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Simón Bolívar

Venezuelan soldier and statesman
Alternative Titles: El Libertador, The Liberator

Simón Bolívar, byname The Liberator or Spanish El Libertador, (born July 24, 1783, Caracas, Venezuela, New Granada [now in Venezuela]—died December 17, 1830, near Santa Marta, Colombia), Venezuelan soldier and statesman who led the revolutions against Spanish rule in the Viceroyalty of New Granada. He was president of Gran Colombia (1819–30) and dictator of Peru (1823–26).
 José de San Martín: Meeting with Bolívar

The two victorious generals met on July 26, 1822, in Guayaquil, where Bolívar had already taken control. What passed between them in their secret discussions is unknown, but what is clear is that San Martín hurried back to Lima, a disappointed man. There, seriously…


The son of a Venezuelan aristocrat of Spanish descent, Bolívar was born to wealth and position. His father died when the boy was three years old, and his mother died six years later, after which his uncle administered his inheritance and provided him with tutors. One of those tutors, Simón Rodríguez, was to have a deep and lasting effect on him. Rodríguez, a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, introduced Bolívar to the world of 18th-century liberal thought.

At the age of 16, Bolívar was sent to Europe to complete his education. For three years he lived in Spain, and in 1801 he married the daughter of a Spanish nobleman, with whom he returned to Caracas. The young bride died of yellow fever less than a year after their marriage. Bolívar believed that her tragic death was the reason that he took up a political career while still a young man.

In 1804, when Napoleon I was approaching the pinnacle of his career, Bolívar returned to Europe. In Paris, under the renewed guidance of his friend and tutor Rodríguez, he steeped himself in the writings of European rationalist thinkers such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon, Jean le Rond d’Alembert, and Claude-Adrien Helvétius, as well as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The latter two had the deepest influence on his political life, but Voltaire coloured his philosophy of life. In Paris he met the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who had just returned from his voyage through Hispanic America and told Bolívar that he believed the Spanish colonies were ripe for independence. That idea took root in Bolívar’s imagination, and, on a trip to Rome with Rodríguez, as they stood on the heights of Monte Sacro, he made a vow to liberate his country.

One other experience enriched his intellect at that time: he watched the extraordinary performance that culminated in Napoleon’s coronation in 1804 as emperor of the French. Bolívar’s reaction to the coronation wavered between admiration of the accomplishments of a single man and revulsion at Napoleon’s betrayal of the ideals of the French Revolution. The desire for glory was one of the permanent traits in Bolívar’s character, and there can be little doubt that it was stimulated by Napoleon. The example of Napoleon was, nevertheless, a warning that Bolívar heeded. In his later days he always insisted that the title of “liberator” was higher than any other and that he would not exchange it for that of king or emperor. In 1807 he returned to Venezuela by way of the United States, visiting the eastern cities.

Independence movement

The Latin American independence movement was launched a year after Bolívar’s return, as Napoleon’s invasion of Spain unsettled Spanish authority. Napoleon also failed completely in his attempt to gain the support of the Spanish colonies, which claimed the right to nominate their own officials. Following the example of the mother country, they wished to establish juntas to rule in the name of the deposed Spanish king. Many of the Spanish settlers, however, saw in those events an opportunity to sever their ties with Spain. Bolívar himself participated in various conspiratorial meetings, and on April 19, 1810, the Spanish governor was officially deprived of his powers and expelled from Venezuela. A junta took over. To obtain help, Bolívar was sent on a mission to London, where he arrived in July. His assignment was to explain to England the plight of the revolutionary colony, to gain recognition for it, and to obtain arms and support. Although he failed in his official negotiations, his English sojourn was in other respects a fruitful one. It gave him an opportunity to study the institutions of the United Kingdom, which remained for him models of political wisdom and stability. More important, he fostered the cause of the revolution by persuading the exiled Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, who in 1806 had attempted to liberate his country single-handedly, to return to Caracas and assume command of the independence movement.

Venezuela was in ferment. In March 1811 a national congress met in Caracas to draft a constitution. Bolívar, though not a delegate, threw himself into the debate that aroused the country. In the first public speech of his career, he declared, “Let us lay the cornerstone of American freedom without fear. To hesitate is to perish.” After long deliberation, the national assembly declared Venezuela’s independence on July 5, 1811. Bolívar now entered the army of the young republic, whose commander in chief was Miranda, and was placed in charge of Puerto Cabello, a port on the Caribbean Sea west of Caracas that was vital to Venezuela. In the short time since their London meeting, he and Miranda had drifted apart. Miranda called Bolívar a “dangerous youth,” and Bolívar had misgivings about the aging general’s abilities. Treasonable action by one of Bolívar’s officers opened the fortress to the Spanish forces, and Miranda, the commander in chief, entered into negotiations with the Spanish commander in chief. An armistice was signed (July 1812) that left the entire country at the mercy of Spain. Miranda was turned over to the Spaniards—after Bolívar and others prevented his escape from Venezuela—and spent the rest of his life in Spanish dungeons.

Determined to continue the struggle, Bolívar obtained a passport to leave the country and went to Cartagena in New Granada. There he published the first of his great political statements, El manifiesto de Cartagena (“The Cartagena Manifesto”), in which he attributed the fall of Venezuela’s First Republic to the lack of strong government and called for a united revolutionary effort to destroy the power of Spain in the Americas.

With backing from the patriots of New Granada, Bolívar led an expeditionary force to retake Venezuela. In a sweeping hard-fought campaign, he vanquished the royalists in six pitched battles and on August 6, 1813, entered Caracas. He was given the title of Liberator and assumed political dictatorship. The war of independence was just beginning, however. The majority of the people of Venezuela were hostile to the forces of independence and weary of the sacrifices imposed. A cruel civil war broke out, and Bolívar himself resorted to extreme measures, such as the shooting of prisoners. His severity failed in its object. In 1814 Bolívar was once more defeated by the Spanish, who had converted the llaneros (cowboys) led by José Tomás Boves into an undisciplined but savagely effective cavalry that Bolívar was unable to repulse. Boves subjected Creole patriots to terrible atrocities, and his capture of Caracas and other principal cities ended the second Venezuelan republic. Narrowly escaping Miranda’s fate, Bolívar fled to New Granada, where he was commissioned in Cartagena to oust a separatist faction from Bogotá (now in Colombia) and succeeded in doing so. He then laid siege to Cartagena but failed to unite the revolutionary forces and fled to Jamaica.

In exile, Bolívar turned his energies toward gaining support from Great Britain, and, in an effort to convince the British people of their stake in the freedom of the Spanish colonies, 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. “The bonds,” wrote Bolívar, “that united us to Spain have been severed.” He was not dismayed that the Spaniards had in certain instances won the upper hand. “A people that love freedom will in the end be free. We are,” he said proudly, “a microcosm of the human race. We are a world apart, confined within two oceans, young in arts and sciences, but old as a human society. We are neither Indians nor Europeans, yet we are a part of each.” He proposed constitutional republics throughout Hispanic America, and for the former Viceroyalty of New Granada he envisioned a government modeled on that of Great Britain, with a hereditary upper house, an elected lower house, and a president chosen for life. The last provision, to which Bolívar clung throughout his career, constituted the most dubious feature of his political thinking.

In “The Letter from Jamaica,” Bolívar showed himself as a great internationalist. He looked forward to the day when the representatives of all Hispanic American nations would gather in a central location such as Panama.

By 1815, Spain had sent to its seditious colonies the strongest expeditionary force that had ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Its commander was Pablo Morillo. Since neither Great Britain nor the United States would promise aid, Bolívar turned to Haiti, which had recently freed itself from French rule. There he was given a friendly reception as well as money and weapons.

Liberation of New Granada

Three years of indecisive defeats and victories followed. In 1817 Bolívar decided to set up headquarters in the Orinoco River 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, established his capital at Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar), began to publish a newspaper, and established a liaison with the revolutionary forces of the plains, including one group led by José Antonio Páez and another group led by Francisco de Paula Santander. In spring 1819 he conceived his master plan of attacking the Viceroyalty of New Granada.

Bolívar’s attack on New Granada is 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 the plains, but it was the rainy season, and the rivers had become lakes. For seven days, according to one of Bolívar’s aides, they marched in water up to their waists. Ten navigable rivers were crossed, most of them in cowhide boats. The journey through the plains seemed child’s play, however, in comparison with their ascent of the Andes Mountains that stood between Bolívar and the city of Bogotá. Bolívar had chosen to cross the cordillera at the pass of Pisba, which the Spanish considered an inconceivable approach. An icy wind blew across the heights of the pass, and many of the scantily clad troops died of cold and exposure. The fatigue and loss, however, were more than outweighed by the advantage gained in descending unopposed into New Granada. The Spaniards were taken by surprise, and in the crucial Battle of Boyacá on August 7, 1819, the bulk of the royalist army surrendered to Bolívar. Three days later he entered Bogotá. That action was the turning point in the history of northern South America.

Indefatigably, Bolívar set out to complete his task. He appointed Santander vice president in charge of the administration and in December 1819 made his appearance before the congress that had assembled in Angostura. Bolívar was made president and military dictator. He urged the legislators to proclaim the creation of a new state; three days later the Republic of Colombia, usually called Gran Colombia, was established, comprising the three departments of New Granada (now the countries of Colombia and Panama), Venezuela, and Quito (Ecuador). Since most of that territory was still under royalist control, it was largely a paper achievement. Bolívar knew, however, that victory was finally within his grasp. Early in 1820 a revolution in Spain forced the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, to recognize the ideals of liberalism on the home front, an action that discouraged the Spanish forces in South America. Bolívar persuaded Morillo to open armistice negotiations, and the two warriors met in a memorable encounter at Santa Ana, Venezuela, signing in November 1820 a treaty that ended hostilities for a six-month period.

When fighting was resumed, Bolívar found it easy, with his superior manpower, to defeat the Spanish forces in Venezuela. The Battle of Carabobo (June 1821) opened the gates of Caracas, and Bolívar’s Venezuelan homeland was at last free. In the autumn of the same year, a congress convened in Cúcuta to draft a constitution for Gran Colombia. Its provisions disappointed Bolívar. Although he had been elected president, he thought the constitution was too liberal in character to guarantee the survival of his creation. As long as more-urgent assignments claimed his attention, however, he was willing to put up with its weak structure. Putting the administration in Santander’s hands, he left to continue his military campaign.

The effort to liberate Ecuador lasted about a year. Bolívar was assisted by the most brilliant of his officers, Antonio José de Sucre. While Bolívar engaged the Spaniards in the mountains that defended the northern access to Quito, capital of Ecuador, Sucre marched from the Pacific Ocean coast to the interior. At Pichincha on May 24, 1822, he won a victory that freed Ecuador from the Spanish yoke. On the following day the capital fell, and Bolívar joined forces with Sucre on June 16.

It was in Quito that the Liberator met the great passion of his life, Manuela Sáenz. She was an ardent revolutionary who freely admitted her love for Bolívar and accompanied him first to Peru and ultimately to the presidential palace in Bogotá.

Liberation of Peru

The territory of Gran Colombia had now been completely recovered from Spain, and its new government was recognized by the United States. Only Peru and Upper Peru remained in the hands of the Spaniards. It was the Peruvian problem that brought Bolívar and the Argentine revolutionary José de San Martín together. San Martín had done for the southern part of the continent what Bolívar had accomplished for the north. In addition, San Martín had already entered Lima and proclaimed Peru’s independence. But the Spanish forces had retreated into the highlands, and San Martín, unable to follow them, decided to consult with Bolívar. On July 26, 1822, the two men met in the port city of Guayaquil, Ecuador (the Guayaquil Conference). Details of their discussions are not known, but presumably they covered completion of the military struggle in Peru as well as the subsequent organization of liberated Hispanic America. San Martín must have understood that Bolívar alone combined the military, political, and psychological assets needed to gain final victory over the powerful Spanish army in the highlands. Given the situation in Lima, where he faced mounting opposition, San Martín’s presence there could only hinder the performance of that task. On his return from Guayaquil, San Martín resigned his office in Lima and went into exile, allowing Bolívar to assume sole direction of the war. Whether he took that action to give Bolívar a free hand or out of a sense of personal frustration is unknown.

The avenue that would lead to Bolívar’s ultimate ambition was now open. In September 1823 he arrived in Lima. The Spanish army occupied the mountains east of the city, and its position was considered unassailable. Bolívar, however, systematically assembled troops, horses, mules, and ammunition to form an army, and in 1824 he moved out of the temporary capital in Trujillo and ascended the high cordillera. The first major battle took place at Junín and was easily won by Bolívar, who then left the successful termination of the campaign to his able chief of staff, Sucre. On December 9, 1824, the Spanish viceroy lost the Battle of Ayacucho to Sucre and surrendered with his entire army.


Bolívar was now president of Gran Colombia and dictator of Peru. Only a small section of the continent—Upper Peru—was still defended by royalist forces. The liberation of that region fell to Sucre, and in April 1825 he reported that the task had been accomplished. The new country chose to be called Bolivia, a variation on the Liberator’s name. For that child of his genius, Bolívar drafted a constitution that showed once more his authoritarian inclinations: it created a lifetime president, a legislative body consisting of three chambers, and a highly restricted suffrage. Bolívar was devoted to his own creation, but, as the instrument of social reform that he had envisaged, the constitution was a failure.

Bolívar had now reached the high point of his career. His power extended from the Caribbean to the Argentine-Bolivian border. He had conquered severe illness, which during his sojourn in Peru had made him practically an invalid for months at a time. Another of his favourite 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. By 1824 such treaties had been signed and ratified by the republics of Colombia, Peru, Mexico, the United Provinces of Central America, and the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. In 1826 a general American congress convened in Panama under Bolívar’s auspices. Compared with Bolívar’s original proposals, it was a fragmentary affair, with only Colombia, Peru, Central America, and Mexico sending representatives. The four countries that attended signed a treaty of alliance and invited all other American countries 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. Only Colombia ratified the treaty, yet the congress in Panama provided an important example for future hemispheric solidarity and understanding in South America.

Bolívar was aware that his plans for hemispheric organization had met with only limited acceptance. His contemporaries thought in terms of individual nation-states, Bolívar in terms of 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. Such a prophecy, made in 1824, was fulfilled in 1826.

Civil war

Venezuela and New Granada began to chafe at the bonds of their union in Gran Colombia. The protagonists in each country, Páez in Venezuela and Santander in New Granada, opposed each other, and at last civil war broke out. Bolívar left Lima in haste, and most authorities agree that Peru was glad to see the end of his three-year reign and its liberation from Colombian influence. In Bogotá, Bolívar found Santander upholding the constitution of Cúcuta and urging that Páez be punished as a rebel. Bolívar, however, was determined to preserve the unity of Gran Colombia and was therefore willing to appease Páez, with whom he became reconciled early in 1827. Páez bowed to the supreme authority of the Liberator, and in turn Bolívar promised a new constitution that would remedy Venezuelan grievances. He declared himself dictator of Gran Colombia and called for a national convention that met in April 1828. Bolívar refused to influence the elections, with the result that the liberals under the leadership of Santander gained the majority.

Bolívar had hoped that the constitution of Cúcuta would be revised and presidential authority strengthened, but the liberals blocked any such attempts. A stalemate developed. Arguing that the old constitution was no longer valid and that no new one had taken its place, Bolívar assumed dictatorial powers in Gran Colombia. A group of liberal conspirators invaded the presidential palace on the night of September 25, and Bolívar was saved from the daggers of the assassins only by the quick-wittedness of Manuela Sáenz. Although the attempt on his life failed, the storm signals increased. Bolívar’s precarious health began to fail. Peru invaded Ecuador with the intention of annexing Guayaquil. Once more Sucre saved Ecuador and defeated the Peruvians at Tarqui (1829). A few months later one of Bolívar’s most-honoured generals, José María Córdoba, staged a revolt. It was crushed, but Bolívar was disheartened by the continued ingratitude of his former adherents. In the fall of 1829 Venezuela seceded from Gran Colombia.

Reluctantly, Bolívar realized that his very existence presented a danger to the internal and external peace of the nations that owed their independence to him, and on May 8, 1830, he left Bogotá, planning to take refuge in Europe. Reaching the Atlantic coast, he learned that Sucre, whom he had trained as his successor, had been assassinated. Bolívar’s grief was boundless. The projected trip to Europe was canceled, and, at the invitation of a Spanish admirer, Bolívar journeyed to his estate near Santa Marta. Ironically, his life ended in the house of a Spaniard, where, toward the end of 1830, he died of tuberculosis.

Bolívar is regarded by many as the greatest genius the Latin American world has produced. He was a man of international renown in his own day, and his reputation has steadily increased since his death. There are few figures in European history and none in the history of the United States who display the rare combination of strength and weakness, character and temperament, prophetic vision and poetic power that distinguish Simón Bolívar. As a consequence, his life and his work have grown to mythical dimensions among the people of his continent.

Gerhard Straussmann Masur



More About Simón Bolívar







 
July 24, 1783

December 17, 1830 (aged 47)
near Santa Marta, Colombia







 (8 Images)