Bolivar: American Liberator

by Arana, Marie

he gave a fancy ball: Hamilton, 232.

  “My good and brave colonel”: Ibid.

  lost all his shirts in battle: Hippisley, 443.

  “Well, why don’t you go?”: Hamilton, 232.

  many of his cohort had died: Manuel B. Alvarez, the uncle of Nariño, and, for a time, his successor in Cundinamarca, was also drawn and quartered on that square.

  As one historian put it: Masur, Simón Bolívar, 384.

  “A weak man requires a long fight,” etc.: SB to the editor of Royal Gazette.

  an ebony-haired Venus, etc.: Charles Stuart Lord Cochrane, quoted in Mario Javier Pacheco García, El fin del imperio latinoamericano (Bogotá: Gobernación de Norte de Santander, 2008), 238.

  one of the great infatuations: Bushnell, Simón Bolívar, 110.

  “No doubt this marriage”: SB to Santander, Pamplona, Nov. 8, 1819, SBO, I, 401–2.

  the source of much gossip: Lynch, Simón Bolívar, 130.

  “I hope you will look after”: SB to Zea, Bogotá, Aug. 13, 1819, SB, Escritos, XVI, 213.

  Within the course of a few weeks, etc.: SB, Oficio, Sept. 14, 1819, ibid., 267; Decreto, Sept. 15, 1819, ibid., 270; Resoluciones, Sept. 15–16, 1819, ibid., 274. Also Lecuna, Crónica, II, 352–55.

  instituted a fund for war widows: This was with his own salary, DOC, XIV, 514.

  an exchange of prisoners: Lecuna, Crónica, II, 354.

  “the Adonis of Bogotá”: J. M. Henao, Historia de Colombia (Bogotá: Bernardus, 1910), 358 fn.

  sheer torment for him: Masur, Simón Bolívar, 392.

  a man of the law: SB to Santander, Lima, Feb. 9, 1825, SBO, II, 1044–46.

  in love with money: Santander’s will, Boletín de la Historia y Antiguedades, IV, 1907, 161.

  always been a mediocre soldier: Rafael Urdaneta, Memorias, 103.

  But on October 11, etc.: O’LB, 166, for all subsequent details of this event.

  engaged to be married, etc.: Slatta and Lucas de Grummond, 196.

  Republican authorities tried to dissociate: O’LB, 166.

  “In the end, I had to get rid”: Santander, in El reportorio colombiano, VI (Bogotá: Librería Americana y Española), 229.

  “The records have been doctored”: Ibid.

  “I have learned with great regret”: O’L, XVI, 515.

  always carried a printing press, etc.: Larrazábal, Vida, I, 432.

  accompanied by a jubilant ball, etc.: Perú de Lacroix, I, 19.

  “There are men”: Ibid.

  Bolívar was devastated: O’LB, 169; also Lecuna, Crónica, II, 360.

  sorely missed her affections: SB to Zea, Bogotá, Aug. 13, 1819.

  the intelligence he was receiving: Lecuna, Crónica, II, 366–69.

  the political bedlam: SB to Santander, Soatá, Nov. 14, 1819, SBO, I, 403–5.

  Mariño had disregarded orders: Arismendi to SB, Angostura, Sept. 16, 1819, O’L, XI, 390–91.

  Worst of all, Arismendi: O’LB, 170.

  fallen victim to running gossip: Larrazábal, Vida, I, 600.

  he was forced to step down: O’LB, 170.

  His first official act: Larrazábal, Vida, I, 602.

  Arismendi was gone, on a tour, etc.: O’LB, 171.

  declared the Bolívarian era finished: A congressman: “Whether or not Bolívar was defeated, as has been reported, we should prepare to move on without him and without his tutelage.” Larrazábal, Vida, I, 601.

  arduous sixty-four-day voyage: Azpurúa, I, 223–27.

  thought the pealing bells, salvos, etc.: O’LB, 171.

  “Long live Bolívar!,” etc.: Ibid.

  congratulated the vice president heartily: Vowell, 121.

  “As soon as those two met,” etc.: Recollections of a Service, 4, 38, 41, 43.

  a goal, he said, he had set almost a decade before: SB, Proclamas y discursos, 244–45.

  elected president and vice president, etc.: Lecuna, Crónica, II, 372–73.

  asked King Ferdinand for twenty thousand soldiers, etc.: Liévano Aguirre, 229.

  drive “all his pirates”: Morillo to the Ministerio de Guerra, Valencia, Sept. 12, 1819, Rodríguez-Villa, III, 50.

  “They’ve gone crazy!”: Morillo to his officers, in Liévano Aguirre, 230.

  “have dashed this army’s”: Morillo to the Ministerio de Guerra, Valencia, April, 29, 1820, Rodríguez Villa, IV, 170.

  Morillo was forced to publish: Constitution of Cádiz, proclaimed in Caracas on June 6 and 7, 1820, Gaceta de Caracas, Ediciones 308, 309, JCBL.

  not to touch, much less appropriate: Ibid.

  Bolívar despaired at their failure, etc.: SB to Santander, June 1, 1820, Carrera Damas, Simón Bolívar Fundamental, I (Caracas: Monte Avila, 1993), 170.

  “The more I think about it”: Ibid.

  made it clear that the black slaves: SB to Santander, San Cristóbal, April 20, SBO, I, 426.

  almost half the white population: Morillo reported to Spain’s Ministry of War, “The whites have disappeared from Venezuela”: Blanco-Fombona, Bolívar y la guerra a muerte, 199. Also J. F. King, HAHR, 23 (Nov. 4, 1953), 535. Also “Memorial presentado al rey en Madrid por el Pbro. Doctor don José Ambrosio Llamozas,” BOLANH, 18 (1935), 168.

  “any free government that commits”: SB to Santander, San Cristóbal, April 20, SBO, I, 42.

  “A leader needs to learn”: SB to Páez, San Cristóbal, April 19, 1820, SB, Escritos, XVII, 223.

  From the relative quiet of Cúcuta: O’LB, 176.

  pleading letters, etc.: Arciniegas, Las mujeres y las horas, 87.

  To his delight: SB to Santander, Cúcuta, June 10, 1820, SBO, I, 453.

  “Tell her whatever she needs to hear”: SB to Santander, Cúcuta, Aug. 1, 1820, ibid., 490.

  He had heard nothing: SB to Domingo Ascanio, San Cristóbal, May 25, 1820, ibid., 442.

  to write to the king: Archivo Nacional, Habana, Asuntos políticos, nos. 17, 5 and 18, 2, quoted in Madariaga, 400. Also M. Garrito, Historia Crítica, no. 31 (Jan.–June 2006), 205–6.

  “absolute ruin”: María Antonia to Ferdinand VII, Habana, Feb. 14, 1819, in Madariaga, 400.

  when Juana had sailed: Ibid.

  much loved José Palacios, etc.: M. L. Scarpetta, “José María Palacios Antunes,” in S. Vergara, ed., Diccionario biográfico de los campeones de la libertad (Bogotá, 1870), 431.

  “I have yet to see Bernardina”: Santander to SB, Bogotá, Aug. 12, 1820, SB, Cartas: Santander–Bolívar, II, 322: 271.

  a rich man’s illegitimate child: Bernardina had a daughter by Miguel Saturnino Uribe, an influential millionaire, who, it was said, fathered many. “Las Ibañez somos así,” Revista semana, Bogotá, May 22, 1989. Two more sources on the Ibañez sisters: López Michelsen, Alfonso, Esbozas y Atisbos (appendix) (Buenos Aires: Avellaneda, 1980), and Jaime Duarte French’s Las Ibañez (Bogotá: El Ancora, 1987).

  bitter hatred against the Liberator: Madariaga, 357; also Polanco Alcántara, 982–83, 988–89.

  newly arrived British troops: SB to Santander, Cúcuta, June 22, 1820, SBO, I, 460.

  “The Irish are like courtesans”: SB to Montilla, Cúcuta, July 21, 1820, ibid. 479.

  Precious livestock: SB to Santander, ibid., 461.

  “diabolical mix of ineptitude”: Ibid.

  the recruits, guns, bullets, etc.: SB to Santander, Cúcuta, June 25, 1820, ibid., 462–63.

  the slowness of the mails: SB to Soublette, Cúcuta, June 19, 1820, ibid., 455–57.

  putting soldiers closer to Caracas: SB to Santander, Cúcuta, May 19, 1820, ibid., 437–38.

  his talented young officers: SB to Santander, June 25, 1820, ibid.

  Antonio José de Sucre: O’LB, 188. O’Leary writes: “On seeing him, I, who did not know him, asked the Liberator who the poor horseman approaching us was. ‘He is one of the best officers in the army,’ he replied. ‘I am determined to bring him out of obscurity, for I am convinced that some day he will rival me.’ ”

  routine was Spartan, etc.: O’LB, 176–77, for subsequent details about
the order of his days.

  30,000 pesos a month: SB to Santander, San Cristóbal, April 14, 1820, SBO, I, 424.

  “squeeze” the provinces: Ibid.

  an excited letter to Soublette: SB to Soublette, Cúcuta, June 19, 1820, ibid., 455–57.

  “Ten thousand enemies”: SB to W. White, San Cristóbal, May 1, 1820, ibid., 430.

  written to him at numerous addresses: SB to M. de La Torre, San Cristóbal, July 7, 1820, ibid., 468; also SB to Morrillo, Carache, Nov. 3, 1820, ibid., 506.

  “If the object of your mission”: Ibid.

  Morillo had married: Rodríguez Villa, 45.

  had never recovered: A. Révesz, Milicia de España. Teniente general don Pablo Morillo (Madrid: Editorial Gran Capitán, 1947).

  a remarkably cordial correspondence: SB to Morillo: Trujillo, Oct. 26; Carache, Nov. 3 (two); Trujillo, Nov. 13; Mocoy, Nov. 16; Trujillo, Nov. 17; Trujillo, Nov. 20, 1820; SBO, I, 503–12.

  A conference was arranged: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, XVIII, 38–43.

  Bolívar rode a strong mule, etc.: Ibid.

  “I thought my escort too small”: Ibid.

  “What? That little man”: Ibid.

  “To the victories of Boyacá!” etc.: All subsequent toasts can be found ibid.

  “Defend the fortress of Puerto Cabello”: Quoted in Líevano Aguirre, 238.

  even Spain had had to censure: Adelman, 276–77.

  “During the entire course”: Perú de Lacroix, 121–23.

  Thousands of mercenaries, etc.: See especially Celia Wu’s fascinating Generals and Diplomats: Great Britain and Peru. Wu claims that 3,000 British, Irish, and German soldiers volunteered for SB’s army. Others put that figure as high as 7,000–8,000 (Rourke, 213–14).

  singing “Ye Gentlemen of England”: Trend, 127.

  the true Liberator had been: Pi Sunyer, Carlos, Patriotas americanos en Londres (Caracas: Monte Avila, 1978), 242.

  one young English colonel: Chesterton, Narrative of Proceedings in Venezuela.

  “as black and barbarous,” etc.: Ibid., vi, 7–8, 20–22.

  “Venezuela, though it has emancipated”: Adams to A. H. Everett, Dec. 29, 1817, The Writings of John Quincy Adams, VI (New York: Macmillan, 1916), 282.

  “Unity, unity, unity”: SB, “The Jamaica Letter,” Kingston, Sept. 6, 1815, El Libertador: Writings of Simón Bolívar, 48.

  He admitted that he distrusted: “I feel distrust of everything proposed and desired by these South American gentlemen”: John Quincy Adams, Writings, VI, 51.

  “There is no community of interests”: Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, notes for Sept. 19, 1820, V (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1875), 176.

  the slave trade was booming: Wood, 3.

  Perry had made the harsh, etc.: D. F. Long, Gold Braid and Foreign Relations: Diplomatic Activities of U.S. Naval Officers (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute, 1988), 59.

  Perry had landed on the very day: J. N. Hambleton, Journal of the Voyage of the USS “Nonsuch” up the Orinoco, July 11–August 23, 1819, in J. F. Vivian, “The Orinoco River and Angostura, Venezuela, in the Summer of 1819,” Americas, 24, no. 2 (Oct. 1967), 160–83.

  sure signs of yellow fever: Ibid.

  “a charlatan general”: Hanke, “Baptis Irvine’s Reports on Simón Bolívar,” 360–73.

  “He affects the language”: Ibid.

  “Without a ray of true”: Ibid.

  a dinner given in Irvine’s honor: Rourke, 234–35.

  “Thus, . . . as I cross this table”: Ibid.

  Samuel D. Forsyth, etc.: Hambleton, p. 182 fn.; also John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, 49–50.

  “eighteen million, struggling to be free!”: Clay, May 24, 1818, quoted in Randolph Adams, History of the Foreign Policy of the United States, 171.

  Clay argued passionately: Annals of Congress, 15th Congress, 1st Session, II, no. 1485, quoted ibid.

  Clay moved that the House of Representatives: Motion “that the House of Representatives participates with the people of the United States in the deep interest which they feel for the success of the Spanish provinces of South America, which are struggling for their liberty and independence”: report by the Committee of Foreign Affairs, in E. McPherson, The Political History of the United States During the Great Rebellion (Washington, DC: Chapman, 1882), 351.

  fight for a maximum of three years, etc.: L. Duarte-Level, in Unamuno, 132.

  He was haunted by the fear: SB to Guillermo White, Barinas, May 6, 1821, SBO, II, 560.

  “Colombia will be independent”: SB to José Revenga and José Echeverría, quoted in Robertson, Rise of the Spanish-American Republics, 244.

  an agenda for renewed war: SB to Santander, Trujillo, Dec. 1, 1820, SBO, I, 520–22.

  written to Morillo, to La Torre, even to King Ferdinand: SB to Morillo, Barinas, Dec. 11, 1820, and Bogotá, Jan. 26, 1821; SB to La Torre, Bogotá, Jan. 25, 1821; SB to Fernando VII, Bogotá, Jan. 24, 1821, SBO, I, 510–32.

  planned every detail: Duarte-Level, in Unamuno, 146.

  Morales . . . had been passed over: From an unnamed British officer’s account of the Battle of Carabobo, quoted in Charles Dickens’s magazine, All the Year Round, XIX, March 28, 1868 (London: Chapman, 1868), 368. The account also appears in Mulhall, Explorers in the New World, 232ff.

  The royalist army, aware now: Lecuna, Crónica, III, 35.

  La Torre’s forces were clearly in shambles: Ibid., 34.

  “the largest and most superb”: SB to Santander, Valencia, June 25, 1821, SBO, II, 571.

  the heavens opened with torrential rains, etc.: Dickens, 369.

  Páez’s cavalry was dispatched: For a good overall description of the battle, see Duarte-Level’s essay in Unamuno’s Simón Bolívar.

  laboring under a broiling sun: Prago, 204.

  they scaled the heights, etc.: Lecuna, Crónica, III, 47–48.

  “hollow square” formation: Prago, 205. A tight square or rectangular formation of 500 men in two to four rows, armed with muskets, rifles, or fixed bayonets: essentially a defensive tactic used against a charging enemy. Soldiers in the “hollow square” would withhold fire until chargers were 100 feet away, at which point they would mow down their attackers, creating piles of bodies that served as obstructions to further attacks.

  more than a thousand royalists lay dead, etc.: Lecuna, Crónica, III, 52.

  six hundred British soldiers lost their lives: Mulhall, 232.

  “My general, I die happy”: Mosquera, 420; also Lecuna, Crónica, III, 51.

  one of his violent fits of epilepsy: Lecuna, Crónica, III, 50.

  Nearby lay the towering First Negro: Mijares, 396.

  “Saviors of my country!,” etc.: Mulhall, 232.

  he was institutionalizing the Latin American warlord: Lynch, Simón Bolívar, 142.

  CHAPTER 11: THE CHOSEN SON

  Epigraph: “I am not the governor this republic needs,” etc.: SB to the secretary of state, Cúcuta, April 8, 1813, SBO, I, 53–55.

  “I am a soldier”: Ibid.

  he reached the city at night: Masur, Simón Bolívar, 434.

  he questioned his patience: O’LN, I, 578.

  written to confess these fears: SB to Nariño, Barinas, April 21, 1821, SBSW, I, 64–65.

  Colombia was a military camp: Ibid.

  all the good men had disappeared: SB to F. Peñalver, Valencia, July 10, 1821, SBO, II, 577–78.

  “Since I am fully convinced”: SB to Nariño.

  not ready for democracy, etc.: SB to Santander, San Carlos, June 13, 1821, SBSW, I, 267–68.

  as feral and rapacious: SB to P. Gual, Guanare, May 24, 1821, SBO, II, 563–64.

  “Even I, riding at their head”: Ibid.

  “We are poised on an abyss”: Ibid.

  governable only by a strong hand: SB to Santander.

  “In Colombia the people”: Ibid.

  begun to question the wisdom, etc.: Polanco Alcántara, 610–25.

  his finances were in disorder, etc.: Lynch, S
imón Bolívar, 141.

  he freed the few slaves: O’LB, 196.

  Among them was his old wet nurse, Hipólita: “Hipólita Bolívar,” in Diccionario de historia de Venezuela, I (Caracas: Editorial Ex Libris, 1992).

  “the only father I have ever known”: SB to María Antonia, July 10, 1825, SBC, 1823–1824–1825, 339.

  He was antsy, nervous: O’LB, 197; also SB to Santander, Valencia, July 10, 1821, SBO, II, 576–77. O’Leary describes him as “suffering indescribable torment” from political enemies. In SB’s July 10 letter to Santander, he admits that he is sick and tired, and that his life is far too frenetic. Polanco Alcántara (610) mentions that a long exhaustion had taken SB sometime before. SB mentions this in a May 7, 1820, letter to Santander, in which he says, “I was very sick in San Cristóbal and so came here [to Cúcuta] to recover. I still don’t know what I had but I know very well that I’m still a wreck, with a strong propensity to sleep all the time or to want to rest, which for me represents a serious illness.” SBO, I, 432–34.

  “I need to round out Colombia”: SB to Castillo Rada, Trujillo, Aug. 24, 1821, SBO, II, 588.

  “I need to give a third sister”: SB to Santander, Tocuyo, Aug. 16, 1821, SBO, II, 582.

  “Send me that book”: SB to Santander, Cúcuta, June 1, 1820, SBO, I, 451. SB asks him to have his friend Pepe París send him a copy of “Los Incas del Peru,” by which he very well could have meant Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s magisterial book, Comentarios Reales de los Incas. Inca Garcilaso was the son of a conquistador and an Inca princess; his record of Inca customs and traditions was the first work ever written by an American. The Spanish king forbade its publication or circulation in 1780, after Túpac Amaru II’s rebellion in Peru. San Martín had also read the book (and carried it with him) before his liberating army entered Lima in 1821.

  having joked that if elected: SB to L. E. Azuola, Trujillo, March 9, 1821, SBO, II, 547–48.

  I am a son of war: Address to the president of the General Congress of Colombia, Cúcuta, October 1, 1821, DOC, VII, 122, quoted in SBSW, I, 285.

  scattering a force of ten thousand: Paz Soldán, Historia del Perú, II, 435. The exact number quoted in the army document is 9,530.

  his skin was so dark, etc.: María Joaquina de Alvear, granddaughter of the Spanish brigadier Diego de Alvear, left a journal (Jan. 23, 1877) in which she claimed that San Martín was the illegitimate son of her grandfather and an indigenous woman—San Martín’s wet nurse, Rosa Guarú. The journal says, furthermore, that the Alvear family offered the child to be adopted into the San Martín family. Indeed, throughout his childhood and youth, San Martín was close to the Alvear family and founded the Lautaro Lodge with Carlos Alvear, who, according to María Joaquina, was his half brother. Complicating the proof of his origins, his birth date is inconsistent in military records, a record of baptism was never found, and his father, Juan de San Martín, is said to have been away from home for the entire year that preceded San Martín’s presumed February birth. None of this has been proven beyond Joaquina de Alvear’s words and subsequent arguments made by Argentine historian Hugo Chumbita, who has written copiously on the matter. See Chumbita, El manuscrito de Joaquina: San Martín y el secreto de la familia Alvear (Buenos Aires: Catálogos, 2007); also Chumbita, El secreto de Yapeyú (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2001). Mary Graham, the widow of a British naval captain, also wrote about San Martín’s presumed “mixed breed” background in an 1823 fragment published in De Don José de San Martín (Santiago: Editorial Barros Browne, 2000). Madariaga claims San Martín’s mother was a half-caste, and that as a result he bore a “mestizo resentment” (Madariaga, 425). Mitre says his birth predisposed him to be “an enemy of the race” of Spaniards (Mitre, Historia de San Martín, III, 193, 218, 225). The inherent prejudice in both cases speaks for itself.