Bolivar: American Liberator
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she scandalized Lima society: Murray, For Glory and Bolívar, 40.
“more jealous than a Portuguese”: Ibid., 33–34; Sáenz to Thorne, Lecuna [n.p., n.d.] Archivo del Libertador, Caracas, 1961, roll 34; also Lecuna, “Papeles de Manuela Sáenz,” 501.
he swallowed his pride and begged, etc.: Boussingault, 208; Murray, For Glory and Bolívar, 33–34.
“No, no, no, hombre!”: Sáenz to Thorne, Lecuna, 501.
Even in a city where women: Murray, For Glory and Bolívar, 21.
“At times she behaved like a grand lady”: Boussingault, 205–11.
was infatuated with Manuela: Lecuna claims that Boussingault was “madly in love” with her. Lecuna, Catálogo, III, 219.
Bolívar didn’t much care: Boussingault, 208.
filled with tenderness: These are too many to cite, but see especially SB to Sáenz, La Plata, Nov. 26, 1824, O’LN, II, 376–77.
Far from spurring an era of creativity: I owe this insight to Colombian historian and diplomat (president of the United Nations General Assembly) Indalecio Liévano Aguirre, Bolívar, 351–52. See also O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 416.
Upper Peru: A counterintuitive geographic term. Although it suggests north, it is the opposite: it lay south of Peru as we know it, and north of Chile.
an astounding twenty-one miles a day: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 410.
a sight that seldom fails to move: Tristan, Peregrinations of a Pariah, 85. Tristan, mother of Paul Gauguin, whose parents were acquaintances of Bolívar’s, made a similar trip eight years later.
dissipate the moment he was gone: Madariaga, 508–9.
returned to South America after decades of exile: Simón Rodríguez arrived in Guayaquil in 1824, Rodríguez to SB, Guayaquil, O’L, IX, 511.
“The opus is finished”: San Martín to D. Vicente Chilavert, Brussels, Jan. 1, 1825, San Martín, San Martín, su correspondencia, 172.
gave Bolívar a welcome, etc.: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 415–17.
Gold and silver ornaments, etc.: Ibid., 417.
a fierce original, etc.: SB to Olmedo, Cuzco, June 27, 1825, SBO, III, 1121–23.
He was presented with a crown, etc.: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 418
he sent the crown to Sucre, etc.: Lecuna, Catálogo, III, 370–71. Sucre eventually gave the crown to the national museum of Colombia: Cuerpo de leyes de la República de Colombia, Jan. 30, 1826 (Caracas: Imprenta Espinal, 1840), 421.
eliminated all titles of nobility, etc.: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 418–22.
“I want to do all that is possible”: AV to Santander, Cuzco, June 28, 1825, SBO, III, 1125–27.
he ordered roads built, etc.: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 418–22.
something repellent about Peru: “The Venezuelans are saints in comparison. The people of Quito and Peru have this in common: They are vicious unto infamy and low to the extreme.” To be fair, this was written while he was still emerging from illness in Pativilca, but his antipathy to Peru is evident throughout his correspondence. SB to Santander, Pativilca, Jan. 9, 1824, O’L, XXIX, 376. See also the account in Paulding, Un rasgo, 58–59: “He condemned Peruvians in general: he called them cowards, claimed that as a people they had no manly virtues. In sum, he made no effort to mask his bitter disdain.”
at the hands of his own men, etc.: L. Lumbreras, Historia de América andina (Quito: Libresa, 1999), IV, 124 fn; also Morote, 164.
a fraction of his original force: Lecuna, Crónica, III, 497; see also O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 430.
and the old viceroyalty of Buenos Aires began: This was actually the viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, ruled out of Buenos Aires.
From Pichincha to Potosí: Larrazábal, Vida, II, 273.
Liberator was handed another crown: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 455.
“This belongs to the true victor”: Ibid.
to deliver the region to war-torn Argentina, etc.: SB to Santander, Feb. 18, 1825, SBO, II, 1047–49.
Bolívar soon disabused him: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 435–42.
laws that were clearly arbitrary and racist: Lynch, Simón Bolívar, 199.
delighted with the news: SB to Santander, La Paz, Aug. 19, 1825, SBO, III, 1169–70.
“If we wait any longer”: SB to the Governments of the Republic of Colombia, Mexico, the River Plate, Chile, and Guatemala, Lima, Dec. 7, 1824, SBO, II, 1016–18.
Bolívar noted a viral dread: SB to Santander, Lima, Feb. 18, 1825, SBO, II, 1047–49.
“We slip in between,” etc.: H. Temperley, “The Later American Policy of George Canning,” American History Review, XI, 781, quoted in Whitaker, 584.
toyed with the notion of taking his liberating army: SB to Santander, Potosí, Oct. 10, 1825, SBO, III, 1193–98.
“The demon of glory will carry us”: SB to Santander, La Paz, Sept. 8, 1825, SBO, III, 1179–80.
Sucre had cried like a baby: L. Diez de Medina, El Libertador en Bolivia (La Paz: Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, 1954), XXXIII, 49.
leapt in the air with joy: Ibid.
But when Santander wrote back: Santander to SB, Bogotá, Jan. 21, 1826, O’L, III, 235.
“The miserable state of our financial affairs”: Ibid.
“man of laws”: SB to Santander, Lima, Feb. 9, 1825, SBO, II, 1044–46.
an agitated letter from Páez: Páez to SB, Caracas, Oct. 1, 1825, SBO, III, 1292–94.
“You cannot imagine how ruinous”: Ibid.
brutal methods of recruitment: Gaceta de Colombia, Aug. 27, 1826, no. 254, “Parte no oficial,” 3 (1826–28), 358. Also Páez, Autobiografía, 288–92.
royalists in Havana were poised to attack: Ibid., 284.
as Napoleon had returned to France: Ibid.
“Colombia is not France”: SB to Páez, Magdalena, March 6, 1826, SBO, III, 1290–91.
“Tell them you will be Liberator”: María Antonia to SB, Caracas, Oct. 30, 1825, SB, Obras completas, II, 311–13.
Sucre told him the same thing: Sucre to SB, Chuquisaca, April 27, 1826, O’L, I, 314–17.
“If principles of liberty,” etc.: Reported in Rickets to Canning, Lima, April, 25, 1826, British National Archives, PRO/FO, 61–67, quoted in Lynch, Simón Bolívar, 202.
rendered the position headless and harmless: SB, Message to the Congress of Bolivia, Lima, May 25, 1826, SB, Selected Writings, II, 596–602.
“we shall avoid elections”: Ibid.
“Regular elections are essential”: SB, Address, Inauguration of the Congress of Angostura, Feb. 15, 1819, DOC, VII, 141ff.
“ark of the covenant”: SB to Sucre, Magdalena, May 12, 1826, SBO, III, 1328–32.
courier who had delivered Páez’s message: This was Antonio Leocadio Guzmán, a member of the Caracas Club, which together with Páez was campaigning to have SB crowned king. Bushnell, Simón Bolívar, 170–71.
“mischievous excess of popular power”: Rickets to Canning, Lima, May 30, 1826, British National Archives.
In South America, opinions were divided: O’LB, 315–16. (In O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 604–5.)
“liberal and popular, strong”: O’LB, 316.
“absurd, a dangerous novelty”: Monsalve, El ideal político, 54. For Santander’s duplicity in saying one thing to SB and another to his cohort in Bogotá, see Masur, Simón Bolívar, 616; and Rourke, 314.
he was assailing the constitution openly: La Gaceta de Colombia, Oct. 22, 1826; G. Hernández de Alba and F. Lozano y Lozano, Documentos sobre el Doctor Vicente Azuero (Bogotá, 1944), VI, 183. The piece was written by Azuero, but the printing was paid out of Santander’s pocket and it was considered to be essentially his views. Bushnell, The Santander Regime in Gran Colombia, 336.
not one patriot publicly objected: O’LB, 319.
it did so with great caution: Ibid.
“We need to take up the work of founding”: O’L, XXXI, 35.
“We will show
Europe”: Ibid.
Some have gone so far as to claim: Fabio Lozano, El maestro del Libertador (Paris: Ollendorff, 1914), 96; Gil Fortoul, 349; Jorge Vejarano, Simón Bolívar (Bogotá: Iqueima, 1951), 516; Victor Andrés Belaunde, “La constitución boliviana,” BANH, XI, no. 44, 377; Masur, Simón Bolívar, 561.
expressly forbidden his family: SB to María Antonia, Magdalena, July 10, 1826, SBO, I, 13.
averse to the quotidian business: SB to Santander, Magdalena, June 23, 1826, SBO, III, 1383–85.
yearned to be the father of a federation: SB to Santander, Chuquisaca, Nov. 11, 1825, SBO, III, 1236–39; and Plata, Nov. 26, 1825, ibid., 1246–47.
You rule Colombia, etc.: SB to Santander, Chuquisaca, ibid.
could not function as a single, integrated country: SB, “Letter from Jamaica,” Kingston, Sept. 6, 1815, SBSW, I, 103–22.
Spain had never encouraged camaraderie: The notion that the lack of relations between colonies was eventually lethal to the unity of South America is elaborated in Belaunde, Bolívar and the Political Thought, 163; and Basadre, Historia de la república del Perú, Introduction.
a grand fraternity, bound by common laws, etc.: SB, Un pensamiento sobre el congreso de Panama, Archivo del Libertador, Caracas, published by Lecuna in Jan. 1916 for the Second Pan-American Congress in Washington.
the Federation of the Andes: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 583–87.
Although each nation would remain a separate entity, etc.: SB to Sucre, Magdalena, May 12, 1826, SBO, III, 1328–32; also Bolívar to La Fuente, Magdalena, May 12, 1826, ibid., 1332–34.
That face would be embodied in a shared constitution, etc.: SB to La Fuente, Lima, June 17, 1826, O’L, XXXI, 228–30.
not to invite Haiti, Brazil, etc.: SB to Santander, Arequipa, June 6, 1825, SB, Cartas: Santander-Bolívar, IV, 388.
“There will come a time,” etc.: Count of Aranda to King Carlos III, quoted in Historia general de España y de sus Indias, VI (Habana: Librería de la Enciclopédia, 1863), 308. Aranda’s next sentence was almost prophetic: “First, she will grab the Floridas.”
Bolívar had decided not to attend: SB to Santander, Lima, June 28, 1825, SB, Obras, SBO, II, 1125–27.
“a horror of too early a union”: Official letter from the government of Argentina to Santander, quoted in Liévano, 408.
Some were ailing, others fearful, etc.: Briceño Méndez, Report on the Congress of Panama, Bogotá, Aug. 15, 1826, O’L, XXVIII, 572.
CHAPTER 15: ERA OF BLUNDERS
Epigraph: “We have arrived at an era of blunders”: Briceño Méndez to SB, on board the Macedonia, July 26, 1826, O’L, VIII, 208–13.
“The institution was admirable”: SB to Páez, Lima, Aug. 8, 1826, O’L, XXVIII, 665.
accusations flowed: One notable critic was a former officer of San Martín, Federico Brandsen, whose “To the Peruvian Nation” was printed in Lima (1825, JCBL) and distributed widely.
“but he is working with a randomness”: Anonymous, “Ensayo sobre la conducta de General Bolívar,” reprint of nos. 11, 13, and 14 of Duende de Buenos Aires (Santiago: Imprenta de la Independencia, 1826), published in Noticias del Perú, vol. 9, JCBL.
one writer fretted: Brandsen, “To the Peruvian Nation.”
people of Lima began to grumble openly: Restrepo, III, quoted in Madariaga, 521.
throw off the ruler’s mantle: In a broadside to all Peruvians, SB called it the “odious” mantle. Cuartel de Trujillo, March 11, 1824, SB, Discursos, 264.
“without so much as a grain of sand”: Ibid.
“I am a foreigner”: SB, speech before congress, Lima, Feb. 10, 1825, ibid., 112.
Bolívar approved the sentences: SB to Unanúe, Plata, Nov. 25, 1825, SBO, III, 1244–45.
“Sambo,” they called him: I know this from my own Peruvian grandparents, who heard it from older generations; but it is also mentioned in Madariaga, 16; also Hildebrandt, 234; and Gott, Húgo Chávez and the Bolívarian Revolution (London: Verso, 2005), 91.
“Viva Bolívar! Viva the Republic!”: Revista de Madrid, Segunda Serie, IV (Madrid: Imprenta de Vicente de Lalama, 1840), 12.
He begged Bolívar to return: Santander to SB, Bogotá, March 30, 1825, SB, Cartas de Bolívar: 1825–1827, 226.
He then went about giving away every gift: O’Leary, Bolívar y la emancipación, 610.
the jewel-encrusted gold sword: SB’s sword (“Espada del Perú”), which was eventually inherited by his sisters (Last Will and Testament, SBSW, II, 766–68), was appropriated by Hugo Chávez, taken from its display case in Caracas’s Banco Central, and removed to the government palace in Feb. 2010. El Comercio, Peru, June 5, 2010.
The one million dollars: Colección de leyes, decretos y ordenes publicadas en el Perú, 1820–1840, VII (Lima: Masías, 1845), Art. 8, Feb. 12, 1825, 486.
had never been produced: Solicitudes de los herederos del Libertador, DOC, X, 231.
the liberator to whom Peru would pay a life pension: San Martín’s regular pension (15,000 pesos) appears in Peruvian government documents, some of which were regularly published in the Gaceta del Gobierno: Gaceta, II, nos. 7–6 (Jan. 24, 1825), 29. The pension was passed into law by the Peruvian congress on Feb. 12, 1825 (the same day one million pesos was offered to SB and rejected), and is clearly referred to in Juan Oviedo, ed., Colección de leyes, decretos y ordenes, 16 (Lima: Ministerio de Hacienda y Comercio, 1872), 352. Ironically, Peru and Chile paid San Martín pensions; Argentina, his homeland, did not.
if he could get those two republics to unite: SB to Santander, Lima, Aug. 17, 1826, SB, Cartas: Santander–Bolívar, VI, 19.
As he had said many times: SB to Santander, Lima, Feb. 9, 1825; Ocaña, May 8, 1825; Cuzco, July 10, 1825; La Paz, Sept. 8, 1825; Potosí, Oct. 27, 1825; all in SB, Cartas: Santander–Bolívar, IV, V.
He was prepared to leave them to Santander: SB to Santander, Potosí, Oct. 27, 1825, ibid.
She had long since moved out: William Tudor to U.S. Secretary of State Henry Clay, Lima, March 23, 1827, Dispatches from U.S. consuls in Lima, 1823–54; referred to in Murray, For Glory and Bolívar, 41, 173.
famously uninhibited Jonatás: Boussingault, 215–16.
Bolívar thought it best to end the affair: SB to Sáenz, Ica, April 20, 1825, SBO, III, 1089–90.
It is possible, too, that Thorne persuaded him: Murray, For Glory and Bolívar, 40.
“Dear beautiful and good Manuela”: SB to Sáenz, April 20, 1825, SBO, III, 1089–90.
“the ill-treatment”: SB to Sáenz, Potosí, Oct. 13, 1825, ibid., 1204.
“What you say about your husband”: SB to Sáenz, Plata, Nov. 26 [1825], ibid., 1246.
“how to cut a knot”: The reference is obviously to the Gordian knot, which was said to be too intricate to untie. Alexander the Great cut it with his sword.
doe-eyed American Jeannette Hart: From Family Histories (a genealogy of several Connecticut families, including the MacCurdys and Harts), 3 vols. (privately published by E. E. Salisbury, 1892), 13. Housed at Cornell University Library.
who had visited Lima with Hull: Long, Gold Braid and Foreign Relations, 83–84.
Bolívar proposed marriage to the brunette beauty: M. C. Holman, “The Romance of a Saybrook Mansion,” Connecticut Magazine, 10 (Hartford, 1906), 50–51; also Family Histories.
chosen to place a crown of laurel: C. Matto de Turner, Bocetos al lápiz de americanos celebres, I (Lima: Bacigalupi, 1890), 146.
“He gave me many honors”: Sucre, quoting Gamarra, to SB, Guayaquil, Sept. 18, 1828, quoted in Liévano Aguirre, 380; also C. Hispano, Historia secreta de Bolívar (Medellín: Bedout, 1977), 185; and Ramón Urdaneta, Los amores de Simón Bolívar, 137.
Doña Pancha or “the Marshalette,” etc.: La Mariscala. According to Flora Tristan, she had accompanied Gamarra in battle since 1823: Tristan, Peregrinations, 290–96; also Matto de Turner, Bocetos al lápiz, 143–47. Matto de Turner cites her participation in combat especially in Bolivia in 1828, after Sucre’s departure.
“She had a long, slightly turned-up nose”: Ibid., 293–94.
“exploit situations as the need arose”: Francisca Gamarra, quoted ibid., 295.
María Joaquina Costas: Her face was preserved for all time in a portrait by José Gil de Castro, an Afro-Peruvian artist of great renown who painted Bolívar, San Martín, Bernardo O’Higgins, and many other figures of the day. The painting of Costas (1817) hangs in the Museo Nacional de Bolivia, in La Paz.
warned him of a royalist plot, etc.: Diez de Medina, 47.
entered into an ardent affair: Cacua Prada, Los hijos secretos de Bolívar, 251–53; also Ramón Urdaneta, Los amores de Simón Bolívar, 137.
José Antonio Costas, would die claiming: H. Muñoz, “Los hijos del Libertador,” El Espectador, Bogotá, May 31, 2008. According to this and other sources, Costas died in Caiza at the age of sixty-nine in 1895.
he was hardly sterile: Perú de Lacroix, 96. See also A. Costa de la Torre, Descendencia de los libertadores Bolívar y Sucre en Bolivia (La Paz: Tamayo, 1982), 35, 67, 249. José Antonio is mentioned, too, in Lynch, Simón Bolívar, 201.
danced with them in her presence: A. Maya, Jeannette Hart: La novia norteamericana de Simón Bolívar (Caracas, 1974), 28–35; also in La mujer en la vida del libertador (Ed. conmemorativa del sesquicentenario, Cooperativa Nacional, 1980), 191.
“Wait for me at all costs”: SB to Sáenz, Lima, [April 6] 1826, SBO, III, 1313.
she had earned the respect of, etc.: Palma, Tradiciones peruanas completas, 1133.
“generous in the extreme,” etc.: Tudor to Clay, Lima, March 23, 1827, Dispatches from U.S. consuls in Lima, microfilm roll 1, quoted in Murray, For Glory and Bolívar, p. 49.
“the most zealous humanity,” etc.: Ibid.
the insurrection had been concocted in Bogotá: Sucre to O’Connor, Feb. 22, 1827, quoted in O’Connor, 166; also Sucre to SB, La Paz, March 11, 1827, O’L, I, 422–25; Lecuna, Catálogo, III, 206–16; Ricketts to Canning, Lima, Feb. 8, 1827, PRO/FO 61/11 ff 65–85, quoted in Murray, For Glory and Bolívar, 45.