Bolivar: American Liberator

by Arana, Marie

  For all his attempts to bring matters under control, Bolívar now proved singularly incapable of imposing order on chaos. There was nothing to do but go. In a matter of hours, all of Pétion’s valuable contributions to the revolution were either pilfered or abandoned for the royalists’ taking. As Morales reported exultantly, “The gang of criminals that once imagined themselves masters of Venezuela has vanished like smoke”; he found Ocumare empty, the port deserted. Littering the ground were the patriots’ precious supplies.

  Few events in Bolívar’s life have been the object of as much censure or debate as those disastrous few days in Ocumare. Even he would come to look back at the catastrophe with regret, admitting much later that perhaps this was the moment in his military career when he might have employed better judgment. In the immediate aftermath, however, he would have a string of excuses.

  Taking off in a fast sloop, he tried to deliver a few arms to patriot forces farther down the coast, but found that every port he approached sported the royalist flag. Yet again, Bolívar was obliged to make a humiliating escape by sea. He sent Admiral Brion on a frantic mission to the United States to seek diplomatic recognition and whatever arms and assistance he could muster, but Brion’s ship was blown off course by violent winds and wrecked off the coast of Panama. Miraculously, Brion managed to survive. Bolívar himself did not escape the raging winds of the Caribbean. After a tempestuous journey, he was finally able to deposit Pepita and her family near St. Thomas. He did not reach the eastern port of Guiria, Venezuela, until a month later—on August 16.

  Bolívar looked forward to reuniting with Mariño and continuing to press the revolution toward Caracas, but he was in for a rude surprise. Upon his arrival in Guiria, Mariño received him coldly. Bermúdez, who had sailed from Ocumare to rejoin his old chief, was downright hostile. Old resentments resurfaced to destroy whatever amicable relations Bolívar had been able to craft. Now that the two easterners were back on their own territory, they wanted no part of Bolívar. To them, he was just another revolutionary—a man with a ready sword, his greatness as yet inchoate, his genius and imagination unseen. Even he had not quite understood what he needed to do in order to bring about the solidarity his revolution so desperately required. He spent a few days trying to muster support, continuing to call himself by his former titles—Liberator, chief of the Armies of Venezuela and New Granada—but before long, a coup broke out against him. On August 22, Mariño’s supporters gathered in Guiria’s plaza and began to shout, “Down with Bolívar! Long live Mariño and Bermúdez!” A crowd took up the cries. There was no question Bolívar was out of his element—he was far from Caracas, far from his Granadan admirers, in a remote part of Venezuela he hardly knew. There was also little question that his life was in danger. The Spanish captain-general had offered 10,000 pesos for his head. If he couldn’t rely on his fellow patriots for protection, he was as good as dead.

  Keen now to make a getaway, Bolívar hastened to the port. But he got no farther than the beach before Mariño’s men surrounded him. They moved to take him into custody. Bolívar pushed past them, drawing his sword into the air. Suddenly Bermúdez—in an uncontrollable fit of rage—lunged at him with his saber. If it hadn’t been for Bolívar’s extraordinary calm and two nimble soldiers who pulled Bermúdez away, the sword would have met its mark. “Never,” asserted a witness, had “Bermúdez’s arm moved with more determination.” Somehow in the skirmish Bolívar managed to slip away, leap onto a canoe, and make a swift course toward his waiting ship. Betrayed, humiliated, but alive, he headed back to Haiti.

  IN AN IRONY NO ONE appreciated at the time, Bolívar took flight from Ocumare on the very day that Miranda took his last breath in a dank prison cell in Cádiz. History was repeating itself. Just as Bolívar had rejected Miranda’s authority, Bolívar’s minions had discarded him from the foray. There was no doubt the Liberator had enemies. Some of his officers were using every excuse to snatch the reins for themselves. Mariño, goaded by Bermúdez and Piar, had disagreed openly with Bolívar about strategies, goals—the very meaning of the word “republic.” Luis Ducoudray, whom Bolívar had forbidden from assuming the title of field marshal, now turned the full force of his bile against him, eventually recording it for all time in his famous invective, Memories of Simón Bolívar. Even Arismendi, once one of Bolívar’s strongest advocates, was infuriated by Bolívar’s retreat from Ocumare. “Bolívar’s cowardice has emerged once too often,” he was heard to say. “He should be court-martialed for it and shot.”

  Warlords were now in charge of the revolution in Venezuela, each with his own patch of territory and band of men. Piar was fighting royalists in the wilds of Guayana. José Antonio Páez had emerged in the western plains. Mariño was in Guiria, Arismendi in Margarita, Manuel Cedeño near the Orinoco River, Pedro Zaraza in the upper plains, José Tadeo Monagas in Cumaná. The republic in disarray, the republicans had fled to far-flung corners, gathering under the most powerful chieftain they could find. Bolívar had never been inclined to be a regional warlord. He had no private army, no rooted power base—his notion of the republic was the vast canvas of America. But it was with such divisiveness and regionalism that he would have to contend.

  It was early September before Bolívar arrived in Haiti. Pétion didn’t hesitate to welcome him back and to offer his continued support, both moral and material. Sutherland, too, seemed willing to subsidize him again. If Bolívar’s own officers doubted his ability to lead a successful revolution, these two did not. Pétion was generous in his praise, firm in the belief that Bolívar had the vision and mettle to effect a true liberation. Sutherland was more pragmatic; he understood that with Bolívar in power in Spanish America, Haiti would have a strong partner in trade.

  But another option soon presented itself. While in Port-au-Prince, Bolívar received a letter from a Spanish insurrectionist, Francisco Javier Mina, who, charming his way through Boston and Baltimore, had taken up residence in New Orleans and was trying to restart the Mexican revolution. Having heard of Bolívar’s valor—not only in Europe, but in Haiti, where Pétion had spoken so highly of him—Mina proposed that Bolívar join him in Mexico. Once Mexican independence was won, Mina promised, a vast army of free Mexicans would help Bolívar liberate his homeland. It was a tempting offer for a warrior who had sought aid so arduously over the years. It was also deeply impressive that Mina had actually managed to raise men and guns for Mexico in North American cities—something Bolívar had never been able to do for his cause. But no sooner had Bolívar started toying with the possibility of helping Mina than he received two letters from Venezuela. One was from Arismendi, who had come to realize the vacuum of leadership Bolívar had left behind. There was simply no commander as inspiring—or appealing—to the population at large; no one as committed to unifying an increasingly fragmented revolution. The second letter was from revolutionaries near Caracas: Come back and lead, they pleaded. Then, in full acknowledgment of Bermúdez’s brazen lunge at him in Ocumare, added, “and try to forget those lamentable scenes in Guiria.”

  For all their lack of unity—for all the unruliness—the patriots had made heartening advances. Páez, who now commanded the plains, had achieved the remarkable feat of winning Boves’s llaneros to the republican side, although Páez didn’t consider himself anyone’s ally. Mariño and Bermúdez had won important victories near Cumaná. All the same, petty animosities between warlords were rampant now. Arismendi openly hated Mariño. Piar and Bermúdez loathed each other. Piar, high on success, had grown jealous of his own colonels and, in a fit of pique, dispatched them to remote locations. There was little cooperation among warlords now.

  This was the tumult to which Bolívar was being recalled, and these were the circumstances that would forge his greatness. For all the warlords’ apparent power and standing armies, not one could match the reputation Bolívar had built beyond his shores, nor the adoration bestowed on him by the people. None had his oratory brilliance, his ease in the wider world, his unders
tanding of history, his willingness to work with rivals, his ability to lead an army and inspire it to greater sacrifice. Although Bolívar eventually met Javier Mina in Port-au-Prince and wished him well in his Mexican expedition, he could not ignore the call of his own countrymen. Nor could he ignore Brion, who had limped into Haiti after his shipwreck and promised to raise more men, more ships, more arms.

  Bolívar left Haiti for the last time on December 21. Landing on the island of Margarita a week later, he issued a proclamation urging Venezuelans to elect a congress and assemble a government. In a letter to two framers of the original 1810 declaration of independence, he wrote: “Our arms will have destroyed tyrants in vain if we don’t establish order and repair wartime ravages.” In a more personal letter to Santiago Mariño, he wrote, “General, I am the best friend you have. Unfortunately, your friends are not my friends, and that is the root of the trouble we now must avoid, not only to save ourselves, but our beloved country.”

  Bolívar embarked on a fervent attempt to build alliances. He wrote to Piar, Monagas, Zaraza, Cedeño. He had come to realize that any gains would be impossible without their cooperation; it was they who had kept the revolution alive. The most valuable among them were also the most headstrong, peevish, wildly erratic. How to harness their energy? How to command a circle of fractious and egotistical men? He would need all his wit and wiles to enlist the warlords to his cause; and then he would need to instill in them—and in the whole revolutionary effort, for that matter—a solid discipline.

  IN JANUARY OF 1817, BOLÍVAR landed in Barcelona with four hundred men, hoping to work his way southwest toward Caracas. Immediately, he set about recruiting Indians, though they were armed with little more than bows and arrows. But General Morillo had returned to tamp out the resurgence, and the route to the capital was so fortified that Bolívar could make no headway. Within weeks, an army ten times the size of his own forces headed toward Barcelona to expel Bolívar. Nevertheless, his pleas for unity had not gone ignored. Colonel Urdaneta, who had fought with Páez on the plains of Apure, now decided to make his way north to join the Liberator. Mariño, too, hearing that the Liberator was in peril, did not hesitate.

  At this, Bermúdez balked and tried to argue, but Mariño interrupted him, aghast. “I hardly know you!” he scolded his second in command. “How can we possibly abandon Bolívar to certain danger? So that Arismendi and all the rest of the patriots can die with him? No, that cannot be.” Somehow, Bermúdez managed to stem his ire and march to Barcelona with Mariño. And somehow, Bolívar decided to forget the scene with him on the beach at Guiria—the threats, the attempted assault, the well-aimed sword. On the afternoon of February 9, Bolívar rode out to greet him. As the proud, straight-backed Bermúdez approached over the bridge, Bolívar threw open his arms. “I’ve come to embrace the liberator of the Liberator!” he cried. Bermúdez was so won by Bolívar’s generosity, so overcome with emotion, he could hardly speak. He finally broke the silence with a husky cry, “Long live a free America!”

  Piar was not so easily won. He continued to ignore Bolívar’s calls for unity. “Small divisions cannot achieve great objectives,” Bolívar had written to him, instructing him to bring in his troops. But Piar paid him no mind and continued to stay right where he was, in the province of Guayana, deep in the Venezuelan interior.

  For all Bolívar’s increased numbers, he still was no match for the Spaniards. Mariño and Bermúdez’s advance had frightened them away momentarily, but they would return to Barcelona when they realized they held the advantage. Bolívar now changed his strategy entirely. With his new reinforcements, he decided to march up the Orinoco River to the wilds of Guayana, where he would join Piar, lure the powerful Páez to his ranks, take command of the plains, and keep the Spanish from spreading their influence beyond the confines of Caracas. It was a masterful plan—designed to bleed Morillo by leading him on a costly chase through the backlands of Venezuela. Since Brion’s fleet was blockading the coast, the republicans had virtual control of much of the seaboard. If Bolívar and his allied warlords could master the waterways and the interior, the result would be a pincer movement on Caracas. From land and sea, the patriots would have the advantage.

  It was a fundamental shift away from Bolívar’s earlier obsession with Caracas. It was also one more lesson Bolívar had learned from Boves: whoever ruled the plains stood to ride in triumph to the capital. Bolívar knew that in Páez he might have his own potential Boves—a powerful llanero who would enlist pardos and strike fear into the royalist heart. Páez had already turned the tables on the Spaniards. In mid-1814, even as Bolívar and Mariño were being run out of Venezuela, accused as scoundrels and thieves, Páez had left the royalist camp and joined the rebels on the plains of Apure. He had tormented the Spanish army ever since, raising a mighty army and recruiting hard-bitten warriors from Boves’s Legions of Hell. By the start of 1817, when Bolívar was heading up the Orinoco toward Guayana, Páez had gathered a potent force of eleven hundred marauding horsemen. So terrifying were they that Spanish generals consistently overestimated their numbers.

  On the vast expanse of savanna near Mucuritas, just west of where Piar had garrisoned his troops, Páez had executed a stunning victory against General Morillo on January 28 by employing what would become his signature maneuver: the harrowing “about-face.” Páez’s men, outnumbered three times by Morillo’s, provoked the Spaniards with a flank attack, then went into immediate retreat, riding into the wind and drawing the enemy’s front lines after them. Suddenly, mid-course, Páez’s troops set fire to the savanna’s parched grasses so that smoke spewed behind and blew into the Spaniards’ faces. Minutes later Páez’s horsemen turned precipitously and attacked their pursuers through the flames, skewering the vanguard on their lances and sending the rest into panicked flight.

  “We had hardly advanced,” reported one of the Spanish captains, “when, from a distance, we saw a forest of spears descending on us at full gallop. It was Páez with four thousand horses, and, upon them, the most audacious cavalry in the world . . . an unrestrained torrent.” Páez’s horsemen would effect many similar victories—never quite thrashing the royalists decisively, but inflicting heavy and dispiriting losses. Every time the royalists fled through the flaming grass, they abandoned horses, swords, guns, heavy artillery to Páez’s forces; and every time a Spanish soldier fell, the bare-chested llanero who had toppled him would ride away fully outfitted in Madrid finery. Morillo later confessed, “Fourteen consecutive attacks on my tired battalions made me see that those men were not just an inconsequential gang of riffraff, as I’d been told, but organized troops that could compete with the best of His Majesty the King’s.”

  Bolívar was thrilled when he heard of Páez’s triumphs. He understood that it was in Venezuela’s interior, with men such as these, that a revolution was possible. The plains had horses, mules, and the grass to keep them alive; it had livestock to feed and clothe an army; it had mounted warriors who knew the terrain and whose enormous lances rendered a Spaniard’s bayonet useless. “We’ve just had the best news from the interior,” Bolívar wrote his nephew Leandro Palacios cheerily; “when we join forces, we’ll have an accumulation of more than ten thousand men, and no one will have the power to prevent us from marching to Bogotá and Peru and liberating those provinces from the yoke of tyranny.” Bolívar wasted no time in sending Arismendi to meet with Páez, in hopes of persuading the llanero to join him in a unified front against the Spanish. “Destiny is calling us to the far frontiers of the American world!” he told his men.

  IN THE MEANTIME, HOWEVER, IT was the pardo Piar who needed to be reined in. Since the standoff in Margarita between the liberators and their deputies, he had grown ever more stubborn and unmanageable, ignoring Bolívar’s appeals and instructions at every turn. On March 25, when Bolívar set out for the interior with only fifteen officers, it was to Piar’s camp that they proceeded. By the time Bolívar, Soublette, Arismendi, and Bermúdez arrived there in early May,
the warlord had demonstrated his worth. Piar’s ragtag army of pardos and Indians had invaded and occupied a sprawling mission on the Coroní River owned by Spanish Capuchin monks—a highly prosperous system of farms and ranches that could feed whole armies. He had gone on to win a decisive victory against the Spaniards in the fields of San Félix, near the ancient and picturesque city of Angostura. He had built fortifications along the river, planned a strategic assault on Angostura, and blockaded Guayana until the starving Spaniards had no choice but to beg for mercy. Bolívar and Piar had gone on to prepare a major offensive. To protect themselves against possible espionage, they arrested two dozen Capuchin monks suspected of being royalist agents; someone—Bolívar? Piar? the history is unclear—issued an order to march the wretched monks off to Divina Pastora. The order was taken literally. The holy men were delivered to divine pastures, that is: dispatched to their Maker—a terrible eventuality, for which Bolívar was blamed, and for which Bolívar in turn blamed Piar.

  All the same, there was no doubt that great headway had been made under Piar, and Piar was puffed with the triumph of it. His troops, who were equipped with little more than spears, had fought against a vastly superior army and routed it roundly. Four hundred royalists had died in battle, three hundred had been taken prisoner and butchered, and the rest had scrambled up and down the Orinoco, running for their lives.