Basilica of Saint Francis and the Liberty Bell

The Basilica of Saint Francis is named after Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order. A bell tower rises above its façade, and access to it once depended on the monks who lived at the church. Inside still hangs a bronze bell cast specifically for this church. Its crack remains, and on the anniversary of the May uprising, twenty-five strikes are traditionally rung.

On the evening of May twenty-fifth, eighteen oh nine, Juan Manuel Lemoine left Plaza Mayor and came here with a saber. One of the organizers of the uprising, he was seeking the release of Jaime de Zudáñez and the resignation of Pizarro, president of the audiencia. There were too few people in the square: the whole city had to be alerted.

Lemoine was risking a very specific position. Before the uprising, he carried out paid assignments for the colonial administration; a case concerning salary owed to him for checking tax lists in Carangas has survived. Now that same administration could try him as a rebel.

The church is named after Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order. Access to the bell tower was therefore controlled by the monks who lived at the church. With a saber in his hand, Lemoine forced them to yield, climbed the tower, and struck the bell cast for San Francisco only nine years earlier.

He rang the alarm—a rapid, urgent peal used to summon residents in a general danger. After the first strikes, the other organizers sent young men to the remaining churches. Bells began ringing throughout the city, and new participants started arriving in the square. The confrontation at Pizarro's residence became a citywide uprising.

Lemoine was given command of a militia of silversmiths. But at the end of that same year, Vicente Nieto, the new president of the audiencia, entered the city, and arrests of participants in the May events soon began. Lemoine avoided imprisonment and fled to Santa Cruz de la Sierra. In eighteen ten, he took part there in forming a new revolutionary junta. He never returned to his former paid assignments for the colonial administration.

According to local tradition, Lemoine rang for so long that night that the bronze cracked. The cracked bell still hangs in the tower of San Francisco. It is called the Liberty Bell specifically because of the alarm rung on May twenty-fifth, and on the anniversary of the uprising, it is traditionally struck twenty-five times.