Hear
This June 20 is the Flag Day and it is worth reviewing the different parts that make up this national emblem created by Manuel Belgranoin whose honor this National holiday.
The official flag of Argentina It was raised for the first time on February 27, 1812, in Rosario, by order of this hero: its colors are distributed in three horizontal stripes, two light blue and one white in the middle. To this design was later added the May Sunwhich consists of 32 rays, sixteen flamboyant in shape rotating clockwise and sixteen straight ones placed alternately.
This symbol was taken from the coins of eight reales and eight escudos minted by the Assembly of the Year XIII, in which the design that would later be used officially on the main flag or in cases of war was displayed. In 1985, the government of Raúl Alfonsín enacted Law 23,208, where the designs of the Flag were unifiedwhich since then always has at its center the May Sun.
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 would allow his troops differentiate themselves from realists.
On February 18 of the same year, that body decreed the recognition and use of such emblem with white and sky blue colors as a national insignia, “the red one with which they formerly distinguished themselves 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 light blue and white from the mantle of the Virgin Mary, to whom he was devoted.
Shortly afterward, he decided that the soldiers needed a flag before which to swear. On February 27, 1812, the same day of its creation, General Manuel Belgrano He wrote to the Triumvirate: “Since it was necessary to fly the flag, and not having one, I ordered it to be made white and blue, in accordance with 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 named 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 the Jujeño Exodus, a scorched earth strategy whose purpose was to wear down the royalist troops.
In that campaign he also suffered the harsh defeats at Vilcapugio and Ayohuma which, added to the growing fragility of his health, led him to have to excuse himself from his position. At the time of his withdrawal, his troops hid two flags in a convent in the city of Titiri, present-day Bolivia. They remained hidden for decades, until in 1883 Father Martín Castro removed the paintings that covered them for remodeling and found the insignia.
One of the flags, which is preserved in the National historical museum, maintains the known pattern. The other specimen, which can be seen in the Casa de la Libertad Museum in Sucre, in Bolivia, has two white stripes and a light blue one in the middle, which shows that in the days of Belgrano The final design was still under discussion.
But everything was defined in 1816 in the Congress of Tucumán, which signed the Act of Independence, of which Belgrano was part. There too The design that we know today for the national flag was made official. The fate of the creator would not be as prosperous as that of his idea: years later he was restored 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
