Simon Bolivar

Simon Bolivar, also known as The Liberator, was a South American Creole soldier and statesman who led the revolutions against Spanish rule in Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. He was president of both Colombia (1821-30) and Peru (1823-29).

Simon Bolivar was born on 24 July 1783 in Caracas, Venezuela. The son of a Venezuelan aristocrat of Spanish descent, Bolivar was born into a family of Creole land-owning elite. His father, Don Juan Vincente, died when Bolivar was three, leaving him in the capable hands of his mother, Dona Maria. As a young boy, Bolivar was distinguished as witty, enthusiastic and idealistic among his peers. His mother died when he was nine, and Bolivar was placed in the guardianship of his uncle, Estaban Palacios, who administered his inheritance and provided him with tutors. At the age of 16, Bolivar was sent to Europe to complete his education. For three years he lived in Spain and in 1801 he married Maria Teresa, the young daughter of a prominent Spanish nobleman, and returned with her to Caracas to assume the lifestyle of landed gentry. However, the young bride died of yellow fever less than a year after her marriage.

Vowing never to marry again, Bolivar undertook a second trip to Europe in 1804, at a time when Napoleon was approaching the pinnacle of his career. In Paris he re-met a former childhood tutor, Simon Rodriguez, who guided him to the writings of such European rationalist thinkers as Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau. The idea of independence for Hispanic America took root in Bolivar's imagination, and his mind, filled with ideas of freedom, liberty and human rights, found monarchy and all its trappings repugnant. In Rome, on the Monte Sacro, he vowed that he would dedicate himself to the cause of South American emancipation. Guided by Rodriguez, Bolivar became a dedicated republican. In 1807 he returned to Venezuela by way of the United States, visiting the eastern cities and observing the workings of free institutions. He offered the first proof of an enlightened mind by freeing the black slaves employed on his estate.

The Latin American independence movement was launched in 1808, as Napoleon's invasion of Spain unsettled Spanish authority. Bolivar himself participated in many conspiratorial meetings. On April 19, 1810, the Spanish governor was officially deprived of his powers and expelled from Venezuela, and a junta took over. To obtain help, Bolivar was sent on a mission to London. His assignment was to explain to England the plight of the revolutionary colony, to gain recognition for it, and to obtain arms, support and protection. Bolivar failed in his negotiations on all these counts, owing to the treaty alliance between England and Spain. Bolivar then played a key role in the events leading to Venezuela's initial declaration of independence from Spain. In March 1811, a national congress met in Caracas to draft a constitution. After long deliberation, it declared Venezuela's independence on 5 July 1811.

At age 28, Bolivar traded his diplomatic duties for a patriot's uniform and marched into battle as a colonel in the army of the young republic. However, the Spanish forces managed to put down the rebellion in Venezuela, and Bolivar fled to Cartagena in New Granada (present-day Colombia). There, determined to continue the struggle, he published the first of his great political statements, El Manfiesto de Cartagena, in which he urged the revolutionary forces to destroy the power of Spain in Venezuela.

Bolivar now emerged as the champion of strong government for the nascent republics of Hispanic America and was named commander of an expeditionary force whose task was to liberate Venezuela. In his first campaign as general, he fought six pitched battles, covered a distance of 1200 kilometers, destroyed five hostile armies, and reconquer western Venezuela - all in 90 days. On 6Aug 1813, he marched into Caracas at the head of the liberating army, and was given the title of Liberator, and assumed political dictatorship.

In 1814, the Spanish once more defeated Bolivar, ending the second Venezuelan republic. After some more sporadic warfare in New Grenada, Bolivar fled to Jamaica to take refuge as an exile. At the low point ofhis fortunes, Bolivar refused to acquiesce to failure. On 6 Sep 1815, he wrote the greatest document of his career: La Carta de Jamaica ("The Letter from Jamaica"), in which he outlined a grandiose panorama from Chile and Argentina to Mexico. He proposed constitutional republics throughout Hispanic America, modeled on the government of Great Britain, with a hereditary upper house, an elected Lower House, and a president chosen for life. The last provision, to which Bolivar clung throughout his career, constituted the most dubious feature of his political thinking. Finding little support in Jamaica, Bolivar moved on to Haiti, a small republic that had freed itself from French rule, where he was given a friendly reception by President Alexandre Sabes Petion, as well as money and weapons.

In 1817 Bolivar decided to set up headquarters in the Orinoco region, which had not been devastated by war and from which the Spaniards could not easily oust him. He engaged the services of several thousand foreign soldiers and officers, mostly British and Irish, and established his capital at Angostara. In the spring of 1819 he conceived his master plan of attacking the Spanish vice royalty of New Granada. Bolivar's attack on New Granada will always be considered one of the most daring in military history. The route of the small army (about 2,500 men, including the British legion) led through flood-swept plains and icy mountains, over routes that the Spanish considered impassable. A man of tireless energy, Bolivar shared the same food, the same hardships of battle and terrain with the common foot soldier and earned the respect and admiration of his troops. The Spaniards were taken by surprise, and in the crucial Battle of Boyaca on 7 Aug 1819, the bulk of the royalist army surrendered to Bolivar. Three days later he entered Bogota. It was the turning point in the history of northern South America. In December 1819, Bolivar was made president and military dictator. He urged the legislators to proclaim the creation of a new state: the Republic of Gran Colombia, and three days later, La Republica de Colombia was established. It was a federation and, since two of its three departments, Venezuela and Quito (Ecuador), were still under royalist control, it was only a paper achievement. Bolivar knew, however, that victory was finally within his reach. A revolution in Spain had forced the Spanish king to recognize the ideals of liberalism on the home front, and his action quite naturally discouraged the Spanish forces in South America. The Battle of Carabobo (June 1821) opened the gates of Caracas, and Bolivar's Venezuelan homeland was at last free. In the autumn of 1821, a congress convened in Cucuta to draft a constitution for Colombia and elected Bolivar as president. Bolivar continued his military campaign, and at the end of 1821, Ecuador was liberated.

The territory of Gran Colombia, comprising what are now Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, had now been completely recovered from Spain and its new government recognised by the United States. Only Peru remained in the hands of the Spaniards. In September 1823 he arrived in Lima, and after a series of battles, the Spanish army surrendered on 9 Dec 1824. Bolivar was now president of Gran Colombia and Peru. Only a small section of the Continent - Upper Peru (present day Bolivia) - was still defended by royalist forces. In April of 1825, Upper Peru was liberated, and the new nation chose to be called Bolivia after the name of the Liberator. For this child of his genius, Bolivar drafted a constitution that showed once more his authoritarian inclinations: a lifetime president, a legislative body without power, and a highly restricted suffrage. Bolivar was devoted to his own creation, but, as the instrument of social reform that he had envisaged, the constitution was a failure.

Bolivar had now reached the high point of his career. His power extended from the Caribbean to the Argentine-Bolivian border. Another of his favorite projects, a league of Hispanic-American states, came to fruition in 1826. He had long advocated treaties of alliance between the American republics, whose weakness he correctly apprehended. In 1826 a general American congress convened in Panama. Compared with Bolivar's original proposals, it was a fragmentary affair, since only Colombia, Peru, Central America, and Mexico sent representatives. The four nations who attended signed a treaty of alliance and invited all other nations to adhere to it. A common army and navy were planned, and a biannual assembly representing the federated states was projected. All controversies among the states were to be solved by arbitration. Despite its meager results, the congress of Panama provided an important example for future hemispheric solidarity and understanding in South America. But Bolivar was aware that his plans for hemispheric organization had met with only limited acceptance. His contemporaries thought in terms of individual nation-states, Bolivar in continents. In the field of domestic policy he continued to be an authoritarian republican. He thought of himself as a rallying point and anticipated civil war as soon as his words should no longer be heeded.

The last few years of Bolivar's life were marred by disagreements between and within the new republics, which culminated in revolts and civil wars. On 25 Sep 1828, a group of liberal conspirators invaded the presidential palace and tried to assassinate Bolivar. But, though this attempt on his life had failed, the storm signals increased. Bolivar's precarious health also began to fail. Reluctantly, Bolivar realized that his very existence presented a danger to the internal and external peace of the nations that owed their independence to him. In May 1830, he decided to retire to Europe, but before he could embark on the journey, he died of tuberculosis on 17 Dec 1830, in Santa Marta, Colombia.

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1992.
2. Dupuy, T. N., The Encyclopaedia of Military Biography, I.B. Tauris & Co, London 1992.
3. Keegan, J. and Wheatcraft A., Who's Who in Military History, Routledge, London 1996.
4. Townson, D., Famous Generals, Purnell, London 1975.
5. Boughton, S., Great Lives, Doubleday, New York 1988.

Artículo tomado de:

Personality Profile- Simón Bolívar