The Repository Códice

Falucho: The Soldier Shot for Refusing Spain's Flag

October 30, 2026 · Runtime 9:49 · Watch on YouTube

In February 1824 the garrison of Callao, most of it San Martin's old Army of the Andes, rose in the night and handed the strongest fortress in South America to Spain. A soldier called Falucho, the story goes, was shot for refusing to salute the Spanish flag. Three histories tell that night. Only one of them has Falucho, and it was written by the man who first published his story.

Transcript

Three histories, one soldier 0:00

Callao, February eighteen twenty-four. A soldier called Falucho is shot for refusing to salute Spain's flag. San Martin's own army had just handed the fortress to Spain. Three histories tell that night. Only one of them has Falucho.

Mitre, Paz Soldan, Miller 0:18

We read all three accounts of that night side by side, page by page. Bartolome Mitre, in Buenos Aires. Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan, in Lima. And the memoirs of William Miller, a British general who fought in Peru. They agree on the mutiny. They disagree on the date, on the pay, and on the man at the flag.

The Real Felipe 0:44

This is the Real Felipe, the fortress of Callao, the port of Lima, filmed in the nineteen forties. Paz Soldan calls it the best fortress in South America. The plan beside it was drawn in eighteen twenty-five by the Spanish general who would hold it. In January eighteen twenty-four, the Liberator Bolivar sent San Martin's old army to guard it.

A body without a soul 1:08

That army had crossed the Andes and freed Chile, then sailed to Peru. By eighteen twenty-four, Mitre writes, the division of the Andes was a body without a soul. Its soldiers were ragged, unpaid, and sometimes hungry. Its dead had been replaced with freed Black men of Peru.

Six days at the walls 1:28

They were not even let in. The Colombian commander of the fortress refused them as suspect troops. For six days they camped in the open, at the foot of the walls. Only a direct order from Bolivar brought them inside, Mitre writes, to their dishonour. Paz Soldan gives the date: the eleventh of January.

The garrison 1:51

Inside were the Rio de la Plata regiment and battalion number eleven of the Andes. With them, a brigade of Chilean artillery, and a Colombian company. The governor of the castles was an Argentine general, Rudecindo Alvarado.

Five months, or three 2:07

The cause, Mitre writes, was pay. More than five months without it. And on the day before, the officers had been paid, and nobody remembered the troops. Paz Soldan counts it differently. In a footnote, he gives three months owed, October to December. Seventy-six thousand, five hundred and fifty-two pesos.

The night 2:32

Then the night. In Mitre, it is the night of the fourth to the fifth of February, and the garrison rises in silence. At its head, two sergeants of the Rio de la Plata regiment, Damaso Moyano and Oliva. They arrest the governor, and every officer in the fortress.

Three nights 2:52

Paz Soldan puts it at ten at night on the fifth, and calls Moyano a mulatto from Cordoba. Miller's memoirs, printed five years later, put it on the seventh. Three historians, three nights. The fortress fell in all of them.

No plan 3:09

The mutineers had no plan, Mitre writes. Fifteen hundred soldiers, led by two sergeants. At first they asked for one hundred thousand pesos on account, and passage home. Paz Soldan says the government agreed, and could raise about twenty thousand. Miller's memoirs say fifty thousand dollars would have saved the fortress.

The prisoner in the casemates 3:33

Below them, in the casemates, the patriots kept Spanish prisoners. One was a colonel, Jose Maria Casariego. Oliva had known him in Chile. The two sergeants went down to the cells to ask his advice. From that moment, Mitre writes, Casariego was the true leader of the movement.

In the name of the king 3:55

The Spanish prisoners were set free. Moyano named himself a colonel, in the name of the king. San Martin's soldiers had changed sides without leaving their posts.

The flag 4:07

Then the flag. Mitre says the Spanish flag went up on the tower called Independence, with a salute from every castle, on the seventh of February. Paz Soldan says the night of the sixth. Miller's memoirs say the Spanish colours were not hoisted until the eighteenth.

Falucho 4:26

And here, only in Mitre, is the soldier. A Black soldier of the Rio de la Plata regiment, born in Buenos Aires, named Antonio Ruiz, called Falucho. He refused to give the flag its honours. He was shot at the foot of the Spanish flag. He died shouting: long live Buenos Aires.

Two silences 4:49

Paz Soldan prints pages of a letter from an officer who went into the fortress that week, and spoke to Moyano. There is no Falucho in it, and none in Paz Soldan's two volumes. Miller's memoirs name Moyano and Casariego. They never name Falucho.

The footnote 5:08

Mitre knew. In a footnote on the same page, he writes that some have doubted Falucho's death. And that others have gone as far as to deny he existed. Then he lists his proof.

Mitre's proof 5:22

First, the spoken word of General Enrique Martinez, who commanded the division, given to Mitre in Montevideo in eighteen thirty-nine. Second, two colonels of the division, Pedro Jose Diaz and Pedro Luna, in Buenos Aires, in eighteen fifty-six. Third, a book by a colonel who served there, Juan Espinosa.

The only written witness 5:46

Espinosa is the only written witness, and Mitre quotes him. The sentry on the bastion, Espinosa writes, whose name we regret we cannot remember, was known in the army as Falucho. Ordered to present arms to the Spanish flag, he said he could not honour a flag he had always fought. He broke his rifle against the flagstaff, and was executed on the spot.

A sentry with no name 6:10

So the only witness who wrote it down did not know the soldier's name. In Espinosa he is a sentry, a nickname, a broken rifle. In Mitre he has a name, a regiment, a birthplace, and last words. Mitre gives no source for the name Antonio Ruiz.

Two Faluchos 6:29

Mitre then complicates his own proof. There was not one Falucho in the army of the Andes, he writes, but two, and both were Black. He quotes a letter from Miller to San Martin in eighteen thirty, about a Falucho of the eighth battalion who took a flag at Maipu. Perhaps, Mitre says, Falucho was a nickname given to unknown heroes.

The first author 6:54

And Mitre was not only the historian of Falucho. He was his first author. Historians Lea Geler and Maria de Lourdes Ghidoli trace his first account of the death to a Buenos Aires newspaper, in May eighteen fifty-seven. The colonels Mitre names as witnesses spoke to him the year before.

The statue 7:14

By eighteen ninety, two Argentine writers had asked whether Mitre ever verified who the soldier was. Buenos Aires gave him a statue anyway. It was unveiled in May eighteen ninety-seven, in bronze, by the sculptor Lucio Correa Morales.

The army dissolved 7:32

What all three histories agree on is the loss. Moyano, Paz Soldan writes, put the best fortress in South America in royalist hands. With it went more than a thousand men, and one hundred and five officers held prisoner. Days later the Grenadiers on Horse rose too. And so, Mitre writes, the army of the Andes was dissolved by mutiny and treason.

Callao is lost 7:58

Bolivar was at Pativilca, nearly two hundred kilometres to the north. On the tenth of February he wrote that Callao was lost. Do not doubt, he added, that it is the work of an arrangement with the Spaniards. The same day, the Congress in Lima made him dictator. And he ordered San Martin's old general, Enrique Martinez, to bring the army north to him.

Lima abandoned 8:23

Lima was left to the royalists. A Spanish division under General Monet came down from the mountains and took the capital without a fight. The patriot officers taken in the fortress were handed over to him. One hundred and sixty of them, Mitre writes, were marched on foot to the valley of Jauja.

Rodil holds Callao 8:44

The Spanish general Rodil took command of Callao. He held it after every other Spanish army in Peru had surrendered. Miller's memoirs say he capitulated on the nineteenth of January, eighteen twenty-six. Of more than four thousand people who shut themselves in with him, the memoirs add, not more than two hundred survived.

Was there a Falucho? 9:06

So was there a Falucho? Two of the three histories of that night never mention him. The one that does was written by the man who had published the story first. His only written witness heard of a sentry with a nickname, and could not remember his name. The name on the statue came from Mitre.

Junin 9:26

One part of the army stayed loyal. Of the Grenadiers on Horse, Mitre writes, a core of one hundred and twenty remained, and would ride in the last battles of independence. Next episode: Junin, August eighteen twenty-four. The cavalry battle where, in Miller's memoirs, not a shot was fired.

Description and sources

This episode reads one night in Callao in the three histories that tell it, page by page: Bartolome Mitre's Historia de San Martin (vol. IV, Buenos Aires, 1890, ch. XLIX, pp. 65-73), Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan's Historia del Peru independiente (1822-1827), vol. II (Madrid edition, 1919, pp. 17-29), and the Memoirs of General Miller, vol. II (London, 1829, pp. 113-120 and 247). The fortress is shown as it was filmed in the 1940s, in a Peruvian newsreel and in Julien Bryan's 'Lima' (1944); every claim is shown on the page it comes from.

The garrison (Mitre, pp. 66-67; Paz Soldan, pp. 17-18): by 1824, Mitre writes, the division of the Andes was 'a body without a soul'. Sent to Callao on Bolivar's orders, it camped six days at the foot of the walls until he ordered it in (11 January 1824). The pay: 'more than five months' in Mitre; three months, October to December, 76,552 pesos 2 1/2 reales, in Paz Soldan's footnote.

The night (Mitre, pp. 67-69; Paz Soldan, pp. 19-21; Miller, pp. 113-115): the night of 4 to 5 February in Mitre; ten at night on the 5th in Paz Soldan; the 7th in Miller. Sergeants Damaso Moyano and Oliva arrest the governor, Rudecindo Alvarado, and every officer; the Spanish prisoner Colonel Jose Maria Casariego becomes the real leader. The Spanish flag goes up on 7 February (Mitre), the night of the 6th (Paz Soldan), or the 18th (Miller).

Falucho (Mitre, p. 70 and note 20): Antonio Ruiz, called Falucho, a Black soldier of the Rio de la Plata regiment, shot at the foot of the Spanish flag. Paz Soldan and Miller never mention him. Mitre's proof: the spoken word of General Enrique Martinez (1839), of Colonels Pedro Jose Diaz and Pedro Luna (1856), and the book of Colonel Juan Espinosa, who writes that he cannot remember the sentry's name. Mitre's first account of Falucho appeared in 1857 (Geler and Ghidoli, Avances del Cesor 16, 2019). The monument in Buenos Aires was unveiled in May 1897, by Lucio Correa Morales.

After (Mitre, pp. 71-73; Paz Soldan, pp. 23-29; Miller, p. 247): the Grenadiers on Horse rise on 14 February, and 120 stay loyal; Bolivar writes from Pativilca that Callao is lost; Monet takes Lima; Rodil holds Callao until January 1826.

PRINT-READY, FROM THIS CHANNEL

The Document Set, Vol. 01 — Cajamarca 1532 and Buenos Aires 1595-1680 — the documents at reading size, with author, date, archive and licence

https://therepository.gumroad.com/l/document-set

FILM — the moving images are public-domain films of the places, shot in the 1940s. They show where it happened, not what happened; the documents are the evidence.

El balcón de la libertad (newsreel) — Productora Huascarán / Ministerio de Gobierno del Perú — 1940s | Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, via Wikimedia Commons | Public domain | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:El_balc%C3%B3n_de_la_libertad,_una_pel%C3%ADcula_documental.webm
Lima — Julien Bryan — 1944 | Internet Archive (Prelinger) | Public domain | https://archive.org/details/Lima1944
Preparativos de la expedición Kon Tiki (newsreel) — Nacional Films del Perú — 1947 | Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, via Wikimedia Commons | Public domain | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Preparativos_de_la_expedici%C3%B3n_Kon_Tiki.webm

SOURCES — every image in this video is a public-domain document.

Each plate below is listed with its author, date, holding archive and licence.

Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan — 1919 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
John Miller — 1829 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan — 1919 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan — 1919 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
José Ramón Rodil — 1825 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain

... and 39 more plates, each credited on screen in the video and listed in this project's manifest.