Antonio Nariño

1. Forbidden translation

Merchant and enlightened official from Santafé de Bogotá, Antonio Nariño became famous in 1794 by clandestinely translating and printing theDeclaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, a French revolutionary text banned by the Spanish Crown.

The act cost him a trial for sedition, the confiscation of his assets and a sentence of ten years in prison in Africa, from which he escaped during his transfer to Spain, beginning years of escape and hiding through Europe and America.

2. Return and Leadership at Independence

Nariño returned to New Granada in 1797 and voluntarily surrendered to the authorities, spending several more years in prison. Released after the events of July 20, 1810, he became a central figure in the first republic: he was elected president of theState of Cundinamarca(1811–1813) and firmly defended the centralist model against the federalists of the United Provinces.

He personally led the failed Southern Campaign in 1813–1814 to liberate Pasto and Quito, being captured by the royalists and sent prisoner to Spain, where he remained until 1820.

3. Final Years and Vice-Presidency

Released after the constitutional restoration in Spain, he returned to New Granada already in the midst of the definitive war of independence. In 1821 he was appointed interim vice president of Gran Colombia by the Congress of Cúcuta, although his health, deteriorated by years of imprisonment, prevented him from holding office for long.

He retired to Villa de Leyva, where he died in 1823, already recognized during his lifetime as one of the ideological fathers of Spanish American independence.

4. Numismatic Legacy

Nariño's portrait figures prominently in the series ofTen Pesos Goldof El Banco de la República (issues of 1949, 1953, 1960 and 1961), in circulation during a good part of the 20th century, and also in the1948 Medio Peso Oro specimen—enduring tribute to his role as one of the first intellectual martyrs of American independence.