Spanish South America
Overview
Simón Bolívar
South American independence movements demonstrate the importance of Simon Bolivar and his linking with San Martin. Bolivar led militaries throughout South America to be successful in removing the Spanish from South America.
Learning Objectives
- Evaluate the differences between the Caribbean and Southern American Age of Revolutions.
- Analyze the impact of Napoleonic Wars on the South American Age of Revolutions.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
- Gran Colombia: name used today for the state that encompassed much of northern South America and part of southern Central America from 1819 to 1831; a territory including present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, northern Peru, western Guyana, and northwest Brazil
- New Granada: the name given on May 27, 1717 to the jurisdiction of the Spanish Empire in northern South America, which corresponds to modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela
- Battle of Carabobo: a battle fought between independence fighters led by Venezuelan General Simón Bolívar and the Royalist forces led by Spanish Field Marshal Miguel de la Torre (Bolívar’s decisive victory at Carabobo led to the independence of Venezuela and establishment of the Republic of Gran Colombia.)
- Army of the Andes: a military force created by the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (Argentina) and mustered by general José de San Martín in his campaign to free Chile from the Spanish Empire (In 1817, it crossed the Andes Mountains from the Argentine province of Cuyo at the current-day province of Mendoza, Argentina, and it succeeded in dislodging the Spanish from the country.)
- Crossing of the Andes: one of the most important feats in the Argentine and Chilean wars of independence, in which a combined army of Argentine soldiers and Chilean exiles invaded Chile, leading to Chile’s liberation from Spanish rule (The crossing of the Andes was a major step in the strategy devised by José de San Martín to defeat the royalist forces at their stronghold of Lima, Viceroyalty of Perú, and secure the Spanish American independence movements.)
Spanish South America El Libertador: Simón Bolívar
Simón Bolívar (July 24, 1783 – December 17, 1830) was a Venezuelan military and political leader who played a key role in the establishment of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama as sovereign states independent of Spanish rule.
Bolívar was born into a wealthy, aristocratic Creole family and like others of his day was educated abroad at a young age, arriving in Spain when he was 16 and later moving to France. While in Europe, he was introduced to the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers, which gave him the ambition to replace the Spanish as rulers. Taking advantage of the disorder in Spain prompted by the Peninsular War, Bolívar began his campaign for Venezuelan independence in 1808, appealing to the wealthy Creole population through a conservative process. He established an organized national congress within three years. Despite several hindrances, including the arrival of an unprecedentedly large Spanish expeditionary force, the revolutionaries eventually prevailed, culminating in a patriot victory at the Battle of Carabobo in 1821 that effectively made Venezuela an independent country.
Following this triumph over the Spanish monarchy, Bolívar participated in the foundation of the first union of independent nations in Latin America: Gran Colombia. He was president of Gran Colombia from 1819 to 1830. Through further military campaigns, he ousted Spanish rulers from Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia (which was named after him). He was simultaneously president of Gran Colombia (current Venezuela, Colombia, Panamá, and Ecuador) and Peru, while his second in command Antonio José de Sucre was appointed president of Bolivia. He aimed at a strong and united Spanish America able to cope not only with the threats emanating from Spain and the European Holy Alliance but also with the emerging power of the United States. At the peak of his power, Bolívar ruled over a vast territory from the Argentine border to the Caribbean Sea.
In his 21-year career, Bolívar faced two main challenges. First was gaining acceptance as undisputed leader of the republican cause. Despite claiming such a role since 1813, he began to achieve acceptance only in 1817, and consolidated his hold on power after his dramatic and unexpected victory in New Granada in 1819. His second challenge was implementing a vision to unify the region into one large state, which he believed (and most would agree, correctly) would be the only guarantee of maintaining independence from the Spanish in northern South America. His early experiences under the First Venezuelan Republic and in New Granada convinced him that divisions among republicans, augmented by federal forms of government, only allowed Spanish American royalists to eventually gain the upper hand. Once again, it was his victory in 1819 that gave him the leverage to bring about the creation of a unified state, Gran Colombia with which to oppose the Spanish Monarchy on the continent.
Bolívar is, along with Argentine General José de San Martín, considered one of the great heroes of the Hispanic independence movements of the early 19th century.
Failed Dream of a Unified Latin America
At the end of the wars of independence (1808 – 1825), many new sovereign states emerged in the Americas from the former Spanish colonies. Throughout this revolutionary era, Bolívar envisioned various unions that would ensure the independence of Spanish America vis-à-vis the European powers—in particular Britain—and the expanding United States. In his 1815 Cartagena Manifesto, Bolívar had already advocated that the Spanish American provinces should present a united front to the Spanish in order to prevent being re-conquered piecemeal, but he had not yet proposed a political union of any kind. During the wars of independence, the fight against Spain was marked by an emerging sense of nationalism. It was unclear what the new states that replaced the Spanish Monarchy should be. Most of those who fought for independence identified with both their birth provinces and Spanish America as a whole, both of which they referred to as their patria—a term roughly translated as “fatherland” and “homeland.”
For Bolivar, Hispanic America was the fatherland. He dreamed of a united Spanish America and in the pursuit of that purpose not only created Gran Colombia but also the Confederation of the Andes. The conference gathered in Peru and Bolivia. Moreover, he envisaged and promoted a network of treaties that would hold together the newly liberated Hispanic American countries. Nonetheless, he was unable to control the centrifugal process that pushed in all directions. On January 20, 1830, as his dream fell apart, Bolívar delivered his last address to the nation, announcing that he would be stepping down from the presidency of Gran Colombia. At the time, “Colombians” referred to the people of Gran Colombia (Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador), not modern-day Colombia. In his speech, a distraught Bolívar urged the people to maintain the union and to be wary of the intentions of those who advocated for separation:
“Colombians! Today I cease to govern you. I have served you for twenty years as soldier and leader. During this long period we have taken back our country, liberated three republics, fomented many civil wars, and four times I have returned to the people their omnipotence, convening personally four constitutional congresses. These services were inspired by your virtues, your courage, and your patriotism; mine is the great privilege of having governed you…
Colombians! Gather around the constitutional congress. It represents the wisdom of the nation, the legitimate hope of the people, and the final point of reunion of the patriots. Its sovereign decrees will determine our lives, the happiness of the Republic, and the glory of Colombia. If dire circumstances should cause you to abandon it, there will be no health for the country, and you will drown in the ocean of anarchy, leaving as your children’s legacy nothing but crime, blood, and death.
Fellow Countrymen! Hear my final plea as I end my political career; in the name of Colombia I ask you, beg you, to remain united, lest you become the assassins of the country and your own executioners.”
Bolívar ultimately failed in his attempt to prevent the collapse of the union.Gran Colombia was dissolved later that year and replaced by the republics of Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador. Ironically, these countries were established as centralist nations and would be governed for decades this way by leaders who, during Bolívar’s last years, accused him of betraying republican principles and wanting to establish a permanent dictatorship. These separatists, among them José Antonio Páez and Francisco de Paula Santander, justified their opposition to Bolívar for this reason and publicly denounced him as a monarch.
Southern Cone Independence
Southern South American Independence: San Martín
José de San Martín was an Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America’s successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire. Born in Yapeyú, Corrientes, in modern-day Argentina, he left his mother country at the early age of seven to study in Málaga, Spain.
In 1808, after taking part in the Peninsular War against Napoleon’s France, San Martín contacted South American supporters of independence from Spain. In 1812, he set sail for Buenos Aires and offered his services to the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, present-day Argentina. After the Battle of San Lorenzo and time commanding the Army of the North during 1814, he organized a plan to defeat the Spanish forces that menaced the United Provinces from the north, using an alternative path to the Viceroyalty of Peru. This objective first involved the establishment of a new army, the Army of the Andes, in Cuyo Province, Argentina. From there, he led the Crossing of the Andes to Chile and triumphed at the Battle of Chacabuco and the Battle of Maipú (1818), thus liberating Chile from royalist rule. Then he sailed to attack the Spanish stronghold of Lima, Peru.
On July 12, 1821, after seizing partial control of Lima, San Martín was appointed Protector of Peru, and Peruvian independence was officially declared on July 28. On July 22, after a closed-door meeting with fellow libertador Simón Bolívar at Guayaquil, Ecuador, Bolívar took over the task of fully liberating Peru. San Martín unexpectedly left the country and resigned the command of his army, excluding himself from politics and the military, and moved to France in 1824. The details of the July 22 meeting would be a subject of debate by later historians.
San Martín is regarded as a national hero of Argentina and Peru, and together with Bolívar, one of the Liberators of Spanish South America. The Order of the Liberator General San Martín (Orden del Libertador General San Martín), created in his honor, is the highest decoration conferred by the Argentine government.
Wars of Independence: Argentina, Chile, Peru
San Martín entered the Argentine War of Independence about a year after it started. The reasons that he left Spain in 1811 to join the Spanish American wars of independence as a patriot remain contentious among historians. The action would seem contradictory and out of character, because if the patriots were waging an independentist and anti-Hispanic war, then he would be a traitor or deserter. There are a variety of explanations by different historians. Some argue that he returned because he missed South America and the war of independence justified changing sides to support it. Others contend that the wars in the Americas were not initially separatist but between supporters of absolutism and liberalism, which thus maintains a continuity between San Martín’s actions in Spain and in Latin America.
The Argentine War of Independence started with the May Revolution and other military campaigns with mixed success. The undesired outcomes of the Paraguay and Upper Peru campaigns led the Junta (the provisional government after the May Revolution) to be replaced by an executive Triumvirate in September 1811.
A few days after his arrival in Buenos Aires, San Martín was interviewed by the First Triumvirate. They appointed him a lieutenant colonel of cavalry and asked him to create a cavalry unit, as Buenos Aires did not have good cavalry. He began to organize the Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers with Alvear and Zapiola. As Buenos Aires lacked professional military leaders, San Martín was entrusted with the protection of the whole city, but kept focused on the task of building the military unit. A year later the Triumvirate was renewed, and San Martín was promoted to colonel.
San Martín came up with a plan: organize an army in Mendoza, cross the Andes to Chile, and move to Peru by sea, all while another general defended the north frontier. This would place him in Peru without crossing the harsh terrain of Upper Peru, where two campaigns had already been defeated. To advance this plan, he requested the governorship of the Cuyo province, which was accepted.
San Martín immediately began to organize the Army of the Andes. He drafted all citizens who could bear arms and all slaves from ages 16 to 30, requested reinforcements to Buenos Aires, and reorganized the economy for war production. San Martín proposed that the country declare independence immediately, before the crossing. That way, they would be acting as a sovereign nation and not as a mere rebellion, but the proposal never was accepted. Needing even more soldiers, San Martín extended the emancipation of slaves to ages 14 to 55, and even allowed them to be promoted to higher military ranks. He proposed a similar measure at the national level, but Pueyrredón encountered severe resistance. He included the Chileans who escaped Chile after the disaster of Rancagua, and organized them in four units: infantry, cavalry, artillery, and dragoons. At the end of 1816, the Army of the Andes had 5,000 men, 10,000 mules, and 1,500 horses. San Martin organized military intelligence, propaganda, and disinformation to confuse the royalist armies (such as the specific routes taken in the Andes), boost the national fervor of his army, and promote desertion among the royalists.
In early 1817, San Martín led the Crossing of the Andes into Chile, obtaining a decisive victory at the battle of Chacabuco on February 17, which allowed the exiled Chilean leader Bernardo O’Higgins to enter Santiago de Chile unopposed and install a new independent government. In December 1817, a popular referendum was set up to decide on the Independence of Chile. On February 18, 1818, the first anniversary of the battle of Chacabuco, Chile declared its independence from the Spanish Crown.
From there, San Martín took the Army of the Andes to fight in Peru. To begin the liberation of Peru and prepare for the invasion, Argentina and Chile signed a treaty on February 5, 1819. General José de San Martín believed that the liberation of Argentina wouldn’t be secure until the royalist stronghold in Peru was defeated. Peru had armed forces nearly four times the strength of those of San Martín. With this disparity, San Martín tried to avoid battles. He tried instead to divide the enemy forces in several locations, as during the Crossing of the Andes, and trap the royalists with a pincer movement with either reinforcements of the Army of the North from the South or the army of Simón Bolívar from the North. He also tried to promote rebellions and insurrection within the royalist ranks and promised the emancipation of any slaves that deserted their Peruvian masters to join his army. When he reached Lima, San Martín invited all of the populace of Lima to swear oath to the Independence cause. The signing of the Act of Independence of Peru was held on July 15, 1821. San Martín became the leader of the government, even though he did not want to lead. He was appointed Protector of Peru. After several years of fighting, San Martín abandoned Peru in September 1822 and left the whole command of the Independence movement to Simon Bolivar. The Peruvian War culminated in 1824 with the defeat of the Spanish Empire in the battles of Junin and Ayacucho.
Guayaquil Conference
The Guayaquil Conference was a meeting that took place on July 26, 1822, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, between José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, to discuss the future of Perú (and South America in general). San Martín arrived in Guayaquil on July 25, where he was enthusiastically greeted by Bolívar. However, the two men could not come to an agreement, despite their common goals and mutual respect, even when San Martín offered to serve under Bolívar. Both men had very different ideas about how to organize the governments of the countries that they had liberated. Bolívar was in favor of forming a series of republics in the newly independent nations, whereas San Martín preferred the European system of rule and wanted to put monarchies in place. San Martín was also in favor of placing a European prince in power as King of Peru when it was liberated. The conference, consequently, was a failure, at least for San Martín.
San Martín, after meeting with Bolívar for several hours on July 26, stayed for a banquet and ball given in his honor. Bolívar proposed a toast to “the two greatest men in South America: the general San Martín and myself,” whereas San Martín drank to “the prompt conclusion of the war, the organization of the different Republics of the continent and the health of the Liberator of Colombia.” After the conference, San Martín abdicated his powers in Peru and returned to Argentina. Soon afterward, he left South America entirely and retired in France.
Primary Source: Simón de Bolívar: Message to the Congress of Angostura, 1819
We are not Europeans; we are not Indians; we are but a mixed species of aborigines and Spaniards. Americans by birth and Europeans by law, we find ourselves engaged in a dual conflict: we are disputing with the natives for titles of ownership, and at the same time we are struggling to maintain ourselves in the country that gave us birth against the opposition of the invaders. Thus our position is most extraordinary and complicated. But there is more. As our role has always been strictly passive and political existence nil, we find that our quest for liberty is now even more difficult of accomplishment; for we, having been placed in a state lower than slavery, had been robbed not only of our freedom but also of the right to exercise an active domestic tyranny. . .We have been ruled more by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. If a people, perverted by their training, succeed in achieving their liberty, they will soon lose it, for it would be of no avail to endeavor to explain to them that happiness consists in the practice of virtue; that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of tyrants, because, as the laws are more inflexible, every one should submit to their beneficent austerity; that proper morals, and not force, are the bases of law; and that to practice justice is to practice liberty.
Although those people [North Americans], so lacking in many respects, are unique in the history of mankind, it is a marvel, I repeat, that so weak and complicated a government as the federal system has managed to govern them in the difficult and trying circumstances of their past. But, regardless of the effectiveness of this form of government with respect to North America, I must say that it has never for a moment entered my mind to compare the position and character of two states as dissimilar as the English-American and the Spanish-American. Would it not be most difficult to apply to Spain the English system of political, civil, and religious liberty: Hence, it would be even more difficult to adapt to Venezuela the laws of North America.
Nothing in our fundamental laws would have to be altered were we to adopt a legislative power similar to that held by the British Parliament. Like the North Americans, we have divided national representation into two chambers: that of Representatives and the Senate. The first is very wisely constituted. It enjoys all its proper functions, and it requires no essential revision, because the Constitution, in creating it, gave it the form and powers which the people deemed necessary in order that they might be legally and properly represented. If the Senate were hereditary rather than elective, it would, in my opinion, be the basis, the tie, the very soul of our republic. In political storms this body would arrest the thunderbolts of the government and would repel any violent popular reaction. Devoted to the government because of a natural interest in its own preservation, a hereditary senate would always oppose any attempt on the part of the people to infringe upon the jurisdiction and authority of their magistrates. . .The creation of a hereditary senate would in no way be a violation of political equality. I do not solicit the establishment of a nobility, for as a celebrated republican has said, that would simultaneously destroy equality and liberty. What I propose is an office for which the candidates must prepare themselves, an office that demands great knowledge and the ability to acquire such knowledge. All should not be left to chance and the outcome of elections. The people are more easily deceived than is Nature perfected by art; and although these senators, it is true, would not be bred in an environment that is all virtue, it is equally true that they would be raised in an atmosphere of enlightened education. The hereditary senate will also serve as a counterweight to both government and people; and as a neutral power it will weaken the mutual attacks of these two eternally rival powers.
The British executive power possesses all the authority properly appertaining to a sovereign, but he is surrounded by a triple line of dams, barriers, and stockades. He is the head of government, but his ministers and subordinates rely more upon law than upon his authority, as they are personally responsible; and not even decrees of royal authority can exempt them from this responsibility. The executive is commander in chief of the army and navy; he makes peace and declares war; but Parliament annually determines what sums are to be paid to these military forces. While the courts and judges are dependent on the executive power, the laws originate in and are made by Parliament. Give Venezuela such an executive power in the person of a president chosen by the people or their representatives, and you will have taken a great step toward national happiness. No matter what citizen occupies this office, he will be aided by the Constitution, and therein being authorized to do good, he can do no harm, because his ministers will cooperate with him only insofar as he abides by the law. If he attempts to infringe upon the law, his own ministers will desert him, thereby isolating him from the Republic, and they will even bring charges against him in the Senate. The ministers, being responsible for any transgressions committed, will actually govern, since they must account for their actions.
A republican magistrate is an individual set apart from society, charged with checking the impulse of the people toward license and the propensity of judges and administrators toward abuse of the laws. He is directly subject to the legislative body, the senate, and the people: he is the one man who resists the combined pressure of the opinions, interests, and passions of the social state and who, as Carnot states, does little more than struggle constantly with the urge to dominate and the desire to escape domination. This weakness can only be corrected by a strongly rooted force. It should be strongly proportioned to meet the resistance which the executive must expect from the legislature, from the judiciary, and from the people of a republic. Unless the executive has easy access to all the administrative resources, fixed by a just distribution of powers, he inevitably becomes a nonentity or abuses his authority. By this I mean that the result will be the death of the government, whose heirs are anarchy, usurpation, and tyranny. . . Therefore, let the entire system of government be strengthened, and let the balance of power be drawn up in such a manner that it will be permanent and incapable of decay because of its own tenuity. Precisely because no form of government is so weak as the democratic, its framework must be firmer, and its institutions must be studied to determine their degree of stability...unless this is done, we will have to reckon with an ungovernable, tumultuous, and anarchic society, not with a social order where happiness, peace, and justice prevail.
Source:
From: Simón Bolívar, An Address of Bolivar at the Congress of Angostura (February 15, 1819), Reprint Ed., (Washington, D.C.: Press of B. S. Adams, 1919), passim.
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg has modernized the text.
Attributions
Attributions
Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Boundless World History
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/north-america/