Anyone remotely familiar with South American history will know that at its base, it is a tragedy. The revolutions of the early 19th century which freed the continent from the shackles of foreign despotism failed to carry through to ending domestic despotism. Still, the peoples of South America venerate the man who more than any other was responsible for their freedom, Simón Bolívar. Today however, we seek to show where Bolívar went wrong, and how South America CAN be fixed today.

Born in 1783 into a family of wealth and stature, Simón was educated in the enlightenment thinkers of his day including Voltaire and Rousseau, inculcating him in a desire of liberty even if it ended the cushy position he held in a society where the criollos (those of pure Spanish blood) ruled over the various impure races with absolute impunity. His interest in revolution was only intensified when he visited France under Napoleon in 1804. In an event that has great interest to Pan-secessionists, Bolívar resolved to free South America from the Spanish yoke at the Sacred Mount of Rome, where the so-called “secession of the plebs” took place in 494 B.C. The lower classes of ancient Rome had a trump card when their wishes were being ignored by the powerful: voting with their feet. A mass emigration of workers starved the Roman State of its lifeblood and so it was used or threatened throughout Antiquity. In a similar way, Bolívar sought to free his fellow slaves to the Spanish Empire from what he called “an even lower form of slavery than [eastern despotism]…for at least the Great Sultan of the Turks is a Turk”. 

Spending the next few years secretly cultivating a network of anti-royalists, his chance for action came in 1810 when the French removed the last vestiges of Spanish authority in Europe. Taking advantage of this crisis and with the help of the British, liberal Venezuelans set up a “Supreme Junta” that claimed to be the true representatives of the Spanish Monarchy. Bolivar led a liberal underground movement, the Sociedad Patriótica which pushed for true independence. The Sociedad successfully defeated the conservatives in the Junta and on the 5th of July 1811 the First Republic of Venezuela was declared. This republic was very ill-fated, and poor leadership and acts of God such as the 1812 Caracas earthquake which killed 20,000 Venezuelans led it to ignominious defeat. Bolivar managed to escape arrest and fled to the sister republic of New Grenada (modern day Colombia). From there he and his allies launched a second campaign for freedom under a Second Republic starting in 1813. Again, setbacks and mistakes plagued him and in 1815 he fled for his life to British Jamaica, once again seeking British support for the movement as the jaws of the Spanish closed around New Grenada as well. At this point the future for freedom in South America looked as dark as it did when Bolivar was a boy. 

Bolivar was not satisfied with British proposals for help, and in 1816 he visited the free black republic of Haiti. Pledging to end slavery as part of his reforms, Bolivar received ample support from Haiti’s President to return to the fight against the Miserable Slaves of Absolute Power. While the British State ended up not providing significant support to Bolivar’s new, Third Republic of Venezuela, thousands of British and Irish liberal volunteers augmented his ranks and provided essential training to his eager but untrained troops, a large portion of which were simply pardos (mixed race south americans) who rose up against the Empire without weapons or even uniforms. These legions joined Bolivar as he won back Colombia and Venezuela from the Spanish and in 1819 united the two Republics into a Gran Colombia, a centralized authoritarian state that Bolivar believed fulfilled the needs of the disparate peoples of the two nations. This belief in centralization will come back in relevance, but for now, Bolivar was going from victory to victory, liberating Ecuador in 1821 and helping the Peruvians fight the royalists further south in 1823. Peru remained an independent nation, although Bolivar and his supporters had designs on a unified South American Republic. Generalissimo Bolivar at this point had such a godlike status among South Americans that the country of Bolivia, well to the South of Venezuela, declared him to be their president (and of course, their namesake) when they declared independence in 1825. By the following year, the Spanish no longer had any power on the entire continent. Freedom was finally secured! That was the hope of the liberals of South America, who had put their faith and most importantly all their political power in the person of Bolivar. 

From 1826 the business of Bolivar turned from freeing a people to managing and consolidating Gran Colombia. The policies of Bolivar were genuinely reformist, not only being opposed to slavery but to the injustice of the Haciendas, the vast state granted estates of the upper class that impoverished the less fortunate, and the old reactionary policies of patent and tariff. But his methods, of using near-absolute power, turned off even old allies of his. Between 1826 and 1830 a power struggle occurred between his camp, the centralists who claimed the only way to govern the new Republic of Gran Colombia, indeed the whole continent, was through Great Men, and the camp of the decentralists, who wanted local self government and self-determination. Bolivar’s defeat in this struggle led to his exile and his death from tuberculosis soon followed. Gran Colombia broke up into the three modern nation states of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. 

In 1842 Bolivar’s remains were buried with full honors in Caracas his home city, with a flowery eulogy to his efforts for liberty: “What profound truths about human destinies are revealed in the situation of the illustrious Caudillo of South American independence, the valiant champion covered with laurels in a hundred battles, that Titan of the Andes who sought to heap one summit upon another in order to dedicate a monument to liberty . . . and then was left helpless upon a shore, his laurels ungirt, seeing his most beautiful creation expiring in his arms and hearing in his agony the cry of scandal and the accusation of calumny! But twelve years passed, and the great judgment was opened. Colombia lives in her children—a noble lineage that shall not perish!—and with the voice of three republics proclaims and bears witness to the glory of her founder. Peru and Bolivia, in consternation and gratitude, acclaim him father and Liberator. His proud fatherland calls him to its bosom with triumphal honors; and republics and empires pay homage to his venerable ashes.”

Springtime of Nations does not mourn the defeat of the personalist dictatorship of Bolivar, but the disparate states of Latin America have been easy prey for the forces of reaction and international rapine. From Britain and France in the 19th century only to be replaced by “benevolent” intervention by the United States, who to this day conducts drug enforcement operations against the peoples of Colombia. If Bolivar had kept his ego in check, and favored a confederation of the rather underpopulated states of South America, a strong but free association of American states could have stood up to the great powers and reduced the great landed estates that plague the continent to this day. 

Bolivar was certainly a soldier, perhaps one of the greatest. A soldier of liberty? In this case we leave the question open to the audience. Long live South America and may 1000 flowers bloom!