1822-2022. Two hundred years since the latest publication of José's summit project Cecilio del Valle: The Friend of the Homeland

Abstract

On March 1, 1822, our distinguished hero published in Guatemala number 24 of the newspaper El Amigo de la Patria, the latest edition of the first major publishing project of who was called by own strangers as the wise Valley. Through its 24 editions, the hero bequeathed to us on each page his brilliant thought and the vision he had of what was then known as the Kingdom of Guatemala and which is to a large extent what we now know as Central America. Its publication began on October 16, 1820 and now in this 2022 we remember two hundred years since the last publication of this monumental work that summarizes the thought of José Cecilio Díaz del Valle, ideas that are now more current than ever. As a modest contribution to the honor of the hero's legacy, we attach the transcript of this last issue of El Amigo de la Patria respecting its original spelling and accompanying the writing with a sober portrait of the wise man, since despite the magnitude of his legacy and the importance of his thought on a regional and continental scale, we know little about its real physiognomy, few studies have been dedicated to this subject, so finding portraits like the one reproduced towards the page right gives us a reference of how his features could have been, since according to what he said José del Valle in the act of donating this work to our university in 1974, the portrait It must have been painted in 1822 when the hero was in Mexico as a deputy in said nation, which means that we also celebrate two centuries of this work, now part of the heritage documentary that treasures our university and a key piece to know the true factions that José Cecilio del Valle had, a luminary that since the 19th century sheds light to understand our economic, historical and social development, an unparalleled legacy in Central America nineteenth-century and not even surpassed so far in the two centuries that have elapsed since our political independence from the Spanish crown in 1821.