by John Lynch
Chapter 5
TOUCHSTONE OF THE REVOLUTION
The Jamaica Letter
In 1814 Ferdinand VII, returned to Spain, restored absolute government and began to punish liberals. In America his policy was equally bereft of ideas and deaf to pacification. Here restoration meant reconquest and the revival of the colonial state. On 16 February 1815 an expeditionary force sailed from Cadiz under the command of General Pablo Morillo, a rough professional soldier, veteran of the peninsular war, who ruled by order and discipline. The original destination, the Río de la Plata, was changed in favour of Venezuela, the focal point of revolution and counter–revolution, from which New Granada could be reconquered, Peru reinforced and the way opened to the Río de la Plata and Chile. In three centuries this was the largest expedition Spain had sent to America – forty–two transports, five escorting warships and over ten thousand troops, followed by annual reinforcements.1 But size exceeded morale, and once in America numbers were soon reduced by death and desertion. The Spanish troops were conscripts, not volunteers. Colonial war was not a popular cause in Spain, and neither troops nor officers wished to risk their lives in America, least of all in Venezuela, where the environment and the fighting were notoriously cruel.2
They were soon in action and in the beginning numbers and professionalism prevailed. In April Morillo occupied Margarita before proceeding to the mainland. In May he entered Caracas, ‘to forgive, to reward and to punish’. And in July he moved on to New Granada where, in a brisk and uncompromising campaign, he completed the reconquest by October 1816. Santa Fe de Bogotá was subjected to an unprecedented reign of terror and the patriot elite wiped out in an orgy of hanging, decapitation and shooting, cynically described as ‘pacification’, while peasants were herded into labour gangs to turn the colony into a supply base for Morillo’s army. The year 1816 was the blackest year of the American revolution, the year of the gallows in New Granada and of reaction and retribution throughout the subcontinent.
The Spanish king spoke piously of mercy and reconciliation. But there had been too much carnage; creoles had lost lives and property; the pardos had advanced. The clock could not be put back, and the counter–revolution imposed itself as a violent reconquest. Morillo needed money and supplies. In 1815 he proceeded rapidly and without due process of law with the confiscation and sale of rebel property, rebels being defined widely enough to include leaders, supporters, passive followers and emigrants. In Venezuela the Junta de Secuestros sold almost 1 million pesos worth of property in 1815–16 for the royal treasury. Over two hundred haciendas were confiscated, most of them in the coast and mountain valleys of the north, the property of a small elite comprising 145 individuals, among them the Tovars, Blancos, Toros, Machados and Palacios. Bolívar himself lost five estates and other properties valued at 80,000 pesos, the largest single confiscation made by the royalists, indicative of his total wealth of some 200,000 pesos and his position as one of the richest men in Venezuela.3 This was not the way to reconcile the Venezuelan elite. Here as elsewhere counter–revolution proved counterproductive.
As news of these events unfolded with dreaded familiarity, Bolívar revised his first plan, which had been to proceed from Jamaica to England ‘in search of help’.4 Spanish action on the mainland demanded proximity to events. His reaction was unfailing: first intellectual analysis, then preparations to strike back. His celebrated ‘Answer of a South American to a Gentleman of this Island’, usually known in Spanish as Carta de Jamaica, was dated from Kingston on 6 September 1815, and addressed to Mr Henry Cullen, a friend and admirer, of Falmouth on the north coast of Jamaica, and implicitly to the wider English–speaking world.5 A requiem to past failure and a celebration of future prospects, Bolívar’s eloquence raises the Spanish American revolution to the heights of world history and his own role to its intellectual as well as its political leadership.
Bolívar was not the first statesman to construct a theory of colonial emancipation. In North America Richard Bland, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, the declarations of the Continental Congress, and the Declaration of Independence itself had all made crucial contributions to the colonial debate. But Bolívar was convinced that the North American experience was different to that of his own people and could never be their model. He had to design his own theory of national liberation, and this was a contribution to the ideas of the Enlightenment, not an imitation. Here the Liberator is seen striving to achieve a total vision of America, beyond Venezuela and New Granada.
Yet the Jamaica Letter was an exercise in applied liberalism rather than a theoretical discourse, though it contains certain political and moral assumptions: that people have natural rights; that they have a right to resist oppression; that nationalism has its own imperatives; that deprivation of office and economic opportunity justifies rebellion. He began by arguing that the unjust policy and oppressive practice of Spain had severed its ties with America and authorized the sixteen million Americans to defend their rights, the more so when counter–revolution increased the oppression. These rights were natural rights, granted by God and nature. True, ‘a principle of loyalty’ had bound Americans to Spain, seen in the enduring habit of obedience, community of interest, understanding, religion, goodwill and, on the part of Americans, a regard for the birthplace of their forbears. But all these bonds were broken, as affinity changed to alienation and the elements of community turned into their opposites and became – though Bolívar did not use the word – signs of incipient nationalism. And there were problems of identity. Americans by birth, they were neither Indian nor European, but in an ambiguous position between usurped and usurpers. Under Spanish rule their political role was purely passive: ‘America was denied not only its freedom but even an active and dominant tyranny.’ Most despotic rulers, he argued, had at least an organized system of oppression in which subordinate agents participated at various levels of administration. But under Spanish absolutism Americans were not allowed to exercise any functions of government or even of internal administration. Thus, he concluded, they were not only deprived of their rights but kept in a state of political infancy.
Bolívar gave significant examples of inequality and discrimination, arguing that Spain deprived Americans of economic opportunity and public office, reducing them to a source of labour and a consumer market. They were not allowed to compete with Spain and supply themselves, either in agricultural products or manufactured goods. They were allowed to be no more than producers of raw materials and precious metals, and the export even of these was controlled by the Spanish trading monopoly. Moreover, he added, this applied today, ‘and perhaps to a greater extent than ever before’, an observation confirmed by modern research, which shows that comercio libre (freedom of trade) was intended to expand Spanish colonial trade and channel it more effectively through the peninsular monopolists. The new imperialism of the Bourbons also sought to restore Spanish domination over appointments. Bolívar states that Americans were barred from senior offices and prevented from acquiring any experience in government and administration. ‘We were never viceroys or governors, save in exceptional circumstances; seldom archbishops and bishops; diplomats never; as soldiers only subordinates; nobles, without real privileges. In brief, we were neither magistrates nor financiers and seldom merchants.’ Modern research concludes that Americans had ample access to public office (mainly through purchase) in an earlier period of colonial history (1650–1750) but were then restricted in a ‘spanish reaction’ which Bolívar himself lived through.6 Bolívar went further. He maintained that Americans possessed ‘constitutional rights’ to public offices, deriving from a pact between Charles V and the conquerors and settlers, whereby in return for their own enterprise and risks they received lordship over land and administration. As history the idea is questionable, but there is a contractual concept embedded in the argument which Bolívar sought to transplant in American soil.
In the Jamaica Letter Bolívar consciously saw himself on the side of change against tr
adition, in favour of revolution against conservatism. It is characteristic of civil wars, he argues, to form two parties, ‘conservatives and reformers’. The former are commonly the more numerous, because the weight of habit induces obedience to established powers; the latter are always fewer in number although more vocal and learned, so numbers are counterbalanced by moral force. Polarization causes prolonged conflict, but he upholds the struggle in hope, because in the war of independence the masses are following the reformers. The international situation, too, he saw in terms of division between conservatism and liberalism, between the Holy Alliance and, in effect, Great Britain. Speaking of Spanish America’s isolation (in 1815) and the need for a sympathetic ally, he wrote: ‘As soon as we are strong, under the patronage of a liberal nation that will lend us its protection, we will reach agreement in cultivating the virtues and talents that lead to glory.’
Bolívar’s view of the old regime and of revolutionary change was not that of a European or a North American, and there were basic limitations on the extent to which outside models could serve him. He lived in a world with a different history, capacity and social organization, and worked among a people with different expectations. As he searched for appropriate forms of government we can see him once more recoiling from the political ideas of the Enlightenment. Political solutions and modes of government, he appreciated, must conform to American conditions and satisfy American needs. One of the greatest needs was for strong, central authority. Americans had risen rapidly in the revolution without previous experience of public affairs. This made it difficult for them to organize their independence or to benefit from liberal institutions. Creatures of the Age of Reason, no sooner did they have the opportunity than they set up popular juntas which in turn summoned congresses; these established democratic and federal government, declaring the rights of man, providing for a balance of powers and passing general laws in favour of liberty of the subject, of the press, and of other freedoms. His conclusion was uncompromising: ‘Events in Tierra Firme have proved that wholly representative institutions are not suited to our character, customs, and present knowledge. In Caracas the spirit of party arose in the societies, assemblies, and popular elections; and parties led us back into slavery.’
The Jamaica Letter is more important as a reflection of Bolívar’s thinking and a source of the springs of action than as a call to the American people, for in 1815 the American people did not hear it. It was first published in English, in 1818, and it was only in 1833 that the first known Spanish version was issued. But the Liberator drew on the Letter, sometimes word for word, in other more public utterances in the years to come, and thus it became part of the political currency of the Spanish American revolution. Well might Camilo Torres, on being informed of Bolívar’s exile in Jamaica, declare that he did not despair of the fate of the revolution, for ‘where Bolívar is, there is the republic’.7 This was Bolívar’s own assessment: he made himself the measure of the revolution.
While he was in Jamaica, Bolívar sought to influence British opinion in the island in the cause of independence and indirectly to seek the support of the British government, through letters to the press and to his own contacts. These did not have the intellectual content of the Jamaica Letter and were mainly exercises in propaganda, not all of it convincing. In a letter to the Royal Gazette he claimed that the government of New Granada would be able to raise troops capable of defeating the Spanish army and besieging Cartagena, while the people of Venezuela had seized all the inland provinces and were poised to drive the enemy into the sea.8 In another he described in lurid detail the atrocities committed by the Spaniards in Venezuela against the old and infirm, the women and children, in their attempt to ‘annihilate the New World and remove its people’.9 In an article in the same periodical, presumably seeking to reassure British interests in the Caribbean, he painted an idyllic picture of race relations in Spanish America between whites, Indians, blacks and mixed races, totally at odds with his own experience and subsequent opinions.10 The whites, though a minority, can claim equality through their intellectual qualities. The Indian is peace loving, ‘the friend of all’, content with his security, his land and his family, and protected by the equality conceded by the government. The slaves on the hacienda, ‘taught by the Church that it is their duty to serve, are born into domestic dependence, their natural state as members of the families of their masters, whom they love and respect’. The Spanish caudillos, ignorant of the true causes of the revolution, have sought to raise the coloured people, including the slaves, against the white creoles, encouraging plunder and bloodshed, but in the end these abandoned the Spanish cause and came to support independence, so that we can now affirm that ‘all the sons of Spanish America, whatever their colour or condition, are joined in fraternal and inalterable affection’. He also renewed contact with Sir Richard Wellesley, pressing the arguments he had already used in London and hoping that a word to the British government might remind it of South America’s need.
Jamaica was a grim exile for Bolívar, a paradise turned purgatory, defeated as he was by the Spaniards, repudiated by his own people, and living in circumstances of personal and public poverty. He looked for loans and assistance to his English friend Maxwell Hyslop, who with his brother Wellwood traded out of Jamaica to Cartagena and the mainland and followed the movement for independence with keen interest.11 Maxwell was a true friend in need, a benefactor who came to the Liberator’s rescue with loans and assistance, earning his undying gratitude, ‘the services which you have rendered to Colombia and to me personally I shall never forget’, he wrote years later. To his friend he was realistic about the prospects for the revolution. He admitted that if Morillo acted decisively and quickly, ‘restoration of the Spanish government in South America appears inevitable’. And he had few illusions about popular opinion: ‘While all thinking persons are, without exception, for independence, the mass of the people are still ignorant of their rights and unmindful of their interests.’ South America will succumb unless a powerful nation comes to its aid. This is the opportunity for England, which has lost its trade to Venezuela and probably to New Granada, but which could regain it with little cost through offering the protection of its arms and its commerce.12
In the next few months Bolívar relied on Hyslop for cash, admitting that he was spent: ‘I do not have a duro, for I have sold the little silver I brought with me.’ A loan of a hundred pesos was followed by another request for the same amount.13 Bolívar was spending not only on himself but also on fellow exiles, while his own needs were getting desperate. On 4 December he again requested a loan, to pay off his landlady who was harassing him for money. ‘This wretched woman now demands more than a hundred pesos for extras, which are quite unjustified; but she has such a wicked and malicious tongue that I do not wish to be dragged before a magistrate for so little and be there provoked to violence by her insolence and insults. I don’t have a maravedí and I beg you to let me have a hundred pesos to pay the woman off, which will make it 300 pesos that you have lent me.’14
Jamaica had worse terrors than landladies. While he changed lodgings, Bolívar was staying with Lieutenant–Colonel Páez and had a room at his house. On the night of 10 December, at about ten o’clock, an assassin crept into Bolívar’s room, groped in the dark for the form sleeping in the hammock and plunged his knife into the neck of the victim, who struggled with his attacker until he received a second wound in the side, cutting off his cries and his life. The assassin was taken and found to be a black slave of Bolívar called Pio. The victim, however, was not Bolívar, but a compatriot, Félix Amestoy, formerly with Bolívar’s Honour Guard who, while calling on the Liberator, had taken advantage of the empty hammock and fallen asleep. Bolívar’s absence became the subject of various stories. In the legendary history of Simón Bolívar, dramatic events often have an erotic subtext, and the Jamaican version has him pursuing a woman elsewhere. But who can tell? The murder and subsequent trial were reported in the Kingston pre
ss, and further details emerged. Two Spaniards, whose names he did not divulge, had offered Pio two thousand pesos to kill Bolívar and he had been plied with drink on the night. He confessed to the crime, was found guilty, executed and his head displayed in Kingston on a pole. According to the press this was the third attempt on the life of the Liberator by ‘the lowest kind of Spaniards’.15 Who were they? A trio of generals were in the frame of suspicion, Morillo, Moxó and La Torre, but o’Leary did not believe that Morillo would stoop so low, and Bolívar kept his thoughts to himself.
Jamaica was useful to Bolívar as a temporary refuge but was no base for a new invasion of Venezuela. Cartagena was a possibility and he still had support there, now headed by a dubious and malevolent ally, H.L.V. Ducoudray–Holstein, a Danish–born French mercenary, seconded by Luis Brión, a wealthy and amiable shipping merchant from Curaçao, Venezuelan by adoption and destined to be one of the most reliable of the Bolivarians. But Cartagena fell to Morillo on 6 December in a frenzy of death and disorder, a mirror image of the ultimate horrors of war. Bolívar left Jamaica on 18 December and, knowing of the fall of Cartagena, he sailed for Haiti, followed by a crowd of refugees from the stricken port. He landed at Aux Cayes and proceeded immediately to Port–au–Prince. Amidst myriad problems of managing men and materials, Bolívar always had time to woo and to win an attractive woman. Among the Venezuelan refugees was Carlos Soublette’s pretty sister, Isabel, whose affections he had engaged in Cartagena and who now advanced further in his favour and joined the list of his lovers. Bolívar also approved of her brother, a distinguished young officer and one of the most loyal of the Bolivarians.