The History of Ipiales

History

By Lorraine Caputo

Several indigenous nations, principally of the Pasto (pas, nation + tax, root) who held off the Inca northward, called this region home before the Spanish conquest. Ipiales means People of White Smoke, deriving from Ipial, a Pasto cacique, plus the -es suffix, which means “people.”

The Villaviciosa de la Concepción de Ipiales was founded in 1537 by Pedro de Puelles, one of several captains sent by Belalcázar (a.k.a. Benalcázar) to found cities as base camps for the search for El Dorado. In the 1570s, the original city was totally destroyed by fire; at a new site several kilometers away it was rebuilt, with the name Villaje de Ipiales. It was administered by the Audencia Real de Quito. Ipiales joined the fight for independence from Spanish rule, in 1809. The Libertador, Simón Bolívar, passed through the city on a number of occasions.