The story
Fiestas de Riobamba in Riobamba
Riobamba folds its independence anniversary, proclaimed April 21, 1820, and the 1822 cavalry battle fought at nearby Tapi into a month-long April festival period featuring the Macaji trade fair, a bullfighting fair and citywide parades. Known locally as the Sultana de los Andes, the city layers this civic history onto its own 1534 founding and 1797 earthquake relocation to the Tapi plain.
Riobamba's independence from Spanish rule was proclaimed on April 21, 1820, and the same date and month later carried added historical weight when royalist and patriot cavalry clashed at Tapi in 1822, a battle still described as one of the most decisive cavalry engagements of South America's independence wars.