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NOTOFILIA Numismatics and Notaphily
ES — Spanish EN — English
Vintage illustrated poster of Agua de Dios, Cundinamarca, City of Hope: isometric colonial town, cathedral, Bogotá River, bridge, Los Chorros, and a Colombia Correos stamp

Virtual collection

Numismatics Lazarettos

A lazaretto is not a mint. In Colombia it was the house where the State held those with Hansen’s disease: Caño del Loro, near Cartagena, for the north; Contratación, born of El Curo, for the centre and the east; and Agua de Dios, the most populous, largest, and most important in the country, today a municipality in Cundinamarca. The name comes from Lazarus and from the orders of Saint Lazarus and Saint John of Jerusalem, which kept those hospitals away from the urban peripheries. Cartagena’s Hospital of San Lázaro opened in 1598; from it came the first lazaretto on the coast. At the beginning of the twentieth century, under the presumption that contagion also passed through objects, decree 300 of 12 March 1901 ordered twenty thousand pesos in a coin that could not leave the compound: the coscoja. Colombia was the only country that engraved on it the cross of Saint Lazarus.

This case gathers that exonumia of isolation. It does not replace the coins of Santa Fe or free-banking paper: it stands beside them. The Banco de la República’s bibliographic exhibition, The coin of the lazarettos, curated by Andrés Yepes Pérez, was shown on the second floor of the Casa de Moneda Museum — Calle 11 no. 4-93, Bogotá — from 24 October 2007 to 14 January 2008: a circuit through the three compounds and the eight pieces in the collection. Individual type pages will be published as they are documented, as in the Philippines case and Colombia-Numismatics.

1598–1950

Caño del Loro · Bolívar

Near Cartagena, in Bolívar: the lazaretto created to care for the sick of the north of the country.

Near Cartagena, Caño del Loro was created to care for the sick of the north of the country. Señal Memoria dates the Hospital of San Lázaro in Cartagena to a 1592 start of works and an opening in 1598: there the authorities gathered the sick who had arrived from Spain. The Archivo General de la Nación places that hospital between 1610 and 1640, and its transfer to the island of Tierrabomba. The Banco de la República exhibition dates the first lazaretto of the New Kingdom — the Royal Hospital of San Lázaro, near the plaza — to 1620, and Caño del Loro, also called La Cantera, to 1784, in an isolated reach of the bay, today the island of Tierra Bomba. In 1742 the engineer Antonio de Arévalo recommended moving the leprosarium to Caño del Loro, at Cantera Vieja; in 1772 it held 104 interned patients. The decree of 21 February 1835 assigned it to the Third District, the north of the Republic; in 1850 it was Cartagena’s provincial lazaretto and, in 1861, that of the State of Bolívar. It was the oldest of the three that would last. They treated with chaulmoogra oil; conditions were poor. The compound was closed in 1950.

from 1812

Contratación · Santander

From the old leprosarium of El Curo: a confinement zone for the central and eastern region.

Contratación, in Santander, grew out of the old leprosarium of El Curo and served as a confinement zone for the central and eastern region. In 1812, at the request of the lepers of that compound, the lazaretto was founded in what is now the municipality. In 1822, by order of Francisco de Paula Santander, eighteen houses went up on the banks of the Suárez River; the municipality grew from that settlement. The Bank’s exhibition guide dates the decree of 21 December 1835: the transfer of the concentrations at Socorro and in the First District to a new settlement, El Curo, on the western bank of the Suárez, near Guadalupe. Rodríguez Salazar and Arévalo Hernández place the republican organization of the compound in 1861; Andrés Yepes Pérez notes that on 27 September of that year, by decree of Eustorgio Salgar, president of the Sovereign State of Santander, the place began to receive the sick. Decree 350 of 23 March 1906, under Rafael Reyes, declared it a corregimiento destined as a place of confinement. Territorial limits were not fixed until 1910 — the same at Caño de Loro and Agua de Dios. There was a court, a notary, and a registry. The place struck its own coin. Law 148 of 1961 restored citizenship; Ordinance 7 of 16 March 1962 erected the municipality. A sanatorium still operates there.

from 1870

Agua de Dios · Cundinamarca

Founded on 10 August 1870: the most populous, largest, and most important in the country. Today it is a municipality.

On 10 August 1870 the Sanatorium of Agua de Dios was founded in Cundinamarca. It was the most populous, largest, and most important in the country; today it is a municipality. The Bank’s exhibition calls it the largest leprosarium in Colombia: Law C of 1864 created the hospital on a hacienda of Manuel Murillo Toro whose lands were already named Agua de Dios, bought by the State under deed 66 of 22 February 1856, signed by the secretary of finance José María Baraya. It stood 115 kilometres from Bogotá, on the colonial road toward the southwest. The name comes from the hot springs of Los Chorros, in the San José hamlet of Tocaima. Law C of 15 January 1873 created the village. In 1872 the Bridge of Sighs was thrown over the Bogotá River: one entered there and, for many, did not return. The municipality was born on 16 November 1881; legal recognition came on 29 November 1963. Law 104 of 1890 imposed total isolation. From 1890 no healthy person could enter, not even a relative; the sick did not leave without leave. In 1901 the settlement was ringed with barbed wire and watched by an Internal National Police formed of the patients themselves. Decree 14 of 1905 declared isolation or sequestration, after a medical examination, “a measure of urgent necessity.” That same year the Central Office of Lazarettos was created, which centralized the direction of the three compounds. In 1913 a sanitary cordon isolated all three lazarettos. Law 14 of 1907 — which the Bank’s guide cites alongside departmental decree 159 — declared the disease a public calamity, ordered the disinfection of goods and mail leaving the compound, and made a special coin obligatory. Public lighting arrived only in 1914. In 1916 the composer Luis A. Calvo entered as a patient and called the town “City of Pain.” Law 148 of 1961 abolished compulsory isolation. Eight properties of the sanatorium are National Historic Heritage under Law 1435 of 2011.

1901–1928

The coscoja · coin of the cordon

Decree 300 of 12 March 1901, twenty thousand pesos, four issues, and the coin that had no worth outside the perimeter.

In the War of a Thousand Days, decree 129 of 1900 judged it urgent, “as a matter of policing and hygiene,” that national paper not circulate in the lazarettos. Decree 300 of 12 March 1901, under José Manuel Marroquín, ordered twenty thousand pesos in bronze coin for exclusive use in the three compounds: 2½, 5, 10, 20, and 50 centavos, the size of 0.835 silver. On the obverse, the octagonal cross of the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem — also called the cross of the eight beatitudes — with the word lazareto; on the reverse, the value and “República de Colombia.” Colombia was the only one of the fifteen countries that struck leprosarium coin to engrave that cross, except on the 1907 series. Those pieces had no validity outside the perimeter unless a special permit was held; without it, the penalty was seizure. Law 8 of 30 April 1905 and the decree of 30 November 1907 — 1452, in the sources that number it — with Agua de Dios already enclosed, ordered thirty thousand gold pesos in nickel of 1, 5, and 10 pesos P/M — paper-money pesos —: hence the name coscoja, a little thing. Decree 2209 of 1918 authorized pieces of 1, 2, and 5 centavos; decree 68 of January 1919, of 10 and 50: they were matched to national denominations, the letters P/M were dropped, and the unit passed from pesos to centavos. Decree 738 of 1921 authorized 100,000 pesos in 50, 20, 10, 5, and 1 centavos. The last striking was in 1928, under Miguel Abadía Méndez: only 50-centavo pieces in bronze, for a value that historians place between 25,000 and 50,000 pesos. In the 1930s the State ordered national coin to circulate; in practice the coscoja lasted until the closure of 1961. The AGN also notes issues of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 25, and 50 centavos of exclusive circulation, and that on entry one lost the vote and inheritance. This case will gather those pieces — as the Philippines notes and the Santa Fe coins already do — as they are documented.

The catalog

Individual type pages will be published as they are documented, as in the Philippines case and Colombia-Numismatics.

Sources

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