III. Venezuelan independence

After a certain point, the Venezuelan war of independence cannot be disentangled from the Argentine war of independence, even though they occurred through parallel but separate and distant political processes and only converged in Perú. It ran concurrently with that of New Granada. The Guipuzcoana company did a commendable job of stimulating the Venezuelan economy, especially in fostering the cultivation of cacao beans, which became Venezuela’s principal export. It opened Venezuelan ports to foreign commerce, but this was basically recognizing a fait accompli. Like no other Spanish American dependency, Venezuela had more contacts with Europe through the British and French islands in the Caribbean. The first organized conspiracy against the colonial regime in Venezuela occurred in 1797 and was directly inspired by the French Revolution. In an almost surreptitious, though legal, manner, Caracas itself had become an intellectual powerhouse. It had its own university since 1721, where you could learn Latin and follow courses in medicine and engineering, apart of course from the humanities. Its most illustrious graduate was Andres Bello, the greatest Spanish American polymath in his time. In Chacao, a town to the east of Caracas, there flourished a school of music whose director Jose Angel Lamas produced a few but impressive compositions according to strictest 18th century European canons. The Spanish neglect of its Venezuelan colony contributed to that its intellectuals were more avid for learning and had more external sources of information than other more important Spanish dependencies, not excluding the viceroyalties, although one should not go overboard on this point for a solid education was only available to the mantuanos, a Venezuelan name for the white Creole elite. Another name for this class was “grandes cacaos”, or great cocoa beans, which to this day in Venezuela means a presumptuous person, and the mantuanos were nothing if not extremely presumptuous and overbearing and overzealous in affirming their privileges against the pardo majority of the population.
            It could have been foreseen, although it wasn’t, so this is pure contrafactual arguing, that a movement for independence headed by grandes cacaos would not over-joy the pardos, and as to slaves, they were not about to be manumitted by any side in any social conflict that could occur in Venezuela. Most of the Amerindians who still survived had been driven to the jungles to the south where the only ones who took an interest in them were Spanish friars, especially the Franciscans or Capucins, who compiled grammars and small lexicons for some of their languages. The most important friar misión, the name for an area where the monks were active, was created in San Tomé in Guayana. What goes around comes around and today the radical Chavez government, probably unwittingly, has adopted the name of “misiones” for groups who carry out its social and educational policies. Venezuelans are statistically supposed to be mainly Roman Catholics, but a large majority of Venezuelans are not church-goers, and they weren’t in the colonial period either except in the cities, but no one knows if the pardos were fervent Catholics, more than likely not very. Venezuelans have always had an affinity for animism and that was more valid in the past than it is today.
            It was Europe that gestated the events that culminated in Venezuela’s declaration of independence, as it was the end of Bonaparte’s wars that permitted Spain to try to subjugate insubordinate New Granada and Venezuela but also put Britain unofficially on the side of the independence movement. But let’s go one step at a time. In 1808, Napoleon uncrowned Charles IV Bourbon, crowned his son Ferdinand VII, and then took away his crown and gave it to his brother Joseph Bonaparte. That marked the beginning of Spain’s own war of independence from French hegemony and partial occupation, before the Spanish American wars of independence even got started. The first major defeat that Napoleonic France suffered was in the battle of Bailén, in Andalusia, in which Pablo Morillo, future commander of the army that invaded New Granada and Venezuela; Emeterio Ureña, an anti-independence officer in Venezuela; and Jose de San Martin, the future Liberator of Argentina and Chile, fought side by side against the French general Pierre Dupont. The focal point of the Spanish political resistance was the Junta of Cádiz, which formed itself to govern in the name of Ferdinand. Word of these events soon reached Caracas, but it wasn’t until 19th April 1810 that its cabildo (city council) decided to follow the example of Cádiz but without getting permission from the Spanish junta to do so. This was already rebellion and the mantuanos, who were its instigators, were looking forward to outright independence. Among the most active was the 27-year old Simon Bolivar, future Liberator. Venezuela needed, or that’s what the mantuanos believed, a veteran and prestigious military leader and this they had in Francisco de Miranda, who was one of the distinguished products of the relative 18th century Caracas enlightenment.
            Miranda’s father, a Canary islander, had been snubbed by the mantuanos when he formed a Spanish militia. His son Francisco emigrated to Spain, where he obtained a royal officer’s commission. From 1772 to 1783, he fought loyally for Spain in Africa and in the taking of Pensacola, Florida, in 1781 in the context of Spain’s support for the American War of Independence. After being suspected of disloyalty in Havana, Miranda joined the French revolutionary army with the rank of general and his command of the artillery decided the issue in the crucial battle of Valmy in 1792. Here again Miranda was suspected of not being unconditional and he was jailed but survived the Reign of Terror and was exonerated in 1795. By then Miranda’s dream was to create a great South American independent republic for which he invented the name of Great Colombia, in honor of Columbus, and designed the yellow, blue, and red flag, which are now the colors of those of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. In 1806, Miranda invaded Coro, but he could not sway the population of even this small city and he retired to live in London in a well-appointed house in Fitzrovia. The Caracas junta sent a mission, which included Bolivar and Andres Bello, to urge Miranda to come and prepare his native land for war. Miranda accepted and he returned with Bolivar. Andres Bello, who never laid claim on martial ability, remained in London. He devoted his time to studying, teaching, and writing and eventually emigrated to independent Chile, where he was a prominent cultural and juridical figure.
            Back in Venezuela, Miranda and Bolivar were pushing for independence, which was declared on 5th July 1811. In Buenos Aires, a junta similar to that of Caracas had been established on 25 May 1810, but the interior of Argentina, which was still called La Plata (silver)—the name “Argentina”, from silver in Latin, was first adopted in 1826— either out of royalism or fear of the capital remained fractious until Gen. Jose de San Martin brought it to heel between 1814 and 1817. The situation in Venezuela, though seemingly closer to independence, was much more fraught. The captaincy-general had nine provinces, of which three: Coro, Guayana, and Maracaibo, did not favor independence at all. (This bit of Venezuelan history was revised by Chavez historians who decided that Guayana had not really opposed independence, for which reason they added an eighth star to the seven on the blue middle stripe of the Venezuelan flag, representing the number of provinces that had favored independence.) And particularly there were no signs that the pardos anywhere in Venezuela were enthusiastic about independence. Miranda was the military generalissimo and the legal civilian president was Cristobal Mendoza. With the rank of colonel, Bolivar was put in command of the fortress of Puerto Cabello. But ultimately what the Venezuelan first republic counted on were the mantuanos. In Coro, the Canarian officer Domingo de Monteverde gathered a force and marched towards the center. Bolivar was the man who should have intercepted him, but he lost the fortress which he only barely controlled, and sailed to La Guaira, the port of Caracas. During 1812, Miranda took a hard look about him and realized that the republic was not a going proposition unassisted as it was by the pardos and himself leading a small mantuano army in Caracas, which in addition was running short of ordnance. He sought terms and got them from Monteverde, but when he was about to leave Venezuela from La Guaira, Bolivar and other officers captured and handed him over to the Spaniards. From that moment on, the independence of Venezuela rested on the shoulders of Bolivar, who escaped with the help of a royalist friend, the Marqués de Casa Leon, obtained a safe conduct from Monteverde himself, and sailed to Cartagena, where patriots had taken over from the colonial authorities.
            Just as there is a “black legend” and a “golden legend” about Spanish colonialism, so there are two ways of looking at The Liberator. The golden legend about the colony is that Spain civilized America. The black legend is that it made a hash of things during over three centuries. As there are more grounds for a sympathetic view of Bolivar than for a hostile one, let us first tell starkly his “black legend”. So as to wash my hands like Pontius Pilate, the dark portrait of Bolivar that follows was included The New American Cyclopedia (1858) which was published in New York by Charles A. Dana and George Ripley. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contributed articles to this work and the one on Bolivar is attributed to Marx himself. Marx must have gotten his information from either prejudiced or ignorant sources because the title of the article is “Bolivar y Ponte” and any one, even in his time, who wanted to could find out that his real name was “Bolivar y Palacios”. Maybe Marx just didn’t care. But anyhow there are other authors who preach the “bad” Bolivar, among them the Spanish author Salvador de Madariaga, who starts his two-volume biography with the revelation that Bolivar was really a pardo, as if that had mattered in the real world in which Bolivar lived. If he was a pardo, he might not have gotten so much hassle from other pardos and the mantuanos would never have recognized him as one of their own. Anyhow, Marx accuses Bolivar of having abjectly surrendered Puerto Cabello to Spanish prisoners who rebelled. There might be more than a grain of truth in this. There is no “bad” Bolivar in Venezuelan historiography and his loss of Puerto Cabello is usually glossed over. But Bolivar took command there with few troops of his own, so basically he had no way to discipline his unruly prisoners. The betrayal of Miranda is generally known and the succor from Casa Leon was written up by the historian Mario Briceño Irragory, the closest there has been among Venezuelan intellectuals to a moderate anti-Bolivarian. Briceño Iragorry is also one of the few Venezuelan historians who depict the squalor and misery in which most Venezuelans lived at the start of independence.
            So as not to make too big a dent on this outline, I will summarize the “Marxist” accusations against Bolivar. (I use quotes because, although no one better than Marx deserves to be called Marxist, I am certain that all Venezuelan Marxists will deny the authenticity of the article, although, much as they would love to, they will not be able to charge it to the CIA or Yankee imperialism.) This non-Marxist, then, attacks Bolivar with the following docket: (1) cowardice and incompetence during 1813, a glory year for “standard” Bolivar, and 1814; (2) tyranny and court-trappings in Caracas; (3) an unnecessary sacking of Bogotá in 1814; (4) the siege of Cartagena because of a military rivalry with the patriot commander of that city; (5) extreme cowardice again in 1816 of which he was reproached by Manuel Piar, whom Bolivar later ordered court-martialed and executed; (6) abandonment of his troops in Barcelona in 1817; (6) loss of over a dozen “battles” against a numerically inferior enemy and elementary strategic errors during 1818; (7) total reliance on foreign troops for the liberation of New Granada during 1819 and of Quito in 1822; (8) secret support for the Venezuelan separatists from Great Colombia in 1826; (9)  actively seeking to establish a personal dictatorship in 1828.
            Now, let’s see whether the “facts”, propositions that are at least probable (as opposed to self-evident lying), support these allegations. In the viceroyalties of La Plata and New Granada the Creoles displaced the Spanish authorities with relative ease, as Caracas had done at first. The autonomous movement swept through New Granada, but the country was far from politically united. Bogotá inherited the role of capital from Spain, but the royalists were entrenched in southern Colombia (Popayán and Pasto). Cali was an independentist bastion just north of royalist territory. Cartagena declared independence not only from Spain but also from Bogotá. Bolivar arrived in Cartagena and was well received, as he was later in Bogotá. He recruited a force and invaded Venezuela through the Andes (1813). His chief, though headstrong, lieutenant was Jose Felix Ribas. In Trujillo, an Andean province, Bolivar emitted a decree of war to the death with which he hoped to get the pardos and any mantuano who was having second thoughts on his side. Monteverde took refuge in Puerto Cabello. At the time that Bolivar was victorious in the west, Santiago Mariño and Manuel Piar in eastern Venezuela were also successfully fighting royalists. Piar was a pardo from the Dutch island of Curazao. But neither Bolivar’s invasion nor his decree were provoking a massive enrollment of pardos in the cause of Independence. It was the other way around. In the llanos, a populist Spanish caudillo, Jose Tomas Boves, initiated a widespread pardo movement against the republic. Bolivar and Ribas held and defended the mantuano center of Venezuela. In the east, the royalists also started recovering territory. After suffering a setback, Mariño joined Bolivar and together they were defeated by Boves (1814). Bolivar was forced to the east, where, in the port of Carúpano, Piar was still holding out, and he did not accept Bolivar’s supreme command. Once again Bolivar went to New Granada (1815). In Bogotá, he was given the task of reducing independent Cartagena, for which he did not have the heart.
            In Spain, the French had been driven out and the restored Ferdinand VII sent a large expeditionary force to Venezuela and New Granada under Pablo Morillo, who had distinguished himself during Spain’s war of independence. It is often said that the Venezuelan llanos were swarming with caudillos like Boves, but this is an exaggeration. Boves was the only significant pro-Spain caudillo and he was acting in concert with Pedro Pablo Morales, who was a regular officer of Spain. In the battle of Urica, Boves was killed and Morales took command and carried on mopping up operations against patriot resistance, which included the capture and execution of Ribas, whose head boiled in oil was sent to Caracas. Morillo arrived in Venezuela and began operations with Morales. Bolivar chose to sail to Jamaica and enlist aid, which the British did not provide. From there, he went to Haiti, which was the first Latin American republic to become independent, not of Spain but of France. The Morillo/Morales duo went from Caracas to Cartagena and Bogotá (1816). Without Boves, there began disperse pardo rebellions against Spain in the llanos. And Piar was also still active in the east. With the support of the Haitian president Alexandre Pétion and with the naval aid of Manuel Brion, another pardo from Curazao, Bolivar returned to Venezuela, but his command of the republican soldiery was still not firm. Mariño, who had come back with Bolivar, and Piar went off on their own and occupied Cumaná. Piar and Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish soldier of fortune who had previously been active in New Granada, captured Barcelona. Bolivar sailed west along the Venezuelan coast to Ocumare, where, in fulfillment of Pétion’s request, he proclaimed the end of slavery (although this went unheeded), but Morales was back in Venezuela and he vastly outnumbered Bolivar, who once again sailed to Haiti with Brion. When Morales tried to reduce eastern Venezuela again, he was resisted by Piar and MacGregor.
            Bolivar and Brion returned and tried to capture Barcelona (1817), where they were repulsed by the Spaniards. In the meantime, Piar and Mariño had occupied defenceless Angostura (a city where the Orinoco river is at its narrowest and deepest; today’s Ciudad Bolivar), to where Bolivar headed and was chosen as supreme leader of the independence movement. Bolivar cashiered Piar, who had been trying to form a pardo force of his own, but was arrested and executed after a court martial in which Brion was one of the judges. British veterans of the Napoleonic wars had begun arriving in Venezuela. They were the nucleus of what later became known as the British Legion, although it was really mainly Irish and included some gossipy Germans. Morillo returned to Caracas and Morales was given troops to dominate eastern Venezuela, which he did successfully. Francisco de Paula Santander, a Newgranadian who had retreated to the llanos after Morillo’s invasion, met with Bolivar and agreed to join forces. Morillo’s other lieutenant, the second in command of the expeditionary force, Miguel de la Torre, was ordered to put down a significant rebellion in the llanos of Apure led by the pardo Jose Antonio Paez. At the time, San Martin had concluded the liberation of Chile with the essential support of the Chilean Bernardo O’Higgins.
            The year of 1818 was basically a stalemate with the patriots based in Angostura and free-wheeling in part of the llanos, and Morillo entrenched in Caracas, triumphant in eastern Venezuela, and operating in the llanos as far as Apure. This is the time during which Marx claims that Bolivar dilly-dallied and lost one skirmish after another, also saying that European officers in Angostura were egging him on to attack the center of Venezuela, which Bolivar did attempt but was defeated at La Puerta. At the time it is true that, under James Rooke, there were over 1,000 European soldiers in Venezuela. But Morillo had larger forces, and not just of Spanish line troops but also of pardos still loyal to the Spanish crown. (In 1943, the French composer Darius Milhaud created an opera named Bolivar, which was set in this period of Bolivar’s life and has to do with an attempt to kill him while he was laying in his hammock. Its theme, apart from the music, was Bolivar’s courage and the odds he was up against.)
            In 1819, Bolivar proclaimed the creation of Great Colombia with Venezuela and New Granada. New volunteers arrived in Venezuela, though most, like those that preceded them, were in essence mercenaries probably under the illusion that there were fortunes to be made in Venezuela, which was hardly the case. There is no evidence that the British government was backing them, but since Spain was no longer a British ally, it wasn’t hindering them either. In Europe, generally, Bolivar’s name was known as was the Spanish American movement for independence, which had the sympathy of every liberal-minded person, as did the independence of Greece, then also in the process of emancipation. Morillo had his hands full and pardos were starting to look towards patriot leaders. Campaigns in eastern Venezuela began turning the tide for independence and in the llanos Paez defeated Morillo and Morales in Apure. This cleared the way for Bolivar and Santander to invade New Granada, where, in Pantano de Vargas, the Spaniards were defeated in a battle in which the British Legion played a central role and its commander, Rooke, was killed in action. In the battle of Boyacá (1819), Spanish power was crushed in New Granada, except in the south. Paez occupied Barinas and, from New Granada, Bolivar invaded Venezuela.
            In Spain in 1820, liberal military, under Rafael Riego, established a constitutional monarchy, which precluded new Spanish invasions of America. Before being recalled to Spain, Morillo signed a truce with Bolivar. Miguel de la Torre was left in command of the royalist forces. The truce ended in 1821 and Bolivar had all available forces converge on Carabobo, a hilly plain near Valencia, to face de la Torre and Morales. The defeat of the Spanish right, which is credited to the British Legion, whose commander Thomas Farrier fell, decided the battle. Later memoirs by the European legionnaires said that Venezuelan troops fled in this action, but, as Venezuelan losses, including two important commanders, were high, this is a fabrication. The remnants of the royalists tried to resist in Maracaibo and Puerto Cabello but by 1824 all had been reduced by Mariano Montilla and Jose Prudencio Padilla. After Carabobo, a congress met in Cúcuta, Santander’s birthplace, and approved a federalist constitution for Great Colombia.
            The liberation of Quito obeyed both strategic and jurisdictional reasons. There was a Quito-Pasto-Popayán royalist axis which was a thorn on the side of Great Colombia, more accurately its bottom. Jurisdictionally, Quito was a dependency of the viceroyalty of New Granada and Bolivar always believed that the new Spanish American nations should keep to the approximate borders they had under colonial jurisdiction, which was not a question so much of aggrandizing Great Colombia as of trying to prevent future border disputes. There was an additional factor and it was that Guayaquil, Quito’s port, had declared its independence and needed support. Peruvian soldiers under orders from San Martin, then occupying Lima, had arrived in Guayaquil. A young Venezuelan general, Antonio Jose de Sucre, had shown his mettle in previous campaigns and Bolivar sent him with troops by sea to Guayaquil while he invaded from the north. Bolivar defeated the royalists early in 1822. But Pasto was opposing his advance. After failing twice to march directly on Quito, Sucre occupied Cuenca and from there, leading a coalition army in which probably Colombians and British or Irish were a marginal majority—it must be kept in mind that most of both the patriot and royalist sides usually never concentrated above brigade size (5,000 men)—he marched on Quito and occupied the side of the Pinchincha volcano facing the city. The Spanish commander tried to outclimb him but the patriots in the end got the best of their enemies in hand to hand combat. In both Bolivar’s and Sucre’s advances, the British Legion participated importantly, although it was definitely not the winner of the battles. Sucre entered Quito and then turned north and repressed the extremely recalcitrant Pasto royalists, making it possible for Bolivar to join forces with him.
            San Martin had not invaded the interior of Perú where Spanish viceroy Jose de la Serna had his forces intact. When the Colombian liberation of Quito had been accomplished, he sailed to Guayaquil for a “summit of Liberators” with Bolivar. The two leaders met in secret and there has been much useless speculation about what they talked about. Some believe that San Martin wanted to claim Quito; others that he sought Bolivar’s help to defeat the Spaniards in Perú. San Martin was a strictly military man. He did not like intrigues and he was not prominent in the political infighting in Buenos Aires. As he was uncomfortable in the political world of Lima, which had not been especially keen on liberation, it is likely that he did ask Bolivar to finish the war in Perú, upon which both generals were agreed on its strategic necessity for the consolidation of South American independence. As the viceroyalty of La Plata, from which the independent United Provinces of La Plata had emerged, had once been the administrative center for Upper Perú (today’s Bolivia), and additionally there had been two previous Platean invasions of the region, it is also likely that he indicated his country’s interest in Upper Perú. Be that as it may, San Martin left Lima, went back to Buenos Aires, and shortly later emigrated to London, where he spent the rest of his life.
            Bolivar was summoned to Lima, which is also likely as Peruvian aristocrats by now knew that their loyalty to Spain could become a drawback once Perú had become independent. The Spaniards still occupied the port of Trujillo in northern Perú, which Colombian forces secured (1823). Bolivar landed in El Callao, the port of Lima, but skirted the fort where a Spanish force was holed up and only surrendered in 1826. In Lima itself he was named dictator. Bolivar and Sucre went after the royalist forces which they beat in the battle of Junin (1824), which consisted of cavalry charges on both sides. Bolivar went back to Lima and Sucre chased La Serna’s army and defeated it in the battle of Ayacucho, considered the landmark victory of South American independence for it involved the highest number of troops ever engaged in the wars of independence (possibly around 20,000 in all). While these events were going in South America, in the USA, which already had 42 years as an independent state, president James Monroe enunciated in 1823 the doctrine that bears his name declaring the Western Hemisphere, except Canada, its area of influence and warning European powers not to encroach on it. Bolivar’s response to American claims of hegemony was the convocation of the Congress of Panamá, which was held in June-July 1826 and which the USA did not attend. Sucre went on to Upper Perú, apparently without Bolivar’s authorization, and he defeated feeble local resistance and created the Republic of Bolivia (1825), named after Bolivar. Bolivar made public the letter in which he reprimanded Sucre, but he wrote the constitution for Bolivia, which he considered his legislative masterpiece. Sucre became president of Bolivia.
            Although Bolivar was feted in Lima and his political ascendancy was never disputed, neither Perú nor Bolivia were hospitable to Colombians. Peruvians themselves were probably a majority on both sides in the battle of Ayacucho. Besides, in Venezuela, nominally a province of Great Colombia, Paez, backed by the former mantuanos (and now the ruling clique in Caracas), tentatively initiated the separation of Venezuela in 1826. Bolivar returned post haste to Bogotá, where vicepresident Santander complained about the Venezuelan insubordination. Bolivar traveled to Caracas and seemingly put Paez in his place (1827). Sucre left Bolivia the same year. Santander was disappointed and on top of that he opposed Bolivar’s plans to implant the Bolivian constitution in Great Colombia, for which a convention was convoked in the town of Ocaña. Thus began the rivalry between Santander and Bolivar. In 1828, in view of the political opposition he was facing both in Venezuela and New Granada and that his Great Colombia was coming apart, Bolivar named himself dictator. He escaped an assassination attempt with the help of his mistress, Manuelita Sanz, a lovely pardo woman from Quito. Santander was exiled but Jose Prudencio Padilla, the pardo general who had cornered Morales after Carabobo in Maracaibo by land and sea, was executed instead. The Peruvians were now emboldened and invaded Guayaquil. Bolivar had to return to Quito in 1829 to repulse them, which didn’t take much doing for the invasion fizzled before Bolivar arrived. Back in Bogotá, Bolivar pleaded for unity and, though he had offered to resign various times during his career, this time, when Great Colombia had a new constitution (not Bolivar’s Bolivian one) and a president, Joaquin Mosquera, Bolivar finally did resign in 1830. At that point, Paez not only had declared the second independence of Venezuela but promoted a campaign of vituperation against Bolivar. Seeing the state of things, Quito followed suit, under Venezuelan general Juan Jose Flores, and Sucre was assassinated while riding alone through a thick forest on his way to that city. A downcast Bolivar rode to the coast with the intention of leaving the country, but he was truly exhausted and very sick. He died in Santa Marta, Colombia, at the age of 47.  
            How does this summary on Bolivar stack up to “Marx’s Bolivar”? Bolivar was not cowardly in any possible sense of the word, but, as military commander, he tended to be cautious. He was fond of power despite his protestations that he only wanted to be an “ordinary citizen”. And he also relished the tributes that were showered on him. It is no secret that he was a ladies’ man. He was a good dancer and easy with compliments. Although this story is an obvious fake and there is no conceivable reason why its Peruvian author, Ricardo Palma, a pardo nostalgic for the viceroyalty, should have invented it, it tells that, when Bolivar first entered Lima, there was a maiden waiting in his chamber. Afterwards, a bloody cloth was waved aloft to the people as evidence of her virginity and Bolivar’s virility, an odd display which, it has been said, was something of a ritual in rural Sicily. But Palma goes a bit further and claims that this cloth was the origin of Perú’s flag, which is white in the center and red on both sides. The report of Bolivar sacking Bogotá has no grounds. We already explained that Bolivar besieged Cartagena because it refused to obey Bogotá. Bolivar did not lose any significant battle against Morillo. The skirmishes in the llanos during Morillo’s offensive obviously indicate that he was engaging in guerrilla warfare, which is what Spaniards had done against France. Bolivar only retreated when the odds were too high against him. Cowards are not usually endowed with a tenacious will, and this no one begrudges Bolivar. The foreign legionnaires under his orders did yeoman duty but by themselves they never would have won a single battle, and Bolivar always gave them their due. Bolivar’s aide de camp during his campaigns after Angostura was the Irishman Daniel O’Leary, who also compiled the largest number of accounts and documents about Bolivar and the Colombian wars of independence. Bolivar never supported Venezuela’s separation from Great Colombia. Aside from proclamations, he never kept his word to Petion to free the slaves, but that would have been as if Robert E. Lee, who freed his own slaves, had tried to impose their emancipation in the Confederacy. Bolivar did seem have something about pardos, but Piar was engaging in sedition when Venezuela most needed unity and it is certain that Padilla, who was also pardo, did participate in the plot to kill Bolivar.
            When Castro came to power in Cuba, he admitted that he could not immediately staff his government with blacks, although it cannot be denied that, if he has accomplished anything, it is racial egalitarianism in a country where racial discrimination was not only common but intense and bitter. The total pardo emancipation in Venezuela is occurring now under Chavez. Yes, Bolivar hung on to power as long as he could, and he probably resigned because he was mortally ill, but his Great Colombia ideal was part of himself, so if he did not give up his dream easily it was because it would have been as if he were slashing his own wrists. So where did Marx get his anti-Bolivarian stories and why did he espouse them as if they were true? The obvious source had to be the many memoirs that were written by the former European volunteers, who were either spited or trying to second-guess Bolivar. Marx’s Bolivar biography is full of errors and contradictions. Marx knew that Bolivar was a mantuano and Marx’s sympathies for the down-trodden probably induced in him the false belief that Bolivar was pro-slavery, or, worse, an opportunistic “feudal” exploiter. Marx knew about Spanish America as much as about milking cows, which is basically what he did, milking that is, in believing the distorted depictions of Bolivar that fellow Europeans were hawking.