[4] In 2015, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a statue of Azurduy replaced the one of Christopher Columbus in front of the Centro Cultural Kirchner, causing some controversy.

[5] Juana Azurduy was born on July 12, 1780, in Chuquisaca, Upper Peru, a territory of the Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

Despite the staunchly Catholic and conservative gender roles of colonial society, Don Matías taught her to become a skilled rider and sharpshooter, and she accompanied him to work the land alongside indigenous laborers.

They became wards of their aunt Petrona Azurduy and her husband Francisco Días Vayo, who administered the properties left by Don Matías to the girls upon their adulthood.

[8][7] In 1805, Azurduy married her neighbor and childhood friend Manuel Ascencio Padilla,[6] a fellow revolutionary who left a Royalist law school to join the independence movement.

[10] The revolutionary government was forced out of Chuquisaca in 1811 by royalist troops, but across the Viceroyalty, rebels maintained control of a patchwork of republiquetas, or independent territories.

[1][6] In 1811, the couple joined the Army of the North under José Castelli and Antonio Balcarce, sent from newly independent Buenos Aires to fight the Spanish occupation of Upper Peru.

[1] In 1812 Padilla and Juana Azurduy served under General Manuel Belgrano, the new head of the Army of the North, helping him to recruit 10,000 militiamen across the republiqueta system.

[9] When their mountain territories became overrun by royalist forces, their militia served as the rear guard for generals Belgrano and Eustoquio Díaz Vélez as they retreated and regrouped in independent Argentina.

[9][6] The Argentine Army of the North, outnumbered and outgunned, was eventually beat back to their border, and the Padilla couple began a phase of guerrilla warfare.

In an act that would become legend, returning hours later to the front lines to rally her troops, and personally captured the standard of the defeated Spanish forces.

When word of these victories reached General Juan Martín de Pueyrredón of the Argentine army, he formally granted her the title of Lieutenant Colonel in an August 16, 1816, ceremony.

[9][8][1][13] During the Battle of La Laguna in September 1816, Juana, who was expecting her fifth child, was injured, and her husband was shot and captured by Spanish forces while trying to rescue her.

[13] In 1818 the Spanish temporarily took control of Chuquisaca, and she was forced to flee again with her soldiers to Northern Argentina, where she continued to fight under the command of the Argentinean General Martín Miguel de Güemes.

[6] She was appointed to the position of commander of the Northern Army of the Revolutionary Government of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata.

[13] In 1825, upon the withdrawal of Spanish forces from Upper Peru, Azurduy petitioned the independent government for aid in returning to her hometown, newly renamed Sucre.