.
Shortly after Belgrano was appointed head of the Northern Army, and He left with his brand new banner for the second aid campaign to Alto Perú, territory that included what is now Bolivia. There he decided on the strategic withdrawal of civilians towards Tucumán, which was baptized as Jujuy Exodus, a scorched earth strategy whose purpose was to wear down royalist troops. In that campaign he also suffered tough defeats in Vilcapugio and Ayohuma which, added to the growing fragility of his health, led him to have to excuse himself from his position.
In 1816 He was part of the Congress of Tucumán that signed the Act of Independence, where its design for the national flag was made official. Two years later he was reinstated as general of the Northern Army, but the development of his illness forced him to decline the honor. He died two years later, on June 20, 1820, as a result of his health deteriorating, on a day that is National holiday because it is the Flag Day.
THE NATION
