by John Lynch
The leader of Upper Peru’s conservatives was Pedro Antonio Olañeta, a commander more royalist than the viceroy, more absolutist than the king, and enemy of all liberals, whether Spanish generals or republican leaders. He repudiated Viceroy La Serna and declared that he would die for king and religion. His rebellion split the Spanish front and forced the creole elite of Upper Peru to make some awkward decisions. Opportunism rather than convictions ruled their choice. Convinced that Spain’s last bastion in America was doomed, they sought an alternative regime that would preserve their interests, their landed property, their control of Indian labour. So they sought a form of autonomy for Upper Peru. Did this mean Olañeta, self–appointed spokesman for absolute monarchy? Or did it mean Bolívar, who would bring a liberal republic? The answer would be given in battle.
After Ayacucho, Bolívar assigned the liberation of Upper Peru to Sucre. The grand marshal soon swept up the debris of Spanish rule in the sierra, entered Cuzco on 24 December 1824, and then crossed the Desaguadero to advance cautiously into Upper Peru, simultaneously negotiating with Olañeta and occupying territory. Olañeta’s forces now began to desert in great numbers, responding to Sucre’s call to join the liberating army. The creoles too had to make up their minds between loyalty to a distant king or acknowledgement of the immediate power of Bolívar and Sucre. Olañeta decided on the king. But the majority of the creoles opted for the winning side and virtually inherited a revolution they had not made. Cochabamba, La Paz and other towns declared their allegiance. Finally, cornered and isolated, Olañeta was mortally wounded at the battle of Tumusla (1 April 1825) and his forces defeated. This was the last battle of the South American revolution, and in its wake Sucre occupied Potosí, the treasury of Spain for three hundred years, as Bolívar called it.
What was Upper Peru? A nation? A people? A province? Sucre issued at La Paz a decree (9 February 1825) proclaiming the virtual independence of Upper Peru. The army, he insisted, had come to liberate, not to govern. Upper Peru could no longer continue its previous dependence on Buenos Aires, for the latter did not possess a government legally representing these provinces; the ultimate solution would have to be based upon a decision of the provinces and an agreement between Peru and Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, Upper Peru would continue under the authority of the commander of the liberating army until a general assembly decided the form of government. Sucre believed, with some justification, that this decree represented the political thinking of his leader. But Bolívar, the professional liberator, disapproved of the initiative and reminded Sucre that he was the commander of an army, not the disposer of political rights, and that in any case he had violated the principle of uti possidetis, by which the new states succeeded to the territorial jurisdiction of the major administrative units of the colonial period.2 While he was still in Lima he shared his thoughts with Santander.
Upper Peru belongs by right to the Río de la Plata; in fact to Spain; by wish of its people, who want a separate state, to independence; and by claim to Peru, who previously owned it and wants it now. … To give it to the Río de la Plata would be to deliver it into anarchy. To give it to Peru would be to violate the international law which we have established. To create a new republic, as the inhabitants demand, would be an innovation which I do not care to undertake, for only an American assembly can decide that.3
In fact, three months later, when he had presumably forgiven Sucre for usurping his role, he confirmed the decree of 9 February. His reasons were compelling: he knew that neither Argentina nor Peru would agree on the other procuring this territory; he himself did not want to enlarge the power of either country by awarding them a valuable mining zone; and he took account of opinion in Upper Peru itself.
What did the Bolivarian revolution mean for its newest recruit? Was it really Bolivarian? A ‘representative’ assembly met on 10 July 1825 in Chuquisaca, the city of four names.4 In a country of well over one million people there were forty–eight delegates, elected by a restricted and complex franchise that included literacy and property tests, and a large province such as Santa Cruz, penalized by its mass illiteracy, could send only two deputies. At least thirty of the deputies were graduates of the University of Chuquisaca, in whose halls the assembly met. And only two – guerrillas both – had actually fought in the war. Thus the creole aristocracy came into their inheritance, replacing Spaniards in a social hierarchy – caballeros, cholos, indios– which endured for many generations to come. The assembly was a meeting of the local elite, men such as Casimiro Olañeta, nephew of the general, who had been first royalists, then olañetistas, and for independence only at the last minute, and who now represented not a nation but a ruling group. For them independence meant control of policy and patronage; only in Upper Peru could they expect to rule, and they were determined that only they should rule there. The assembly declared independence on 6 August, and the new republic adopted the name of Bolívar, later changed to Bolivia, and appointed the Liberator to supreme executive power. The deputies also requested him to draw up a constitution for Bolivia. He was on his way from Cuzco to Puno when he received these decisions and in August he hastened to greet a new country.
When Bolívar was approaching Bolivia, Sucre came to meet him north of the Desaguadero. Alighting from his horse to salute the Liberator his sword fell from his scabbard. In the evening he remarked to o’Leary that it was a bad omen. The next day one of his servants was insolent. He drew his sword and was striking him with the flat of it when it broke. ‘That’s a worse omen,’ said o’Leary, ‘now your misfortunes begin.’ ‘I was thinking so myself,’ replied Sucre.5 Misfortunes there would be, but the immediate future looked good. At least the Liberator thought so. The wonders of nature in the southern Andes raised Bolívar’s spirits and, as he passed under the arches erected in his honour along the mountain routes, he spoke to his staff of his envy of the Emperor Napoleon’s passing over the Alps in triumph. He received a triumphant welcome in La Paz, where he arrived on 18 August. Presented with a crown of gold studded with diamonds, he handed it to Sucre: ‘This reward belongs to the victor, the hero of Ayacucho.’6 La Paz, in turn, received some of the benefits of Bolívar’s liberal thinking in reforms of administrative and clerical abuses, not all of them immediately welcome. He left La Paz on 20 September, crossing the altiplano towards Oruro, and after a succession of mountains each appearing higher than the last, finally reached Potosí. There he was handsomely received by its prefect, General William Miller, English veteran of the army of the Andes, in a series of colourful entertainments and Indian parades.7 He was also pestered by two Argentine agents wanting the assistance of Colombian forces for a war with Brazil, a project which was not in Colombia’s interests or Bolívar’s gift but which he acknowledged with diplomatic tact. An English visitor to Potosí at this time, Captain Joseph Andrews, travelling on behalf of the Chilean and Peruvian Mining Association, found the Liberator looking tense, careworn and tired, with an anxious brow, penetrating eyes and rapid speech, but he was also very approachable, with a ‘cordial, downright, English shake of the hand’.8
Bolívar, whose health was long supposed to be precarious, was never deterred by altitudes or averse to triumphs. After a hard climb by mule and the final stage on foot, accompanied by Sucre and his staff, he reached the summit of the great silver mountain, an icon of imperial wealth and power and supreme trophy of the revolution. In the chill winds of the mountain top they unfurled the flags of independence, Colombia, Peru and Argentina, and drank to the American revolution. It was a historic event for all there, especially the Liberator himself. As he looked northwards across the bleak páramo and beyond the Cordillera Central, he saw in his mind’s eye the narrative of his odyssey, from the shores of the Orinoco and the coasts of the Caribbean, across the great plains of Venezuela, the peaks and valleys of Colombia and Ecuador, to the awesome landscapes of Peru. At that moment fifteen years of marches and battles, failures and successes, bitterness and pleasure, fifteen years of glory passed across
his mind.9
An emotional moment, but not one to be prolonged. Following his usual practice – to conquer, to pronounce, and to depart – he left a protesting Sucre to govern Bolivia and returned to Lima to further his political life. If legend is to be believed he also left a fleeting lover, María Costa, wife of an Argentine general, and in due course a secret offspring, José Antonio, who claimed to be the son of Simón Bolívar.10 His journey took him to Chuquisaca, where he dashed off a decree prohibiting the circulation of obscene publications, ‘so conducive to immorality’, deferred the next meeting of the general assembly to 25 May 1826, and delegated supreme authority to Sucre.11 Then on to Cochabamba and Arica, where he embarked in the Chimborazo on 2 February 1826 and arrived at Chorrillos on the night of 7 February; from there it was a short journey north to Lima and his residence of La Magdalena. On 10 February he made a public entry into Lima amid cheering crowds, flags and triumphant arches, a welcome rarely extended to their own.
He had already begun to collect his documents, his drafts, his thoughts for the constitution that would bear his name. Now, in a mood of great elation, he began to place them on paper. ‘The Bolivian Republic has a special delight for me. First, there is its name, and then all its advantages, without a single drawback; it appears destined to be fashioned by hand. The more I think of the destiny of this country, the more it seems a small marvel.’12 He took great pride in the commission: ‘If I receive no other public honours, to give my name to an entire people fills my soul and my heart to overflowing.’13 The task of legislating for the management of free people, as he put it, was hard and difficult and he gave it everything he had. It was finished and dispatched on 12 May, committed not to the postal service but to Colonel William Ferguson and Captain Belford Hinton Wilson, who completed the journey of eighteen hundred miles in an epic ride of twenty–one days to deliver the constitution to Sucre in Chuquisaca.14 On 18 May Peru recognized the independence of Bolivia.
The Bolivarian Enlightenment
As the revolution advanced into its final stages, Bolívar was haunted by America’s need for strong government, and it was in this frame of mind that he drafted the Bolivian constitution.15 It was the culmination of his political thought, ‘his great idea’, written in his maturity, when the war was over and the peace waiting to be established. His lifelong search for a balance between tyranny and anarchy now moved unerringly towards authority. He told the British consul in Lima ‘that his heart always beats in favour of liberty, but that his head leans towards aristocracy … if the principles of liberty are too rapidly introduced anarchy and the destruction of the white inhabitants will be the inevitable consequences’.16 As o’Leary explained, ‘He sought a system capable of controlling revolutions, not theories which might foment them; the fatal spirit of ill–conceived democracy which had already produced so many evils in America had to be curbed if its effects were to be avoided.’17
The new constitution preserved the division of powers – legislative, executive and judicial – and to these he added an elective power, by which groups of citizens in each province chose an elector, and the electing body then chose representatives and nominated mayors and justices. The legislative power was divided into three bodies – tribunes, senators and censors – all elected. The tribunes initiated finance and major policy issues; the senators were guardians of law and ecclesiastical patronage; and the censors were responsible for the preservation of civil liberties, culture, and the constitution – an awkward revival of his previous notion of a ‘moral power’. The president was appointed by the legislature for life and had the right to appoint his successor; this Bolívar regarded as ‘the most sublime inspiration of republican ideas’, the president being ‘the sun which, fixed in its orbit, imparts life to the universe’.18 The president appointed the vice–president, who held the office of prime minister and would succeed the president in office. Thus ‘elections would be avoided, which are the greatest scourge of republics and produce only anarchy’. This was the measure of his disillusion seven years after 1819 when, at Angostura, he had declared: ‘The continuation of authority in the same individual has frequently meant the end of democratic governments. Repeated elections are essential in proper systems of government.’
The constitution, insisted Bolívar with justification, was a liberal document. It provided for civil rights – liberty, equality, security and property –and for a strong, independent judicial power. Equality too was enshrined. The constitution abolished social privileges and declared the slaves free ‘from the day the constitution was published’. Bolívar was alive to the problems latent in the concept of liberty. Liberty in America was no longer freedom from the Spanish monarchy but from the republican state, and it needed a firm base. ‘God has destined man to freedom,’ he proclaimed in his presentation. With its origin secure in divine power it also needed a rule of limitation; this he found in the demands of public interest and security. But this was not a theoretical liberty alone: the Liberator sought an applied liberty and one that influenced the life of society. This was the basic justification for the strong and uncompromising institutions that the constitution created.
Some observers were genuinely impressed. The British consul believed that it was ‘founded apparently on the basis of the British constitution’, allowing ‘useful liberty’ but ‘obviating any mischievous excess of popular power’.19 In London, Bolívar’s friend Sir Robert Wilson made the point that criticism of the constitution in North America was not surprising in a state where slavery was so firmly rooted, but it was increasingly favoured by enlightened opinion.20 Bolívar himself claimed that the constitutional restraints on the president were ‘the closest ever known’, restricted as he was by his ministers, who in turn were responsible to the censors and scrutinized by the legislators. He warned Bolivians against ‘two monstrous enemies who will attack you at once. Tyranny and anarchy constitute an immense ocean of oppression encircling a tiny island of freedom.’ Their salvation would be the institutions and the liberties enshrined in his constitution.
The constitution, however, was branded by its executive power, by the life–president with the right to choose his successor.21 Sucre, a man with his own opinions and not easily influenced, supported the constitution and the life–presidency, but he knew that it was controversial: ‘I believe you should be here in person to present the constitution, for the essential article of the life–president raises thousands of difficulties, and I doubt whether it will get through.’22 In other words there were opponents in congress and some of them presented reasonable arguments, fearing that a life–presidency would become a republican monarch and degenerate into a hereditary one. Sucre himself, knowing he was the designated appointee, suggested that the first president be elected by popular vote and not merely by that of congress.23 In the event the article was accepted without amendment. There was another keen debate on giving the vote to Indians, for the constitution excluded illiterates. It was argued that if sovereignty resided in the people and two thirds of Bolivians were Indians, then these could not in justice be excluded; others pointed out that qualifications could be improved by education, and others that ignorance precluded political participation. A compromise was reached when congress agreed that the requirement of literacy should be postponed until 1835.24 On religion there was no compromise. Bolívar wanted to exclude all reference to the subject but congress insisted on defining the Catholic religion as the exclusive religion of the republic.
Many Americans, conservatives as well as liberals, were outraged by the idea of a president for life. No doubt Bolívar’s experience of the frightening anarchy of Peru and the obstacles to stability in Bolivia help to explain his preference for a life–president. But the fact remains that he was anxious to export the constitution to other American countries. Five editions were quickly printed in South America, and he sent copies to his friends, colleagues and enemies throughout Colombia. Páez was on the list. There was a London edition aimed at his favourite power,
which he hoped to recruit to his cause. He regarded the Constitution as ‘the ark of the covenant, an alliance between Europe and America, between soldier and civilian, between democracy and aristocracy, between imperialism and republicanism’.25 And in recommending it to a wider audience he claimed that ‘in it are combined all the advantages of federalism, all the strength of centralized government, all the stability of monarchical regimes’.26 Indeed, the life–presidency was a source of particular pride and he considered it superior to hereditary monarchy, for the president appointed his successor, who was thus a ruler by merit and not by hereditary right. According to o’Leary, far from endangering freedom, the Bolivian Constitution was a great defence and guarantor of freedom, freedom from anarchy and revolution. This could be seen in the address accompanying the constitution: ‘The one who wrote it fought for the cause of liberty from his study with extraordinary eloquence, after having been its most renowned champion on the field of battle.’27
Bolívar had a strongly personal view of power and always found it necessary to exercise his individual will, not only in military campaigns but also in state building. An active government had to be strong and free from constraints. He personally always wanted freedom to escape the narrow bounds of institutional control and to impose his will, in the field or in government house, and for this he needed absolute power. The Bolivian Constitution should also be judged in terms of function. Bolívar never saw liberty as an end in itself. For him there was always a further question: freedom for what? He did not regard the role of government as purely passive, defending rights, preserving privileges, exercising patronage. Government existed to maximize human happiness, and its function was to make policy as well as to satisfy interests. He was not the last to learn that new countries had a special need of strong government as an effective instrument of reform. In his own mind he had no doubt that his constitution was liberal and reformist, ‘more liberal and more durable than that of Colombia’, containing as it did the unconditional abolition of slavery and the revocation of all privileges. Bolivia could be a model of the Bolivarian state. In a remote corner of the Andes, far from their native Venezuela, Bolívar and Sucre began a historic enterprise of state building, starting if not from a tabula rasa, at least from their own agenda.
