Death: September 22, 1968 Luis Castellanos Tapias (born in Molagavita, Santander) was a Colombian attorney (Universidad Externado de Colombia), historian, politician, publisher and writer.
[citation needed] Records show him also as the author of a technical report and a census on the tobacco industry in Colombia for Instituto Nacional de Fomento Tabacalero (INTABACO).
[citation needed] The 1962 novel El Alzamiento shows the influences of the French Annales school of historiography, that came to Castellanos Tapias through his history teacher at Colegio de Santander, José Fulgencio Gutiérrez.
With an eye to the social forces bubbling up to threaten Spanish colonial power and faithful to historical detail, the novel fleshes out the characters of the women and men that led the insurrection and suffered the ensuing repression afterwards.
The "criollo" middle classes, the future "heroes" of the national independence from Spain, take advantage of the triumphant movement to help themselves, later on turning their backs and delivering the peasant leaders to be executed.