The first settlers in the Pijao region
arrived in the 1890s from Tolima. Many were radical Liberal guerrillas, fleeing
reprisals from the governing Conservative regime and the civil disorder that
culminated in the Thousand Day War. Among them were Quintiliano Fernández and
his wife Griselda Marín. Loaiza (2004) cites their great-grandson, who tells of
how their Conservative enemies tracked the couple to Pijao, where they had
built a house and farm. The pregnant Griselda was hung from a tree and tortured
until she revealed the location of her father, a leading guerrilla from Tolima.
