Our Belief is that a conception of human history driven by individual protagonists at the crest of the great waves of anonymous mass movements is insufficient. Of equal or greater importance are the thousands of supporting characters of vision and talent who collectively dedicate their lives to supporting great movements from which great leaders by necessity arise.

Our Ancestor Josef Leon Galindo Camacho was born in present day Colombia and was the only American-born officer of Simon Bolivar’s Colombian army to settle in Bolivia after its independence. He contributed to the liberation of five countries under Bolivar and was a confidant of Antonio Jose de Sucre, Bolivia’s first de facto president. As Prefect of the Department of Potosi, he restored order to the war-devastated city and oversaw the minting of the new republic’s first coinage. He settled his family in Cochabamba where he became a successful agriculturalist and was a dominant figure in the civic life of the city. The arc of his life yoked the idealist and chaotic war of independence to the birth of a new nation, and to its eventual consolidation as a viable constitutional republic.