Bolivar: American Liberator (36 page)

Come January of 1819, while she was en route, Bolívar was in San Juan de Payara prepared to march toward New Granada, eager to pit his revitalized army against Morillo’s troops. But when he heard that
a large brigade of British mercenaries was about to arrive, he put Páez in charge, promoted him to major general, and returned to Angostura. There was another reason he needed to be there: the newly elected congressmen from the republican districts had started to gather
in Angostura—as they had been instructed to do. Bolívar intended to open their congressional proceedings, unveil his constitution, and air his views on the budding republic.

He made the journey in a long canoe with a small company of men, winding his way down the snake-infested Orinoco, writing the nation’s constitution as he went. They skimmed under the majestic palms and giant hardwoods—listening, by night, to the owls, the bats, the bellowing monkeys, the relentless gurgle of frogs. In the swelter of day, he swung in his hammock, batted away mosquitoes, and dictated his thoughts to his secretary. These were theories and ideas he had been formulating since his “Letter from Jamaica,” when the revolution’s prospects were far more tenuous. In the interim, he had come to know Venezuela more intimately. He had traveled the wide country, ridden from mountain to desolate plain. He had sailed the length of the northern coast, had marched east and west, had seen how topography and peoples could change from island to flatland. He had lived with Páez’s cowboys, fought alongside tribesmen, shared rations with former slaves. It was not the kind of company a rich Mantuano ordinarily kept; it was no land easily understood from Madrid, where, as a youth, he had devoured book after book in the Marquis of Ustaríz’s library, trying to comprehend his homeland.
This was the real Venezuela—no philosopher’s mirage, but its crystalline reality—where bandits, horsemen, nomads, sailors, slum dwellers, and jungle Indians now called themselves patriots. This was the America he was trying to liberate.

At noon on February 15, 1819, after a brisk salvo of artillery and three reverberating rounds of cannon, Bolívar took his place in the modest government house in Angostura, ready to mark the inauguration of
the Second National Congress. In a clear, stentorian voice, he proceeded to enthrall his listeners with his vision for the republic. The men present represented the greater part of the republic’s governing body—
twenty-six of the thirty-five—elected into office at the end of the previous year.

Bolívar began by surrendering his power. Nothing was more perilous, he insisted, than allowing one man to stay in control for so long. He went on to explain the colossal scope of the work at hand. He described how the colonies had been robbed, not only of freedom, but also of the right to participate in a true democracy. Spanish Americans had been
demoralized, debased, cut off from the world in all matters that related to the rule of nations. The work of building a republic, therefore, would be arduous: they had to reeducate an ignorant nation—a body politic with no notion of justice or fair government, no concept of democracy’s high demands. Liberty, as Rousseau had written, was a succulent morsel, but eminently difficult to digest.

As successful as the United States had been at balancing its hard-won liberty, Bolívar argued, its federal system was not a good model for Venezuela. The North American and South American colonies were as different in character as England was from Spain.
“Laws need to suit the people for whom they are made,” he insisted. And, in every practical respect, according to him, Spanish America at this crucial hour of its molting did not possess the moral fiber to marshal a truly representative government—a system “so sublime that it might be more fitting for a republic of saints.”

Venezuela, as Bolívar explained, like the rest of the Spanish American continent, was rent by a great many divisions—geographic, economic, human—and it would not be in congress’s interest to enact a government that ignored or exacerbated them. “Unity, unity, unity must be our motto!” he told them. But of all the nation’s challenges, the greatest was race:

Our people are nothing like Europeans or North Americans; indeed, we are more a mixture of Africa and America than we are children of Europe. . . . It is impossible to say with any certainty to which human race we belong. Most of our Indians have been annihilated; Spaniards have mixed with Americans and Africans; their children, in turn, have mixed with Indians and Spaniards. . . . we all differ visibly in the color of our skin: This diversity places upon as an obligation of the highest order. . . . We will require an infinitely firm hand and an infinitely fine tact to manage all the racial divisions in this heterogeneous society, where even the slightest alteration can throw off, divide, or undo its delicate balance.

It wasn’t that Spanish Americans were lesser stock; it was that they were a different stock altogether: a new kind of people, forged by three
centuries of history, cruelly emasculated by Spain. “When a man loses his freedom,” Homer had said, and Bolívar quoted him now, “he loses half his spirit.” Codes and statutes were insufficient for a populace laboring under the triple yoke of ignorance, tyranny, and vice; what was needed was wise, considered leadership. It was incumbent on congress to fashion a new kind of government for this new race of man—one capable of governing and nurturing at the same time, for only “virtuous men, patriotic men, learned men can make republics.” Toward this end, he proposed a
poder moral
as one of the nation’s basic institutions, an educational body that would be responsible for instilling ethics and civic responsibilities.

Indeed, education was of primary concern to Bolívar. He begged the congressmen to establish a strong educational system, guarantee civil liberties, reject any aspect of Spain’s old judiciary system, and install a firm central government that united all Venezuela in a single republic, “one and indivisible.” He pleaded with them, “as I would plead for my very life,” to confirm the absolute freedom of slaves. He favored a powerful president, elected for life. He called for a hereditary senate, similar to the British House of Lords, which would serve as an arbiter between government and the governed. He urged congress to be generous in rewarding the armies, not only with gratitude but also with laurels, since these were soldiers who had fought not “for power, nor fortune, nor even glory, but for liberty alone.”

The representatives were brought to tears by the passion and eloquence of Bolívar’s address. Not only was it a model of oratory—tautly written, roundly delivered—it was a flood of erudition, containing references to Roman and Greek law, Spartan ingenuity, human history from Genghis Khan to George Washington, bright snatches of wisdom from literature. For many, his frank declarations on race were unprecedented and rattled some deeply held prejudices. But no one could argue with the patriotism, principle, and reason behind the words. At every step along the way, he was interrupted by
long, frenzied applause.

As he drew to a conclusion, Bolívar looked out into the crowded room—sweltering in the tropical afternoon, packed with legislators in
straw hats and white pantaloons. “I beg you,” he said solemnly, “to grant Venezuela a government that is eminently populist, eminently just,
eminently moral—one that will put an end to anarchy, tyranny, and recriminations.” And then he closed crisply, saying, “Gentlemen, begin your labors. I have finished mine.” He had resigned, in effect, all powers as supreme chief, stepped down. But it wasn’t long before he would have all those powers back again.

By the next morning, the congress of Angostura had elected Bolívar president and the dignified Granadan professor Francisco Antonio Zea vice president of the republic. Once that was done, they set to work on Bolívar’s proposed constitution.
Every day for six months, the members—
some barefoot and in patches—gathered in the municipal building to make their deliberations. In time, they devised a document that adopted many of Bolívar’s ideas but
rejected the hereditary senate and the
poder moral.
The republic they had in mind was far from becoming a reality, however. That work would be accomplished not in the halls of government, but on the fields of war.

PÁEZ HAD NOT ALLOWED THE
Spaniards to lure him to battle while Bolívar was in Angostura. He had been given a clear command. So loyal was Páez to Bolívar’s order that when he heard that Morillo’s army was on its way to him in San Fernando, he burned the place to the ground rather than engage the general in combat. Throughout February and March of 1819, Páez had been taunting Morillo’s forces in a masterful guerrilla campaign, stinging his flanks enough to fatigue his army, but not enough to provoke him to all-out battle. By the time Bolívar returned, making his way up the Orinoco with a battalion of three hundred English soldiers, Páez’s Army of the Apure was itching to fight.

Páez finally was given the go-ahead on the afternoon of April 2.
With 150 horsemen, he crossed the River Arauca and approached Morillo’s camp on the plains of Queseras del Medio. Ninety of his men waited by the riverbank while three squads of twenty rode at full gallop toward the royalist encampment. Seeing a massive dust cloud rise from the plains, Morillo was persuaded that Bolívar’s entire army was on its way. He rallied his corps of a thousand and marched out to meet them. Almost immediately, Páez’s horsemen fell into retreat, spurring the enemy to pursue them. Morillo’s soldiers opened a resounding fire, and the royalist cavalry raced after. At the most fevered point of the chase, as all horses
thundered across the plains toward the river, Páez ordered the squad led by his fiercest horseman, Juan José Rondón, to wheel around and rush the enemy furiously, executing a sudden about-face. The other horsemen followed. The Spanish were momentarily bewildered. They dismounted their horses to better aim their guns at the approaching horde, but Páez and his men, at a full gallop now, were dangling from the far sides of their mounts, invisible. The royalists could hardly see: the failing light, the smoke of their own gunfire, the choking dust, had rendered the battlefield opaque. Páez’s men easily overtook them, springing high on their horses to lance royalists left and right, inflicting a swift and terrible punishment. The mayhem of spears, the slash of machetes, and the shrill, barbaric cries of the horsemen were too much for the Spaniards. Their cavalry turned and fled, and their infantry made a frantic run for the forest, abandoning all heavy artillery. Morillo was forced to retreat that night to safer ground, many hours away. It is hard to say whether the Spanish general truly believed what he would later write or whether he simply wanted to blunt his failure, but in
his account to Madrid, he reported that Páez had attacked not with 150 men, but seven hundred.

Indeed, Páez’s nimble little band of paladins had fought circles around the royalists.
Four hundred soldiers of the king died at Queseras del Medio and many staggered away wounded. Páez’s men, on the other hand, left the battlefield with trifling losses: two dead, six wounded. It was a glorious victory for the patriots, delivering a powerful psychological blow to the enemy; Bolívar, exultant, generously rewarded the horsemen with citations for their valor. That magnificent clash of so few against so many has lived on in the annals of South American history as the height of revolutionary pluck and mettle—a David and Goliath encounter that marked a turning point in the war. Morillo was never quite the same after that maneuver. Between the wild horsemen of the Apure and Bolívar’s newly enlisted British legion, it was clear the patriots had taken on new muscle. Although Morillo commanded
a robust army of seven thousand, his communiqués began to reflect a distinct pessimism. He had grown
more than a little worried about the fate of his pacification campaign.

And yet the war was far from over. In the ensuing months, patriots and royalists crisscrossed the plains, never quite winning enough
skirmishes to put either side at an advantage. In the east, General Urdaneta’s troops had been unable to get closer to Caracas. In the west, General Santander was building troops, awaiting orders. Bolívar was eager to carry the war west into New Granada while the weather was good, but he had hoped to deliver one more deadly blow to Morillo before undertaking that difficult passage. He grew frustrated, restless.
“Patience,” Páez counseled, “for behind every hill, there’s a wide open plain.” The aphorism was hardly consoling: plains were precisely what concerned Bolívar.
By May, the rains had begun, and the Orinoco’s vast web of tributaries was threatening to spill onto the land, rot the vegetation, and drive game to higher ground. As they moved back and forth in pursuit of Morillo, the patriot
soldiers had little food, little rest, and were forced to traverse the very savannas they had previously reduced to ash. But they dared not complain. The president himself was enduring those Spartan conditions.

BOLÍVAR WAS, AT THIS POINT,
thirty-five and at the
height of his physical and mental powers. Tirelessly driven, lit by a nervous energy, he slept little, survived on a soldier’s rations, and marched alongside his men, urging them on, inspiring them to greater sacrifice.
His face had lost its luster of youth and, although his movements were spirited and agile, his was the countenance of an older man: rawboned, jaundiced. His hair had grown long and grazed his shoulders in wispy curls; during the day, he tied it with string. A few errant locks tumbled over his brow, concealing a thinning hairline.
His mustache and sideburns were jarringly blond. His fine, aquiline nose was marred by a small, tumorous growth, which offended his vanity no end, until it disappeared years later, leaving a scar.
An Englishman seeing him for the first time in those plains remarked at the surprising modesty of his dress—the sandals of jute, the simple coat, the helmet of a British private. He had, for all the humility of his appearance, a rare elegance of manner, and it was nowhere more evident than there, on the fields of war, in the company of rougher men. If he departed at all from a soldier’s rituals, it was in the care he paid to his bodily hygiene: He bathed at daybreak—
sometimes two or three times a day—and, for all the privations of the battlefield, his teeth were a radiant white.