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Simón Bolívar Palacios
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Miranda was born in Caracas of wealthy criollo parents in 1750. Following a checkered career
in the Spanish Army, Miranda spent virtually the rest of his life living in nations that were at odds with Spain,
seeking support for the cause of the independence of his native Spanish America. Although he was a professed admirer
of the newly independent United States, Miranda's political vision of Latin America, beyond independence, remained
equivocal. In 1806 he led an expedition that sailed from New York and landed at Coro, in western Venezuela. Expecting
a popular uprising, he encountered instead hostility and resistance. Miranda returned to Britain, where in 1810
Bolívar persuaded him to return to Venezuela at the head of a second insurrectionary effort. |
Events in Europe were perhaps even more crucial to the movement for Latin American independence
than Miranda's efforts. In 1808 French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's troops invaded Spain amidst a family dispute
in which the Spanish king Charles IV had been forced to abdicate the throne in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII.
The fearful Bourbon royal family soon became Napoleon's captives, and in 1810 the conquering French emperor granted
his brother, Joseph, the Spanish throne, precipitating a four-year- long guerrilla war in Spain.
These events had important repercussions in the Caracas cabildo (city council). Composed of a criollo elite whose allegiance to the crown had already been stretched
thin by the gross incompetence of Charles and his feud with his son, the cabildo refused to recognize the French usurper. Meeting as a cabildo abierto (town meeting) on April 19, 1810, the Caracas cabildo ousted Governor Vicente Emparán and, shortly thereafter, declared itself to be a junta governing
in the name of the deposed Ferdinand VII. On July 5, 1811, a congress convoked by the junta declared Venezuelan
independence from Spain. Miranda assumed command of the army and leadership of the junta.
A constitution, dated December 21, 1811, marked the official beginning of Venezuela's First Republic. Known commonly
by Venezuelan historians as La Patria Boba, the Silly Republic, Venezuela's first experiment at independence suffered
from myriad difficulties from the outset. The cabildos of three major cities--Coro, Maracaibo, and Guayana--preferring to be governed by Joseph Bonaparte rather
than by the Caracas cabildo, never accepted
independence from Spain. The First Republic's leadership, furthermore, distrusted Miranda and deprived him of the
powers necessary to govern effectively until it was too late. Most damaging, however, was the initial failure of
the Caracas criollo elite insurgents to recognize the need for popular support for the cause of independence. Venezuela's
popular masses, particularly the pardos, did
not relish being governed by the white elite of Caracas and therefore remained loyal to the crown. Thus, a racially
defined civil war underlay the early years of the long independence struggle in Venezuela.
When a major earthquake in March 1812 devastated proindependence strongholds while sparing virtually every locale
commanded by royalist forces, it seemed that the very forces of nature were conspiring against La Patria Boba.
Despite the gravity of the circumstances, Miranda's July 25, 1812, surrender of his troops to the Spanish commander,
General Domingo Monteverde, provoked a great deal of resentment among Bolívar and his other subordinates.
Miranda died in a Spanish prison in 1816; Bolívar managed to escape to New Granada (present-day Colombia),
where he assumed the leadership of Venezuela's independence struggle.
Bolívar was born in 1783 into one of Caracas's most aristocratic criollo families. Orphaned at age nine,
he was educated in Europe, where he became intrigued by the intellectual revolution called the Enlightenment and
the political revolution in France. As a young man, Bolívar pledged himself to see a united Latin America,
not simply his native Venezuela, liberated from Spanish rule. His brilliant career as a field general began in
1813 with the famous cry of "war to the death" against Venezuela's Spanish rulers that was followed by
a lightning campaign through the Andes to capture Caracas. There he was proclaimed "The Liberator" and,
following the establishment of the Second Republic, was given dictatorial powers. Once again, however, Bolívar
overlooked the aspirations of common, nonwhite Venezuelans. The llaneros (plainsmen), who were excellent horsemen, fought under the leadership of the royalist caudillo, José
Tomás Boves, for what they saw as social equality against a revolutionary army that represented the white,
criollo elite. By September 1814, having won a series of victories, Boves's troops forced Bolívar and his
army out of Caracas, bringing an end to the Second Republic.
After Ferdinand VII regained the Spanish throne in late 1814, he sent reinforcements to the American colonies that
crushed most remaining pockets of resistance to royal control. Bolívar was forced to flee to Jamaica, where
he issued an eloquent letter that established his intellectual leadership of the Spanish American independence
movement. A number of local caudillos kept the movement alive in Venezuela. One, José Antonio Páez,
a mestizo, was able to convince his fellow llaneros
along the Río Apure that Boves (who had been killed in battle in late 1814) had been mistaken: that the
Spanish, not the criollo patriots, were the true enemies of social equality. The alliance of his fierce cavalrymen
with Bolívar proved indispensable during the critical 1816-20 stage of the independence struggle. Another
caudillo chief named Manuel Piar, after outspokenly encouraging his black and pardo troops to assert their claims for social change, however, was promptly captured, tried, and executed
under Bolívar's direction. This ruthless disposition of Piar as an enemy of the cause of independence enhanced
Bolívar's stature and military leadership as the "maximum caudillo."
Based near the mouth of the Río Orinoco, Bolívar defeated the royalist forces in the east with the
help of several thousand volunteer European recruits, veterans of the Napoleonic Wars. Although Caracas remained
in royalist hands, the 1819 Congress at Angostura (present-day Ciudad Bolívar) established the Third Republic
and named Bolívar as its first president. Bolívar then quickly marched his troops across the llanos
and into the Andes, where a surprise attack on the Spanish garrison at Boyacá, near Bogotá, routed
the royalist forces and liberated New Granada. Nearly two years later, in June 1821, Bolívar's troops fought
the decisive Battle of Carabobo that liberated Caracas from Spanish rule. In August delegates from Venezuela and
Colombia met at the border town of Cúcuta to formally sign the Constitution of the Republic of Gran Colombia,
with its capital in Bogotá. Bolívar was named president and Francisco de Paula Santander, a Colombian,
was named vice president.
Bolívar, however, continued the fight for the liberation of Spanish America, leading his forces against
the royalist troops remaining in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. In the meantime, the Bolivarian dream of Gran Colombia
was proving to be politically unworkable. Bolívar's fellow Venezuelans became his enemies. King Ferdinand,
after an 1820 revolt by liberals in Spain, had lost the political will to recover the rebellious American colonies.
But the Venezuelans themselves expressed resentment at being governed once again from far-off Bogotá.
Venezuelan nationalism, politically and economically centered in Caracas, had been an ever-increasing force for
over a century. During the 1820s, Venezuelan nationalism was embodied in the figure of General Páez. Even
the tremendous prestige of Bolívar could not overcome the historical reality of nationalism, and in 1829
Páez led Venezuela in its separation from Gran Colombia. Páez ordered the ailing and friendless Bolívar
into exile. Shortly before his death in December 1830, the liberator of northern South America likened his efforts
at Latin American unity to having "plowed the sea." |
