by John Lynch
The Bolivian Constitution was his ultimate solution, his final expression of hope but, as he suspected, only Sucre was capable of fulfilling it and ruling in his absence. If Sucre were rejected, what then? There were no other proconsuls in line. As he dragged his Bolivian Constitution around from country to country it became a weight in his baggage that he could not unload. The life presidency in particular was a stumbling block: it closed the route to success for all other candidates; it denied politicians the perquisites of power and their clients the fruits of office. In closing options to his opponents he opened the door to greater destruction. He was left with Colombia, the core of his revolution. Colombia was under control, but after an absence of five years followed by two years of conflict and controversy, it was not entirely in his control, and even Colombia’s borderlands suffered from surrounding disorder. Bolívar stood for the continuation of Colombia under his supreme authority, exercised first through the extraordinary powers which the constitution allowed him, then by the absolute power finally conferred by popular acclaim. But could the Colombian union hold? The politics of the revolution surged on and marooned its maker. As Venezuela seceded and the exodus spread, he looked increasingly isolated. ‘Colombia,’ it has been aptly said, ‘was a republic with only one citizen.’97
Chapter 11
JOURNEY OF DISILLUSION
Rebels and Invaders
There were few choices now, only further trials by battle. If 1828 was a bad year worse were to come. The chronology, the policies and the itineraries of the time are complex, and the observer has to track Bolívar closely to follow his mind and movements. But the logic of events is clear. In 1829 the juxtaposition of external shock and internal revolt produced a classic state of crisis, a turning point when things were on a knife–edge. Attack from Peru encouraged dissidents in Colombia, these challenged the regime, and the exodus from the doomed state began. Bolívar was struggling in that fatal year. The war on nature which he had proclaimed in Caracas during the earthquake of 1812 came back to haunt him. Now his own health was crumbling and he could not defy it. Yet he was not a helpless victim of events. His legendary instincts survived: if there was a fire, quench it, if there was a revolt, stifle it, and always look for a political deal. As new rivals rose to scourge Bolívar and old enemies renewed their attack, he remained cool under pressure, mobilized the Bolivarians, posted his generals, stationed his forces and continued to negotiate with his enemies. So 1829 was not totally bleak; there were breaks in the clouds and brief flashes of hope. But as the year drew to a close, despair was the prevailing mood.
Bolívar was aware of the crisis and spoke of it. The historian is tempted to believe that Bolívar’s own diagnosis was correct: the Colombians are to blame, not me. Every political measure, the liberal regime in Colombia, the presidency with extraordinary powers, absolutism by acclaim, received only partial or temporary support, and that because of the prestige of the Liberator. Even his cherished Bolivian Constitution, he believed, ‘would not last longer than a slice of bread’.1 Nothing else endured. The irreducible fact remained, that the source of the Liberator’s legitimacy was his own personal qualities. The dilemma was still unresolved. Bolívar ruled alone, the only stable thing in a world in turmoil. That was the world he blamed, and his analysis had its merits. Without Bolívar the revolution would have split into numerous fief–doms, the caudillos the ultimate authorities. Only he had the perseverance for a national revolution and political union. Moreover, Bolívar raised legitimate questions concerning the appropriate extent of liberty and the freedom of opposition groups to subvert the very state that guaranteed their existence. Absolute freedom placed its defenders in a classic liberal dilemma when they supported dangerous and illiberal extremists. Did not a duly constituted government have the right to protect itself from those proclaiming its destruction in the name of freedom? For liberals were not lambs. They too claimed absolute power. For the likes of Santander, to be free meant to govern other people. Possession of government, that was the touchstone of their liberalism. To paraphrase Alberdi, who observed a similar trend in Argentina, it never occurred to Colombian liberals to respect the views of others when they were in disagreement with their own. Liberals of this kind were soon at Bolívar’s throat. He needed his honour guard as a body guard.
The attempt on Bolívar’s life in September 1828 had repercussions in southern Colombia. Colonel José María Obando declared against Bolívar in Popayán late in October, with the same intention as the assassins in Bogotá but with more resources, for he seized gold meant for the mint and looted rich estates. The illegitimate son of an upper–class Popayán family, he had fought as a guerrilla leader under royalist colours from 1819 to 1822, switched sides, and served as a republican officer from 1822 to 1828. He was a bloodthirsty enemy wherever he fought, a classic caudillo who, while proclaiming the usual slogans, ‘long live liberty, death to tyrants’, would have had no compunction about killing Bolívar and defending his own lair in southern Colombia. He promoted his career by a mixture of force and fraud, Hobbes’s two cardinal virtues in war. He unleashed a force of blacks and Indians to terrorize the Popayán countryside before he launched his four hundred against the seven hundred badly led troops of the Bolivarian commander, Tomás C. Mosquera; he triumphed in the battle of La Ladera on 11 November 1828, and captured two thousand rifles with ammunition. While Mosquera abandoned his troops and fled, Obando predictably massacred his prisoners for, as Posada Gutiérrez explained, ‘In the Cauca wars no quarter is normally given, and the murder of defenceless men who have surrendered is not regarded as criminal, a custom which is still prevalent among the revolutionaries of our own day.’2 He assigned Colonel José Hilario López to take charge of ‘our noble revolution’ in Popayán and moved south to Pasto, his natural habitat, where he recruited Indians by claiming that he was fighting ‘for the King of Spain and the Catholic religion’; he also made contact with the Peruvian enemies of Colombia and assured La Mar that Bolívar, ‘the Sultan of Colombia’, was finished and ‘we are resolved only to deal with his ashes’.3
Bolívar distrusted ‘these infernal regions’, as he called them. He had hated Pasto since his first bloody battle there in 1822, and its subsequent rebellions infuriated him beyond measure. In 1825 he advocated that ‘the pastusos should be liquidated and their women and children transported to another part of the country, leaving Pasto for occupation as a military colony. Otherwise the pastusos will return to haunt Colombia at the slightest disturbance for the next hundred years.’4 Meanwhile they were useful fodder for his foes. López was a native of Popayán and after joining the republican cause spent some years in prison for his pains. He opposed Bolívar’s government and in most respects was a mirror image of Obando, whose tutelage he followed with enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Obando cultivated his power base in Pasto, and there he remained, a warlord in waiting.
Bolívar heard of the Cauca rebellion on 22 November, while he was in Chía; he left his rural retreat to return to Bogotá and face the problems he was coming to dread. He had to take action quickly for the danger of liaison between Peru and the rebels was too great to ignore. As an immediate response he sent General Córdova with fifteen hundred troops, while he prepared to follow personally to confront the threats from the south. He left a council of ministers to rule in his absence and on 24 December decreed that elections for delegates to a constituent congress be held in July 1829. Reminding the public that the government established by his Organic Decree of 27 August was ‘strictly provisional’, he laid down that the congress would convene in Bogotá on 2 January 1830 to decide on a permanent constitution for Colombia ‘in keeping with the enlightened ideas of the age and the customs and needs of the people’.5 Then on 28 December he moved south in the wake of Córdova. Now time seemed shorter, distance longer, as the effort and pain of marching and riding increased.
Córdova arrived in Popayán and recaptured the city in late December, then harassed López and the rebel troops tow
ards Pasto. Delighted to be released on to a larger stage, Córdova began to anticipate his prospects. In Popayán he derided Mosquera for his weak defence against the fewer troops of Obando and created an enemy who would not forget the insults.6 He also began to develop ideas at variance with those of the Liberator, who did not need sermons from a military subordinate advising him to resign or accept a constitution. Anxious to push forward towards Peru and to avoid having to fight his way through the punishing passes he recalled from 1822, Bolívar decided to negotiate with the rebel Obando. He recruited two priests to make an offer of amnesty to those rebels who laid down their arms, while Obando sent two commissioners to represent his views. They met on 2 March at the bridge over the Río de Mayo, close to Berruecos. Bolívar took a risk in entrusting himself without his own troops to the mercies of Obando and riding with him overnight. The hind travelled with the panther, but his nerve held and he reached a deal. On 9 March he reported to Urdaneta, ‘At last we are in Pasto, and not badly received by the people and Obando, who will be a good friend in time according to all the signs he is showing now.’7 In fact it was not quite like that. Obando accepted Bolívar’s terms, safe passage for his armies through Popayán and Pasto and southwards through Ecuador, but charged a high price: promotion for himself to the rank of general and exemption of Pasto from conscription for a year. Bolívar then heard of Sucre’s victory over the Peruvians at Tarqui and realized he had conceded too much. As for Obando, a man without shame, he now appeared reconciled and replaced outright abuse of Bolívar with cringing messages of regret and promises of good behaviour.8
Bolívar made serious charges against the Peruvian government, specifically its involvement in the rebellion of the Colombian Third Division, intervention in Bolivia, occupation of Colombian border territory and failure to pay its debt for Colombian aid. He refused to receive the Peruvian minister, whom he suspected of connivance with the liberal opposition, and came out with fighting words, reminiscent of his old style, declaring that war was inevitable and was the responsibility of Peru. ‘Colombians of the south, arm yourselves, hasten to the frontiers of Peru, and wait there for the hour of vengeance. My presence among you will be the signal for combat.’9 For their part the ruling class of Peru had never been entirely comfortable with Bolívar’s settlement. They regarded themselves as the experts on managing life and labour in Peru, controlling Indians in the sierra and blacks on the coast. Their generals had their eyes on the frontiers, which they regarded as insecure or an affront to historic claims, and they had never reconciled themselves to the loss of Guayaquil. In 1828 General Agustín Gamarra stationed an army on the Bolivian border, while collaborators in Chuquisaca raised a mutiny among the garrison on 18 April and badly wounded Sucre. Gamarra invaded at the end of April, and forced Sucre to resign and take his Colombian troops home. In the north General La Mar, now President of Peru, moved to invade Colombia by land while a naval force blockaded Guayaquil. General Juan José Flores, a fighter in the war of independence who subsequently preferred to serve Bolívar in his adopted country, Ecuador, regarded these actions as a declaration of war, and took measures to defend Guayaquil and the Ecuadorian provinces bordering Peru. Bolívar appointed o’Leary as a peace commissioner in the south to negotiate a truce and raise the question of the boundary between Peru and Colombia. Bolívar wanted war with Peru but needed time to mobilize and move an army from Colombia to Guayaquil and the southern border.
O’Leary and Flores arrived in Guayaquil on 13 September, overtly to talk peace and negotiate a settlement of the debt and the boundary, in fact to buy time to make war. Flores needed five thousand troops and two months to mobilize them. o’Leary argued that a military victory would be the best preparation for peace negotiations. Sucre joined them on 19 September on route from Bolivia, still nursing a wounded arm, and briefed them on the situation in Peru and Bolivia. President La Mar, whom Bolívar described scathingly as a coward, barbarian and traitor, was making warlike noises, and moving the Peruvian army towards the Colombian border, while a squadron under Admiral George Martin Guise, an English naval officer, menaced Guayaquil by sea to install a blockade.
Sucre then left for Quito, where he arrived on 30 September, relieved to be with Mariana after five years’ separation; he looked older, he was carrying a wound and he was alarmed by the signs of enforced mobilization in Ecuador, which increased his determination to retire from public life. But war was approaching. For the moment La Mar remained with the army in northern Peru, ‘talking much, doing nothing’. In early November o’Leary informed Bolívar that Flores had gone to Riobamba to raise an army, leaving an Englishman, General John Illingsworth, or Illingrot as he was known locally, in command at Guayaquil. The Englishman responded vigorously to Guise’s shelling and his counter–fire killed the admiral, ‘a brave and excellent seaman’, commented o’Leary.10 The fleet then broke off the attack and Guayaquil was spared a sacking. War with Peru was an economic problem for all concerned. On his journey to Quito in September Sucre reported: ‘I have heard repeated clamours against the war with Peru, because it is the source of the parlous state of this country and of its overwhelming poverty, forced exactions of mules, horses, potatoes, wheat, cattle, and then the inexorable conscription, not only of vagrants and single men but also of fathers of families.’11 His own family was heavily taxed for the war, adding to his rancour and his personal financial difficulties.
The threats to Bolívar’s scheme of things brought out evident tensions between the senior Bolivarians, as they came together in Guayaquil, their personalities colliding and clashing. Who was top? Whose service record was best? Who had the ear of the Liberator? Sucre was cool and superior, no mere sycophant, recently wounded in action, ready to throw it all in from a position of leadership, and known to be a touchy individual. Flores was a Venezuelan pardo, conscious of Bolívar’s patronage, more of an opportunist, driven by ambition, and not Sucre’s best friend. Both had married into the Quito aristocracy, but Sucre came from a superior family to start with. o’Leary was third in ranking order, a foreigner, the ever loyal servant, by now accepted by Bolívar as a confidant as well as an aide, and able to report on the other two with candour. In his Detached Recollections he was generous in his appraisal of Sucre, ‘the best general of Colombia, a man of talent and good sense, superior to most public men’, while Flores, ‘a bastard of singular merit’, rated a lesser entry.12 There could also be policy differences. Sucre was less warlike towards Peru than the other two and was convinced that war would prejudice any progress towards stability in Colombia. o’Leary was hard line on most issues. The future of the Bolivarian cause exercised all their minds. There was probably, too, a lot of barrack–room talk and gossip, and private views about Bolívar that did not diminish their loyalty but were more critical than they expressed in public.
These exchanges, formal and informal, seem to have been reflected in the writings of o’Leary. In Detached Recollections he wrote of Sucre, ‘He was once an idolater of General Bolívar and continued so until he was wounded in Chuquisaca. Ever afterwards he abused him and accused him of being the author of the disasters which Colombia suffered.’ In October 1828, following the trio’s discussions in Guayaquil, he wrote to Bolívar that he got on well with Flores, who was also ‘a great friend of yours’, though he could not say the same of Sucre, who was criticizing official policy of commandeering resources for the army. ‘General Sucre was my friend, but I do not have or wish to have any friendship with one who tries to recruit supporters for himself by unseemly means. I thought of writing him a strong letter, but then preferred not to clash with him direct, so as to be able to mediate between him and Flores should dissensions occur between them. The behaviour of Sucre should hasten Your Excellency’s coming; now more than ever your presence is needed in these departments.’13 A curious intervention by the Irishman, reflecting the Bolivarian tensions of the time. Later, during the crisis of Colombia, when the Liberator’s hand was weakening, o’Leary asked not to be p
laced under the command of Sucre on the north–east frontier but to operate independently, though deferring to Bolívar’s decision.14
Bolívar had already decided that the south needed his presence to resist the threats to external and internal security, and also evidently to reduce jealousies and clarify ranking among his senior colleagues. Before leaving Bogotá he sent a special envoy to Sucre in Quito, bearing a message of welcome and relief: ‘These papers contain your appointment as absolute chief of the south. All my powers, for good and evil, I delegate to you. Whether you make war or peace, save or lose the south, you are the arbiter of its destinies. I have placed all my hopes in you.’15 Bolívar had long experience of his colleagues’ sensitivities. He knew the appointment would irritate Sucre, who was anti–war and anxious to retire, and arouse jealousy in others, especially Flores, who was pro–war and eager to command, and he advised Sucre to read the special dispatch to Flores and o’Leary, ‘so that they may know I have given Simón Bolívar’s being to you. Yes, my dear Sucre, you are one with me, except in your goodness and my luck.’ And to Flores he insisted, ‘I do not deprive you of the slightest glory, for there is no glory to be won in these unhappy times. I give you this successor to spare you a disaster, and advise you to bow to circumstances, like the rest of us.’16
