Bolivar: American Liberator (48 page)

Controlling himself with great difficulty now, the Argentine
implored Bolívar to come to Peru himself. He would serve under Bolívar’s command, if need be. The Liberator could lead both armies. Bolívar demurred, saying that as president of Colombia, he could not leave the country without congress’s consent; and surely, they would never agree to it. There was a nation to secure, a government to build. As to the
question of making San Martín his subordinate: such an arrangement was hard to imagine,
too delicate to pursue. Here, the Protector sensed Bolívar was being slippery, evasive, and he was hard pressed to understand why.
“I couldn’t get a clear answer from him,” he told a journalist many years later.
The only conclusion he could make was that Bolívar wanted all the power and glory to himself.

More likely, Bolívar was caught between desire and common sense. It would have been folly for him to strip a newly independent nation of its army and take on another war. There were problems Colombia had yet to address: Puerto Cabello was still under Spanish rule, Pasto continued to teem with royalist passions, Caracas and Bogotá lacked in defenses, and Guayaquil and Quito had only just been annexed. As for the question of having San Martín report to him, any military man could see that that was a catastrophe waiting to happen—the subordinate would be the hero, the soldier who had made the greater sacrifice, the man with the moral force. But Bolívar didn’t say these things to San Martín;
he didn’t trust him completely. The chemistry between them seemed all wrong.

When they finally spoke about the political system San Martín had in mind for Peru, Bolívar’s suspicions were confirmed. The Protector laid out
his plan for establishing a monarchy with a European prince in rule. Bolívar had heard rumors about this, but hoped they weren’t true. A year before, he had sent one of his aides, Diego Ibarra, to Lima, with a letter of congratulations for San Martín and instructions for Ibarra to learn what he could. Was San Martín considering a monarchical plan and, if so, how deeply was he committed to it?
“Sound out the general’s spirit,” he ordered Ibarra, “and persuade him, if you can, against any project of erecting a throne in Peru, which would be nothing short of scandalous.” Now he was hearing about a Peruvian king from the Protector himself. San Martín explained to Bolívar that he had spoken about his plan to both viceroys; that he had
sent a delegation of diplomats to England months before to discuss just such a throne and which prince or duke might fill it. If England weren’t willing, his delegates would look for qualified candidates in Belgium, France, Russia, Holland, or—even—Spain. It was the reason he had stalled in forming a Peruvian congress or drawing up a Peruvian constitution. As far as
San Martín was concerned, the nation was not ready for democracy—education was in a shambles; ignorance abounded; the pillars upon which democracy could depend did not exist. Bolívar might have agreed on this last point, but he was viscerally opposed to royalty, to kings and queens, to that old, musty European system that had required so much American blood to purge. He would not hear of it.

Bolívar left the meeting
as somber and impenetrable as a sphinx. San Martín left it
deeply mortified. There had been no question that at every point of discussion, San Martín had been the supplicant, Bolívar the khan. The Liberator had everything the Protector needed: a winning army, the acclaim of his people, the luster of success, the recognition of a major world power. But Bolívar had given nothing; instead he had walked away deeply apprehensive of San Martín’s motives.

After the meeting, San Martín made solemn
pronouncements from the balcony of that sprawling house, under which throngs of adulators had gathered. He received scores of visitors and heard out their appeals and thanks. But he was cheerless, disconsolate. Later that afternoon, he and Bolívar met for another half hour in the company of their minions.
Little was said.

That night, they dined separately, giving them time for ample deliberation. Clearly, they had had plenty of opportunity to take one another’s measure, for when they convened again on the next day, they were full of conviction. San Martín had already decided he would leave on the
Macedonia
that same night and had given instructions for his crew to be ready to depart at eleven. He walked from his house to Bolívar’s at one in the afternoon and there they proceeded to spend the next four hours in earnest conversation.

Little is known about precisely what was said, but at the end of it Bolívar asked San Martín
how the people of Lima would characterize his government. “Satisfactory,” San Martín replied. Bolívar nodded. “Well,” he said, “the pleasure of our meeting has been marred by news of a revolt there.” Bolívar handed him a communiqué he had just received from one of his generals. The report indicated that Bernardo Monteagudo, San Martín’s closest advisor, had been driven from power during the Protector’s absence. San Martín was visibly stricken by the
news. Monteagudo had been ruthless and roundly despised, but he had been his most trusted deputy. Once he recovered from the shock, San Martín confided in Bolívar that it was all finished for him now. He would
resign his position, leave Lima. He had already contemplated the possibility. Indeed, he had left his
resignation in a sealed envelope before he had boarded the
Macedonia.
But he had hoped Bolívar would save the day.

It was not to be. Whatever was said beyond this, we cannot know. Over the years, there has been much conjecture. Certainly, they went on to speak of Bolívar’s vision to create a federation of Latin American nations. San Martín was heartily in favor of it. It was one of the few things upon which they agreed. But by early evening, there was little more to say. When the doors of their meeting room swung open at five o’clock, they walked through them, resolved in very different ways. They appeared shortly thereafter at the banquet Bolívar had planned in San Martín’s honor.

Apart from wanting to win Guayaquil for Peru, San Martín had come as an innocent to these proceedings. He was no agent of Argentina, no demagogue in search of a wider power, no seeker of personal glory. As one historian has said: He came to the meeting with
not a single trump card up his sleeve. Nevertheless, the moment he decided to leave the deck of the
Macedonia
for the hard earth of Guayaquil, he was on the losing side. Perhaps he knew it. Perhaps he was scrambling to save what he could.

Bolívar, in contrast, had studied his potential collaborator with a hard, cold eye.
From Manuela Sáenz and others, he had been given intelligence about San Martín’s recurrent illness, his reliance on drugs, his bloodless invasion of Lima, his excess of caution, his willful, angry spats with Lord Cochrane. He knew far more about the Argentine than he let on.

San Martín would leave Guayaquil a defeated man. Bolívar, on the other hand, had been assured the possibility of more triumphs.
“Good God, I want no more,” he wrote Santander within hours of the banquet. “For the first time I have no further desires.” At dinner, he took the head of the table, presiding over a noisy, festive affair. San Martín took
the seat of honor at his side. There was lively music, an abundance of good food and wine, and a hearty sense of cordiality. The feast had
cost Bolívar 8,000 pesos, by far the largest expenditure he made as Colombia’s wars drew to a close. When it came time for toasts, he sprang to his feet:
“Gentlemen,” he began, “I offer a toast to the two greatest men of South America—to General San Martín, and to me.” It was a preposterous thing to say, a diplomatic blunder, but enough wine had been consumed that it hardly mattered. San Martín rose and with exquisite courtesy offered the following:
“To the swift termination of this war, to the organization of new nations on this American continent, and to the health of the Liberator.” The toasts went on until well into the evening. San Martín repaired to his house to rest awhile before returning for a sprightly ball in his honor, which began at nine.

The celebration was held in the sprawling and sumptuous Municipal Hall, the most imposing structure in the city. Revelers in fancy dress clamored to witness the two most renowned personages in South America demonstrate their friendship, and they were hardly disappointed. When San Martín arrived, they saw a tall, weary, but courtly man
greeted with great warmth by Bolívar and his generals. But the elegant Argentine attended the dance without ever participating in it, and it was obvious that his mind was far away, filled with distant preoccupations. Whereas Bolívar danced with gusto, tirelessly, guiding one beauty after another onto the reeling dance floor,
San Martín was resolutely unresponsive. The thrumming valses, so beloved of the time, neither interested nor lured him. Dancers swirled by, their euphoria rising with each passing hour, but he seemed to look past the spectacle and bacchanalia, adrift in another world. He stayed as long as patience would allow; but at one o’clock in the morning, he waved to his colonels and told them he could no longer stand the noise.

He left,
not through a side door, undetected, as some have claimed, but through the front, with Bolívar at his side. Together they stepped into the night and, as the music and frivolity faded behind them, they walked toward the wide, muddy waters of the Guayas River. A small boat awaited; the
Macedonia
was in the distance; the luggage had already been taken aboard. All was prepared for the Protector’s return to Lima. Bolívar sent off his guest with a portrait of himself,
“a sincere
memento of their friendship.” “Sincere” and “friendship” were
the last two words San Martín would have used to describe the encounter. As soon as he was securely on board, his schooner set sail for the Pacific. He had spent
less than forty hours in Guayaquil.

“General Bolívar
beat us to the punch,” San Martín told his men.
“He is not the man we thought he was.” He had left Guayaquil with nothing to show and had been surprised by how little in common he had with his fellow liberator.
He had found him superficial, deceitful, childishly vain. The man had seemed—to someone who had worn a uniform since he was twelve—the very antithesis of a soldier. As San Martín sailed down the Guayas River,
bound for history and oblivion,
his animus grew.

Disembarking in Lima three weeks later, he learned that the information Bolívar had given him about Monteagudo was true. His
second in command had been stripped of power, threatened with the death penalty, and driven from Peru. More than ever, San Martín became determined to remove himself from the equation—to allow Bolívar, the fiercer man, reign over the Peruvian quagmire.

Bolívar, for his part, began with more praise than condemnation for his Argentine counterpart. The general had withdrawn gracefully, after all, and he had taken President Olmedo and two hundred disgruntled residents with him. The day after San Martín departed from Guayaquil, Bolívar wrote to Santander:
“His character is essentially that of a military man, and he seems quick, no dimwit. His ideas are forthright, interesting, but he doesn’t strike me as subtle enough to rise to the sublime.” Within two months, Bolívar had changed his tune; he had heard about San Martín’s low opinion of him.
“San Martín has been taking me apart,” he now told Santander. Within six months, Bolívar wouldn’t deign to mention him at all.

The first words San Martín uttered before Lima’s opening congress on Friday, September 20, announced his resignation. The congress responded by heaping honors on him; but his decision was accepted without debate. Only within his small circle of friends were there any passionate objections.
“The scepter has slipped from my hands,” he told his followers. There was no arguing about it: the people no longer supported or respected him.
In his final address, he assured them that he
was leaving the government in excellent order, that independence was all but won, that he would leave it to them to elect a new leader. At nine o’clock on that same winter’s night, he stole away on horseback, abandoning the capital for the coast. He was convinced he was helping Peru by clearing the way for Bolívar. But in so doing he left the brand-new republic leaderless, rudderless, and in chaos.

Before he departed, he told his followers and friends
that someday they would find documents that explained his sudden and bewildering desertion, but those documents—if indeed they existed—were never found. Pressed by one of his ministers for a better explanation, he gave one that only a bitter heart could muster:
“There is no room in all of Peru for General Bolívar and me.”

He boarded a ship that very night and skimmed away, unnoticed. He sailed first to Ancón, a port nineteen miles away, where he stayed for a few days, inspiring the rumor that he was waiting to be invited back. No invitation came. With only
Pizarro’s flag of conquest in hand—a gift that had been given to him months before by the municipality of Lima—he headed for the old glory fields of home.

Wasted by opium, wearied by war, overwhelmed by political labyrinths wherever he turned, he found no comfort in Mendoza. His old cohort was out of power. His twenty-five-year-old wife, hundreds of miles away in Buenos Aires, was dead of tuberculosis before he could reach her. Two years later, he and his eight-year-old daughter moved to a quiet suburb of London. In time, they went on to Belgium and France. Theirs was an impecunious existence—on a meager and irregular pension provided by Peru—but San Martín was hardly as sick as he thought he was. The Protector would be in the world for twenty-seven more years, outliving the Liberator by a full two decades. Eventually, he would transcend the rancor of defeat and find it within himself to write this of Bolívar:
“My successes in the war of independence are decidedly trivial compared to those that that general contributed to the American cause.” And:
“It is reasonable to say that his military achievements have merited his reputation as the most extraordinary man South America has ever produced.”

He was too modest.
It was because of San Martín that Peru had declared itself a nation without expending a drop of blood. He had arrived
with a scant army of four thousand men and scattered the king’s far more powerful legions. Whittled by fevers, reduced by an unhealthy climate, his soldiers had held Lima by patience alone. San Martín was not a master of improvisation, but neither was he a reckless or sanguinary man. When he slipped out of Lima, he left no congress or constitution but he left laws by which justice could be dealt, safety might be ensured, and a nation could govern. For all the criticism he endured during his tenure, Peru will always remember him as its most honorable hero. But to win Peru its full liberty, honor would not be enough.