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1. An Introduction to John V. Lombardi's
Contribution
Mired for a century in adulatory hagiography, military histories and distortingly polemical detractions, Simon
Bolivar remains a significant challenge to historiography and biography to this day. By its very restricted nature,
biography has been unable to venture beyond a personalist analysis which reduces complex networks of differing
interests in time and space into conspiracy, petty antagonism, or mere adversities designed to highlight Bol?var's
glory. These limitations aside, the very international dimension of Bolivar's military and political life-experience
(spanning five present-day Latin American nations), has presented crippling difficulties for histories and biographies,
especially if they are written to adress only one national context. Since existing accounts of his life tend to
be either restricted to his person and/or his thought, or merely catalogue his battles and campaigns, the brief
treatment of Bolivar in this essay will seek to present a partial, introductory view that may help to clarify by
what processes, locations and positions Bolivar interacted with other players during the Wars of Independence.
In order to accomplish this, I have chosen to adopt, with some minor alteration, much of John V. Lombardi's (Venezuela,
The Search for Order, The Dream of Progress, Oxford 1982) useful periodization of the Wars of Independence, organized
around different "styles of conflict" in Venezuela in the years spanning 1808 and 1835.
The advantage of Lombardi's schema is that it expertly orders the seemingly chaotic process of Independence into
a handful of analytically useful periods. The first "style of conflict" as described by Lombardi is elite
rebellion (1808-1812), the second is a Caracas-centered military strategy (1812-1814), the third a formation of
patriot bases in the Orinoco and New Granada (1814-1823) and the fourth style is caudillesque nationalism (1823-1835).
Because Lombardi's purpose is to explore the history of Venezuela, and not Bolivar's Andean campaign in his final
years, only styles 1-3 (1808-1823), which correspond to the interlinked experiences of present-day Colombia and
Venezuela in the Wars of Independence, can be usefully appropiated for a systematic view of Bolivar's presence
in the conflict. This essay's analysis of Bolivar's career will only highlight what Lombardi terms the first, elite
style of rebellion. I hope my analysis will illustrate the usefulness of Lombardi periodization for further study
and synthesis of Bolivar's life.
2. How Independence Came About
The first "style" of conflict that Lombardi describes, spanning 1808-12, was characterized by its elite,
intellectual nature, and "expected to produce modest changes in local conditions" (121). As in the rest
of Spain's colonial posessions on the continent, the independence movement resulted (in an immediate sense) from
the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808 and the installment of Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. From the very beginning
the Caracas cabildo (town council) was solidly opposed to Bonaparte and expressed its support for the "legitimate"
King Ferdinand VII. Spain struggled to expel the French and restore their King, and mantained the legitimate King's
authority through a Central Junta. Given this peculiar re-configuration of the the absent King's authority, it
was hardly surprising that the Caracas cabildo, long accustomed to a modicum of authority and independence in the
affair of the General Captaincy of Venezuela, pushed for a Junta of their own in support of the Spanish King. When
this failed and when the Spanish Central Junta substituted itself with a Regency in early 1810, the cabildo expelled
the Captain General, rejected the Regency and formed the Junta Conservadora de los Derechos de Fernando VII.
By the summer of 1810, with the new Caracas Junta in place, there were two parties lobbying for influence: the
autonomists, who mantained the authority of the Spanish King, and the independents, centered around the Sociedad
Patriotica, who desired independence.
3. Who was Bolívar in 1810?
The twenty-seven year old Simon Bolivar, a militia colonel comitted to independence, was a member of one of colonial
Caracas' most prominent families. Educated in Venezuela by tutors Andres Bello and the Jacobin ideologue Simon
Rodriguez, Bolivar completed his studies with relatives in Spain at the turn of the century and returned to Venezuela
with a bride who promptly died of malaria. A few years later Bolivar returned to Europe, stayed for a few years,
observed Napoleon and became radicalized to the point of believing it was his destiny to personally liberate the
Spanish colonies in the New World. In the summer of 1810 Bol?var unsuccessfully led a diplomatic mission that included
Andrés Bello, to acquire England's military protection for the Junta of Caracas. Although the English were
hungry for easier commercial access to the Spanish colonies, they did not want to alienate their ally the Spanish
Regency by promoting separatism in the New World.
4. The "Patria Boba" (Foolish Fatherland)
By the summer of 1811 the Sociedad Patriotica's lobbying efforts, aided by the sixty-year old caraque?o expatriate
and seasoned leader Francisco Miranda, were successful and independence was declared on July 5. A liberal, Federalist
constitution was drawn up abolishing the slave trade (but not the institution itself), fueros (corporate privileges)
and the archaic legal lexicon of socio-racial discrimination and labeling. The executive office was quite weak
in its powers, and further, was composed of three, alternating presidents. The weak executive decreed by the Constitution
was symptomatic of the First Republic, also known as La Patria Boba (The Foolish Fatherland), because the patriots
were absolutely unprepared and indecisive in countering the Royalist counter-revolution which quickly devastated
La Patria Boba.
Bolivar saw battle for the first time without much success and prominence. In fact, his carelessness resulted in
the loss of Puerto Cabello, an important strategic coastal town.
5. Three Key Problems of the Patria Boba
The Caraqueño elite that had engineered independence had not taken into account three important obstacles:
1) the lack of a prior "national" unity upon which to declare an independent, consolidated Republic 2)
the counter-revolutionary potential of the non-white masses of the Republic and 3) A lack of an effective military
leaders.
6.The Race Question and its Role
The question of the masses of non-whites was crucial for the eventual victory of the patriots, but the criollo
elite was painfully but understandably slow in learning the lesson. After all, the criollos were more concerned
with creating new opportunities for planters and merchants through better access to the Atlantic Economy, without
reforming the social structure that kept the majority of the population subjected under their authority to atrocious
forms of peonage and slavery. The creole elite was the most vociferous lobbying group against Royal decrees liberalizing
the rules of social mobility and servitude. It should not be surprising that slaves, pardos (mestizos and blancos
de orilla or poor whites) and indians, which formed eighty per cent of the colony's demography, could be prone
to be more loyal to the Spanish King than to a Republican administration identified with the interests of the Grandes
Cacaos (planter class) or creole, urban mercantile class.
7. Francisco Miranda, Leader of the Patria Boba
Francisco Miranda, the military leader of the First Republic, brought anachronistic and misplaced expectations
to the business of conducting military campaigns in a Latin American landscape. Formed on the battlefields of Europe,
Miranda quickly became exasperated with his forces and officers. In more ways than one, Miranda was something of
a true outsider in Venezuela; as a Canario (his family had come the Canary Islands), he was a victim of a tradition
of caraque?o prejudice against a sector identified with the more plebeian aspect of commerce. Also, he was distanced
from his lieutenants, such as Bolivar, by his fundamentally cosmopolitan-European life experience, and his advanced
age. To be fair, Miranda's failure merely reflects the understandable lack of experience with a new brand of warfare,
one that grew out of the social and regional conditions of the Spanish colonies. It took Bol?var himself some time
to realize how to effectively harness the revolutionary potential of the continent.
Conclusions...
The Patria Boba or the First Venezuelan Republic was doomed to fail, and Bolívar learnt some painful lessons
in the process. The patriots would have to learn how to be more decisive, more focused in order to succeed. Although
Bolívar suffered an inauspicious and embarassing defeat in this first era of Independence, he was merely
beginning to emerge as the "hombre de las dificultades" (the man of the difficulties) capable of overcoming
defeats to arrive at spectacular triumphs. |
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