Simon Bolivar - Liberator of a continent
Today marks the 224th birth anniversary of Simon Bolivar, the South American freedom fighter. It is a national holiday in many South American countries, which mark the occasion as Simon Bolivar Day.
LIBERTY: Simon Bolivar was one of South America's greatest generals. His victories over the Spaniards won independence for Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. He is called El Liberator (The Liberator) and the "George Washington of South America."
Bolivar was born in July 24, 1783, at Caracas, Venezuela. His parents died when he was a child and he inherited a fortune. As a young man, he travelled in Europe. As he returned to Venezuela, Bolivar joined the group of patriots that seized Caracas in 1810 and proclaimed independence from Spain.
He went to Great Britain in search of aid, but could get only a promise of British neutrality. When he returned to Venezuela, and took command of a patriot army, he recaptured Caracas in 1813 from the Spaniards.
The Spaniards forced Bolivar to retreat from Venezuela to New Granada (now Colombia), also at war with Spain. He took command of a Colombian force and captured Bogota in 1814. The patriots, however, lacked men and supplies, and new defeats led Bolivar to flee to Jamaica. In Haiti he gathered a force that landed in Venezuela in 1816, and took Angostra (now Ciudad Bolivar).
Bolivar marched into New Granada in 1819. He defeated the Spaniards in Boyar in 1819, liberating the territory of Colombia. He then returned to Angostura and led the congress that organized the original republic of Colombia (now Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela). Bolivar became its first president on December 17, 1819.
Bolivar crushed the Spanish army at Carabobo in Venezuela on June 24, 1821. Next, he marched into Ecuador and added that territory to the new Colombian republic.
After a meeting in 1822 with another great liberator, Bolivar became ruler of Peru. His army won a victory over the Spaniards at Auacucho in 1824, which needed Spanish power in South America. Upper Peru became a separate state, named Bolivia in Bolivar's honour, in 1825.
The constitution, which he drew up for Bolivia, is one of his most important political pronouncements.
Bolivar, the Liberator, organized and led military forces, never numbering more than then thousand, to free the northern portion of South America from Spanish rule in the early nineteenth century.
While others talked or dreamed of independence, Bolivar united and motivated a small group of followers to defeat the Spanish occupiers through surprise attacks and wise decisions in the midst of battle. Later, these instances were to provide inspiration for Che Guevera and Fidel Castro.
Little is known of Bolivar's private life. But at the age of 19, Bolivar married a woman of Spanish nobility shortly before returning home.
Within a year of the couple's arrival in Venezuela, Bolivar's wife died of yellow fever. One US inspired Bolivar as it had won independence from Great Britain.
By the time Bolivar arrived back in Venezuela, he had become convinced that it was time for his country's independence from Spain and that he was destined to be the movement's leader.
Before he could depart for his planned exile in Europe, he died of tuberculosis at the age of forty-seven on December 17, 1830, at Santa Marta.
Bolivar's accomplishments are remarkable, especially considering that with a small army, he liberated most of an entire continent, an area nearly one-half that of the United States.
The governments of all these countries remain tenuous at best, but they are still free - a direct achievement of Bolivar.