Spain–Venezuela relations
News of Spanish losses in the 1808 Napoleonic Wars soon reached Latin America, but only on 19 April 1810 did the "cabildo" (city council) of Caracas decide to follow the example set by the Spanish provinces two years earlier. On 5 July 1811, seven of the ten provinces of the Captaincy General of Venezuela declared their independence in the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence. The First Republic of Venezuela was lost in 1812 following the 1812 Caracas earthquake and the Battle of La Victoria (1812). Simón Bolívar led an "Admirable Campaign" to retake Venezuela, establishing the Second Republic of Venezuela in 1813, but this did not last long either, falling to a combination of a local uprising and Spanish royalist reconquest.
First Republic of Venezuela
Shortly after the juntas were set up, Venezuelan émigré Francisco de Miranda had returned to his homeland taking advantage of the rapidly changing political climate. He had been a "persona non grata" since his failed attempt at liberating Venezuela in 1806. Miranda was elected to the Congress and began agitating for independence, gathered around him a group of similarly-minded individuals, who formed an association, modeled on the Jacobin Club, to pressure the Congress. Independence was formally declared on 5 July 1811. The Congress established a Confederation called the American Confederation of Venezuela in its Declaration of Independence, referred variously as States of Venezuela (in its opening sentence) and afterwards United States of Venezuela, and American Confederation of Venezuela in the Constitution, crafted mostly by lawyer Juan Germán Roscio, that it ratified on 21 December 1811. The Constitution created a strong bicameral legislature and, as also happened in neighboring New Granada, the Congress kept the weak executive consisting of a triumvirate. This government was not in force for long, since the provinces (referred to as states in the Constitution) did not fully implement it. The provinces also wrote their own constitutions, a right which the Congress recognized.