Simon Bolivar

by John Lynch

  Córdova’s rebellion, small–scale in itself, shook Bolívar as he learned that his former protégé in arms had become ‘a missionary of division and rebellion, and was seeking the help of Páez and the collaboration of the British consul in Bogotá’. To Sucre he wrote, ‘He is saying among other things that you want to make yourself king of Peru! How’s that? As for me, I am everything, everything bad; yet they still want me to continue ruling. We will always be guilty simply by our birth: whites and Venezuelans. Charged with these crimes we can never rule in these regions.’39 He issued instructions to Urdaneta for troop dispositions to encircle the rebellion and prevent it infecting other parts of Colombia. And he prepared to move north. His mood now wavered between optimism and despair. Congress would just have to do what it thought best. He accepted that, for as he remarked to Sucre, ‘I too am a liberal; no one will believe it but it is true.’

  O’Leary brought Córdova to battle at Santuario, east of Medellín. As he approached with his troops on 17 October the rebel recognized him and came up to talk, but o’Leary brought the conversation to a close when Córdoba sought to ‘seduce’ his antioqueño followers. In the ensuing action, a matter of two hours, the rebel troops were no match for the regulars; Córdova fought bravely but was wounded and lay on the floor of a house where he sought refuge and which o’Leary ordered to be stormed. Colonel Rupert Hand, an Irish veteran of the British Legion and a man with a violent past, found Córdova prostrate on the floor and coolly killed him with two thrusts of his sword. o’Leary did not give these details to Bolívar, though he seems to have been present and even to have spoken to ‘the poor devil’. He reported the death of Córdova as a duty to avenge Bolívar and defend his own honour.40 He reminded Bolívar that he had warned him against the rebel some time before and that his judgement had been ignored; Córdova was a fool and a failure, with only his bravery to recommend him.41 Pity had no place in the revolution, and if the incident disturbed o’Leary as Hand’s commanding officer it did not show or prevent him from appointing the perpetrator to a further operation in the Chocó. In 1831, at the instigation of Obando, Hand was arrested and tried for murder; he was sentenced to death but escaped from prison to Venezuela, where he avoided extradition and became the first Professor of English in the University of Caracas.42

  In the aftermath of the Córdova rebellion the question remained: had Bolívar succumbed to temptation? Did he wish to become king, or collaborate with a monarchy? When they knew of the rebel’s defeat, ministers returned to the monarchy project and officially informed the French and British agents of their intention to alter the form of government. It was now time to advise Bolívar of what had taken place, and the foreign secretary wrote to him on the subject. From Popayán Bolívar replied, protesting in strong terms that his colleagues had gone too far. On 22 November 1829 he wrote to the council of ministers that their negotiations had contravened government policy, which was to call congress; ‘they had usurped the high functions of the congress summoned to consider the organization of a national government’, and he warned them, ‘You should now suspend all negotiations with the governments of France and England.’ In private letters to Urdaneta he spoke more tactfully, but still insisted that ‘we have got too involved and should go no further, leaving congress to do its duty’. And in congress it will be ‘easier to appoint a president than a prince’.43 This was consistent with his responses throughout the affair, when his motive was to steer constitutional change towards his favourite goal of stronger government, monocracy perhaps, but not specifically monarchy. His ‘Glance at Spanish America’, to which Restrepo appealed, expressed no preference for monarchy. The rebuke caused a sensation in Bogotá. The ministers sent in their resignations, protesting that they had merely acted according to his instructions. But his only explicit instructions had been to solicit the protection of some European power, as he considered that the country could not maintain itself as a nation without some such support.44

  During these months of 1829 Bolívar’s leadership was tested on two fronts. Following hard on his military campaign in the south he was faced with political confusion in the rest of Colombia, including a project of monarchy not of his making. Any leader who has to think through a decision or a policy, turning one way then another, considering one option then its opposite, changing course in the process of decision–making, will understand that this was not ambivalence, or duplicity, or inconsistency, but a reasonable way of reaching conclusions and taking action. Such was Bolívar’s procedure in 1829, as it had been in other crises of his life. He now closed the subject, appointed a new cabinet and suspended negotiations with Bresson and Campbell. He saw that political liberalism and its advocates were still in fighting mood, and that it was dangerous even to mention the word monarchy in the Colombia of his time.

  The Exodus

  The insurrection of Córdova encouraged the opposition in Venezuela. Páez abandoned vacillation and moved purposefully to take his country out of the union. From the moment the news arrived at Caracas on 28 October, Bolívar’s enemies surrounded Páez, exaggerated the news, exploited the controversy over monarchy, and pressed their caudillo to lose no time in revolutionizing Venezuela. At this critical date, his judgement perhaps impaired by his isolation and his illness, Bolívar presented the politicians and caudillos with a needless advantage. Unreconciled to a purely personalist solution, he decided to consult the people. On 16 October 1829, the Ministry of the Interior issued Bolívar’s circular letter of 31 August 1829 authorizing, indeed ordering, that public meetings be held where the citizens could give their opinion on a new form of government and the future organization of Colombia.45 This was for congress to determine, but the elected deputies were to attend congress not as free agents but as delegates mandated by written instructions. So Bolívar sought the will of the people and undertook to be bound by it, for good or for ill.46 But were the people free to express their will? Would not the caudillos control or coerce the assemblies? Bolívar’s closest friends and advisers had grave reservations about this procedure. From Quito Sucre warned that it was alienating reasonable and substantial citizens and encouraging radicals, and advised him to reduce it to the simple right of petition; otherwise the right to give binding instructions ‘will revive local pretensions’.47

  Indeed the separatists immediately exploited these meetings to secure the opinions they wanted. Representation could not in itself frustrate the local warlords. In Caracas the public meeting of the people on 25 November 1829 was preceded on the night before by a meeting of four hundred leading citizens and landowners in the house of the caudillo Arismendi, with other generals present. The gathering pronounced, with only two dissenting voices – Revenga and Intendant Clementi – for the independence of Venezuela and against Bolívar, a lead which was followed by the public meeting in the Franciscan church the following day.48 Another example of pressure was given in a complaint from the town of Escuque to General Páez against the procedures adopted by the military commander of the district of Trujillo, Colonel Cegarra:

  Even the popular assemblies have been the occasion of his [Cegarra’s] insolence, since he has insisted that the citizens sign not what has been said and agreed in their meetings, but various papers which he himself has written in his own home, threatening with violence those who refused to obey. Is this freedom, Sir? Can a people speak freely when at the very time of their assembly they see a squadron of cavalry and a company of fusiliers forming up in the main square? If the papers which Sr Cegarra wanted us to sign had contained fair and reasoned complaints, then our approval might have been sought at an opportune moment. But to require us to subscribe to a lot of insults, abuse, and insolence against General Bolívar does not seem proper, for we have always believed that we could reject his authority yet treat him with respect.49

  Spectacles of this kind revealed the scale of the task facing Bolívar. Most of the towns and districts of Venezuela pronounced for independence from Colombia, and in favour of Páe
z against Bolívar, whom they called a tyrant and worse. Worse, apparently, than their local tyrants, the majority of whom wanted independence. ‘The untrammelled expression of popular desires’ so ardently sought by Bolívar turned into a torrent of abuse and defiance, and the constituent congress of Colombia promised little better. In November 1829 the Venezuelans were already speaking the language of withdrawal from Colombia, arguing that, ‘Venezuela ought not to remain united to New Granada and Quito, because the laws which are appropriate for those countries are not suitable for ours, which is completely different in customs, climate and products; and because government applied over a great area loses its strength and energy.’50 On 1 December Páez told Bolívar, ‘Venezuelans have a heartfelt hatred for the union with Bogotá, and they are resolved to make whatever sacrifice it needs to secure separation.’ He would hold his hand for the moment, but he expected Bolívar to recognize that ‘separation is inevitable’ and to recommend it to the forthcoming constituent congress, otherwise he could not answer for the consequences. A bitter experience for the Liberator to listen to arrogance from a crass caudillo! He was in despair at ‘the horrible news’ coming out of Venezuela and the infamy of his native country, which did not even give him the option of resigning voluntarily. ‘I have never suffered so much as now, and I long for the desperate moment when this shameful life may end.’51

  As Bolívar approached the end of his political career in Colombia, he knew that Venezuela and the caudillos had repudiated him. Bermúdez issued a strident proclamation calling Venezuela to arms against the ‘despot’, the promoter of monarchy, the enemy of the republic. Mariño, who claimed to know ‘the virtues, the views, the particular interests of every inhabitant of Cumaná’, was outraged when Bolívar refused to employ him in the east.52 Páez wanted an independent Venezuela, and independence meant opposing Bolívar. Caudillism now advanced because it concided with Venezuelan nationalism, and this was an expression of interests as well as of identity. The Venezuelan caudillos had begun as local leaders with access to limited resources. War gave them the opportunity to improve their personal fortunes and expand their bases of power. Peace brought them even greater rewards, and these they were determined to keep. The caudillos abandoned Colombia because they were Venezuelans and because they were resolved to retain Venezuelan resources for themselves and their clients. Caudillism and nationalism reinforced each other. The greatest victim was Bolívar.

  The constituent congress of Venezuela assembled in Valencia on 6 May 1830. From his headquarters at San Carlos, Páez sent a message: ‘My sword, my lance and all my military triumphs are subject to the decisions of the law, in respect and obedience.’53 It was a double–edged remark, reminding legislators that, in spite of his claim to be ‘a simple citizen’, with his llaneros behind him and the oligarchy of wealth and office at his side, he was the supreme power in the land. This congress founded the sovereign and independent republic of Venezuela, in which Páez retained the dual authority of president and army commander. As for Bolívar, he was deeply disillusioned: ‘The tyrants of my country have taken it from me and I am banished; now I have no homeland for which to sacrifice myself.’54

  Venezuela was the first to go, but not the last. Ecuador too sought its own national identity. The country’s political experience was less violent than Venezuela’s, whose pardos and mestizos were more ambitious than the passive and apolitical Indians of Ecuador, and whose upper classes were more active than the Quito aristocracy. But Ecuador too had its grievances. The liberal economic policy of Colombia did not give sufficient protection to Ecuador’s industry, already damaged by war and disruption of export routes. The country had also suffered from heavy conscription and the exaction of forced loans and supplies; Ecuador sustained a substantial part of the final war effort in Peru, and Bolívar milked the Ecuadorian economy dry to pay for the Colombian army in 1828–9. The large agricultural estates yielded little more than subsistence production, and the only commercial output was that of cacao, together with some shipbuilding and repairing at Guayaquil.55 These problems were neglected by the Bogotá government, which provided no tax relief, no protection and no subsidy for Ecuador. And its liberalism provoked the latent conservatism of Ecuador’s ruling class, one of whose demands was for the retention of Indian tribute and black slavery. Ecuadoreans were under–represented in the central government and its offices, and at home they had a sense of being colonized by new imperialists. For the foreign liberators stayed on as a virtual army of occupation, and Ecuadorean civil and military institutions were staffed by soldiers and bureaucrats from other parts of Colombia. On 13 May 1830 the southern departments of Colombia seceded from the union and declared the independent state of Ecuador under the presidency of General Juan José Flores, a Venezuelan mulatto made respectable by his marriage. In due course, accepting the political fragmentation that seemed inevitable, the constituent congress agreed to divide Colombia into three states. The former New Granada was left to bear alone the name of Colombia.

  Farewell to Power, Salute to Glory

  The constituent congress called by Bolívar for 2 January 1830 slowly began to assemble in the following weeks as delegates made their way from distant provinces; across mountains, hills and plains, these regional leaders converged on Bogotá to listen to the supreme leader of the union. The gathering was small, exclusive and conservative; lawyers and the military were strongly represented, the regions less so.56 Bolívar arrived on 15 January, outwardly a shadow of the man who had entered Bogotá after Boyacá, his face drawn, his hair thin, his movements laboured, but inwardly no less lucid in his ideas and determined in his actions. He convened congress on 20 January and after mass in the cathedral the delegates gathered in the Assembly Hall; they had different expectations of the days ahead but all minds were focused on the Liberator. He was soon in action. Sucre was elected president of the congress and the bishop of Santa Marta, José María Esteves, vice–president. The hand of Bolívar was evident here. But manipulated or not, these nominations now represented his ideal of Church and State: Sucre as his heir apparent, and a bishop to speak for ‘the holy religion we profess’. In his message to the ‘Congreso Admirable, as he called it, he reviewed the recent problems of Colombia, defended his responses to disturbances within and attacks from without, and hoped that from this grim picture they would learn lessons for the future.57 Then, in words with bitter undertones, he submitted his resignation, admonishing congress not to try and re–elect him, for he had no wish to vote himself into power, and there were others who were above suspicion and worthy of the office of president:

  Only I am branded with aspirations to tyranny. Spare me, I beg you, the disgrace that awaits me if I continue to fulfil a destiny that can never be free of the censure of ambition…. Do as you will with the presidency, which I respectfully abdicate into your hands. From this day forth, I am but a citizen–in–arms, ready to defend the country and obey the government. My public duties are finished for ever. I formally and solemnly deliver to you the supreme authority conferred upon me by votes of the nation.

  And he closed with one of his starkest confessions: ‘I am ashamed to admit it, but independence is the only benefit we have gained, at the cost of everything else.’

  Bolívar had reached the end of his constitutional projects. He could not totally let go, and in the following weeks he was besieged from one side and another, his mind a turmoil of conflicting ideas, clutching at the slimmest of hopes that something might be rescued from the constitutional ruins of Colombia. But there was nothing left, and no one to equal him. As Bolívar lost his strength of body and powers of leadership, he still remained the one outstanding figure in a gallery of mediocrities. He was now concerned above all to defend his record and refute his enemies. A kingdom was never his intention. Power was gone. Glory alone remained, and this he was determined to protect. He instructed José Fernández Madrid, the Colombian agent in London, to answer the slanders that were being spread:58

  F
irst, I have never sought to establish the Bolivian constitution in Colombia; nor was it I who did so in Peru. The people and the ministers did this of their own accord.

  Second, every act of treachery, duplicity, or deceit attributed to me is complete slander. Whatever I have done or said has been with seriousness and without any dissimulation.

  Third, you should totally deny any cruelty toward the patriots, and declare that if at any time I dealt cruelly with the Spaniards, it was in reprisal.

  Fourth, you can deny any act of self–interest on my part, and make it clear that I have dealt generously with most of my enemies.

  Fifth, you can assert that during the war I took no step dictated by prudence or reason that can be attributed to cowardice.59 My every action was prompted by calculation, and even more by daring.

  The committee named by congress to frame a reply to Bolívar’s message postponed a decision on his resignation until a new constitution and new leaders were in place. Bolívar appointed a provisional president, Domingo Caicedo, and left for the latter’s country house in Fucha on the western outskirts of the city to recover his health. Among his visitors was the Bolivarian officer Posada Gutiérrez, who recorded his impressions of an evening walk through the meadows: