Spanish American wars of independence important change in strategy after three United Provinces campaigns had been defeated in Upper Peru. San Martín's army became the nucleus of the Army of the Andes, which received crucial political and material support in 1816 when Juan Martín de Pueyrredón became Supreme Director of the United Provinces. In January 1817, San Martín was finally ready to advance against the royalists in Chile. Ignoring an injunction from the congress of the Río de la Plata not to move against Chile, San Martín together with General Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme, later Supreme Director of Chile, led the Army over the Andes in
Martha de San Bernardo Martha de San Bernardo Martha de San Bernardo, P.C.C., was a 17th-century Colettine Poor Clare who was first Filipino woman to become a Roman Catholic nun and renowned Catholic pending for the cause for Beatification alongside with Maddalena de la Concepcion, a religious from the Poor Clares. While her birth name is lost, it is recorded that she was a "ladina" (a Spanish-speaking native of the Philippines who had no Spanish ancestry) who belonged to an affluent and influential family from Pampanga on the island of Luzon, then part of the Spanish East Indies. Inspired by the lives of the