by John Lynch
The chronicle of Bolívar’s life in the years from 1810 to 1812 is not good reading for those who seek perfection in a hero. These were years of ordeal by battle when relentless events tested his will and judgement and gave him lessons in leadership. He emerged a deeper and a wiser man, but a scan of his record reveals a number of shadows that cannot easily be banished. The loss of Puerto Cabello, his fault or not, was a strategic disaster and a blow to his morale; the arrest of Miranda was an ignoble action, ‘perfidy’ in Andrés Bello’s view, a punishment undeserved by one who had worked so long for the American cause; and the passport to safety was gained through influence with royalists which Miranda himself had never enjoyed.53 These are episodes that reveal flaws of temperament and behaviour which his own excuses and those of his partisans only magnify. There was an emotional streak in Bolívar, times when reason retreated and passion took command; his endless denunciation of Miranda as a ‘cobarde’ was unforgiving, hardly excused by belated recognition of him as ‘ilustre’.54 Nevertheless from the ruins of the first republic emerged the unmistakable signs of a leader: a commander’s ruthlessness, an inner fortitude, a resolution in the face of adversity, and an ability to pick himself up from calamity and come back fighting. Superficially cast down, he still retained deep within him the will to win. The Spanish American revolution re–enacted the scene many times in the next twenty years: his individual survival amidst collective failure.
Bolívar sailed from La Guaira in a Spanish vessel, the Jesús, María y José, and arrived in Curaçao five days later. There his baggage was confiscated by an unfriendly British governor and he lived, no longer the aristocrat, politician and officer in a new republic, as a refugee with conditions to negotiate and a role to establish. He relied on friends, especially Iturbe, to administer his properties, protect his revenues and look after his interests in Venezuela, where his personal wealth was his only power base for the future. Meanwhile, ‘indifferent to bad luck’, he had some books to read, an inevitable friend in need, and time to calm his mind and recover his spirit.55 At the end of October he managed to procure a thousand–peso loan and sailed for Cartagena, while in Caracas the counter–revolution exacted its revenge.
Chapter 4
WAR TO THE DEATH
The Cartagena Manifesto
Cartagena was an obvious choice for Bolívar. Caribbean port and fortified outpost of South America, once a depot for the Atlantic slave trade and now the home of a diverse population of blacks, mulattos and Indians, it opened an alternative route to independence. Its hinterland of great rivers, plains, jungles and mountains, of tropical vegetation and bleak plateaus, contained a similar mixture of resources as Venezuela – with the addition of gold deposits, now less profitable than formerly. Like Venezuela, New Granada was in the second league of Spanish colonies, though elevated to a viceroyalty in the eighteenth century. A population of 1.1 million inhabitants in 1825 contained the familiar divisions of whites, blacks, Indians and mixed races, and was characterized by extensive mestization.1 It was a normally docile society, though fiercely protective towards its perceived rights. Creole grievances were expressed within traditional structures and did not threaten the colonial state until that state itself collapsed when Spain began to falter in the years after 1808. Then New Granada reproduced the prevailing pattern of colonial dissent, from loyal juntas to independent government. Following the example of Quito, other towns of New Granada formed separate juntas of creole elites in competition with those in Spain, overtly supportive of Ferdinand VII and of Spanish resistance to Napoleon but by 1812 independent of the Spanish connection.
Independence, however, led to disunity, and disunity to destruction. Bolívar knew the sequence well. The republic was immediately divided into centralist and federalist factions. Cundinamarca, the most important of the provinces, was a centralist base, its president, Antonio Nariño, a dissident voice since the 1790s; but the other provinces refused to subordinate themselves to the rule of Santa Fe de Bogotá and grouped themselves into the Federation of New Granadan Provinces, with its capital Tunja. And, in the worst scenario, provinces began fighting each other. The revolution thus became self–defeating and the country was engulfed in civil war before it was even fully independent. The Spaniards simply had to wait for New Granadans to destroy each other.
Cartagena, a port long anxious for free trade, sought to extricate itself from Spain and from the surrounding chaos. There the revolution had a broader social base, as the merchant elite mobilized the pardos in support of the junta and then in the push for complete independence.2 This was accompanied by the adoption of a republican constitution and the emergence in effect of an independent Cartagena state from November 1811, hostile to Spain, isolated from surrounding regions, and like Caracas vulnerable to counter–revolution. This was the refuge sought by Bolívar in October 1812.
Bolívar entered Cartagena with a prepared agenda for the next stage of his life. First, he wrote the conceptual framework of his project, then he acted it out in the field. He planned to restore his military reputation in New Granada, but before that he displayed his political credentials. He began by writing to the congress of New Granada, briefly explaining the reasons for the collapse of the Venezuelan republic. The earthquake of 26 March and the loss of twenty thousand people he described as of only secondary importance. The primary causes were the political errors committed by the government, especially the failure to crush the resistance of Coro before it infected the rest of the country. There were other failures: lack of military recruitment and budget control; indulgence towards perfidious Spaniards; religious fanaticism ‘hypocritically directed by the clergy’ to keep its control over a superstitious people; and the weakness of federal government. The republic’s army had been capable of winning, in spite of which its general ‘with unmatched cowardice’ failed to pursue the enemy and instead concluded a capitulation. Now the few who escaped ‘the clutches of those raging beasts’ implored the protection of New Granada; to earn this they wished to join the struggle between the new state and the province of Santa Marta. Their service to South American freedom encouraged them to look to the liberal spirit of the people of New Granada. ‘Caracas, the cradle of Colombian independence, surely deserves deliverance, like another Jerusalem.’ And fellow republicans here, learning from us, can become the liberators of their captive brothers, thus recovering the freedom of South America and restoring ‘its natural rights’.3
The natural rights of South America received closer attention in Bolívar’s first major statement of his political ideas, the so–called ‘Cartagena Manifesto’, in which he gave vent to his intellect and expounded his vision. Here he further analysed the failings of the first Venezuelan republic and probed its political assumptions, offering these ‘terrible lessons’ as an example and a warning.4 The reasons for failure, he argued, lay in the adoption of a constitution ill–adapted to the character of the people; excessive and misguided tolerance towards the enemy; reluctance to recruit professional military forces, relying instead on undisciplined militia forces; financial incompetence leading to the issue of paper money; the earthquake, physically and morally destructive, compounded by a weak central government incapable of repairing the damage, and the religious fanaticism unleashed by the event; and, finally, the factionalism which subverted the republic from within, the ‘fatal poison that laid the country in its tomb’. Popular elections, he maintained, allowed the ignorant and the ambitious to have their say and placed government in the hands of inept and immoral men who introduced the spirit of faction. Thus, ‘our own disunity, not Spanish arms, returned us to slavery’. Peoples so young, so innocent of representative government and of education, could not be immediately transformed into democracies; their system of government should not advance beyond social realities. He insisted on unity and centralization; a ‘terrible power’ was needed to defeat the royalists, and constitutional susceptibilities were irrelevant until peace and happiness were restored. This was the beginn
ing of his permanent opposition to federalism: it was contrary to the interests of an emerging state, for a federal government was weak and complex, whereas America needed strength and unity.
Bolívar appealed for continental collaboration and more immediately for New Granadan support for the liberation of Venezuela. The recovery of Venezuela, he urged, was essential to the security of New Granada and to the liberty and independence of South America. He returned to a favourite analogy. If royalism in Coro led to the fall of Caracas, could not counterrevolution in Venezuela endanger the whole of America? ‘Coro is to Caracas what Caracas is to America.’ The appeal to self–interest was also an appeal to seize the opportunity. Spain was on its heels, deserted by creole troops and slow with reinforcements; for the moment the route to Caracas was open and patriots were waiting in welcome. The good name of New Granada depended upon it taking over the task of marching into Venezuela ‘to free that cradle of Colombian independence’ and bring liberty to all.
The Cartagena Manifesto presents Venezuela as a lesson in politics. But there is a subtext running through the document, taking its significance beyond the immediate political and military context into conceptual problems of political ideas. Bolívar steps back from the Age of Reason and distances himself from many of its liberal assumptions. For the first time we can judge him against the thought of the Enlightenment and observe him exercising his own critical perceptions.5 He sees that a society’s ability to survive militarily and politically depends on the efficiency of its institutions. So he warns New Granada not to fall into the same errors as Venezuela, errors which could be traced to the lack of realism in the Constitution of 1811. The flaws of that constitution derived from its individualist and federalist character and were rooted in the ideas of the Enlightenment. Institutions were created according to abstract and rationalist principles far removed from concrete reality and the needs of time and place. Bolívar coined the phrase ‘repúblicas aéreas’, ethereal or abstract republics, to show how distant from reality was the thought of the Enlightenment as expressed in the Caracas constitution.
The codes consulted by our magistrates were not those which could teach them the practical science of government but those designed by certain worthy visionaries who, conceiving in their minds some ethereal republic, have sought to attain political perfection, assuming the perfectibility of the human race. So we were given philosophers for leaders, philanthropy for legislation, dialectic for tactics, and sophists for soldiers. This subversion of principles and affairs shook the social order to its foundations, and inevitably the State made giant strides toward its general dissolution, which soon came about.
The next stage of the argument was to show that institutions that are adopted for their philosophical content (possibly valid for other countries and times) were fatal and condemned to military and political failure. The vacuum left by the fall of the Spanish empire had to be filled by institutions appropriate for that purpose, based on American reality and not on imported ideas. This meant shunning absolute democracy, which legitimizes the government by the electoral process without incorporating moderating elements into the organization of the state; these are needed to provide defence against demagogues and political schemers looking for their own exclusive interests. ‘What most weakened the government of Venezuela was the federal form it adopted in keeping with the exaggerated principles of the rights of man. By authorizing self–government, this principle undermines social contracts and reduces nations to anarchy.’ So each province, then each city, claimed independence ‘on the theory that all men and all peoples have the right to establish whatever form of government they choose’. There were of course alternative explanations to those of Bolívar. Does federalism provoke or placate localism? Was it possible that Venezuelans had not yet achieved a sense of nation, and people still looked primarily to towns and cities as the focus of their political interests, as they had in colonial times?6 Valid questions, though Bolívar would blame ignorance and inexperience among the people, not lack of identity.
The Western Front
First the word, then the action. Bolívar was determined to prove that Venezuela could earn the support of its neighbour. He was in fact an asset to Cartagena, a boost to its revolution and a focus for further resistance. He was the most distinguished of a group of Venezuelan officers who sought refuge in the port and were accepted into the army: José Félix Ribas, friend and relative, Antonio Nicolás Briceño, neighbouring hacendado, Francisco and Miguel Carabaño, Mariano and Tomás Montilla, and others. The Cartagena government gave Bolívar command of a corps in the division headed by Colonel Pierre Labatut, a French mercenary of mediocre talents and provocative ways, who posted him to the town of Barranca near the mouth of the Magdalena River with instructions not to move, effectively not to detract, from the Frenchman’s command. Fifty years previously a missionary friar who had travelled the same route described the Magdalena as a pleasure and a paradise, a delight to the senses of all who sailed it. Bolívar saw it as a gateway to great things. Beyond the river lay the royalist territory of Santa Marta, a colonial outpost and frontier against unconquered Indians. He decided to attack the Spaniards at the fortified town of Tenerife and open up the river. Pausing only to recruit volunteers and, it is said, to conduct a brief affair with Anita Lenoit, a young Frenchwoman, he proceeded upriver and seized the initiative through tactics of secrecy and surprise rather than superior force; he had only two hundred poorly armed men, but the startled Spaniards abandoned their supplies and boats as well as Tenerife itself.
Never one to miss an opportunity to speak of liberation, he stood at the head of his small army and assembled the inhabitants on the riverbank. There he reproached them for their previous royalism and loyalty towards tyrants ‘who have enslaved your men, plundered your homes and raped your women, for where the Spanish empire rules, there rules desolation and death’. He went on to describe the new regime that was taking shape as though he were giving a class in constitutional law, concluding: ‘Now we have come to open up for you a great future of glory and fortune, declaring you members of a society which has as its foundations absolute equality of rights and the rule of law, which never favours birth or wealth, but always virtue and merit. In short, you are now free men.’7 Thus, on the banks of the Magdalena, in a clearing in the tropical forest and among an uncultured community, Bolívar summarized his republican hopes and the liberation that military victories could bring. He asked these people if they would swear loyalty and obedience to the sovereign government of Cartagena, and they answered with a unanimous, ‘Yes, we do swear’.
Continuing upriver, Bolívar reached Mompós on 27 December and was acclaimed military commander of the district by grateful patriots. Recruiting along the route, he then occupied El Banco on 1 January 1813 and advanced to defeat the Spaniards at Chiriguaná. Then he seized Tamalameque by surprise and occupied Puerto Real and Ocaña without any opposition. This ended the campaign to free the upper Magdalena and clear the way to the interior of New Granada, previously cut off by the Spanish ships on the river.8 On 8 January he reported to congress in Tunja that he had opened the Magdalena to navigation in just fifteen days. The government of Cartagena was impressed and ignored Labatut’s complaints about the victor’s insubordination.
For his next campaign Bolívar was authorized by the president of Cartagena to march on the Spanish forces under Ramón Correa occupying the valleys of Cúcuta, and thus close the gap in the eastern defences of New Granada. It was also the route to Venezuela. This involved leading troops accustomed to the tropics through harsh mountain conditions where the terrain and the climate were a severe test of endurance even before battle was joined; at San José de Cúcuta the Spanish forces were defeated by a mixture of smart tactics on the part of Bolívar and brave charges led by his friend Ribas. The royalists fled, abandoning valuable ordinance and merchandise. San José was a major victory, Bolívar’s first, an early example too of his response to the challenge of landscape; above al
l, it established his credentials for leadership.
He crossed the Táchira River in early March and in the Venezuelan town of San Antonio addressed his troops in the first of many such proclamations: ‘Your liberating arms have reached Venezuela, bringing life and protection to the first of its towns. In less than two months you have concluded two campaigns and begun a third, which will end in the country that gave me birth.’9 He thus pre–empted the liberation of Venezuela and likened it to the crusades ‘which liberated Jerusalem’. He was subsequently given military promotion to the rank of brigadier general in command of the federation armies. He established his headquarters at Cúcuta and followed his military victories with political initiatives. He knew that he still had to sell his project to president and congress in New Granada and persuade them to support an invasion of Venezuela. Now he showed his talents not only as a soldier who could win battles but also as a politician who could win a difficult argument. His case was muddied by military rivalries. Colonel Manuel Castillo, his second–in–command, a native of Cartagena and early fighter for independence, resented the intrusion of a Venezuelan into his revolution, and reported to congress that Bolívar had misused the booty taken at Cúcuta and was rushing into an unauthorized invasion of Venezuela. Bolívar defended himself vigorously and his eloquence, plus the support of Camilo Torres, patriot pioneer and president of the United Provinces, induced congress to grant him permission to invade Venezuela, but only as far as Mérida and Trujillo; in May 1813 he was required to swear adhesion to this commission and throughout the campaign he dutifully reported his progress to congress.
