Soldier from El Tocuyo who joined the patriot army at age thirteen and fought alongside Bolívar. He commanded the heroic Vargas Battalion at Corpahuaico (1824), saving the patriot army on the eve of Ayacucho. The Morán Municipality bears his name.
A child-soldier of Independence
José Trinidad Morán was born in El Tocuyo on November 26, 1796, into a family of clear patriot sympathies. He was barely a child when the war of Independence began, but from a very young age he became involved in the struggle: at thirteen —in 1810— he joined the patriot army.
After the fall of the First Republic (1812), the family suffered royalist persecution. His father was shot in El Tocuyo in 1813 and the family's property was confiscated. Young Morán fled to Trujillo and the following year joined the liberating army commanded by Bolívar.
Alongside Bolívar
He fought in numerous actions of the Venezuelan war. He was wounded at San Mateo (1814), one of the harshest battles of that fateful year. He survived and went on fighting. When Bolívar undertook the southern campaign to liberate New Granada, Quito, Peru, and Bolivia, Morán was among the troops who crossed the Andes and fought at Pichincha, Junín, and Ayacucho.
His military consecration came in December 1824, days before Ayacucho.
Corpahuaico: the rescue of the patriot army
On December 3, 1824, in the ravine of Corpahuaico (Peru), Sucre's patriot army was caught off guard by the royalist troops of Viceroy La Serna. The situation was critical: the patriot column could be annihilated and, with it, the very possibility of American independence.
The Vargas Battalion, commanded by Tocuyo-born colonel José Trinidad Morán, was ordered to cover the rear. The battalion absorbed the assault at the cost of enormous human losses —it is estimated to have lost half its men— but allowed the bulk of the army to regroup and reach Ayacucho ready to fight.
Six days later, on December 9, 1824, Sucre triumphed at the Battle of Ayacucho and sealed the independence of South America. Without Corpahuaico —and without Morán and the Vargas— that victory would probably never have happened.
Later life in Peru
After the war, Morán remained in Peru. He married there, rose to general, and took part in the internal struggles of the young Peruvian republic. He served as governor of several provinces and defended his adopted homeland in numerous civil wars.
Tragic death in Arequipa
Like so many soldiers of independence, his end was tragic. Caught up in the political struggles of nineteenth-century Peru, he was executed by firing squad in Arequipa on December 3, 1854 —the same calendar day on which, thirty years earlier, he had saved the patriot army at Corpahuaico.
He was 58 years old.
The Morán Municipality
On December 31, 1925 —some sources say December 26— the Constituent Assembly of Lara state changed the name of the former Tocuyo District or Bolívar District to Morán Municipality in his honor.
The decision was apt: few sons of El Tocuyo have merits comparable to those of the soldier-boy who fought beside Bolívar and commanded the battalion that made Ayacucho possible. Today, every time someone says "Morán Municipality," they honor the Tocuyo hero who sleeps his eternal sleep in Peruvian soil.