Venezuela THE EPIC OF INDEPENDENCE
Simón Bolívar Palacios
Courtesy Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
Miranda was born in Caracas of wealthy criollo parents
in
1750. Following a checkered career in the Spanish Army,
Miranda
spent virtually the rest of his life living in nations
that were
at odds with Spain, seeking support for the cause of the
independence of his native Spanish America. Although he
was a
professed admirer of the newly independent United States,
Miranda's political vision of Latin America, beyond
independence,
remained equivocal. In 1806 he led an expedition that
sailed from
New York and landed at Coro, in western Venezuela.
Expecting a
popular uprising, he encountered instead hostility and
resistance. Miranda returned to Britain, where in 1810
Bolívar
persuaded him to return to Venezuela at the head of a
second
insurrectionary effort.
Events in Europe were perhaps even more crucial to the
movement for Latin American independence than Miranda's
efforts.
In 1808 French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's troops invaded
Spain
amidst a family dispute in which the Spanish king Charles
IV had
been forced to abdicate the throne in favor of his son,
Ferdinand
VII. The fearful Bourbon royal family soon became
Napoleon's
captives, and in 1810 the conquering French emperor
granted his
brother, Joseph, the Spanish throne, precipitating a
four-year-
long guerrilla war in Spain.
These events had important repercussions in the Caracas
cabildo (city council). Composed of a criollo elite
whose
allegiance to the crown had already been stretched thin by
the
gross incompetence of Charles and his feud with his son,
the
cabildo refused to recognize the French usurper.
Meeting
as a cabildo abierto (town meeting) on April 19,
1810, the
Caracas cabildo ousted Governor Vicente Emparán
and,
shortly thereafter, declared itself to be a junta
governing in
the name of the deposed Ferdinand VII. On July 5, 1811, a
congress convoked by the junta declared Venezuelan
independence
from Spain. Miranda assumed command of the army and
leadership of
the junta.
A constitution, dated December 21, 1811, marked the
official
beginning of Venezuela's First Republic. Known commonly by
Venezuelan historians as La Patria Boba, the Silly
Republic,
Venezuela's first experiment at independence suffered from
myriad
difficulties from the outset. The cabildos of three
major
cities--Coro, Maracaibo, and Guayana--preferring to be
governed
by Joseph Bonaparte rather than by the Caracas
cabildo,
never accepted independence from Spain. The First
Republic's
leadership, furthermore, distrusted Miranda and deprived
him of
the powers necessary to govern effectively until it was
too late.
Most damaging, however, was the initial failure of the
Caracas
criollo elite insurgents to recognize the need for popular
support for the cause of independence. Venezuela's popular
masses, particularly the pardos, did not relish
being
governed by the white elite of Caracas and therefore
remained
loyal to the crown. Thus, a racially defined civil war
underlay
the early years of the long independence struggle in
Venezuela.
When a major earthquake in March 1812 devastated proindependence strongholds while sparing virtually every
locale
commanded by royalist forces, it seemed that the very
forces of
nature were conspiring against La Patria Boba. Despite the
gravity of the circumstances, Miranda's July 25, 1812,
surrender
of his troops to the Spanish commander, General Domingo
Monteverde, provoked a great deal of resentment among
Bolívar and
his other subordinates. Miranda died in a Spanish prison
in 1816;
Bolívar managed to escape to New Granada (present-day
Colombia),
where he assumed the leadership of Venezuela's
independence
struggle.
Bolívar was born in 1783 into one of Caracas's most
aristocratic criollo families. Orphaned at age nine, he
was
educated in Europe, where he became intrigued by the
intellectual
revolution called the Enlightenment and the political
revolution
in France. As a young man, Bolívar pledged himself to see
a
united Latin America, not simply his native Venezuela,
liberated
from Spanish rule. His brilliant career as a field general
began
in 1813 with the famous cry of "war to the death" against
Venezuela's Spanish rulers that was followed by a
lightning
campaign through the Andes to capture Caracas. There he
was
proclaimed "The Liberator" and, following the
establishment of
the Second Republic, was given dictatorial powers. Once
again,
however, Bolívar overlooked the aspirations of common,
nonwhite
Venezuelans. The llaneros (plainsmen), who were
excellent
horsemen, fought under the leadership of the royalist
caudillo,
José Tomás Boves, for what they saw as social equality
against a
revolutionary army that represented the white, criollo
elite. By
September 1814, having won a series of victories, Boves's
troops
forced Bolívar and his army out of Caracas, bringing an
end to
the Second Republic.
After Ferdinand VII regained the Spanish throne in late
1814,
he sent reinforcements to the American colonies that
crushed most
remaining pockets of resistance to royal control. Bolívar
was
forced to flee to Jamaica, where he issued an eloquent
letter
that established his intellectual leadership of the
Spanish
American independence movement. A number of local
caudillos kept
the movement alive in Venezuela. One, José Antonio Páez, a
mestizo, was able to convince his fellow llaneros
along
the Río Apure that Boves (who had been killed in battle in
late
1814) had been mistaken: that the Spanish, not the criollo
patriots, were the true enemies of social equality. The
alliance
of his fierce cavalrymen with Bolívar proved indispensable
during
the critical 1816-20 stage of the independence struggle.
Another
caudillo chief named Manuel Piar, after outspokenly
encouraging
his black and pardo troops to assert their claims
for
social change, however, was promptly captured, tried, and
executed under Bolívar's direction. This ruthless
disposition of
Piar as an enemy of the cause of independence enhanced
Bolívar's
stature and military leadership as the "maximum caudillo."
Based near the mouth of the Río Orinoco, Bolívar
defeated the
royalist forces in the east with the help of several
thousand
volunteer European recruits, veterans of the Napoleonic
Wars.
Although Caracas remained in royalist hands, the 1819
Congress at
Angostura (present-day Ciudad Bolívar) established the
Third
Republic and named Bolívar as its first president. Bolívar
then
quickly marched his troops across the llanos and into the
Andes,
where a surprise attack on the Spanish garrison at Boyacá,
near
Bogotá, routed the royalist forces and liberated New
Granada.
Nearly two years later, in June 1821, Bolívar's troops
fought the
decisive Battle of Carabobo that liberated Caracas from
Spanish
rule. In August delegates from Venezuela and Colombia met
at the
border town of Cúcuta to formally sign the Constitution of
the
Republic of Gran Colombia (see Glossary), with its capital
in Bogotá. Bolívar was named president and Francisco de Paula
Santander, a Colombian, was named vice president.
Bolívar, however, continued the fight for the
liberation of
Spanish America, leading his forces against the royalist
troops
remaining in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. In the meantime,
the
Bolivarian dream of Gran Colombia was proving to be
politically
unworkable. Bolívar's fellow Venezuelans became his
enemies. King
Ferdinand, after an 1820 revolt by liberals in Spain, had
lost
the political will to recover the rebellious American
colonies.
But the Venezuelans themselves expressed resentment at
being
governed once again from far-off Bogotá.
Venezuelan nationalism, politically and economically
centered
in Caracas, had been an ever-increasing force for over a
century.
During the 1820s, Venezuelan nationalism was embodied in
the
figure of General Páez. Even the tremendous prestige of
Bolívar
could not overcome the historical reality of nationalism,
and in
1829 Páez led Venezuela in its separation from Gran
Colombia.
Páez ordered the ailing and friendless Bolívar into exile.
Shortly before his death in December 1830, the liberator
of
northern South America likened his efforts at Latin
American
unity to having "plowed the sea."
Data as of December 1990
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