86JOURNEYS In the footsteps of Simón Bolívar’s campaign to liberate Colombiawo hundred years ago,
Simón Bolívar set out from
Venezuela to attack the
royalist Spanish strong-
holds in New Granada (now Colombia).
Through the heat, humidity and
caimans of the flooded llanos (plains)
and the precipices and blizzardy cold of
the Andes mountains, Bolívar’s army
undertook a daring expedition that
determined the course of South
American independence.
By 1819, Bolívar had been waging his
liberation campaign for over a decade.
In that time, he had proclaimed the
liberation from Spanish rule of modern-
day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and
Ecuador, only to have much of that
territory reconquered by the royalist
general Pablo Morillo. By the time the
rainy season began in May 1819, the war
was in a state of stalemate.
Bolívar, however, conceived an
audacious new plan. Rather than
wait out the rainy season in western
Venezuela or launch a campaign to take
the capital, Caracas, he looked over the
Andes to New Granada. It was here,
he reasoned, that the independence of
northern South America could be won.
But to achieve it, he would have
to surprise Morillo.
Two years earlier, José de San
Martín’s patriots had crossed the Andes
from Argentina to confront royalists in
Chile – but he had done it in summer.
There was no chance, Morillo assumed,
that Bolívar could cross the mountains
and plains during the rainy season.
Bolívar, though, saw things differ-
ently. On 23 May, he called his officers
to a council of war. Cork-born Daniel
O’Leary, a staff officer among the patriot
troops, described the scene: “They metT
in the ruins of a cabin in the deserted
and destroyed village of Setenta on the
right bank of the Apure. There was no
table. There were no chairs. A party
of royalists, who had bivouacked there
some time before, had killed several
head of cattle. The rain and the sun
had bleached the skulls of the bullocks,
and they served as seats on which the
destiny of a great country was about to
be decided.”Scarcely conceivable
By now, the officers were accustomed to
Bolívar’s grandiose schemes – and to the
fact that, in recent times at least, they
rarely worked. This time he proposed
a scarcely conceivable plan: to march
west through the downpours to the New
Granadan plains of Casanare, taking
his troops close enough to strike at the
Spanish royalists when weather and
circumstances permitted.
“Most of the army is naked,” Bolívar
noted. “We have no medical supplies.”
Yet still he kept making his case: the
patriots would suffer just as many losses
if they stayed put, where they would be
at the mercy of malaria and yellow fever.
And unless the troops kept on the move,
many would consider deserting.
Whether it was Bolívar’s rhetoric,
logic or force of personality that per-
suaded them, the officers left the derelict
cabin in agreement. But he had revealed
to them only half of his plan.
Bolívar’s troops numbered 2,100. Ac-
companying them were some wives and
girlfriends of the soldiers – the so-called
Juanas – and their children. In the patri-
ots’ favour was their youthful vigour. As
well as being leader of the army, Bolívar- still only 35 – was very much the elder
statesman of the movement.
Bolívar’s officers were accustomed to
his grandiose schemes – and also to the
fact that they rarely worked
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima
Trinidad Bolívar Palacios Ponte y Blanco
(1783–1830) was born in Spanish-ruled
Caracas to an aristocratic family, and
finished his schooling in Spain.
Drawn to the republican ideals of
the Enlightenment, Bolívar recognised
that Spanish power was waning and,
believing that conditions were right for
independence in South America, in 1807
he returned to Venezuela. His cause
was boosted by Napoleon’s invasion
of Spain, and in 1808 Bolívar began his
campaign; however, though he enjoyed
initial military successes, Spain regained
much of its territory in northern South
America during the mid-1810s. Bolívar’s
journey through the plains and over the
Andes changed the balance of power
in the region, altering the course of the
independence war. The liberation of New
Granada (Colombia) in 1819 was followed
by Venezuela in 1821, Ecuador in 1822
and Peru in 1824. In 1825, the newly
independent country formerly known as
Upper Peru was named Bolivia after him.
Though its territory was not yet fully
liberated, Bolívar founded the state of
Gran Colombia (comprising modern-day
Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela and Colom-
bia) in 1819. He was its president from
1819 to 1830 and dictator of Peru 1823–26.
Beset by ideological enemies and claims
that he was exercising autocratic control,
Bolívar resigned the Gran Colombian
presidency in April 1830, and prepared
for exile; he died of tuberculosis in Santa
Marta, Colombia later that year.
Following his death, Gran Colombia
split three ways (Panama didn’t cede
from Colombia till 1903). Bolívar’s legacy
has since been contested by movements
from both ends of the political spectrum. ALAMYSimón Bolívar:
Liberator of
South AmericaÆ
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