Margarita Diez-Colunje y Pombo

Margarita Diez de Arroyo
Oil portrait of Margarita Diez-Colunje y Pombo wearing the mourning mantilla for her widowhood. Private collection, Bogotá
Born	Margarita Diez-Colunje y Pombo June 10, 1838 Buenaventura, Republic of New Granada
Died	April 18, 1919 (aged 81) Popayán, Colombia
Alma mater	Colegio del Sagrado Corazón, Bogotá
Occupations	Historian, genealogist, translator Genres: essay, prose, translation Native language: Spanish
Notable work	Belalcázar-tronco común de los patriotas, Apuntamientos, Los muros de una prisión, La jornada sangrienta
Spouse	Miguel Arroyo Hurtado
Parent(s)	José María Diez-Colunje Caballero and Natalia Pombo O'Donnell

Margarita Diez-Colunje y Pombo (Buenaventura, June 10, 1838 – Popayán, April 18, 1919) was a Colombian historian, translator and genealogist.

Biography

Birth and education

Photograph of Margarita Diez-Colunje y Pombo in her youth, from a daguerreotype from the first half of the 19th century.

She was born into the household formed by José María Diez-Colunje Caballero, a native of Panama, and Natalia Pombo O'Donnell, niece of Enrique José O'Donnell, 1st Count of La Bisbal, and cousin of Leopoldo O'Donnell, 1st Duke of Tetuán and 1st Count of Lucena. She was born in Buenaventura because her father was serving at that time as customs administrator in that city. Her godparents at baptism were her cousin Julio Arboleda Pombo and María Josefa Mallarino de Holguín, mother of President Carlos Holguín Mallarino.

Renowned for her precocity and intelligence, she learned to read at the age of four. Her aunt Teresa Pombo O'Donnell took charge of her elementary education and moved with her to Bogotá, where Margarita entered the Colegio del Sagrado Corazón, a girls' school founded and run by Sixta Tulia Pontón y Piedrahíta, widow of General Francisco de Paula Santander. Upon her aunt's death, her education and upbringing fell to another of her maternal uncles, Lino de Pombo O'Donnell.

At the Bogotá school she received lessons in French, religion, history, grammar, arithmetic, geometry, geography, physics, English, music and embroidery, and had prominent figures of the time such as Mariano Ospina and José Manuel Groot among her teachers and tutors. She came to master the French language with great fluency, becoming a seasoned translator from that language into Spanish.

Work

She published several writings of her own in the magazine Popayán, founded by her son Miguel Arroyo Diez and Antonino Olano. In 1910, on the occasion of the commemoration of the first centenary of national independence, she established and demonstrated, after meticulous historical research, that the conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar is the common ancestor of several heroes of the Independence, among them Silvestre Ortiz, Fidel Pombo O'Donnell, Miguel de Pombo, Francisco Antonio de Ulloa, José María Quijano, Francisco José de Caldas, Camilo Torres Tenorio and Joaquín Cayzedo y Cuero. This study achieved wide recognition among the historians of the time, and was printed and reproduced profusely throughout the 20th century.

A keen observer of the events of her time, in her Apuntamientos she narrates in detail the circumstances of the assassination of her cousin, President Julio Arboleda Pombo, in 1862, as well as the taking of Popayán by opposing forces in that same year, in which her own family suffered great harassment:

«Meanwhile we families groaned under the tyranny of the invaders, and on January 20 they simultaneously attacked the Arboleda house, where my mother, doña Natalia Pombo de Díez Colunge, lived, and they carried off furniture, paintings, clothing and whatever they found, so that this lady, for being don Julio's aunt, was not left even a skirt to go to Mass. They tore off the doors and pulled up the brick floors of the rooms, hanging the fresh meat, as I saw myself, on the nails that had previously held the mirrors. On the same day and at the same hour they occupied the house of the Arroyos, on Santo Domingo street, where I had lived with my in-laws since the year 1888. Some two hundred men entered, under the command of Colonel Martín Pérez de la Sierra, and seized whatever they found. First they broke down the street door with an axe and then that of don Jaime Arroyo's room, and took books from here and there, manuscripts, and this caused the library and several notes on the important "History of Popayán" to be left incomplete, a work with which this learned gentleman had been occupied since 1858 or 57.»

In a letter dated 1893, the Panamanian historian Juan Bautista Pérez y Soto asked Diez-Colunje for help in gathering information on the events in the Cauca, for a book he had in preparation.

Detail of the genealogical chart prepared by Margarita Diez-Colunje de Arroyo for the magazine «Popayán», on the occasion of the first centenary of the Independence.

Among her unpublished work, Emigración de Popayán en 1877 y 1878 stands out, in which the author gives a detailed account of the nearly 200 members of Popayán families—including her own—who were forced to emigrate to Bogotá, Quito or Lima because of the turbulent political situation prevailing in that period.

Shortly before her death, the author wrote a biographical sketch of Ignacio Muñoz Córdoba, in which she describes the life of the prosperous Cauca businessman and his rise in business through, among other things, the purchase of numerous Cauca haciendas, including Genagra Alto, which belonged to the Arroyo family. These memoirs were compiled and transcribed posthumously by her grandson Miguel Antonio Arroyo and published years later under the title Recuerdos de don Ignacio Muñoz.

Her translations from French cover historical, biographical and lyrical subjects. Among her most accomplished texts are Los muros de una prisión, La jornada sangrienta and María de Médicis.

Personal life

She married the political leader Miguel Arroyo Hurtado in Popayán on March 25, 1857, with whom she had four children:

• Beatriz Arroyo Diez, unmarried, a skilled artist who left numerous works in oil on canvas and pastel;
• Miguel Arroyo Diez, a distinguished politician and historian, married to María Manuela Olano Borrero;
• Santiago Arroyo Diez, member of the Colombian Academy of History, married to Zoila Arboleda Sánchez;
• José Antonio Arroyo Diez, Mayor of Popayán in 1905, married on September 13, 1898 to Sofía Arboleda Quijano, daughter of Gregorio Arboleda Torres and Sofía Quijano Wallis.

Because of the fratricidal struggles that ravaged Colombia during the second half of the 19th century, the Arroyo Diez family had to take up residence in Ecuador on repeated occasions and for long periods of time.

Margarita Diez-Colunje y Pombo was Syndic of the Confraternity of Saint Anthony of Padua, established in Popayán in 1772 by papal brief of Pope Clement XIV, with its permanent seat in the church of San Francisco, a family tradition that passed to her daughter Beatriz Arroyo Diez and from her to her niece Sofía Dolores Arroyo de Arboleda.

She died in the Cauca capital at the age of 81.

See also

• Lino de Pombo
• Miguel Arroyo Hurtado
• Miguel Arroyo Diez
• Revista Popayán

Bibliography

• Alonso de Cadenas y López, Ampelio (2012). Elenco de Grandezas y Títulos Nobiliarios Españoles- Real Asociación de Hidalgos de España. Madrid: Ediciones Hidalguía
• Aragón, Arcesio (1941). Fastos Payaneses - Publicación del Ministerio de Educación Nacional. Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional
• Aragón, Arcesio (1925). La Universidad del Cauca - Monografía Histórica. Popayán: Imprenta Oficial del Departamento del Cauca
• Arboleda, Gustavo (1962). Diccionario Biográfico y Genealógico del Antiguo Departamento del Cauca. Bogotá: Guadalupe
• Arquidiócesis de Popayán (2014). Popayán: Religión, Arte y Cultura. Cali: Feriva S.A.
• Arroyo, Miguel Antonio (1953). El Cauca es así - Un ensayo de su realidad económica y social sobre los datos de la historia, la geografía y la estadística. Popayán: Universidad del Cauca
• Buendía Astudillo, Alexander (2018). Narrativa histórica en la Revista Popayán. Popayán: Editorial Universidad del Cauca
• Castrillón Arboleda, Diego (2007). Muros de Bronce - Popayán y sus estancias históricas, humanas y territoriales. Cali: Feriva.
• De Burgos, Augusto (1860). Duque de Tetuán in Blasón de España - Libro de oro de su nobleza. Madrid: Imprenta de Don Pedro Montero
• Diez-Colunje de Arroyo, Margarita (1910). Genealogías - Homenaje a los próceres. Primer centenario de 1810. Special offprint of the magazine Popayán No. 29-34. Popayán: Imprenta Departamental
• Hernández de Alba, Guillermo (1982). Las postrimerías de Julio Arboleda in Boletín Cultural y Bibliográfico de la Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, volume XIX, No. 4. Bogotá: Banco de la República
• Iragorri, Luis Carlos (1978). Estampa de un payanés ilustre: Ignacio Muñoz Córdoba in Revista Popayán - Órgano de la Academia de Historia del Cauca, year LXIX, number 298. Popayán: Imprenta del Departamento
• Martínez Delgado, Luis (1959). Popayán, Ciudad Procera. Bogotá: Kelly
• Prado Arellano, Luis Ervin, and Prado Valencia, David Fernando (2017). Narraciones contemporáneas de la guerra por la federación en el Cauca (1859-1863). Bogotá: Editorial Universidad del Rosario
• Quintero Guzmán, Miguel Wenceslao (2006). Linajes del Cauca Grande, fuentes para la historia, vol. II. Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes
• Restrepo Sáenz, José María and Rivas, Raimundo (1928). Genealogías de Santa Fe de Bogotá. Bogotá: Librería Colombiana

External links

• Margarita Diez-Colunje y Pombo in the Boletín Cultural y Bibliográfico of the Banco de la República

List of members of the Pombo family (Colombia)