Bolivar: American Liberator

by Arana, Marie

  No one knew more than Páez the power of that Bolívarian image. Struggling to maintain his grip on the Venezuelan presidency, Páez reached once again for Bolívar to help him shore up an unstable nation. Never mind that Bolívar was dead. Never mind that Páez’s vision for Venezuela was in stark counterpoint to that of Bolívar. In November of 1842, almost twelve years after the Liberator’s death, Páez had the hero’s remains exhumed from their serene resting place in the Cathedral of Santa Marta and brought by a naval fleet to the port of La Guaira. To pacify Colombia, Páez granted it permission to keep the Liberator’s heart, and so that part of him remained behind, preserved in a small urn interred at Santa Marta. When Bolívar’s eviscerated corpse arrived in La Guaira, it was welcomed home by an enormous delegation of military men, diplomats, clerics, and government dignitaries. As the funeral procession made its way over the mountain to Caracas, an adoring public poured into the streets to greet it. So began the posthumous glorification of a hero, the birth of the cult of Bolívar.

  As years passed—not only in nations he had liberated, but throughout the world—Bolívar became the personification of Latin American greatness: a man with a resolute love of liberty and an unwavering sense of justice; a hero willing to risk everything for a dream. But as the legend grew, each version building on the last, the man took on a protean quality. Politicians, whether they were left or right, used him to defend their positions. Priests quoted him in righteous sermons. Poets lauded him in ecstatic verse. History texts swooned over his exploits. Teachers pointed to his brilliance. Fathers urged sons to emulate him. Schoolchildren memorized his speeches: “Soldiers!” they all learned to roar, just as Bolívar had done after the Battle of Ayacucho, “You have given South America its freedom and now a quarter of this world is a living monument to your glory!”

  In time, historians, too, took up the task of glorification. Whole institutions and scholarly apparatuses were put in place to defend him. And defend him they would, for doubts about him were beginning to creep back. Peruvians, who had always resented the Venezuelan liberator, complained that Bolívar had cheated Peru of land in the course of building nations, that he had robbed the Inca of their nobility. Indeed, by 1825, Lima’s wealth and influence had shrunk; the viceregal city that had once overseen a large swath of South America had far less presence, far less power. All the same, it was an exaggeration to say that Bolívar had ruined Peru. Peru hadn’t existed before the revolution. Peru hadn’t lost land; it hadn’t owned land to begin with. As for the descendants of the Inca, Bolívar hadn’t singled them out especially. He had abolished all rank, outlawed Freemasons, secret societies, any semblance of legislated superiority. To him, indigenous nobility was just another form of oppression. In other words, Bolívar had changed all the rules in Peru. And Peru, once the most powerful nexus of the Spanish Metropolis—the most loyal of Spain’s colonies—never forgot it.

  The debunkers would be many—Argentines who preferred to glorify San Martín, Spaniards who felt obliged to defend the madre patria, Andeans who felt crimped by their borders, mercenaries who never got paid, even the vociferous Karl Marx, who called Bolívar “the dastardly, most miserable and meanest of blackguards.” But all that came later, By the time of the one-hundredth anniversary of Bolívar’s birth, the myth was in place, augmented with surprising flourishes. The intervening century had made Bolívar a good Catholic, a moral exemplar, an unwavering democrat—none of which he had been during his life. The story had less to do with the man than with a romantic ideal. He was our better angel, our prince valiant. Even the imperfections (the dozens of mistresses, the take-no-prisoners bravado, the penchant for dictatorship) were seen as natural parts of the persona, what every young man should aspire to be. As the writer José Martí so famously wrote of Bolívar in those centennial years: “Nothing is more beautiful than that craggy forehead, those cavernous eyes, that cape flapping against him on the back of a winged horse. . . . From son to son, for as long as America shall live, the echo of his name will resound in our manly hearts.”

  The echo certainly resounded in the manly heart of President Antonio Guzmán Blanco, who, like Páez half a century before, was trying to keep a firm grip on the Venezuelan nation. Guzmán had come to power in 1870, ruled flamboyantly for eighteen years, and presided over great growth as well as rampant corruption. He was far from anything like Bolívar. But he, too, knew the power of the image. Taking his cue from Páez, he had Bolívar’s remains exhumed and transported from the cathedral to the newly completed National Pantheon. He purchased Bolívar’s family home in Caracas, announced the publication of a thirty-two-volume history of the Liberator’s career, then presided bombastically over the centenary of Bolívar’s birth, memorializing no one so much as himself in the process. Bolívar, we can only imagine, would have been horrified at the spectacle of being preyed on so publicly by a man who embodied all that he despised: sycophancy, corruption, pomposity, Freemasonry, and a full-bore attack on the Church. But the scheme worked: Guzmán stayed in power for a staggering eighteen years, driving out one political opponent after another, until his anti-Catholic campaign backfired and he was cast out by an angry nation.

  One hundred years later, in 1982, following those predecessors’ examples, Hugo Chávez, an ambitious young captain in the Venezuelan army, established a leftist party he called the Bolívarian Revolutionary Movement. After a decade of secret machinations, he attempted a coup on the sitting government, was arrested and sentenced to prison. Nevertheless, he emerged to ride Bolívar’s legacy to the presidency in 1998. The following year, Chávez rewrote the constitution and renamed the country the Bolívarian Republic of Venezuela. He made televised speeches with Bolívar’s image behind him, had his followers chant, “Bolívar! Bolívar!” in the streets. Think of the irony in this: there is no George Washington party in the United States of America, no registered adherents of a founder, no declared enemies. There are no people who shout Napoleon’s name in the streets of Paris today. But in Latin America, Bolívar lives on as a galvanizing force, a lightning rod for political action.

  Bolívar had been aped by many pretenders in his mercurial afterlife, but never so bizarrely as by Chávez, a radical socialist, whose goals were a far cry from Bolívar’s. Once again, in a period of national instability—in 2010, the bicentenary year of the start of the revolution—Bolívar’s bones were exhumed. This time, President Chávez had them taken from his sarcophagus in the National Pantheon in what can only be described as a macabre freak show. Throughout, Chávez narrated, prayed, rhapsodized in what looked to anyone witnessing it like a highly stylized performance by astronauts in moon gear. Behind, above, everywhere on display was the flag of Venezuela. The purpose of this outlandish ballet was the same as it had been for two hundred years: to become one with the spirit of the Liberator, to bask in “the magic of his prestige.” But this time Chávez hoped to prove something more than brotherhood. He had Bolívar’s DNA tested in order to show that the Liberator had been poisoned by Colombian autocrats, landed gentry who couldn’t tolerate his “socialist” impulses—but the tests gave inconclusive results. In bolstering his own faded reputation, in lobbing a stiff accusation across the border, Chávez had played a very old hand. But he had also brought Bolívar full circle. Harassed to the end of his days by those who accused him of being too fond of dictatorial powers, Bolívar was now being touted by a military despot as the apotheosis of liberal thought.

  Certainly, it was not the first time the legend was twisted to preposterous ends; nor were Chávez, Guzmán, and Páez the only strongmen to try it. Countless dictators who came after independence tried to manipulate Bolívar’s image in some way in the process of burnishing their own. Bolívar purported to hate dictatorships—he claimed he had taken them on only for limited periods and as necessary expedients—but there is little doubt that he created the mythic creature that the Latin American dictator became.

  In centuries to come, dictators came in a multitude of varieties. B
ut the trajectory was always the same. Indeed, many of the most tyrannical and barbaric started out as liberals. South American history is replete with such men. As the Argentine writer Ernesto Sábato once said: “The most stubborn conservatism is that which is born of a triumphant revolution.” Bolívar had feared it would be so. He died convinced that a bloody-minded era would follow, and follow him it did. In Bolivia, a famously debauched dictator, fleeing retribution, was tracked down and killed by his mistress’s brother; in Ecuador, a deeply religious despot who had installed himself for a third term was butchered on the Cathedral steps in the full light of morning; in Quito, a liberal caudillo who tried to seize power too many times was thrown in prison, murdered, and dragged through the cobbled streets. There is a reason why blood trickles down roads and heads roll out from under bushes in Latin American literature: this is not magical realism. It is history. It is true.

  In many ways, the revolution is still afoot in Latin America. Although Bolívar’s name has been conjured by every -ism that succeeded him, his burning ideals seemed lost in the bedlam that ensued. Principles of the Enlightenment were cast aside as rich whites scrambled to appropriate the wealth and power the Spanish overlords had left behind. Equality, which Bolívar had insisted was the linchpin of justice, was quickly replaced by a virulent racism. The rule of law—indispensable to a free people—was abandoned as one dictator after another rewrote laws according to his caprices. Democracy, equality, fraternity: these were slow to come to South America. Unity, which might have made the continent a mighty force, was never realized. And yet Bolívar’s dream never would die.

  Perhaps that is because his life has always spoken so clearly to the Latin American people. Here is an all too imperfect man who, with sheer will, a keen mind, an ardent heart, and admirable disinterest carried a revolution to far corners of his continent. Here is a leader whom fate presented with one opportunity and a glut of insuperable hurdles. A general betrayed by his officers; a strategist who had no equals on whom he could rely; a head of state who oversaw nothing that resembled a vigorous, unified team of rivals. With a stamina that is arguably unmatched in history, he prosecuted a seemingly unwinnable war over the harshest of terrains to shuck the formidable banner of Pizarro. From Haiti to Potosí, there was little that stopped him. On he rode, into the void, fighting against unimaginable odds. Until he remade a world.

  Anonymous portrait of a young Bolívar made in Madrid, ca 1799. Bolívar’s wife, María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro carried this miniature until her death. (Colección Fundación John Boulton, Caracas)

  The wedding of Simón and María Teresa on May 24, 1802, in Madrid. He was 18; she was 21. She would die within a year. Tito Salas’s painting resides in the Casa Natal del Libertador, Caracas.

  Fanny, the countess Dervieu du Villars, with whom Bolívar had an intimate relationship from 1804 to 1806 when he was in Paris to recover from the death of his young wife. (Ministerio de Educación, Venezuela)

  Bolívar in his full regalia. Painting by Ricardo Acevedo Bernal. (Palacio Presidencial de San Carlos, Bogotá.)

  Francisco de Miranda, the “Precursor,” who boasted friendships with General Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson, Catherine the Great, but whose failed revolution gained him the ire of Bolívar and landed him in the dungeons of Cádiz, where he died. Detail from a painting by Arturo Michelena. (Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas)

  The Liberator’s “Admirable Campaign” was undertaken in 1813, when Bolívar marched to Caracas and installed the short-lived Second Republic, after liberating New Granada. (Comisión Para la Conmemoración del Bicentenario de la Independencia, Colombia)

  Manuel Piar, the general Bolívar had executed for trying to start a “race war” during the early days of the Third Republic. (Anonymous lithograph from Baralt’s Resumen, Vol. II, Bethencourt, 1887)

  The Battle of Araure, December 15, 1813, in which Bolívar defeated the superior forces of General Domingo Monteverde. (Painting by Tito Salas, Casa Natal del Libertador, Caracas)

  The peaks of the Andes in Colombia, over which Bolívar’s forces rode many times, most notably before the Battle of Boyacá in 1819. The defining Battle of Ayacucho, which ejected Spain from South America altogether, took place after another of Bolívar’s punishing crossings, this time over the Peruvian Andes. (© Terry Carr/Dreamstime.com)

  The fierce Spanish general Pablo Morillo, Bolívar’s nemesis, who negotiated a truce with him in June of 1820, slept in the same room with him after a long night of toasts, and became one of his most admiring correspondents. (Anonymous painter, courtesy Armada Española)

  General José Antonio Páez, the Lion of the Apure, who helped Bolívar win the Wars of Independence, but ultimately contributed to the Liberator’s demise and a rupture with Greater Colombia. Páez rose to the presidency of independent Venezuela three times between 1830 and 1863. (Library of Congress)

  General Francisco Santander, Vice President of Greater Colombia, who went from being Bolívar’s right-hand man to being his rival and, perhaps, the mastermind behind the attempt to assassinate him. After the rupture with Venezuela, Santander returned from exile to become president of Colombia. (Painting by Luis García Hevia, Museo Nacional, Bogotá)

  Bolívar and Santander at the Congress of Cúcuta, 1821, in which Greater Colombia was created from the newly independent regions of Venezuela and New Granada. The congress elected Bolívar and Santander president and vice-president, respectively. (Painting by Ricardo Acevedo Bernal, La Quinta Museo de Bolívar, Bogotá)

  Antonio José de Sucre, Bolívar’s “chosen son,” greatest general, and the first president of Bolivia, who was assassinated in the forests of the Andes as he rode home to his wife and baby in Quito in 1830. The assassination had a devastating effect on Bolívar. (Painting by Arturo Michelena, Colección Gobierno de Bolivia)

  Manuela Sáenz, “The Liberatrix of the Liberator,” Bolívar’s most enduring lover, who was also an accomplished horsewoman and colonel with the liberating army. Sáenz followed Bolívar from battlefield to palace as he liberated three nations. She saved his life more than once. (Painting resides in La Quinta Bolívar, Bogotá)

  José de San Martin, the Protector of Lima and liberator of Argentina. After his closed-door meeting with Bolívar in Guayaquil in 1822, he left Lima under the cover of night and relinquished the revolution in Peru to Bolívar. (Authorship disputed, Museo Historico Nacional, Buenos Aires)

  The Spanish general José Canterac signs his surrender to the patriot general Antonio de Sucre after the Battle of Ayacucho, liberating Peru and ending the Wars of Independence in South America. (Painting by Daniel Hernandez, Lima)

  The presidential palace in Bogotá, the site of the September 25, 1828, assassination attempt on Bolívar’s life. At Manuela Sáenz’s insistence, he leapt to safety from a window and left her to fend off his assailants. (Private photo collection)

  Bolívar died on a sugar plantation in Santa Marta, Colombia, too ill to board a ship and go into exile. (Painting by Antonio Herrera Toro, Colección Museo Bolivariano, Caracas)

  Acknowledgments

  Before I acknowledge the living, I must pay tribute to the dead: my ancestors, whose very frowns drove me to write this book.

  When I was an unruly child in Lima, Peru, I was made to atone for my misbehavior by sitting alone on a hard stool in my grandparents’ living room. It was an airless chamber, shuttered against the coast’s alternating sun and fog. There were musty books in shaky bookcases, an ornately carved piano, marble-topped tables, bronze busts of illustrious Romans, and five immense ancestral portraits that seemed to regard me with pointed reproach. Two of the likenesses were of my beloved grandparents peering down with what I never saw on their real faces—sharp looks of haughty surprise. But the other three were of earlier vintage, painted 125 years before I was born.

  One was of an imposing general named Joaquín Rubín de Celis, my great-great-great-grandfather, the first Spaniard to charge and the first to fall at the Battle of Ayac
ucho. His defeat won Peru its freedom. The wistful beauty who stared at him from the other wall was the daughter he never knew: Trinidad. She was born a few weeks after a rebel sword pierced his heart. At sixteen, Trinidad married a rebel general, my great-great-grandfather Pedro Cisneros Torres, who had rushed down the Andes with Bolívar’s forces on that crisp December day to fight against her father.

  After three hundred years of Spanish rule, with two of my ancestors battling each other in the dust of the cordillera, the yoke of colonialism was broken, the war of independence won. And so, although I had been instructed to sit in that room and ponder my wanton badness, I could only wonder at the glories of rebellion. A lifetime later, those faces are still with me. They hang in my study today. I only hope that I have done their history credit in this book about the man at the crucible of American possibility, Simón Bolívar.

  There is no shortage of books about Bolívar. In the Library of Congress alone there are 2,683 volumes. Most are in Spanish, many are in Bolívar’s words or written by his contemporaries; many more, unfortunately, tend to be filled with hagiography or vitriol. He was a controversial man. But I owe a large debt of gratitude to a number of writers and historians whose portraits animated me: Daniel Florencio O’Leary, José Manuel Restrepo, Vicente Lecuna, Gerhard Masur, Indalecio Liévano Aguirre, David Bushnell, John Lynch, and Gabriel García Márquez. I have benefited from the friendship of others who have written about Latin American history in general: among them, Mario Vargas Llosa, John Hemming, Larrie Ferreiro, the late Germán Arciniegas, Natalia Sobrevilla, Pamela Murray, Lawrence Clayton, and Lester Langley.