Simon Bolivar

by John Lynch

  The sovereignty of the people is not unlimited, because it is based on justice and constrained by the concept of perfect utility. This doctrine comes from the constitutional apostle of the day [Bentham]. How can the representatives of the people think they are authorized constantly to change the social organization? What will then become of the basis of the rights, properties, honour, and life of citizens? It would be better to live under a ruthless despotism, then at least their safety would have some protection from the same power that oppresses them. … I would rather abandon Colombia than accept any laws that undermined the magnificent work of the Liberating Army. I ask you to present to the general congress my solemn promise not to recognize during my presidency any act of congress that revokes, changes, or modifies the fundamental laws of the Republic of Colombia.37

  Bolívar won this round. In face of his frank speaking, congress backed off and indeed gave him a vote of thanks. o’Leary believed that at this point he had reached the peak of his influence in Colombia: ‘There was nothing that was not within his powers.’ But the resentment of the opposition and the determination of Bolívar would test those powers in the future.

  Manuela Sáenz

  The year 1822 was a memorable one for the Liberator, a year of punishing marches, hard battles, great victories, spectacular landscapes, new lands and political alarms from old adversaries. It was also a year in which he made two new acquaintances: an American hero, and a flamboyant mistress. San Martín soon departed from his life. The mistress was more enduring. Since the death of his young wife Bolívar had never remarried, though he had had a number of women.38 In the case of Manuela Sáenz it seems to have been love, if not at first sight, one that became a lasting relationship. But at the beginning of the year his eyes, or at least his feelings, had been directed elsewhere, to a young woman in Bogotá who had once rejected him for another soldier and was still resisting his advances, or, as he described her, ‘fastidious and lovely Bernardina’, whom he implored to write to him. ‘I think only of you and of those things that remind me of your attractions, and I can only imagine those. You are the only one in the world for me. Heavenly angel, you alone stir my senses and desires, my hopes for happiness, and all my longings. Modesty and discretion prevent me from saying all I want to say, but do not think that I do not love you. Write to me, who writes tirelessly to you. Adios. Your beloved.’39 But within six months his passion was diverted.

  Manuela Sáenz was not simply a pretty face looking over a balcony in Quito as the Liberator rode by. Born to María Joaquina de Aizpuru, the American mistress of Simón Sáenz, a Spanish businessman, she lost her mother while still young and emerged from a lax convent education a lively and independent girl with a talent for riding and shooting, and some sympathy for revolutionary ideas. She was soon the subject of rumours and legends, which followed her for the rest of her life and became traps for historians.40 In 1817, at the age of twenty, she was married off to a wealthy English merchant, James Thorne, a worthy but dull man more than twenty years her senior, and accompanied him to royalist Lima where she lived from 1819 to 1820. She was attractive and shapely, her oval face, pearl complexion, dark eyes and flowing hair the epitome of South American beauty. Pleasure loving and irreverent, she was a lively figure in Lima society, a friend of the actress Rosita Campuzano who was reputed to be close to the Protector, and already determined to be a celebrity in her own right. She was also committed to the American revolution and, with the independence of Peru in 1821, to the cause of San Martín. Her services were recognized with the decoration known as the Caballeresa del Sol (Dame of the Order of the Sun). She was more devoted to politics and pleasure than to her husband and, accompanied by her father, she returned to Quito. There, at the age of twenty–five, she met her hero who became her friend, companion and lover. The relationship, begun at the victory ball, survived partings, distances, rows and their own passionate temperaments, and entered the Bolivarian story for all time.

  But for Bolívar it began, as other affairs, as a post–campaign recreation. One conquest was not enough. Moving on to Guayaquil he was there captivated by the numerous women of the Garaycoa family, and his eyes fell especially on Joaquina, who greeted him in their home as el glorioso and he reciprocated by calling her La Gloriosa, sometimes amable loca or loca gloriosa. With La Gloriosa he conducted a romantic affair, showering her with his usual compliments, insisting that she was right to love him, for he loved her devotedly and she lived in his heart.41 He wrote to her in family letters and personal messages, describing himself as ‘the most wretched of your admirers’, telling her not to be jealous during his absence, for the girls in the highlands were so modest that they fled at the sight of a soldier, and he describes his lodgings in Cuenca: ‘The Church has conquered me. I live in an oratory. The nuns send me meals and the canons refreshments. The Te Deum is my song and prayer my nightly devotion …. When you see me again I shall be angelic.’42 She calls him ‘my dear sweet friend’ and is always eager to hear from him. Pursuit and surrender? Or romantic yearnings?

  Four years later he was still in touch with the family, now communicating with the married sister, Manuela, who tells him that La Gloriosa is ill with tertian fever: ‘But you are the antidote for all ills; she took your letter and placed it on her brow, and imagined she was better.’ By now it was Manuela who maintained a loving correspondence with him: ‘My dear sweet friend, I wait impatiently for the happy day when I can embrace you.’ And again, ‘What fire of love burns in my breast for you, in fact we are all rivals in love for you.’ ‘La Gloriosa asks me to say so many things to you that I cannot express them; I too am carried away, for I hold within me the love of my Liberator.’43 Their hero continued to write and to entertain Gloriosa with sweet nothings.44 The sisters were disconsolate when he left the stage in 1830. Joaquina wrote to him, ‘I am inspired by your goodness; I always hold you in my heart, there I see you, speak to you, hear you, embrace you, admire you.’45

  With Manuela Sáenz, the relationship was sexual. Both were erotic creatures, and their feelings for each other when apart were the longings and loneliness of lovers. But it was a meeting of minds as well as emotions. Manuela, unlike his other lovers, was associated with his work and interested in his policies and, without accompanying him on the battlefield as legend has it, seems to have received more confidences from him than his passing fancies. No doubt she was an exhibitionist, determined to cut a public figure and challenge male culture. Always accompanied by two black servant girls, Jonatás and Nathán, she had her own entourage and caused a stir wherever she went. She provoked different reactions in Bolívar’s staff: Sucre was a friend, o’Leary accepted her at headquarters as a part–time secretary and archivist, but there were some who hated her. She could be awkward and she guarded Bolívar’s archive even against his own minister of war. The legends grew, as well as the scandal. The young French scientist Jean–Baptiste Boussingault, an erratic and mischievous observer, who seemed to have met her frequently in Peru in the mid 1820s, was fascinated by her:

  At times she was like a great lady, at others a half–breed; she danced with equal grace the minuet or the cachucha. She was inseparable from a young and beautiful mulata slave, who was always dressed like a soldier, and encouraged Manuela’s sensual and licentious tendencies. She was the shadow of her mistress, and possibly her lover, a vice very extensive in Peru. She performed dances that were highly lascivious. She had no lovers: her only love was Manuela.46

  If the rumour of lesbianism were true, it was not something that affected her relations with Bolívar, who came to see her not only as a beautiful lover but as a brave and loyal – and jealous – woman, who would eventually help to save his life. The style of his words to her is extremely different from that of his dispatches, proclamations and decrees. In his letters he speaks the language of the heart.

  The pain of parting was an essential theme of their relationship from the very beginning. She found it difficult to accept his absence in Pasto
in January 1823, when she was touched by his concern for her interests but wanted him nearer: ‘I have paid a lot for your victory at Yacuanquer. You will probably conclude that I am not patriotic in what I am saying. But I would rather triumph with you and without ten victories in Pasto. I often think how boring it must be for you in that village. Yet no matter how desperate it is for you it is not as desperate as it is for the best of your friends, who is Manuela.’47 Separation, and her marital state, could bring doubts about their relationship in the mind of Bolívar. But separation was probably more deeply felt by Manuela who, active though she was, did not have the responsibilities of planning, commanding and fighting on many fronts to distract her. As he was preparing his campaign in Peru, he wanted his old tutor, Simón Rodríguez, to join him: ‘Instead of a lover, I want a philosopher beside me, for at the moment I prefer Socrates to the lovely Aspasia.’48 She was alarmed by any prolonged silence, as on the eve of the great march to Pasco, and would ask his staff for news: ‘I have fallen into disfavour, everything is at an end,’ she wrote to Captain Santana. ‘The general no longer thinks of me, he has hardly written two letters in nineteen days. What’s going on? You have always said you are my friend, so if I cannot ask you, who can I ask?’49

  Later in 1823 James Thorne, faithful husband, was still left with an unfaithful wife. But she was not mercenary and seems to have resisted his money as well as his advances. On these she had no mercy. Mistress of Bolívar, secure in his love, passionate in her desire, she had no intention of returning to her husband, much less of accompanying him to England and enduring his English ways.

  Sir, you are an excellent person, an inimitable person, but my answer is still No, a thousand times No …. Do you think that it lowers my honour that this general is my lover and not my husband? I do not live by social rules, invented only to torment. So leave me alone, my dear Englishman. We will marry again when we are in heaven but not on earth …. You are boring, like your nation, which makes love without pleasure, conversation without grace, walks slowly, greets solemnly, stands up and sits down carefully, jokes without laughing …. Enough banter. Seriously, with the truth and purity of an English woman, I say I will never return to you.

  She later sent a copy of this letter to Bolívar, who was in Upper Peru at the time. He found her description of her husband ‘sad and funny at the same time. … I don’t want to steal a virtuous heart, but it is not my fault, and I don’t know how to reconcile our love with our duty, or to cut the knot of my love with my lovely Manuela.’50

  He wrestled with his conscience over their relationship and he did not hide his doubts, even trying to distance himself when he was travelling in Peru in 1825. ‘I think of you and your fate at every moment and lament this horrible situation, for you to reconcile yourself with someone you don’t love, and for me to leave the one I adore …. When you were mine I loved you more for your lovely nature than for your physical beauty …. Now, to separate is to tear our lives apart. In future you will be alone, though at the side of your husband, and I will be alone in the middle of the world. Our only consolation will be the glory of having won through.’51 He does not sound very convinced, or convincing. From Potosí he is anxious for her welfare, an errant wife in a traditional society, and he advises her to go to Arequipa where he has friends who would look after her. Absence only increases her passion for him, which she preserves for her peace of mind and declares it is for ever.52

  Separated by a vast distance, he valued her letters, and when their locations were reversed – he in Lima and she in Bolivia – he implored her to wait for him ‘at all costs, do you hear, do you understand?’ He begged her not to go to London or anywhere else: ‘I want to see you, to touch you, feel you, taste you, to join you to me in complete union …. Learn to love me and don’t go away, not even with God himself. To the only woman, as you say to me. Your own.’53 She too found distances and silences unbearable. Her love is greater than his, she declares: ‘You had a little love for me and the long separation killed it. But I, who had a great passion for you, have kept it to preserve my peace and happiness.’54 Four years after their first meeting his letters to her were as passionate as ever. Writing to her on his journey from Quito to Bogotá in 1826 he laments that he has not the time to write the long letters in small writing that she prefers.

  You are all love. I too am consumed by this burning fever that devours us like two children. At my age I suffer the sickness that I ought to have forgotten long ago. You alone hold me in this state. You ask me to tell you that I love no one else. Oh, no, I love no one else, and never will. The altar you occupy will not be profaned by any other idol or image, not even by God himself. You have made me an idolater of human beauty, of Manuela. Believe me: I love you and you alone and no one else. Don’t kill yourself, live for me and for yourself: live to console the unfortunate and to console your lover who longs to see you.55

  In April 1828 they were still exchanging tender letters and she could still amuse as well as move him. From Bucaramanga he told her he was coming straight back to Bogotá, missing out Venezuela and Cartagena, and that they would see each other soon: ‘Doesn’t that make you pleased with him who loves you with all his soul?’56 And in July, when she was criticized by some for her public role, he sent a lover’s plea: ‘Your love renews a life that is expiring. I cannot live without you, my Manuela, I cannot freely give you up. I do not have as much strength as you, not enough not to see you: I see you even at a distance. Come, come, come.’ And on his last journey he lamented their cruel separation and declared his never–ending love.57 The course of true love ran too swiftly for Bolívar.

  Into Peru

  Peru in 1823 was a challenge to Bolívar, its government an object of contempt. Once San Martín had left there was no great liberator with whom he could negotiate. The creoles were uncommitted, the aristocracy unreliable. Such was José de la Riva Agüero, in February appointed president with the rank of grand marshal: ‘Congress thus awarded political power and the highest military rank to the caudillo who had provoked the military revolt against congress and who had not fought in a single campaign or a single battle.’58 Unwilling to liberate itself, Peru was reluctant to be liberated by others. This prospect caused greater resentment than the Spanish presence had ever done, and Peruvian nationalism first expressed itself not against Spaniards but against Americans. Yet Peruvians themselves had a cross to bear. Two years of war had undermined their already fragile economy, lowered their subsistence level and diminished their resistance to disease, to malaria, dysentery, and typhoid, and to the severe climatic changes of the time.59 Peruvians in 1822 were in no condition to support a further scourge of war.

  Bolívar felt the full force of Andean xenophobia before he even entered Peru. After the liberation of Quito he was anxious to pursue the enemy in the south and he offered aid to the Peruvian leaders, but the offer was rejected and he himself was villified in the Lima press. ‘The members of the government,’ he remarked, ‘are more jealous of us than they are afraid of the Spaniards.’ Bolívar believed that he had the right to intervene in Peru without invitation in defence of the American revolution: ‘The enemy will come here if I do not go there to forestall him; moreover, enemy territory should be regarded not as foreign territory but as conquerable territory.’60 Yet he hesitated to go, conscious of the instability he would leave behind and the chaos that lay ahead: ‘The desire to end the war in America drives me to Peru, and the love of my reputation holds me back at the same time.’61

  In March 1823 he agreed to assign six thousand troops to Peru, and in April he sent his chosen precursor to establish liaison with the Peruvian government and command the Colombian advance division. But in Peru Sucre was isolated, frustrated by factionalism. In June a royalist force seized Lima, and Sucre barely managed to evacuate the city and save the army. ‘The anarchy was indescribable. I curse the moment I came to Lima. What a task you have landed me with!’ he complained.62 The government fled to Callao, where congress de
posed Riva Agüero and appointed Sucre to supreme command. But Riva Agüero refused to accept dismissal. To the relief of Sucre, he withdrew to Trujillo, followed by a group of congressmen; there he raised an army and dissolved congress. The latter reconstituted itself in Lima, now evacuated by the royalists, and appointed a new president, Torre Tagle, whom Riva Agüero refused to recognize and who literally bought a following with money from the public treasury.63