Hello, I am Camila Restrepo and this is Sword, Pen and Cordillera, a history of Latin American independence that goes beyond the men on horseback in the public squares. We begin in my own city. In 1816 Bogota was back under Spanish control after a brutal reconquest, and the patriot cause survived mostly in the plains to the east and in a quiet network of informants inside the city. One of them was a seamstress in her early twenties called Policarpa Salavarrieta. She sewed in royalist households and listened. For about a year the information she passed out reached the guerrillas in the llanos. Then she was caught. We follow the network, the couriers, the trial where she refused to name anyone, and the morning in November 1817 when she was shot. Then we ask what the banknote with her face leaves out. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.