by John Lynch
Thoughts from a fertile mind, fruit of the wish rather than the deed, and a despairing attempt to shore up a world that was slipping away. British policymakers, on the other hand, were content to rest their relations with Bolívar’s America on their consuls, their naval stations and their merchants.
A Deal with the Devil
With each year that passed Bolívar became more conscious of the racial divisions in American society and the propensity of its people to anarchy:
I am convinced to the very marrow of my bones that America can only be ruled by an able despotism …. We are the vile offspring of the predatory Spaniards who came to America to bleed her white and to breed with their victims. Later the illegitimate offspring of these unions joined with the offspring of slaves transported from Africa. With such racial mixture and such a moral record, can we afford to place laws above leaders and principles above men?82
From La Magdalena he warned Santander against the liberal ideologues, ‘the vilest and most cowardly of men’, slavish copiers of the Spanish liberals, who will reduce us to another Haiti and unleash a liberty they cannot control. ‘Where is there an army of occupation to impose order? Africa? – we shall have more and more of Africa. I do not say this lightly, for anyone with a white skin who escapes will be lucky.’ Eventually the call from Colombia became compelling. Santander was insistent and always moralizing: overtly supportive, he had his own liberal agenda and needed Bolívar to back him in his conflict with the rebellious Páez and what he regarded as the threat of civil war. There was usually an insinuation in his message: As president of the Republic, its Liberator, the father of the patria, the soldier of liberty, and the first subject of the constitution and its laws, you will understand the situation and know which course to take to save Colombia, your own offspring.’83
In November 1826 Bolívar returned from Peru to a divided nation, where Santanderian liberalism, federalism and his own conservative constitution all competed for support. As he approached the borderlands, he did not disguise his dismay at the state of Colombia. ‘The south of Colombia has received me with much show and rejoicing, but their speeches are laments, their words sighs, and everyone complains of everything; it sounds like the wailing of purgatory.’ The republican system had failed its citizens; taxes were too high, incomes too low, while the bureaucracy was swollen with useless officials. The Colombian utopia was finished. He was expected to do something. But what?
The south hates the north, the coast hates the highlands, Venezuela hates Cundinamarca; Cundinamarca suffers from the disorders in Venezuela. The army is discontented and outraged by the regulations imposed on it. The precious freedom of the press has become a scandal, breaking all restraint and enraging every opinion. And in the midst of all this disturbance pardocracia flourishes. None of this is my fault, or the army’s. The legislators and the philosophers are to blame. I have fought the laws of Spain; I am not going to fight now for republican laws which are no better, indeed more absurd.84
The further north he travelled the more convinced he became that strong central government was the only answer, and that was to be found in his Bolivian Constitution.
His return after five years was an event to celebrate. Santander led a party of senior colleagues – war minister Soublette, foreign secretary Revenga –south as far as Tocaima to greet him. Later, approaching Bogotá on 14 November, another delegation met him containing a familiar type, an official mouthing liberal criticisms of laws broken and rights infringed, which stung the Liberator into an angry rejoinder: ‘This day is set aside to celebrate the glories of the liberating army, not to discuss violations of laws.’ He wheeled away and entered Bogotá in a rain as cold as his feelings, observing with distaste the liberal graffiti no doubt inspired by Santander. The atmosphere improved at an official reception in Government House, where the greeting from Santander was formally friendly and his own reply generous. This was in keeping with their correspondence during the past three years, exchanging two or three letters every month, discussing matters of state, issues of politics, financial problems, and military movements and promotions. Bolívar always took care to inform Santander of his next move, checked with anything that congress would need to know, and even had time to discuss intellectual ideas. He was invariably open and reasonable, Santander always polite and respectful. Yet beneath the routine lay unspoken tensions, unspoken at least to each other. Soon the tensions would snap.
In Bogotá the Liberator briefly assumed control of the administrative machine and performed some brisk repairs. He did not disguise his disapproval of what he regarded as Santander’s indiscriminate liberalism, his financial ineptitude and the divisive effects on the nation, and he wasted no opportunity to promote his Bolivian Constitution. But in the event he altered little, apart from trying ‘to bring the expenditure of the country within its income’.85 Time was against him. He was now recalled beyond Bogotá to Venezuela, where Páez was in revolt. In March congress had re–elected Bolívar president for a second four–year term beginning on 2 January 1827, and Santander as vice–president. Bolívar now exercised the presidency with extraordinary powers, leaving Santander to take charge in Bogotá.
There were many ironies in Bolívar’s life, none more painful than this: that his own Venezuela, the first to conceive Colombia, should be the first to challenge it. Venezuelan separatism had a long history. Opposition between Venezuela and New Granada was manifest as early as 1815; it produced resistance to Bolívar and his officers in New Granada, and contributed to the success of the Spanish counter–revolution of 1815–16. In 1819 national conflict was responsible for the deposition of New Granadan Zea as vice–president of Venezuela by the congress of Angostura and his replacement by Arismendi. Once Colombia was constituted these tensions persisted. The great distances separating Venezuela, Cundinamarca and Quito, the mountain ranges, the poor communications, the heterogeneous mass of the population, pardos of Venezuela, mestizos of New Granada, Indians of Ecuador, all made it impossible to unite greater Colombia or to inform it with ‘national character and national feeling’.86 There was no impetus to economic integration: the economics of Venezuela and New Granada were separate and independent, and while both had serious problems these were not such as could be resolved by unification. Venezuelans complained that they did not receive a fair share of national expenditure. But the real discrimination was of another kind.
The relative inaccessibility of Bogotá, remote from the periphery in time and space, deprived the Venezuelans of adequate representation in the capital, while the constitution also denied them discretionary power over their internal affairs and forced them to refer everything to Bogotá for decision, with consequent delay and opportunity for bribery and corruption. The first freedom fighters were now subject to new restraints, governed by a new metropolis. Venezuelans came to regard the New Granadans as foreign masters, a view given credence by the advantages that these gained from the fact of being at the centre of offices and opportunities. The centralization of the republic in Cundinamarca ushered Bogotá into a boom period, during which it became the site of an expanding bureaucracy, new public works, fiscal favouritism, population growth. Bogotá thus advanced from a primitive outpost of empire to a civilized capital.87 Even so it still reproduced the features of many South American towns of handsome ecclesiastical buildings surrounded by undistinguished one–storey dwellings. The Venezuelan military criticized what they regarded as a new colonialism: while they had fought for victory corrupt politicians in Bogotá enjoyed the fruits. In Bogotá lawyers and officials, a traditional and powerful elite, also had their point of view, resenting the Venezuelan dominance of the army and the burden of the military budget.88 To some degree, therefore, relations between Venezuela and Bogotá suffered from antagonism between military commanders and civil officials. But national feelings, recognized by Bolívar, also played their part. People were primarily Venezuelans, New Granadans, quiteños, and they found their national home in their own country,
where they developed a higher degree of communication with each other than with outsiders. War nurtured nationality. The armies brought together men of different patrias, often in uneasy proximity, close observers of their differences and rivalries. National prejudices were born and stereotypes created, revealed in the language of the time, and sometimes in that of Bolívar: Venezuelans were pardos or militares, New Granadans mestizos or curiales, Ecuadorians indios. Americans did not naturally like each other.
José Antonio Páez, commandant–general of the department of Venezuela, spoke for many Venezuelans when he expressed resentment. He represented a military, and to some extent a popular, constituency in opposition to Intendant Juan de Escolona and his masters in Bogotá. It was unrealistic to appoint Escalona, a known enemy of Páez, to administer Venezuela and then to replace Páez as head of the army.89 A major caudillo could not be treated like this. Bolívar understood the problem, but Santander did not. The llanero warrior had now acquired a huge fortune and vast landed wealth, not only in the llanos but also in the centre–north where he forged an alliance with the established elite of that region. There he acquired a new power base and was successful in reassuring the landowners, merchants and office–holders of Caracas that he stood for order and stability; they in turn tamed their chosen caudillo and converted him to new economic priorities, identifying with the hegemony of the northern hacendados and the exporting sector. Bolívar did not take fright at these developments, regarding Páez as an asset for a country such as Venezuela: ‘I believe that Venezuela could very well be governed by Páez, with a good secretary and a good adviser like General Briceño Méndez, and with the help of 4,000 men of the army which went to Peru…. I want Briceño Méndez to go to Caracas to marry my niece and become adviser to Páez …. General Páez, together with Briceño Méndez, will rule the region to perfection, as Páez is feared by all the factious elements and the others are not important.’90 Yet the problem was more complex. Páez as a medium of authority was useful. Páez as a national leader was dangerous. He was leading the Venezuelan oligarchy in a separatist movement which would place their country under the control of the national elite, ruled from Caracas and not from Bogotá, and monopolizing its own resources. This was an alliance of landowners and military caudillos on behalf of a conservative and independent Venezuela. But a movement against Colombia was a movement against Bolívar and this demanded a response from him. Santander was badgering him to take action against ‘a chief whose authority came from rebellion and force’.
Páez had few political ideas of his own, and his greatest passions were gambling and cock–fighting, but he was trying hard to improve himself and to learn how to read and write and to use a knife and fork. He was ready to take advice, not, however, from Briceño Méndez or other Bolivarians, but from a faction in Caracas which Bolívar called ‘the demagogues’. These included Mariño, his second–in–command, a master of intrigue and inveterate opponent of Bolívar, Dr Miguel Peña, his civil adviser, an able if unprincipled politician who had already crossed swords with Santander; and Colonel Francisco Carabaño, a military colleague sullenly resentful of Bolívar. These were the nucleus of a separatist or federalist faction, of which observers believed Páez to be ‘rather an instrument than a leader’.91 Whatever the truth of this, Páez was encouraged in his inferiority complex: he came to believe that he had not received the power and recognition he deserved. His exasperation with legislators and politicians focused especially on those in Bogotá, civilians whom he regarded as oppressors of the ‘poor military’. The military were predominantly Venezuelan. And Venezuela was the source of an alarming idea.
In 1825 Páez urged Bolívar to take greater, even monarchical, powers, and make himself a Napoleon of South America to save the patria.92 He transmitted his letter by a special agent, Antonio Leocadio Guzmán – destined to be a leading liberal politician in independent Venezuela – on the pretext that he distrusted the postal system, but really in order to create a stir and publicize a political move. Bolívar rejected the idea out of hand. He saw it as emanating from the ‘demagogues’ in Caracas. He was insulted by the assumption that he was motivated by vulgar ambition, and embarrassed by the damage it would do to his reputation. He gave Páez a simple lesson in French history, pointing out that Colombia was not France and that he was not Napoleon. ‘The title of Liberator is superior to any that human pride can bestow. … I tell you frankly that this plan is not good for you, for me, or for the country.’ Instead he recommended his Bolivian Constitution, which combined authority and liberty, was a mean between federalism and monarchy, and deserved to be publicized.93
His sister, María Antonia, aware of trends in Caracas, advised him to beware of anyone who offered him a crown, an infamous proposal: ‘Tell them you will be Liberator or nothing, that is your true title, one that will preserve your hard–won glory.’94 Sucre, who never claimed to be a democrat, agreed with María Antonia that he should be Liberator or nothing, and warned Bolívar against the bad faith of those in Caracas who urged the Napoleonic project; prudence and patriotism alike would demand that he reject the idea: ‘If you had children I might think differently, but without heirs the project would destabilize the country and on your death its authors would compete to succeed you.’ The Bolivian Constitution, he advised, resolved all the problems, providing strong government in a free and independent nation.95 Santander was even more dismissive of Páez and his idea, which he described as insulting to Bolívar, anarchical and unpopular and, as Bolívar was not eternal, likely to leave a succession problem. He reserved his opinion on some of the details of the Bolivian Constitution, particularly the life presidency, but meanwhile agreed that it was ‘liberal, popular, strong, and vigorous’.96 An insincere letter, even by Santander’s standards. His true thoughts were contained in an autobiographical memoir he subsequently wrote, where he described the life–president as ‘more powerful than the monarchy of England or France’. The whole constitution, he thought, was complicated, absurd and destabilizing, and showed how far Bolívar had moved from the legislator of Angostura. He had remained silent out of respect for Bolívar’s reputation and on the assumption that the constitution was appropriate only for Bolivia.97 Santander objected to any talk of a life presidency for Colombia, as he had ambitions of his own to succeed Bolívar at the end of the latter’s presidency – under the existing Colombian constitution – in 1831.
In April 1826 Páez was relieved of his command and summoned to Bogotá for impeachment by congress on charges of illegal and arbitrary conduct in conscripting civilians for the militia in Caracas. The object, as Santander explained, was ‘to make the first chiefs of the republic understand that their services and heroism are not a licence to abuse the citizens’.98 But Páez resisted. Backed by the llaneros, and prompted by the Venezuelan military and the extreme federalists around him, he hoisted the banner of revolt on 30 April, first in Valencia, then in the department of Venezuela. The cry was raised – independence for Venezuela. There was much support for Páez, though not universal support, for the sense of national identity was not sufficiently developed to appeal to everyone. His action, in fact, was divisive. Other caudillos reacted variously. Mariño aligned himself with Páez; Bermúdez rejected him and offered to crush the rebellion. In Zulia General Urdaneta awaited orders from Bogotá and remained a loyal Bolivarian. Like many of the military, however, he derived satisfaction from Páez’s opposition to Congress, as it reinforced pressure on Bolívar to establish a stronger government. The Liberator was now the focus of the personalism that he so abhorred. The British consul in Maracaibo reported, after an interview with Urdaneta, that the military ‘remain constant in their attachment and obedience to their Chiefs, rather than to the Constitution and to Congress, and hope much from the return of the President’. According to the same source, the military were disillusioned with a government ‘monopolized by General Santander and by a faction of shopkeepers in Bogotá …. My impression is that there are very few military
men in the country that would not cheerfully cry out tomorrow, “Long live King Bolívar”.’99
Bolívar sent o’Leary on a mission of pacification. The Irishman found Páez at Achaguas, capital of Apure, in a friend’s house, seated on a stool, playing a violin, ‘his only audience a blind Negro’. He was reminded irresistibly of Nero. Otherwise he was not impressed. After ten futile days he left with Páez’s final answer ringing in his ears: ‘I hope the president will not force me to be his enemy and destroy Colombia with civil war.’100 o’Leary was convinced that the rebellion had no roots ‘en el alma popular’, that Páez was an instrument of faction and swayed by those around him, and was now worried that he had started something he could not control.101
The rebellion of Páez placed Bolívar in a dilemma. He did not approve of military rebellion against civil power. Yet in this case he had more sympathy with Páez than with Santander and the legislators, believing that Páez and the military were victims of the excessive liberalism of civilian politicians. These sought to ‘destroy their liberators’, and they made a great mistake in summoning Páez before congress. He also knew that they were being unrealistic in trying to deprive a caudillo of his military command. Bolívar did not wish to become personally involved, for if he failed he risked his own authority. As the news from Bogotá reached him in Lima he read it with increasing irritation; his instinctive reaction was to identify military discontent, socio–racial agitation, and caudillo affinity to both, as the factors behind rebellion of the warlords, and he would have wished to wash his hands of the whole madness. ‘These two men [Páez and Padilla] have elements of power in their blood; therefore, it is useless for me to oppose them because my own blood means nothing to the people.’102
