The General in His Labyrinth

by Gabriel García Márquez

  The coup de grace came from the Congress of Venezuela, meeting in Valencia, who crowned their deliberations with a resolution for definitive separation and a solemn declaration that there would be no agreement with New Granada and Ecuador as long as the General remained in Colombian territory. As much as the action itself, it grieved him that the official communique from Santa Fe de Bogota was sent through a September 25 conspirator and his mortal enemy, whom President Mosquera had brought back from exile in order to name him Minister of the Interior. "I must say that this is the event that has affected me most in my life," said the General. He spent the night dictating different versions of his reply to a variety of secretaries, but his rage was so great that he fell asleep. At dawn, after a disturbed sleep, he said to Jose Palacios:

  "The day I die the bells in Caracas will ring in jubilation."

  That was not all that happened. When he heard the news of the General's death the Governor of Maracaibo would write: "I hasten to share the news of this great event, which, beyond all doubt, will produce untold benefits for the cause of liberty and the well-being of the country. The genius of evil, the firebrand of anarchy, the oppressor of the nation, has ceased to exist." The announcement, intended at first to inform the government in Caracas, ended as a national proclamation.

  In the midst of the horror of those ill-fated days, Jose Palacios sang out to the General the date of his birth at five o'clock in the morning: "The twenty-fourth of July, feast day of Saint Christina, Virgin and Martyr." He opened his eyes and once again must have been aware of himself as one chosen by adversity.

  It was his custom to celebrate not his birthday but his saint's day. There were eleven Simons in the Catholic calendar of saints, and he would have preferred to be named for the one who helped Christ carry his cross, but destiny gave him another Simon, the apostle and preacher in Egypt and Ethiopia, whose day is October 28. Once, on that date, in Santa Fe de Bogota, he was crowned with a laurel wreath during the fiesta. He removed it with good humor and placed it, along with all his malice, on the head of General Santander, who accepted it without changing expression. But he reckoned his life not by his name but by his age. Forty-seven had a special significance for him, because on July 24 of the previous year, in the midst of bad news from all sides and the delirium of his pernicious fevers, he had been shaken by a presentiment--he, who never admitted the reality of presentiments. The message was clear: If he could stay alive until his next birthday, then there would be no death that could kill him. The mystery of that secret oracle was the force that had sustained him until now, against all reason.

  "Forty-seven years old, damn it," he murmured. "And I'm still alive!"

  He sat up in the hammock, his strength restored and his heart elated by the marvelous certainty that he was safe from all harm. He called Briceno Mendez, the ringleader of those who wanted to go to Venezuela to fight for the integrity of Colombia, and through him he granted his officers' wish because it was his birthday.

  "Starting with the rank of lieutenant," he said, "let everyone who wants to fight in Venezuela pack up his gear."

  General Briceno Mendez was the first. Another two generals, four colonels, and eight captains from the Cartagena garrison joined the expedition. But when Carreno reminded the General of his earlier promise, he told him:

  "You're reserved for a higher destiny."

  Two hours before their departure he decided that Jose Laurencio Silva should go as well, for he had the impression that the rust of routine was worsening his obsession with his eyes. Silva declined the honor.

  "This idleness is also a war, and one of the most difficult," he said. "And therefore I'll stay here, if my General does not order otherwise."

  On the other hand, Iturbide, Fernando, and Andres Ibarra were denied permission to join the others. "If you leave, it will be to another destination," the General told Iturbide. He informed Andres, with strange reasoning, that General Diego Ibarra was already in the struggle, and two brothers were too many for the same war. Fernando did not even volunteer, because he was sure he would receive the same answer he always did: "A man must be whole to go to war, but he cannot allow his two eyes and right hand to go without him." He resigned himself with the consolation that this answer was, in a certain sense, a kind of military distinction.

  Montilla brought the travel funds on the same night they were approved, and he took part in the simple ceremony in which the General said goodbye to each of them with an embrace and a few words. They left one by one, taking different routes, some headed for Jamaica, others for Curacao, others for Guajira, and all wearing civilian clothes, without weapons or anything else that could betray their identity, just as they had learned to do in their clandestine actions against the Spanish. At dawn the house at the foot of La Popa was a dismantled barracks, but the General was sustained by the hope that a new war would make the laurels of long ago green again.

  GENERAL RAFAEL URDANETA took power on September 5. The Constituent Congress had come to the end of its mandate, and there was no other valid authority to legitimatize the coup, but the insurgents appealed to the City Council of Santa Fe de Bogota, which recognized Urdaneta as the man entrusted with power until it was assumed by the General. This was the culmination of an insurrection by Venezuelan troops and officers garrisoned in New Granada, who defeated the government forces with the support of the small landowners on the savanna and the rural clergy. It was the first coup d'etat in the Republic of Colombia, and the first of the forty-nine civil wars we would suffer in what remained of the century. President Joaquin Mosquera and Vice-President Caycedo, isolated in the midst of nothing, renounced their offices. Urdaneta picked up the power left lying on the ground, and his first governmental act was to send a personal delegation to Cartagena to offer the General the presidency of the Republic.

  It had been a long while since Jose Palacios could remember his master's health as stable as it was during this time, for the headaches and twilight fevers surrendered their weapons as soon as news of the military coup was received. But neither had he seen him more restless. This worried Montilla, who sought the cooperation of Friar Sebastian de Siguenza in providing the General with covert relief. The friar was a willing and able accomplice, allowing himself to be beaten at chess during the arid afternoons when they were waiting for Urdaneta's messengers.

  The General had learned how to move the pieces on his second trip to Europe, and he came close to mastery playing with General O'Leary on dull nights during the long campaign in Peru. But he did not feel capable of going any further. "Chess isn't a game, it's a passion," he would say. "And I prefer bolder ones." Nevertheless, in his programs for public education he had included it among the useful and honest games that should be taught in school. The truth was he had not continued because his nerves were not made for so circumspect a game, and he needed the concentration it demanded for more serious matters.

  Friar Sebastian found him swaying with violent lurches in the hammock he had ordered hung in front of the street door so he could keep watch over the parched dust of the road where Urdaneta's messengers were to appear. "Ah, Father," the General said when he saw him approach. "You're a glutton for punishment." He remained seated only long enough to move the pieces, for after every play he would stand up while the friar was thinking.

  "Don't distract me, Excellency," the friar would say. "I'm going to skin you alive."

  The General laughed:

  "Pride goeth before a fall."

  O'Leary would stop by the table to study the board and make suggestions to the General, who would reject them with indignation. But each time he won he would go out to the patio where his officers were playing cards to announce his victory. In the middle of one game Friar Sebastian asked if he planned to write his memoirs.

  "Never," he said. "They're nothing but dead men making trouble."

  The mail, which was one of his dominant obsessions, became his martyrdom. It was even worse during those weeks of confusion when the mail c
arriers in Santa Fe de Bogota would delay their departure in expectation of the latest news and the connecting riders would grow weary of waiting for them. On the other hand, the clandestine mails became faster and more frequent. As a consequence the General had news of the news before it arrived, and there was more than enough time for his decisions to ripen.

  On September 17, when he learned that the emissaries were near, he sent Carreno and O'Leary to meet them on the Turbaco road. The first surprise for Colonels Vicente Pineres and Julian Santa Maria was the good spirits in which they found the hopeless invalid who was the subject of so much talk in Santa Fe de Bogota. A solemn ceremony was improvised in the house, with civilian and military dignitaries, secondhand speeches, and toasts to the health of the nation. But when it was over he took the emissaries aside and truths were told in private. Colonel Santa Maria, who found solace in melodrama, struck the culminating note: If the General did not accept command, the most awful anarchy would break out in the country. The General was evasive.

  "Existence comes before modifications," he said. "We won't know if there's a nation or not until the political horizon clears."

  Colonel Santa Maria did not understand.

  "I mean that the most urgent matter is to reunify the country by force of arms," said the General. "But the road begins in Venezuela, not here."

  From then on, that would be his fixed idea: to begin again from the beginning, knowing that the enemy was not external but inside the house. The oligarchies in each country, represented in New Granada by the Santanderists and by Santander himself, had declared war to the death against the idea of integrity because it was unfavorable to the local privileges of the great families.

  "This is the real cause, the only cause, of the war of dispersion that is killing us," said the General. "And the saddest part is that they think they're changing the world when they're really perpetuating the most reactionary thought in Spain."

  He drew breath and continued: "I know I'm ridiculed because in the same letter, on the same day, and to the same person I say first one thing and then the opposite, because I approved the plan for monarchy, or I didn't approve it, or somewhere I agreed with both positions at the same time." He was accused of being capricious in the way he judged men and manipulated history, he was accused of fighting Fernando VII and embracing Morillo, of waging war to the death against Spain and promoting her spirit, of depending on Haiti in order to win the war and then considering Haiti a foreign country in order to exclude her from the Congress of Panama, of having been a Mason and reading Voltaire at Mass but of being the paladin of the Church, of courting the English while wooing a French princess, of being frivolous, hypocritical, and even disloyal because he flattered his friends in their presence and denigrated them behind their backs. "Well, all of that is true, but circumstantial," he said, "because everything I've done has been for the sole purpose of making this continent into a single, independent country, and as far as that's concerned I've never contradicted myself or had a single doubt." And he concluded in pure Caribbean:

  "All the rest is bullshit!"

  In a letter he sent two days later to General Briceno Mendez he wrote: "I have not wanted to accept the command conferred on me by events because I do not want to appear to be the leader of rebels or be named by dint of the victors' military might." Nevertheless, in two letters he dictated that same night to Fernando and sent to General Rafael Urdaneta, he was careful not to be so radical.

  The first was a formal reply, and his solemnity was far too evident, beginning with the salutation: "Most Excellent Sir." He justified the coup because of the anarchy and lawlessness that prevailed in the Republic following the dissolution of the previous government. "In such cases the people are not deceived," he wrote. But there was no possibility of his accepting the presidency. All he could offer was his willingness to return to Santa Fe de Bogota to serve the new government as a simple soldier.

  The other was a private letter, and he indicated this at the outset: "My dear General." It was extensive and explicit, and it did not leave the slightest doubt regarding the reasons for his hesitancy. Since Don Joaquin Mosquera had not renounced his title, he could claim recognition as the legal President tomorrow, making the General a usurper. And so he reiterated what he had said in the official letter: As long as there was no clear mandate from a legitimate source, there was no possibility of his assuming power.

  The two letters were sent by the same mail, along with the original copy of a proclamation in which he asked the country to forget its passions and support the new government. But he distanced himself from any commitment. "Although I may seem to offer a good deal, I offer nothing," he would say later. And he recognized that he had written some words with the sole object of flattering those who wanted him in office. What was most significant in the second letter was his tone of command, surprising in someone who had been stripped of all power. He requested the promotion of Colonel Florencio Jimenez so he could go west with enough troops and equipment to resist the pointless war being waged against the central government by Generals Jose Maria Obando and Jose Hilario Lopez: "The men who assassinated Sucre," he insisted. He also recommended other officers for various high positions. "Take care of this," he told Urdaneta, "and I'll see to the rest from the Magdalena to Venezuela, including Boyaca." He was prepared to leave for Santa Fe de Bogota at the head of two thousand men and in that way contribute to the reestablishment of public order and the consolidation of the new government.

  He did not receive direct news again from Urdaneta for forty-two days. But in any case he continued to write to him during the long month when he did nothing but impart military orders to the four winds. The ships came and went, but there was no more talk of the voyage to Europe, although he brought it up from time to time as a way of exerting political pressure. The house at the foot of La Popa was turned into headquarters for the entire country, and few military decisions during those months were not inspired or made by him from his hammock. Step by step, almost without intending to, he also became involved in decisions that went beyond military affairs. He even concerned himself with trivial matters, such as finding a position in the mail offices for his good friend Senor Tatis, or returning General Jose Ucros to active service because he could no longer endure peace at home.

  During this time he repeated one of his old phrases with renewed emphasis: "I'm old, sick, tired, disillusioned, harassed, slandered, and unappreciated." Nevertheless, no one who saw him would have believed it. For while he seemed to twist and turn like a scalded cat only to strengthen the government, in reality he was planning, with the authority and power of the commander in chief, each piece of the detailed military strategy with which he proposed to regain Venezuela and from there begin to restore the largest alliance of nations in the world.

  A more propitious moment could not have been imagined. New Granada, with the liberal party in defeat and Santander anchored in Paris, was safe in Urdaneta's hands. Ecuador was assured by Flores, the same ambitious, contentious Venezuelan leader who had separated Quito and Guayaquil from Colombia in order to create the new republic but whom the General was certain of bringing back to the cause after he defeated Sucre's assassins. Bolivia was secure with his friend Field Marshal de Santa Cruz, who had just offered him the post of Ambassador to the Holy See. And therefore his immediate objective was to wrest the control of Venezuela from General Paez once and for all.

  The General's military plan seemed aimed at launching a major offensive from Cucuta while Paez was engaged in the defense of Maracaibo. But on September 1 the Province of Riohacha deposed its military commander, refused to recognize the authority of Cartagena, and declared itself Venezuelan. Maracaibo not only offered immediate support but also sent in its defense the leader of the September 25 attempt, General Pedro Carujo, who had fled punishment to the protection of the Venezuelan government.

  Montilla brought the news as soon as he received it, but the General had already heard it and was exultant becaus
e the Riohacha insurrection justified his mobilizing new and better forces on another front to move against Maracaibo.

  "And furthermore," he said, "Carujo is in our hands."

  That same night he closeted himself with his officers and outlined the strategy with great precision, describing the irregularities of the terrain, moving entire armies like chessmen, anticipating the enemy's most unexpected purposes. He did not have an academic education even comparable to that of any of his officers, most of whom had been educated at the best military schools in Spain, but he had the ability to conceptualize an entire situation down to the smallest details. His visual memory was so remarkable that he could describe an obstacle seen in passing many years before, and although he was far from a master of the arts of war, no one surpassed him in inspiration.

  At dawn the plan was finished. It was thorough and ferocious and so visionary that the attack on Maracaibo was planned for the end of November or, if worst came to worst, the beginning of December. When the final revision was completed at eight o'clock on a rainy Tuesday morning, Montilla pointed out the noteworthy absence of a New Granadan general in the plan.

  "There isn't one from New Granada who's worth anything," the General said. "Those who aren't incompetent are scoundrels."

  Montilla hastened to sweeten the conversation:

  "And you, General, where will you be going?"

  "Right now I don't care if it's Cucuta or Riohacha," he said.

  He turned to leave, and General Carreno's hard frown reminded him of the promise he had not kept several times over. The truth was he wanted to have him at his side at any cost but could no longer bear his restlessness. He gave him his usual pat on the shoulder and said:

  "Word of honor, Carreno, you're going too."

  The expeditionary force of two thousand men set sail from Cartagena on September 25, a date that seemed chosen for its symbolism. It was under the command of Generals Mariano Montilla, Jose Felix Blanco, and Jose Maria Carreno, each of whom had a separate commission to find a country house in Santa Marta where the General could follow the war at close range while he recovered his health. He wrote to a friend: "In two days I leave for Santa Marta to take some exercise, to escape the ennui in which I find myself, and to improve my disposition." No sooner said than done: On October 1 he set out on the journey. On October 2, while he was en route, he was more straightforward in a letter to General Justo Briceno: "I am on my way to Santa Marta with the intention of contributing my influence to the expedition against Maracaibo." The same day he wrote again to Urdaneta: "I am on my way to Santa Marta with the intention of visiting that region, which I have never seen, and to learn if I can disillusion some enemies who have too great an influence on opinion." Only then did he disclose the real purpose of his journey: "I will observe at first hand the operations against Riohacha, and I will approach Maracaibo and the troops to discover if I can influence some important operation." Viewed in the proper light, he was no longer a defeated pensioner fleeing into exile but a general on campaign.