The military and political career of Simón Bolívar (July 24, 1783 – December 17, 1830), which included both formal service in the armies of various revolutionary regimes and actions organized by himself or in collaboration with other exile patriot leaders during the years from 1811 to 1830, was an important element in the success of the independence wars in South America. Given the unstable political climate during these years, Bolívar and other patriot leaders, such as Santiago Mariño, Manuel Piar, José Francisco Bermúdez and Francisco de Paula Santander often had to go into exile in the Caribbean or nearby areas of Spanish America that at the moment were controlled by those favoring independence, and from there, carry on the struggle. These wars resulted in the creation of several South American states out of the former Spanish colonies, the currently existing Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, and the now defunct Gran Colombia.
In his 30-year career, Bolívar faced two main challenges. First was gaining acceptance as undisputed leader of the republican cause. Despite claiming such a role since 1813, he began to achieve this only in 1817, and consolidated his hold on power after his dramatic and unexpected victory in New Granada in 1819. His second challenge was implementing a vision of unifying the region into one large state, which he believed would be the only guarantee of maintaining American independence from the Spanish in northern South America. His early experiences under the First Venezuelan Republic and in New Granada convinced him that divisions among republicans, augmented by federal forms of government, only allowed Spanish American royalists to eventually gain the upper hand. Once again, it was his victory in 1819 that gave him the leverage to bring about the creation of a unified state, Gran Colombia, with which to oppose the Spanish Monarchy on the continent.
Historical background
The idea of independence for Spanish America had existed for several years among a minority of the residents of northern South America. In 1797 the Venezuelans Manuel Gual and José María España, inspired by exiled Spaniard Juan Bautista Picornell, unsuccessfully attempted to establish a republic in Venezuela with greater social equality for Venezuelans of all racial and social backgrounds. Nine years later, in 1806 long-time Venezuelan expatriate Francisco de Miranda led a small group of mostly British and American foreign volunteers in an attempt to take over Venezuela and set up an independent republic. Like Gual and España's conspiracy, Miranda's putsch failed to attract Venezuelans of any social and economic class, in fact local Venezuelans organized the resistance to Miranda's invasion and quickly dispersed it. The lack of interest on the part of the Venezuelan Criollos is often explained by their fear that the loss of the removal of Spanish control might bring about a revolution that would destroy their own power in Venezuela. Nevertheless, in the decades leading up to 1806, Criollos had often been at odds with the Spanish Crown: they wanted an expansion of the free trade that was benefiting their plantation economy and objected to the Crown's new policy of granting social privileges that had been traditionally been reserved for whites (españoles) to Pardos through the purchase of certificates of whiteness (gracias al sacar). So the Criollos' failure to support Gual, España and Miranda, which would have created a state under their control, needs to also be understood by the fact that a national identity separate from the Spanish had not yet emerged among them.
In neighboring New Granada tensions also existed with the Crown but had not evolved into an outright desire for separation. In 1779 the Revolt of the Comuneros pitted middle-class and rural residents against the royal authorities over the issue of new taxes instituted as part of the Bourbon Reforms. Although the revolt was stopped and the leaders punished or executed, the uprising did manage to slow down the economic reforms that the Crown had planned for New Granada. In the subsequent decades, a few New Granadans, like Antonio Nariño, became intrigued by the ideas of the French Revolution and attempted to promote its values by disseminating translated documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Again, this was a minority and not necessarily a sign that the majority in New Granada did not see themselves as members of the Spanish Monarchy.
The break with the Crown came in 1808 with the disappearance of a stable government in Spain. The crisis was precipitated by Napoleon's removal of Bourbon Dynasty from the throne of Spain (he convinced Ferdinand VII to abdicate, and his father Charles IV to renounce any claim to returning to the throne he had abdicated only months earlier) and his invasion of Spain. As the entire Spanish world rejected the new Bonaparte Dynasty (Napoleon gave the crown of Spain to his brother, the King of Naples and Sicily), Spain itself fell into chaos and it took almost a year for a coordinated, centralized provisional government (the Supreme Central and Governmental Junta of Spain and the Indies) to form. Even then, the rapid and large French advances in the Peninsula seemed to make the idea of a stable government in Spain pointless. By 1810, the Supreme Junta was cornered in the island city of Cadiz during the two-year Siege of Cádiz. Throughout Spanish America, people felt it was time to take the government into their own hands, if a Spanish world, independent of the French, were to continue to exist at all, and therefore in 1810 juntas were set up throughout the Americas, including in Caracas and Bogotá, just as they had been in Spain two years earlier.Lynch, Bolívar: A Life, 44-48; Madariaga, 108-116; and Masur (1969), 62-65.
Service under the First Republic (1810-1812)
In 1809 a twenty-six-year-old Bolívar had retreated to his estate in the Valleys of Aragua, refusing to openly participate in calls for the establishment of a Venezuelan junta, because the plans did not consider the option of independence. He was still in his country estates when a junta was successfully established on April 19, 1810. The new Junta of Caracas chose him to be part of a delegation to the United Kingdom to seek British aid. The delegation did not have much success, but Bolívar did return in December 1810 with Francisco de Miranda, who saw an opportunity in the political turmoil to return to Venezuela.
Independence declared Civil war broke out between the provinces of Venezuela that recognized the Caracas Junta and those that still recognized the Regency in Spain (the Cortes of Cádiz), that had replaced the Supreme Central Junta. The situation became more tense when a congress, called by the Caracas Junta, declared independence on July 5, 1811, sparking rebellions in Valencia in favor of the Cortes of Cádiz. Bolívar's first military service was as an officer under Miranda's command in the units created to put down this revolt. Bolívar was promoted to colonel and made commandant of Puerto Cabello the following year. At the same time that Frigate Captain Domingo de Monteverde was making fast and vast advances into republican territory from the west (his forces had entered Valencia on May 3, 1812), Bolívar lost control of San Felipe Castle along with its ammunition stores on June 30, when the royalist prisoners held there managed to take it over and attack the small number of troops in the city. Deciding that the situation was lost, Bolívar effectively abandoned his post and retreated to his estate farm in San Mateo. Miranda also saw the republican cause as lost and authorized a capitulation with Monteverde on July 25.Masur (1969), 98-102; and Lynch, Bolívar: A Life, 60-63.
The royalist restoration The terms of the Capitulation of San Mateo, which Monteverde approved but which Miranda never came to sign, granted amnesty and the right to emigrate from Venezuela to all republicans, if they chose to do so. Nevertheless, there was great confusion among the republicans as to what the treaty actually contained or if Monteverde would keep his word. It was in this uncertain environment that Miranda chose to abandon the country before Monteverde occupied Caracas. In the early morning of August 1, Miranda was sleeping in the house of the commandant of La Guaira, Colonel Manuel María Casas, when he was awakened by Casas, Bolívar, Miguel Peña and four other soldiers, who promptly arrested Miranda for treason to the Republic and turned him over to Monteverde. For his apparent services to the royalist cause, Monteverde granted Bolívar a passport, and Bolívar left for Curaçao on August 27.
Exile and the Second Republic (1812-1814)
In Curaçao Bolívar learned that Monteverde had broken the promises given in the Capitulation of San Mateo. Many of the republicans who had stayed behind were arrested and the property of many republicans, both in Venezuela and in exile, were confiscated to make up for the large deficits the government faced. Bolívar decided to rejoin the patriot cause and made his way to Cartagena de Indias, which had established itself as an independent republic on November 11, 1811 (in reaction as much to events in Spain as to attempts by the junta in Bogotá to control it) and joined a few days later in a confederation with four other provinces, the United Provinces of New Granada. In the weeks before arriving in Cartagena in October 1812, Bolívar began to analyze the collapse of the Venezuelan republic and published his thoughts in December in his Cartagena Manifesto. In the document Bolívar blamed the failure on the federal nature of the Venezuelan republic, which had allowed provinces to ignore the needs of other provinces threatened by Monteverde's advance, and the intransigence of the Venezuelan population to the republican cause, among other things. He saw the Venezuelan case as a warning to the divided New Granada and urged it to retake Caracas from the royalists. He enlisted as an officer in the army of the New Granadan Union and led forces in the Magdalena Campaign against cities in the lower Magdalena River that had refused to accept Cartagena's authority or that of the Union, and then attacked Ocaña. His success in these operations convinced the congress of the Union to authorize his plans to invade Venezuela in May 1813, and thus began his Admirable Campaign.
His reentry into Venezuela marked a new, more violent phase of the wars of independence. Monteverde's troops had already carried out atrocities: he had allowed his soldiers to loot many of the cities he occupied and several of his commanders became notorious for torturing and killing civilians suspected of collaborating with the Republic. Bolívar also faced the fact that by 1813 much of the older aristocrats, who had led the republic, had abandoned the cause of independence, and the general population had turned against republicanism even before its collapse. In order to drive a wedge between Venezuelans and Peninsulares, Bolívar's instituted a policy of no quarter in his Decree of War to the Death, in which he promised to kill any Peninsular who did not actively support his efforts to restore independence and to spare any American even if they actively collaborated with Monteverde or the royalists.Lynch, Bolívar: A Life, 70-75; and Masur (1969), 122-127.
The Republic restored and lost