Manuel Atanasio Girardot Díaz (2 May 1791 – 30 September 1813) was a Neogranadine military officer and one of the heroes of the Colombian and Venezuelan wars of Independence.

In 1813, he was assigned to Brigadier Simón Bolívar’s army during the Admirable Campaign, where he participated with distinction in numerous battles fought in Venezuela.

Simón Bolívar himself issued a lengthy decree in his honor, ordering that Girardot’s remains be taken triumphantly to Caracas and that his family be granted a lifelong pension.

Spanish citizenship meant that young Atanasio would now be able to get an education, thus he was subsequently enrolled in Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario.

Spanish army units stationed in the city also joined the revolt and pledged allegiance to the newly established Supreme Junta of Santafé.

On March 25, 1811, the Republican army, with more than a thousand men, left Corrales for Piendamó, preceded by a vanguard under the command of the 19-year-old lieutenant, Atanasio Girardot.

Girardot tenaciously defended his position, immediately informing Baraya, who was in Piendamó, two hours from where the combat was occurring, which indicates to what extent his impetuous subordinate had detached himself from the bulk of the army.

When Baraya reached the Palacé river well in the afternoon, Girardot was still holding his positions, in front of the bridge head that his adversary had achieved on the north bank.

A supporter of a strong centralist government to face an uncertain future, Nariño decided to incorporate the provinces of Tunja and Socorro into the nascent state.

In a sudden change of front, the two expedition commanders switched to the federalist side of the Congress of the United Provinces of New Granada, and explained their reasons in an act, where Girardot’s signature does not appear.

For Girardot, duty was put before all consideration and, in an act that must have weighed a lot on his soul, he obtained the surrender of the unit, and captured his father Don Luis.

It was up to Girardot, in Baraya’s plan, to take the positions on the slopes of Monserrate, which he did with his usual boldness, and launch from there his attack in the final assault on the city.

Biting his impatience, the young captain had to observe the disaster of the Federal Army, and retreat to Tunja with his troops intact, while his companions fell prisoners.

Simón Bolívar, an exiled Venezuelan military officer who had fled to New Granada after the fall of the first republic of Venezuela to the Spanish, was commissioned into the army of the union of the federal congress and made a brigadier.

Colonel Atanasio was selected to be part of this force, he commanded the vanguard, made up of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Battalions of La Unión, a total of 560 neogranadine troops.

The southern flank of the invasion offered the greatest risk, because of the large number royalist troops concentrated in the area of Barinas.

However royalist uprisings in various parts of Venezuela, along with the arrival of important Spanish reinforcements received by sea from their colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba coupled with the losses and exhaustion of the republican troops, allowed Captain General Juan Domingo de Monteverde, commander of Spanish forces in Venezuela, to lead a counteroffensive.

With 1,800 men he departed the fortified redoubt of Puerto Cabello and, heading south, occupied the double position of Las Trincheras and the hill of Bárbula, somewhat separated from each other, which allowed them to be beat in detail.

Bolívar’s decree instructs that a month-long period of mourning be observed throughout the country and that Girardot’s remains be repatriated to his birthplace in Antioquía.