Simon Bolivar

by John Lynch

  Castillo remained a thorn in his flesh for the next two years, opposing most of his initiatives and splitting the army between Venezuelans and New Granadans. Preparations for the move into Venezuela were hampered by these personal rivalries. Castillo resigned from the division which was then commanded by one of his supporters, Major Francisco de Paula Santander, a rising officer in the New Granadan army, who appeared to be reluctant to order the unit forward. Bolívar ordered Santander to march, but the latter indicated that he was not prepared to obey. ‘There is no choice,’ retorted the general. ‘March! For either you will shoot me or I will certainly shoot you.’ The division left but without Santander, who remained on frontier duties in La Grita.10 This was another rivalry that endured. Bolívar had shed two awkward subordinates but they were influential officers and for the moment their absence cost him the confidence of other officers and the enthusiasm of the troops. The support of Colonel Rafael Urdaneta, a young officer from Maracaibo who was to prove one his most loyal followers, was more than welcome: ‘General, if two men are enough to free the country, I am ready to go with you.’

  Bolívar’s military service in New Granada earned him, if not the respect of his rivals, at least credit with congress, and this enabled him to secure a base on the border and to recruit an army of invasion. It was a small army – estimates vary between three hundred and seven hundred men – and its prospects depended upon striking at the heart of royalist power before Monteverde could concentrate his scattered forces. Its strength lay in the confidence of its general, the quality of officers such as Ribas, Urdaneta and Girardot, and the commitment of its troops. And for once Bolívar had been able to assemble adequate arms and supplies. Anyone taking stock of Bolívar’s war at this point would conclude that since entering Cartagena he had written his own script. First, he had mounted an intellectual assault pinpointing the flaws of the revolution and the prospects of overcoming them. Then he had applied a military strategy, partly of his own making, partly the fortune of time and place, beginning with a river campaign to clear the Magdalena of Spanish occupation, followed by a major battle to finish the war in New Granada and lead him back to Venezuela. Now he simply needed a short, sharp campaign to lead him to Caracas.

  In Caracas Monteverde had taken the title of ‘commander general of the army of pacification’, and was subsequently appointed captain–general and jefe político under the Spanish Constitution of 1812. He established his own regime, oppressive certainly but not at first violent. He did not consider himself bound by the capitulation and he promptly began to jail patriots and confiscate their property. Soon the fortresses of Puerto Cabello and La Guaira were full of independentistas and of many who were mere suspects. The caudillo based his rule on upper–class creoles, royalist clergy, and his compatriots, the canarios; many personal scores were settled and much property changed hands. But this military dictatorship was not an unmitigated blessing to Spain. It alienated the legitimate Spanish bureaucracy and outraged moderate royalists by its greed and cruelty. Monteverde had usurped authority from his Spanish superiors in 1812 and therefore needed a power base against the official Spanish party as well as against the creole republicans. He found this among the lower social groups, not pardos or blacks but poor whites, most of whom were Canarians, ‘usually regarded in Venezuela’, commented the audiencia judge José Francisco Heredia, ‘as synonymous with ignorance, barbarism and coarseness’.11 Royalism had less success in attracting pardos and slaves. Were Spanish masters any improvement on the aristocratic republic? The slaves once more burst out of their plantations; at Curiepe they armed themselves with machetes and knives and marched on La Guaira. The pardos of the coast were still restless and in November 1812 conspired to overthrow the dictatorship. Bands of insurgent peons and llaneros continued guerrilla actions against white property–owners. These part–bandits, part–rebels were no asset to either side; they preyed upon the economy and terrorized the countryside. Yet their mere existence served the cause of independence. They provided a source of recruits for the republican forces when the struggle was renewed. Meanwhile they demonstrated to the creoles that restoration of royal power was no guarantee of social order.

  War by Terror

  Bolívar left Cúcuta and moved quickly out of New Granada in May 1813. Mérida fell without a fight on 23 May and added reinforcements to his army and the name of Liberator to its commander. Trujillo quickly followed, and soon he was on the road to Barquisimeto, Valencia and Caracas.12 Venezuela now endured a new and bloodier conflict; cruel and destructive, it was total war. This was a measure of the insecurity felt by each side, neither of which held preponderance of power or could afford to allow the other to grow. Monteverde tried to tip the balance in his favour by terrorizing the population and allowing his subordinates to kill civilians as well as belligerents. Bolívar reported news of the killing of one hundred victims in Caracas. The cruelty of the Spaniards was nowhere worse than at Maturín and Aragua and no one more monstrous than the officer Antonio Zuazola, who burned, mutilated and murdered indiscriminately, encouraging his soldiers to shoot wounded insurgents; he exhorted his troops to ‘spare no one over seven years’ – ‘a detestable man’, as Bolívar called him, who destroyed even the foetus in the mother’s womb.13

  Atrocities were committed on both sides in different parts of Venezuela. Antonio Nicolás Briceño, a hacendado neighbour of Bolívar, hard–line revolutionary and fellow exile, who became known as El Diablo among his colleagues, had his own terrorist agenda outside the control of the authorities in New Granada. He presented to Bolívar a plan of action (16 January 1813), in which he proposed to kill all European Spaniards. Bolívar gave approval only for those found arms in hand; Briceño offered promotion to his officers and men in return for the heads of Spaniards, and this tactic too was repudiated.14 But he killed and decapitated two elderly Spanish civilians and sent a head each to Bolívar and Castillo, an action for which he was denounced and disavowed by Bolívar. In an independent expedition to Barinas he continued his bloody ways, but was captured and with twenty–five of his men and twelve other prisoners was executed by Spanish forces – rough justice perhaps but an outrage to Bolívar. According to o’Leary, ‘this event was one of the immediate causes of the declaration of war to the death.’15

  In Bolívar’s view the enemy was waging an undeclared war of extermination, killing prisoners whose only crime was that they fought for freedom. He believed that his people were fighting at a disadvantage, conceding impunity to the Spaniards, who denied such a right to the patriots. He could not ignore the injustice without compromising his leadership. He therefore resolved upon a new policy – war to the death, pardoning only Americans, in order to give the patriots parity of menace. ‘Our tolerance is now exhausted, and as our oppressors force us into a mortal war they will disappear from America and our land will be purged of the monsters who infest it. Our hatred will be implacable, the war will be to the death.’16 In the upland village of Mucuchíes, near Mérida, the army executed the first victims of American vengeance, and in Mucuchíes too, according to legend, Bolívar was presented with a dog of the celebrated local breed that followed him with its young Indian companion until they both died in the battle of Boyacá.

  On 15 June, in the celebrated decree issued at Trujillo, Bolívar made the position even clearer in words that were carefully calculated:

  Any Spaniard who does not collaborate against tyranny in favour of the just cause, actively and effectively, shall be considered an enemy and punished as a traitor to the country, and in consequence shall be inescapably executed…. Spaniards and Canarians, know that you will die, even if you are simply neutral, unless you actively espouse the liberation of America. Americans, you will be spared, even when you are guilty.17

  The exception was significant. This was a civil war, in which Americans predominated on both sides. And Bolívar could not bring himself to wage war to the death on Venezuelans, even though they might be royalists: ‘It is not right
to destroy men who do not wish to be free.’18 Nor was it feasible to do so. Knowing that he could not win this war without American support, both that of landowners and of the other creoles, he promised the creoles that they could count on absolute immunity. The Trujillo decree ruthlessly distinguished between Spaniards and Americans; it sought to cut through categories such as royalism and republicanism and to make this a war between nations, between Spain and America. More simply it aimed to terrorize Spaniards into submission and to encourage creoles to support independence. In fact it did not accomplish either, neither was it rigidly enforced. But it added to the violence.

  Armed with the Trujillo decree, Bolívar’s army increased its numbers from volunteers and enemy deserters and advanced eastwards. To fulfil his mission and to sustain his army he had to advance, even if it meant ignoring the instructions he had received from congress. His strategy, ‘the initial effort of an inexperienced warrior’, was to attack along the route to Caracas, and rapidly, in order to give the enemy no respite and to prevent his own forces from starving. Speed was the key weapon: ‘If we move rapidly our armies can feed off the country until we reach Caracas.’19 On his left flank he had to beware of royalist Maracaibo and beyond that Coro, of sinister memory. In Barinas, to his right, Monteverde had positioned a sizeable force under the command of Antonio Tizcar; if this managed to invade Trujillo and Mérida it could take New Granada and cut off Bolívar’s own army. Somewhere in front was Monteverde himself with his forces from the east. Bolívar made a characteristic pre–emptive strike. Crossing the mountain range into the Barinas plains he made a rapid advance on Tizcar, forcing Monteverde to evacuate Barinas so hurriedly that he left valuable arms and ammunition to the patriots. Meanwhile by frontal attack Ribas won a decisive victory on the Niquitao heights, adding four hundred American prisoners to the patriot ranks and putting all the Spaniards to the sword. He went on to face a bitter and bloody struggle to take Barquisimeto and eventually join up with Bolívar, who had already occupied San Carlos. Bolívar immediately marched against the royalists and overwhelmed them on the savannah of Taguanes (31 July), where he employed the tactic of two men to a horse to give his infantry greater mobility, and caused great casualties among the enemy. Monteverde, already defeated in the east, had to make a rapid escape from Valencia to Puerto Cabello, piling up atrocities on the way and incurring equal reprisals.

  In addition to speed, Bolívar valued the word, and on this campaign his words soared. As he liberated so he praised, and still more often preached: you have done well but we want more – money and volunteers. Governors were warned that unless their people yielded supplies, horses, mules and money, their provinces would be treated as enemy country.20 He also appealed to women, new fighters for the cause, and praised their support, denouncing the Spaniards for their cruelties. In Carache ‘they have directed their deadly arms against the fair and tender breasts of our lovely women, spilling their blood and killing not a few … and our women are fighting against the oppressors and competing with us to overcome them’.21 And as he advanced he reminded all of the terms of war to the death.

  Bolívar occupied Valencia on 2 August and assigned Atanasio Girardot, a young veteran of New Granada’s wars, to cover the enemy at Puerto Cabello. He himself went on towards Caracas where virtual anarchy prevailed and the authorities, lacking political leadership and military defences, saw no alternative but to capitulate. Frightened peninsulares and Canarians, who were the principal government and military officials, began to abandon the country. As royalist forces disappeared and republicans stood back, the pardos began sacking houses and public buildings, and menacing the lives of whites. While the capitulation was being negotiated the captain–general, together with military and civil authorities and many Spaniards, fled from the city and embarked at La Guaira, leaving their compatriots to face an angry populace. The city authorities sent another deputation to Bolívar begging him to come quickly to protect the lives and property of the inhabitants. He agreed but insisted that Monteverde too should ratify the agreement. ‘Caracas remained almost deserted, because its joyful inhabitants went out to welcome the conqueror, who entered his native city on 6 August 1813, amidst the cheers of a grateful people.’22

  Caracas, showing the scars of earthquake and occupation, was not too gloomy to celebrate. A great crowd of people turned out to greet him, with cries of ‘Viva el Libertador de Venezuela’. A troop of young girls in white broke through the crowd and took the bridle of his horse, and as he dismounted crowded round to crown him with laurels and press flowers in his arms. Church bells rang and bands played as he moved in triumph through the streets of the capital, responding to the embraces of the crowd and the greetings of supporters.23 That night he danced at a ball given in his honour and there he began his relationship with Josefina Machado, ‘Pepita’, one of the girls in white, an amiable twenty–year–old, not a great beauty but assiduous in her attentions and her opinions, who also brought her mother and sister along. She was his acknowledged mistress for the next four or five years, and if court gossip was to be believed a source of patronage for office–seekers.24 Glory on campaign, power in government, a woman in his bed – Bolívar took it all as his due.

  The Liberator

  The eloquence of victory was left to Bolívar. Two days later he presented to the people of Caracas the results of the Admirable Campaign in the war to restore laws, liberty and independence to Venezuela:

  Your liberators have arrived, from the banks of the swollen Magdalena to the flowering valleys of Aragua and the precincts of this great capital, victorious they have crossed the rivers of Zulia, of Táchira, of Boconó, of Masparro, Portuguesa, Morador and Acarigua; they have traversed the bleak and icy plateaus of Mucuchíes, Boconó and Niquitao; they have made their way over the deserts and mountains of Ocaña, Mérida and Trujillo; they have triumphed seven times in the battles of Cúcuta, La Grita, Betijoque Carache, Niquitao, Barquisimeto and Tinaquillo, and have left beaten five armies, which to the number of 10,000 men were devastating the fair provinces of Santa Marta, Pamplona, Mérida, Trujillo, Barinas, and Caracas.25

  The itinerary had given Bolívar himself a vivid lesson in the geography of his country, and five pitched battles opened him to new knowledge in the art of war.

  Events of equal importance were taking place in the eastern part of the country. There too Monteverde had imposed the rule of conquest and crushed the patriot movement. But a group of its leaders, Santiago Mariño, José Francisco Bermúdez, Manuel Valdés, Manuel Piar and Antonio José de Sucre, decided to fight back and liberate Venezuela. On 11 January 1813 Mariño, like Bolívar a product of the colonial elite, headed a small expedition, the famous ‘forty–five’, from Trinidad to Güiria, leading his band from his hacienda to operate in territory where he had property, relations and dependants.26 The enterprise flourished and the royalists began to retreat and scatter before the eastern caudillos. Mariño captured Maturín and, later in the year, Cumaná and Barcelona. He established his leadership through his style, his victories and his violence. He repaid cruelty with cruelty. In Cumaná he had forty–seven Spaniards and creoles shot in reprisal; in Barcelona he executed sixty–nine conspirators, because ‘the life of such men was incompatible with the existence of the State’.27

  But Mariño was a challenge as well as an ally. Naming himself ‘chief of the independent army’, he established not only an independent military command in the east but a political entity separate from Caracas and from the government of Bolívar. The Liberator, on the other hand, insisted on establishing a central authority for all Venezuela. While it made sense to have two military departments, it was essential to have one central government uniting east and west: Venezuela and New Granada. ‘Only a Venezuela united with New Granada could form a nation that would inspire in others the proper consideration due to her. How can we think of dividing her into two?’28 Thus, Bolívar’s first projection of a greater Colombia, united for national strength and economic viability, w
as presented as an alternative to the anarchy of local caudillo rule.

  With the exception of Maracaibo and Guayana, Venezuela was now in republican hands with an army of trained veterans, hardened by combat in Bolívar’s Admirable Campaign. Royalist officers told Heredia that in the battle of Araure ‘the insurgents had fought with prodigious courage and manoeuvred with as much speed and dash as the most battle–hardened European troops’.29 Bolívar’s victory was so complete – or thus it appeared – that he was able to establish a virtual dictatorship, and with military success behind him he was in a position to dictate policy and appoint his own nominees. He was determined to avoid the mistakes of the first republic. He spoke of ‘re-establishing the free forms of republican government’, but he really wanted new and strong executive power; this he procured on 2 January 1814 when a representative assembly granted him supreme power. And in spite of the reservations of the Venezuelan aristocracy, who regarded him as a tyrant and sought to restrain him by reinforcing the cabildos and the judiciary, he established a hard–line revolutionary government; his policy was to offer no mercy towards Spaniards, and to Americans an amnesty for those who surrendered, but the death penalty for those who disturbed public order and peace. Hard in government, soft in leisure, this was the stereotype of Bolívar now circulated by his enemies and given credence by the malicious Ducoudray–Holstein, a foreign adventurer who did not get the promotion he thought was his due: ‘Bolívar, like most of his countrymen, loved ease and his pleasures better than exertion. His favourite occupations were being in the company of his numerous mistresses, and lying in his hammock surrounded by his flatterers.’30