Cali - History

Cali was founded by Spanish conqueror Sebastian de Belalcazar on July 25th 1536. He had wanted the city to be built facing the sea but the native people thereof tore the city down after every mere attempt of construction. Sebastian de Belalcazar finally gave up and built his city on the other side of the mountains. Decades later his statue was erected, in his honour, with him overlooking the city he built but pointing in the opposite way, to where he had once envisioned it, next to the sea.

If the fundamental part of the conquest had begun by entering the Spaniards under the control of Jimenez of Quezada for the Pacific coast, for the road of Dagua toward the interior, very possibly the history of Colombia would be different, because Quezada would have seated the Spanish king's domains, in the New Granada, in the Valley of the Cauca and Cali had been the capital of Colombia.

But the reality is that Belalcázar, on July 25th of 1536, "put the first foundations of the village that denominated Santiago of Cali", in the apostle's memory and the name of Quechua origin given to the river Cauca  for the Gorrones tribe that means plain. Quechua are also the words Jamundí, Guachinte and Yotoco that mean blowpipe, and many others that still subsist in the Valley of the Cauca. The word Cali or cari means caribes and Belalcazar took it from the Indians that incorporated in his troops.

Belalcazar wanted, with great vision and natural convenience, to find a communication between the recently founded town and the Pacific Ocean. To the effect, he sent the Lieutenant-governor Miguel Muñoz to cross the western mountain range, zeal that was frustrated, circumstance that motivated to move Cali to the place that occupies at the present time, on a hill that dominates the esplanade. "Its aspect is of oriental city, for the contrast between the green of the hill on that it stands and the blue of the mountain range on which seems recumbent, with its white cover of red roofs shadowed by fruit-trees and slender palms". His majesty, according to Ocariz, gave to the city on June 17th of 1559 coat of arms whose original is in the National File and he granted it the title of "Loyal" seven days later.

At the present time it boasts with the title of Sultana of the Valley that pages with its modified Moorish style, represented in notable form  in the facade of Saint Francisco's temple.

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