Simon Bolivar

by John Lynch

  Among his political and military preoccupations, he still had time to think of Josefina Machado. In St Thomas his nephew Leandro Palacios was in touch with Pepita and through him an anxious Bolívar urged her to come to Angostura, at his expense and insistence, out of fear, apparently, of being mocked for her absence. Eventually Leandro was able to report that she was on her way, with her family in train, but by the time she reached Angostura, Bolívar had left on campaign in New Granada.78 She tried to follow him but died on her way to him.

  The years 1816–18, ‘the third period of the republic’, were among the most difficult in the life of Bolívar, when he had to resolve the three great problems of Spanish American independence: to defeat Spain in the field, to overcome insubordination in his own ranks and to fend off race war. Royalists, caudillos, pardos, these were the challenges, and none of them could be won in a day. To wage warfare in the llanos was a debatable strategy. In those empty plains Bolívar could free masses of territory, but not masses of people. He was a shackled giant. With all his assets, a European education and three campaigns behind him, he was scarcely able to move the revolution forward an inch. The Spaniards occupied the centre–north, the economic and political core of Venezuela, its demographic heartland and the essence of the colonial system. This was what Bolívar craved. He had invaded in flanking movements from west and east, he had conquered the Orinoco and Guayana, he was advancing in the llanos. But he had still not taken Caracas. A new strategy of liberation was required and in the fertile mind of the Liberator it was already taking shape. In spite of appearances, Bolívar had reasons for optimism. He could see that the war in the llanos, overtly in General Morillo’s favour, in fact had gained the Spaniard no strategic advance and had cost him personally a near–mortal wound. Morillo was wary of Bolívar: he thought him more dangerous in defeat than in victory. The Spaniard was pessimistic. He believed that the possession of Guayana and its resources gave Bolívar a decisive advantage and that the restoration of Spanish sovereignty in America would only be achieved by force after a great military victory by the royal army. Meanwhile, the forces of the Bolivarian alliance – the Liberators’ own army augmented by insistent recruiting campaigns, plus the forces of Páez and other caudillos – amounted to some fourteen thousand troops, against the eleven thousand of Morillo, split between New Granada and Venezuela.79

  Bolívar was ready to take on the world, or at least Spain and the Holy Alliance: ‘The Republic of Venezuela, by divine and human right, is emancipated from the Spanish nation and constituted as an independent, free, and sovereign state.’80 This was his judgement on the third age of the republic and his prophecy for the battles to come.

  Chapter 6

  NEW STRATEGY, NEW FRONT

  The Angostura Address

  In the first decade of revolution Bolívar’s life acquired a rhythm of thought and action which he sustained with extraordinary consistency through periods otherwise marked by political disorder, military confusion and personal defeat. From the time of the first republic there was a pattern of advance, retreat, reorganize; this was repeated in the second republic with a further push, another defeat, another pause; then a third sequence of attack, rebuff and return, beginning in Haiti and ending in Guayana. In each stage there was a similar response to challenge: first analysis, then action. So the Cartagena Manifesto preceded the Admirable Campaign, and the Jamaica Letter the invasion of the mainland. Now, in 1819, as he contemplated the stalemate in Venezuela and pondered a new strategy, he prepared for further action with a further statement of belief.

  His efforts to encourage elections throughout the liberated territories bore fruit at last and delegates began to make their way to Angostura. Bolívar returned from his military headquarters at San Juan de Payara, leaving command of the army to Páez, whom he promoted to major–general. During the journey back to Angostura along the upper Orinoco, its waters the home of snakes and alligators and its banks infested by mosquitoes, he reclined in his hammock during the heat of the day or on board the flechera or under the giant trees on the shores of the river in the cool of the evening. In a familiar posture, one hand on the collar of his jacket and his thumb on his upper lip, Bolívar dictated to his secretary the final version of the address on which he had been working since November and now planned to give to congress, together with the accompanying constitution for the republic, reaching for the ideas on which he had been brooding since their first expression in the Jamaica Letter.1

  At ten thirty on the appointed day, 15 February 1819, twenty–six delegates, representatives of Margarita, Guayana, Cumaná, Barcelona, Caracas and Barinas, took their seats in the modest hall of government house in Angostura to inaugurate the general congress. Bolívar and his staff officers arrived at the plain brick one–story building in the main square to a three–gun salute and military parade, and the delegates went out to greet him and conduct him to his place at the head of the assembly.2 When he rose to present his constitution, the political peak of the revolution up to that time and the culmination of all his hopes, he spoke in a clear voice but one which betrayed his emotion. His audience, Venezuelan citizens and foreign guests, were also deeply moved, some to tears, as his angel tongue delivered a rare expression of reason and emotion.3 He described an ideal democratic republic in the exact mould of the age of revolution: ‘Venezuela, on breaking with Spain, has recovered her independence, her freedom, her equality, and her national sovereignty. By establishing a democratic republic she has abolished monarchy, distinction, nobility, prerogatives, and privileges. She has declared for the rights of man and freedom of action, thought, speech, and the press.’4 These ‘eminently liberal acts’, as he called them, were possible because only in democracy was absolute liberty assured. But was this practicable? Democracy, he admitted, does not necessarily guarantee the power, prosperity and permanence of a state. The federal system in particular makes for weak and divided government. It may be appropriate for the people of North America, who were raised on liberty and political virtues, but ‘it has never for a moment entered my mind to compare the position and character of two states as dissimilar as the Anglo–American and the Spanish American. It would be more difficult to apply to Venezuela the political system of the United States than it would be to apply to Spain that of England.’

  Laws, remarked Montesquieu, should be suited to the people for whom they are made. Rousseau maintained even more explicitly that constitutions must take account of national character. Bolívar was no less insistent: constitutions must conform to the environment, character, history and resources of the people. ‘This is the code we must consult, not the code of Washington.’ Bolívar still sought something corresponding to Spanish American reality, not a North American imitation. Spanish American reality was revealed in two ways. The starting point was the multiracial character of society. Speaking of Venezuela, he observed: ‘The diversity of social origin will require an infinitely firm hand and great tactfulness in order to manage this heterogeneous society, whose complex mechanism is easily impaired, separated, and disintegrated by the slightest controversy.’ It was Bolívar’s conviction that ‘the fundamental principal of our political system depends directly and exclusively on the establishment and practice of equality in Venezuela. The wisdom of the ages proclaims that all men are born with equal rights to the benefits of society, but also that not all possess equal capabilities, virtue and talents.’ So law must correct the disparity of intelligence and character imposed by nature. The logic of his own principles led him to conclude that the greater the social inequality, the greater the need for legal equality. Second, in seeking the institutions to secure true equality, legislators must consider political experience and capacity. While Greece, Rome, France, England and North America all had something to teach in matters of law and government, yet he reminded the delegates that the excellence of a government lies not in its theories or its forms, but in its being suited to the nature and character of the nation for which it is instituted
. Bursting with ideas, he was neither dogmatic nor doctrinaire. In his speech the footprints of Montesquieu are plain, those of Rousseau fainter. Basically he was a pragmatist, as he had made clear in the Jamaica Letter: ‘Do not adopt the best system of government, but the one that is most likely to work.’5

  Rather than build upon French or North American models, Bolívar recommended British experience, though cautioning against slavish imitation and any adoption of monarchy. With these qualifications, the British constitution seemed the one most likely to bring about ‘the greatest possible good’ for those who adopted it. It recognized popular sovereignty, division and balance of powers, civil liberty, freedom of conscience and freedom of the press, and he recommended it as ‘the most worthy to serve as a model for those who desire to enjoy the rights of man and all political happiness compatible with our fragile nature’. He began with a legislature modelled on the British parliament, with two chambers, one a house of elected representatives, the other a hereditary senate. The latter, he thought, would remain independent of popular and government pressures, and would protect the people against themselves. The senators would not be an aristocracy or a body of privilege, but an elite of virtue and wisdom produced not by electoral chance but by an enlightened education, specially designed for this vocation. Like the House of Lords in England, the Venezuelan senate would be ‘a bulwark of liberty’. Yet the legislature, distinguished though it was, should not usurp power that properly belonged to the executive. Bolívar’s executive, though elected, was powerful and centralized, virtually a king with the name of president. Again he looked to the British model, a strong executive at the head of government and the armed forces, but accountable to parliament, which had legislative functions and financial control. ‘A perfect model for a kingdom, for an aristocracy, or for a democracy.’ Give Venezuela such an executive power in the person of the president chosen by the people or their representatives, he advised, and you will have taken a great step towards national happiness. Add to this an independent judiciary and happiness would be complete, or almost complete, for Bolívar had a further proposal.

  To the three classical powers Bolívar added a fourth of his own design, the poder moral, which would be responsible for training people in public spirit and political virtue. This idea was badly conceived and met with no response from his contemporaries, but it was typical of his search for a political education for his people, which he regarded as so important that it needed an institution to promote it. He believed that people were educable, if their natural inclinations and talents were respected; this was his experience in creating a multiracial army and his proof that his project was not a utopia.

  Was not the whole Angostura project anti–democratic? Bolívar was ready with an answer. ‘Absolute liberty invariably lapses into absolute power, and the mean between these two extremes is supreme social liberty. Abstract theories create the pernicious idea of unlimited freedom.’ In his view stable government required ‘moderation of the popular will and limitation of public authority’. He admitted that such a balance was ‘difficult to define in practice’, but could be achieved by education and experience in the administration of justice and the rule of law. On the subject of the British constitution – did he really understand it? – Bolívar parted company from the philosophes, among whom there was a strong bias against British political practice for its corruption and unrepresentative character, and from Rousseau too, who criticized the English system of government because parliament was independent of its constituents. The hereditary senate, one of the most controversial of all Bolívar’s ideas, was an attempt to set a restraint on absolute democracy, which could be as tyrannical as any despot, but this transplanting of the English House of Lords to America – breaking his own ‘American reality’ principle –would simply have confirmed and prolonged the seigneurial social structure of Venezuela. The congress of Angostura adopted a constitution embodying many of Bolívar’s ideas, though not the hereditary senate or the moral power. It elected Bolívar president of the Republic and Zea vice–president. But the new constitution was pure theory, for the war had still to be won. On the military front Bolívar had new opportunities and a new vision, an opportunity to realize his political ideals through organization, discipline and leadership.

  Reinforcements and Reappraisal

  In 1817 the Venezuelan representative in London, Luis López Méndez, was asked by Bolívar to recruit officers and sergeants to join the patriot army and navy, and from Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, he began to negotiate with British officers to raise and lead regiments for service in Venezuela. In July he contracted with Colonel H.C. Wilson, in October with Colonel Gustavus Hippisley.6 From this point, during the next five years, over six thousand volunteers left Britain and Ireland in fifty–three ships for service in South America, of whom at least 5,300 set foot there.7 The Spanish ambassador protested to the Foreign Office that the entire population of England seemed to have joined expeditions to the Americas. British merchants were already playing a part in republican activities. They had provided assistance to Bolívar in Jamaica and helped to fund his expeditions from Haiti; in Guayana they traded hardware, arms and munitions in exchange for cattle and other exportable products, and the Hyslops described themselves as the commercial agents of General Bolívar as well as of New Granada. The official policy of the British government was to prohibit British subjects from taking part in the war between Spain and its colonies, as it was contrary to the government’s policy of neutrality, and a decree of 13 May 1818 forbade the export of arms to Spanish America. Bolívar understood the limitations placed on Britain’s freedom of action by its wide commitments and never pushed diplomacy too hard, preferring to seek specific gains and practical advantages. Circumstances favoured this approach.

  In the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars there were numerous half–pay officers and unemployed soldiers ready to accept contracts as mercenaries for the wars of independence, and even more adventurers with no military experience seeking honourable causes and better opportunities in the Americas; there were surplus stores, arms and ammunition, which merchants were only too willing to sell, while public opinion generally favoured the cause of Spanish America rather than Spain. The Spanish embassy in London monitored every detail of the recruiting campaign of the Venezuelans and bombarded the Foreign Office with complaints; it was especially riled to see volunteers training daily in London. The British government was caught in a dilemma and in the event combined official disapproval of recruitment with toleration of the recruits’ departure to Spanish America. In 1818 English envoys of Bolívar returned to organize yet further expeditions, to include soldiers as well as officers, the nucleus of the British Legion, together with ships, sailors and guns.

  In one way or another, with the tolerance, connivance or indifference of the authorities, ships, men and arms, and entire regiments left British ports for South America in 1817–19, while volunteer officers and seamen also crossed the Atlantic to join the Venezuelan navy. Some fifty thousand rifles and muskets, hundreds of tons of lead and powder, artillery, lances, cutlasses, swords, sabres and pistols were sold to the republicans. The commercial aspect predominated, and in London there was perpetual conflict around López Méndez concerning money not paid by him and contracts not fulfilled by merchants. Eventually, the growing scale of the operation, the infraction of the law and the protests of Spain forced the British government to do something. The Foreign Enlistment Act of 1819 forbade British subjects to serve in the armies of South America and prohibited the export of arms to the insurgents; this prompted a scramble to get away and numerous vessels slipped out of Liverpool in the course of 1820. The British authorities went through the motions of enforcing the law but, favoured by public opinion, enlistment continued, as did the supply of arms.8 Denounced in London by Spain, the legionaries were tracked in Venezuela by Spanish commanders. General Morillo tried to address them directly: ‘You are serving under the command of a man in every respect insig
nificant, and have joined an horde of banditti who are famed for the exercise of the most barbarous cruelties, which are so averse to yor unational character, that you must abhorr them. He who retains the least spark of honour and justice cannot remain united with such a band of Ragamuffins.’9 British soldiers rejected the overtures and the insults to Bolívar: ‘Bolívar is as deserving of his country’s gratitude and the admiration of the world as Washington himself– and like him he will be venerated whilst he lives, and his memory will be immortalized.’10

  A tale of heroism and setbacks, this was the sequel to the recruiting drive, with disease, drunkenness and desertion reducing the ranks of fighting men who actually reached Bolívar’s army. They soon found that ‘campaigns in the immense plains of South America were no joke’, and no way to wealth.11 But the Liberator liked them, even if some of his officers looked askance. Wilson and Hippisley did not last long, but many of their forces persevered and the place of their commanders was taken by Colonel James Rooke and Thomas Ferriar who gave excellent service, as did Robert Pigott. Shiploads of troops landed at Angostura and were marched up country to join Colonel Rooke with Bolívar in the Apure, where he was planning a campaign into New Granada. Venezuelan commanders were divided in their opinions of the plan, but when it was Rooke’s turn to speak he said he would follow the Liberator to Cape Horn if need be. Rooke’s British unit, now called the British Legion, were there at the crossing of the Andes. The British soldiers soon became known as good marchers and when they were in the vanguard their pace was too fast for many; American troops incorporated into British units ‘thought themselves above the other soldiers, and called themselves English, and swore in English by way of keeping up their title’.12 Whatever their reputation, in the campaign of 1819 British troops made a difference. This was the belief of Bolívar, who used to say that the true Liberator was his recruiting agent in London, Luis López Méndez.13