Bolivar: American Liberator

by Arana, Marie

  Bolívar did not stay long in Bogotá. A mere ten days after his arrival and two days after being granted dictatorial powers, he was en route again, riding over the same terrain he had crossed when he had descended so spectacularly over the Andes and overpowered the Spaniards at Boyacá. It had been seven long years since that historic moment, and he was all the worse for wear. He was exhausted, unwell, not the warrior he once had been. But he was determined to bring Páez in line and rescue the foundering republic. He wrote to the Lion of the Apure sternly, preparing him for the pending encounter: “General Castillo opposed me and lost,” he warned. “General Piar opposed me and lost. General Mariño opposed me and lost. Generals Riva Agüero and Torre Tagle both opposed me and lost. It would seem that Providence curses my personal enemies to hell-fire, Americans and Spaniards alike.” But he ended with an outstretched hand: “I believe in you as I believe in my own sword, and I know that it will never be directed against my heart.”

  When he arrived in Puerto Cabello, Páez was afraid to see him. By then, the truculent plainsman was unwaveringly committed to seceding from Greater Colombia. Santander had stripped Páez of the title of supreme chief of Venezuela and further insulted him by summoning him to Bogotá to be tried for military crimes. Outraged, Páez had ignored the order and made clear that he was poised to go to war to free his country from Bogotá’s clutches. He was, after all, the hero of the Battle of Carabobo, liberator of Puerto Cabello—and Venezuelans were firmly on his side. The great Colombian generals Bermúdez and Urdaneta had declared in no uncertain terms that they would never take up arms against him. This was precisely why Santander had asked Bolívar to intervene.

  But hearing of Bolívar’s tenure in Bogotá and his evident solidarity with Santander, Páez assumed that the Liberator was now on the opposing side, especially when it became known that Bolívar was advancing on Venezuela with Santander’s army. As Bolívar labored over the Andes, fording rivers, covering more than seven hundred miles in the course of twenty-eight days, Páez began to mount a campaign to raise Venezuela against him. He spread the rumor that Bolívar had set out to make himself king—a preposterous fabrication, given the fact that it was Páez himself who had sent emissaries to beg Bolívar to take up the crown. He tried to persuade pardos and blacks, whose opportunities had improved markedly since the revolution, that Bolívar would be like the Mantuanos of old—avaricious, cruel, and adamant about keeping the colored people down.

  Bolívar had two choices: negotiate with Páez or see the republic he had toiled to create slide calamitously into civil war. Arriving in Puerto Cabello on December 31, he wasted no time. He issued a unilateral decree granting Páez amnesty for his rebellion, confirmed his title as supreme chief of Venezuela, and invited him to parley. Granadans and Venezuelans were both citizens of Colombia, Bolívar boomed, his voice still electrifying, though the body was frail. He told them they were what they always had been: brothers, comrades in arms, sons of the same destiny. He implored them to see reason and put bitterness behind them. Were they so short of enemies, he scolded, that they would turn on each other in fratricide? To Páez, who in past months had lost much of the support he had ever had among the Venezuelan people, Bolívar wrote, “Enough of the blood and ruin. . . . I came here because you called me. If you want to see me, come. Even Morillo did not mistrust me, and he and I have been friends ever since.” Bolívar assured Páez that he had nothing to lose, everything to gain; all he had to do was recognize the Liberator’s authority. Páez accepted immediately. On January 4, 1827, he rode out to meet Bolívar in Valencia; but he appeared with armed guards on the chance that the lure was a ruse. Bolívar came alone. When he saw the stout, burly bear of a man without whom he could not have won his America’s independence, he strode forward and took him into his arms. Páez later wrote that it was an embrace from which he could hardly release himself: their swords became tangled, locking fast so that the two couldn’t break free. “A good omen,” Bolívar chuckled, and smiled broadly. But as they struggled to separate their weapons, Páez couldn’t help feeling a shudder of dread.

  WITH ONE EMBRACE, BOLÍVAR HAD saved the republic. He had always known how to manage his generals. His flexibility in war, his aptitude for employing just the right combination of cordiality and muscle, his natural sympathy for soldiers had served him well among military men. It was dealing with the politicians that would test his patience. He had said so many years before, in 1821, and it would resonate with ever more meaning now:

  When catastrophe forced weapons into my hands and history called me to liberate my country, I put myself at the head of a military venture that has labored for more than eleven years, never dreaming I would be asked to lead governments. With firm resolve, I swore I would never do it. I pledged with all my heart that I was but a soldier, that I would serve only in war; and that, when peace finally came, I would move on to the role of citizen. Ready to sacrifice my fortune, my blood, my very name for the public good, I cannot say I am ready to sacrifice my conscience. I am thoroughly convinced I have no capacities for governing Colombia. I know absolutely nothing about rule. I am not the adjudicator a thriving republic needs. Soldier by necessity and inclination, my destiny has ever been in the battlefield, the barracks.

  History had forced his hand. Knowing only one way to manage—the military way, from the top down—he forged on with the enterprise. At every turn, he was given ample encouragement: Every republic he liberated had come to believe, even grudgingly, that Bolívar had an uncanny ability to deal with Gordian knots. If he were present, if he unleashed his spellbinding rhetoric, he could tame a whirlwind, and a whirlwind is what many feared would come without the Liberator at the helm. Caught up in this notion of invincibility, Bolívar began to believe that only he could set things right. “I, too, shall play the game of politics,” he had told Santander, and he proceeded to do just that.

  On January 12, 1827, he made a glorious entry into Caracas with Páez at his side. It was the first he had been back since the glory days of 1821. They rode through the streets in an open carriage and reveled in the adoration. It was a joyous homecoming, filled with the prospect of seeing family, the childhood haunts, the city of his birth, the nation for which he had sacrified everything. The throngs were so thick and clamorous that the carriage could hardly move. Arches soared over the streets; festive music filled the air. When they reached the square, two pretty women in white came forward to crown him with wreaths: one for besting the Spaniards, another for averting a civil war. He took the laurels in hand and proclaimed, “I value these symbols of victory with all my heart, but allow me to pass them on to the real victors.” He put one on Páez’s head; the second, he threw to the people.

  Bolívar’s homecoming was the last leg of an arduous journey—most of it on horseback—that had begun in Lima four months before and had carried him four thousand miles. Awaiting him at the end was family, or what was left of it. There were his sister María Antonia, a royalist throughout the revolution, who had become one of Bolívar’s most loyal defenders after the war was over; his favorite uncle, Esteban, who had returned from Europe after an absence of thirty years; his beloved Hipólita, the wet nurse he had freed from bondage. He toured the old houses, visited his properties, and in the comforts of familiar rooms heard news about the others. His patriot sister, Juana, whose daughter had married one of Bolívar’s generals, was off in the mountain city of Barinas. His nephew Fernando Bolívar—the seventeen-year-old child of his dead brother—was in Philadelphia, having just graduated from school. Bolívar had paid for Fernando’s education. When eminent Americans learned that the Liberator’s nephew was among them, they had sought him out. General Lafayette had visited the boy; Thomas Jefferson had corresponded with him; and, on his way to attend Jefferson’s new university in Virginia, Fernando had stopped in Washington and met John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and James Monroe.

  Bolívar governed Venezuela for the next six months, pledging full faith in Páez, even refer
ring to him as the “savior of the nation.” But he was playing politics now. In private, his opinion was very different:

  General Páez is the most ambitious, vain man in the world: he has no desire to obey, only command; it galls him to see me above him in the political hierarchy of Colombia; he doesn’t recognize his own incompetence, so blinded is he by pride and ignorance. He will never be more than an instrument of advisors. As far as I am concerned, he is the most dangerous man in Colombia.

  He had admitted this to very few. He and Páez took up residence under the same roof and the Liberator soon mollified the disruptive chieftain with assurances that Venezuela would be a separate state in the greater Federation of the Andes. This coddling of Páez would cost Bolívar dearly: his overblown public tributes to a rebel who had broken the republic’s laws were an affront to those who had worked diligently to abide by the constitution. But to Bolívar, the rupture between Santander and Páez had become a felicitous opportunity to redefine the republic as he saw fit. First he intended to install his constitution in Venezuela, then nudge Colombia toward adoption. Even as Bolívar confirmed Páez’s supremacy, he called for a constitutional convention at which all such matters would be decided. But he was treading on risky ground.

  Bolívar tried to do what he could for Venezuela in those months, going about business, trying to boost public morale, but it was evident from the first that Caracas was in heartbreaking disorder. Independence had left it in ruins. All agriculture had halted, the import-export businesses had withered, and a paralyzing torpor had taken their place. He had found similar disrepair in the outlying areas of Greater Colombia. Everywhere he went, he had heard about the wretched state of the national treasury, even though, only two years before, Britain had granted Colombia a loan of $30 million. Where had the money gone? There were many Colombians (and especially Venezuelans) who accused the regime in Bogotá of dissipating it irresponsibly, or even snatching it for themselves. Certainly, the residents of Bogotá lived far more comfortably than their miserable counterparts in Caracas or Quito. The British ambassador complained bitterly that Santander had committed “the most scandalous abuses,” siphoning off money for his friends under the guise of assigning commercial contracts. Bolívar had not been shy to ask about such allegations. He recalled all too well that, in correspondence with Santander not long before, he had had to point out that heads of nations could not afford to involve themselves in money schemes. His vice president had seemed to have a poor understanding of this principle.

  Learning that the Liberator had openly impugned his honor, Santander took offense. “Let’s ignore for the moment what you’ve been saying in public,” he wrote Bolívar sharply. “Páez is called the savior of his nation, whereas I, as ruler of this country as well as of Congress, am considered criminal, delinquent, forced to defend myself against these charges.” He felt cheated, betrayed. He had called on Bolívar to rein in Páez, not glorify him; he had furnished the Liberator with troops in order to intimidate the Lion of the Apure, not parade through Caracas exalting the man’s crimes.

  Santander had tried to temper his messages, not being entirely candid about the extent of hostility he and his circle felt about Bolívar’s constitution, his call for a life presidency, his dictatorial powers, his evident disregard for a system Santander had worked so carefully to create. To be blamed for the disastrous financial state of Colombia was simply infuriating. He wrote out a long report in his own defense. But by then Bolívar had had enough of him. He informed Santander bluntly that he would write to him no longer—between them there was nothing more to say.

  The intricacies of the British loan turned out to be far more complicated than anyone understood at the time. The problems had begun in 1822, when the former vice president of Colombia, Francisco Zea—as flamboyant with money as he was with words—had been sent to London to raise funds for the revolution. It had taken two years for Britain to respond, but by 1824 when a loan of $30 million was approved, Zea had already frittered away a good third of it through reckless spending, questionable negotiations, and rampant debt. The other $20 million had been swallowed immediately by the military’s yawning deficit. For five years running, Colombia essentially had underwritten the liberation of six countries. Taxes had brought the government $5 or $6 million a year, but the army and navy were spending double that—$13 or $14 million—and much of it on foreign ground. The ever expanding wars of independence had become a vast maw that needed to be fed. Santander was all too aware of it; it was why he had constantly carped about military costs. There was no doubt that government corruption was endemic: tax collectors, commercial middlemen, official bursars were flagrantly dishonest, promoting rank fraud and embezzlement; the vice president had had to impose the death penalty on the most brazen of these. But the facts were incontrovertible: the loan was gone, the republic had been forced to beg Britain for another one, and the republic’s economy was in ruin.

  Even as he stewed about the financial state of affairs, Bolívar proceeded to address the crippling discontent in Venezuela. He had put a stop to civil war, but insurrections now flared like wildfires around the country. He deployed General Páez and his stalwart in eastern Venezuela, General Mariño, to quell them. He felt personally responsible for ameliorating his country’s problems, having ignored Venezuela for so long. But by April, as he sorted through the financial and military muddle, he was given evidence of Santander’s duplicity on a very different matter: the insurrection by Colombian troops Bolívar had left behind in Lima. It had taken three months for news of that January coup to reach him. Whether or not Santander personally inspired the 3rd Division’s uprising has never been proven—General Sucre believed he did, so did Bolívar—but there is no question that Santander and his minions in Bogotá saw it as a godsend, since they had been weary of paying for Lima’s defense. When they heard that Colombian soldiers in Lima’s garrisons had overthrown their generals and rejected Bolívar’s constitution, the people of Bogotá spilled into the streets to celebrate. The coup, in itself, did not implicate Santander. But his reaction did. He strolled out into the night to listen to the music and join in the revelry, an act hardly befitting the dignity of his station. A few days later he wrote to José Bustamante, the leader of the revolt, and congratulated him. Bustamante’s actions, the vice president announced, were to be highly commended; the republic deeply appreciated the patriotic instincts that had prompted them. A few days later Santander signed the order promoting Bustamante to colonel.

  Enraged, Bolívar had his secretary of state fire off a stinging rebuke to Santander’s minister of war. Bustamante’s rebellion, the missive claimed, was a clear contravention of the military’s most sacred laws. Soldiers had risen up against commanders, and yet Colombia had had the gall to congratulate them! “The Liberator is astonished by this evidence of moral decay in the government. . . . He doesn’t know which is worse: the crime committed by Bustamante or the act undertaken with all deliberation to give the man a prize.” Santander shot back, arguing that to absolve Bustamante for his rebellion in Peru was equivalent to absolving Páez for his rebellion in Venezuela. But Bolívar remained adamant. He wrote in candor to one of his generals: “Santander is a snake . . . I can no longer abide him. I trust neither his principles nor his heart.”

  The revolt of the 3rd Division had a resounding impact on Peru. The government Bolívar had cobbled together in Lima was finished, his constitution abrogated. General Santa Cruz, to whom Bolívar had virtually handed the presidency, had done nothing to curb the fall. Santa Cruz now attempted Bolívar’s old, trusted gesture of relinquishing all power, so sure was he that it would be given back. But the Peruvian congress astounded him by accepting his resignation, and then began organizing a new election.

  Colonel Bustamante and his rebel division went on to create more trouble. They departed secretly from Lima, swept north, invaded Guayaquil, and replaced the city’s staunchly pro-Bolívarian head with a Peruvian general. Five years after the infamo
us Guayaquil standoff between Bolívar and San Martín, it looked as if Peru finally was taking hold of that disputed port. To what extent the invasion was instigated by Peru has never been clearly established, but Peruvians were widely blamed for it. The bizarre enterprise of a Colombian division running amok, invading the Colombian republic, was enough to set even Santander’s teeth on edge. He did not condemn Bustamante’s division outright, but he ordered it to desist.

  Little seemed to be going well in the querulous Republic of Greater Colombia. As Bolívar’s confidant Pedro Briceño Méndez put it, “We have arrived at an era of blunders. In order to fix one, we commit fifty.” Bolívar could see that the only way for him to retake control and address those errors was to return to Bogotá, perhaps even mount a new military campaign and show the republic that he meant business. He had been working at the periphery for too long; he needed to attend to the center. But the center had long since become exasperated with Bolívar. On June 20, Santander decided to abolish Bolívar’s dictatorial powers and reinstate the law of the land; and so, with one stroke of the pen, all of Bolívar’s improvised mandates were annulled. It would take more than a Hercules to win back Bogotá now.

  Have no doubt, Bolívar told Páez, “I’m ready to do whatever it takes to liberate my people. I would even declare war to the death all over again.” He gathered up the mighty army that Bogotá had provided him and readied it to double back against the capital. A notice went out to all Colombians: “The Liberator has resolved to march against the traitors who have stained the Republic’s glory and are working even now to dismember it.” As Manuela Sáenz was sailing north from Peru to Guayaquil, still stinging from the mortification of her eviction, Bolívar sailed in the opposite direction, from Caracas to Cartagena, in what he remembered as the most pleasant voyage he had ever made. From there, he mobilized his generals: Urdaneta in Maracaibo, Páez in central Venezuela, all the troops he could muster in Cartagena, and told them to prepare to move on Bogotá. He continued on toward the capital, upriver on the Magdalena, with a force powerful enough to quell all the rebels of Guayaquil and Peru put together.