THE EPIC OF INDEPENDENCE
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
pro-independence 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, 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." |
