Bolivar: American Liberator (76 page)

Notes

BANH Biblioteca de la Academia Nacional de la Historia, Caracas

BOLANH Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia,
Caracas

DOC
Documentos para la historia de la vida pública del Libertador de Colombia
, José Félix Blanco and Ramón Azpurúa, eds.

FJB Fundación John Boulton, Archives, Caracas

HAHR Hispanic American Historical Review

JCBL John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

LOC Library of Congress

O’L
Memorias del General O’Leary
, Daniel Florencio O’Leary, 32 vols.

O’LB
Bolívar and the War of Independence
, Daniel Florencio O’Leary

O’LN
Memorias: Narración
, Daniel Florencio O’Leary, 3 vols.

PRO/FO Public Records Office, Foreign Office, Great Britain

SB Simón Bolívar

SBC
Cartas del Libertador corregidas conforme a los originales
, Vicente Lecuna, ed., 10 vols.

SBO
Obras (Cartas, Proclamas, y Discursos)
, Vicente Lecuna, ed., 3 vols.

SBSW
Selected Writings of Bolívar
, Vicente Lecuna and Harold A. Bierck, Jr., eds., 2 vols.

“You can’t speak with calm”:
José Martí,
Amistad funesta
(Middlesex: Echo, 2006), 39–40.

Epigraph:
We, who are as good as you:
Oath at the coronation of the monarch, Aragón, Spain, as reported by Antonio Pérez, secretary to Philip II of Spain, 1550s. Viscardo y Guzmán,
Letter
, 74.

magnificent horse:
Espinosa,
Memorias
, 260. Espinosa was a soldier in the Granadan rebel forces who became a painter. His portraits are among the most famous of SB. He painted SB from life, so spoke with him often. Hermógenes Maza, the fellow soldier present at this scene, may well have relayed the dialogue that Espinosa quotes.

small, thin:
Ibid.

“Here comes one of those losing bastards”:
Ibid.

He had been captured and tortured:
Delgado,
Hermógenes Maza
, 28.

“Halt! Who goes there?”:
Espinosa, 260.

“¡Soy yo!”:
Ibid., 261. Also Delgado, 73.

sweltering afternoon:
Groot,
Historia
, IV, 20.

barely alive, scarcely clothed:
O’LB, 158.

He had lost a third:
Lecuna.
Crónica
, II, 307–17.

abandoned their houses:
Groot, IV, 20; also O’L, I, 578–80.

deafening detonations:
Groot, IV, 20.

cold-blooded execution:
Gaceta de Caracas
, 1815, no. 14, 120–21.

he, too, had been ruthless:
SB to Zea, Tasco, July 13, 1819, SBO, I, 393.

raced ahead, virtually alone:
Groot, IV, 21.

He was gaunt, shirtless:
Peñuela,
Album de Boyacá
, 319–20.

“God bless you, phantom!”:
José Peña,
Homenaje de Colombia al Libertador Simón Bolívar
(Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1883), 304.

dismounted in one agile movement:
Juan Pablo Carrasquilla, quoted in Blanco-Fombona,
Ensayos Históricos
, 303 fn.

five foot six inches, etc.:
O’LB, 139.

population one and a half times:
Bethell,
Cambridge History
, III, 26. Humboldt estimated the population of Spanish America in 1800 to be 16.9 million. U.S. census figures (
www.census.gov
) show that of the U.S. in 1820 to be 9,638,453. The total population of Canada in 1822 was 427,465. Joseph Bouchette,
The British Dominions in North America
(1832), II, 235.

Washington of South America:
Langley,
Simón Bolívar
, ix.

neglected to take the bag:
O’L, XVI, 431 (
Boletín del Ejército Libertador
, Aug, 11, 1819).

hoard of pesos:
SB to Zea, Bogotá, Aug. 14, 1819, SBO, I, 395. Bolívar’s letter claims it was one million pesos, but the amount in the treasury was actually 500,000 pesos in coins and 100,000 pesos in gold bars (O’LB, 164).

the serene trickle:
Carlos Borges, in Restrepo de Martínez,
Así era Bolívar
, 24.

predatory sexual escapades:
Madariaga,
Bolívar
(English edition), 23.

gather in the house’s parlor:
Blanco-Fombona,
Mocedades
, 45.

ponderous carved mahogany, etc.:
Ibid.; Restrepo de Martínez, 13–32.

chamber next to the living room:
Blanco-Fombona,
Mocedades
, 45.

aware that she was ailing:
Gómez Botero,
Infancia
, 13.

one of their prized female slaves:
Ibid., 12.

Inés Mancebo, the Cuban:
SB to Pulido, Gobernador de Barinas, Aug. 18, 1813, SBO, II, 222.

Juan Vicente’s lively blue eyes:
Camacho Clemente, “Juan Vicente,” in
La Revista de Buenos Aires
, I (Buenos Aires: Imprenta Mayo, 1863), 278.

looked far older than his years:
Gómez Botero, 12.

replied with youthful energy:
Blanco-Fombona,
Mocedades
, 46.

portrait in the elaborate gold frame:
Restrepo de Martínez, 16.

descendant of the powerful Xedlers:
Madariaga (English edition), 12.

He arrived in Santo Domingo, etc.:
Humbert,
Les origines
, 62.

He introduced large-scale agricultural, etc.:
de la Cruz Herrera,
Don Simón de Bolívar
, 35.

conceived and built the port:
Arístides Rojas,
Estudios
, 191.

Queen Isabel and the Church:
Pope Alexander VI, the bull
Inter Caetera
, 1493. Especially: “We command you . . . to appoint to the aforesaid mainlands and islands worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled, and experienced men, in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in the Catholic faith and train them in good morals.”
New Iberian World
, I, 273; also, Ferdinand I and Isabella I,
Instructions to Christopher Columbus
, March 14, 1502, especially: “You are not to take slaves, but if a native should ask to come, for the purpose of learning Our language and returning, you are to give him passage.”
New Iberian World
, II, 107.

instructing them in the Christian faith:
Las Casas,
Devastation
, 41.

“Forasmuch as my Lord”:
Isabel I,
Decree on Indian Labor
, 1503,
New Iberian World
, II, 263.

“Slaves are the primary source”:
Las Casas, quoted in Sullivan,
Indian Freedom
, 60.

“Spaniards are still acting like ravening beasts”:
Ibid., 127.

to “a population of barely two hundred”:
Ibid., 29.

stolen more than a million:
Ibid., 50.

“Deep, Bloody American Tragedy,” etc.:
Las Casas,
A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
, penultimate paragraph (
www.gutenberg.org/files/23466/23466-h/23466-h.html
).

“humble, patient, and peaceable”:
Las Casas,
Devastation
, 28.

ten thousand African slaves:
Salcedo-Bastardo,
Bolívar
, 4.

Chained, herded in gangs:
At the port of Buenos Aires in 1630, Governor Pedro de Avila declared that he had witnessed the open sale of 600,000 Indians over the course of two years—a striking number, since the population of the entire city at that time was only 20,000. Miller,
Memoirs of General Miller
, I, 5.

Indian men who had no facial hair, etc.:
Ibid., 12.

a cosmic race:
This term was coined by the Mexican philosopher-politician José Vasconcelos in his famous 1925 essay, “La raza cósmica.”

population counted 5,000 Spaniards, etc.:
Salcedo-Bastardo,
Bolívar
, 5.

Venezuela had 800,000 inhabitants:
Ibid.

Today, more than two thirds:
Francisco Lizcano Fernández, “Composición étnica de las tres áreas culturales del continente americano,”
Revista Argentina de Sociología
, 38 (May–Aug. 2005), 218.

Nowhere else on earth:
Salcedo-Bastardo,
Bolívar
, 16.

he bought the title outright:
Lecuna,
Adolescencia y juventud
, BANH, no. 52, 484–533.

Josefa’s mother was an Indian from Aroa:
Rafael Diégo Mérida, SB’s declared enemy and virulent detractor (whom SB called “El Malo”), claimed this. See Mijares,
The Liberator
, 14.

a black slave from Caracas:
Claimed by SB’s Peruvian nemesis, José de la Riva Aguero, who was deposed by SB but eventually returned to the presidency of Peru. Ibid.

age of sixteen, served the Spanish king, etc.:
Masur,
Simón Bolívar
, 30.

a sexual profligate, etc.:
Madariaga (English edition), 23–24, 659.

He began to molest, etc.:
Madariaga,
Bolívar
(Mexico: Editorial Hermes, 1951) I, 67–72. From the Spanish edition of this biography, which is more complete in these details
than the English translation. Madariaga quotes from a “reserved file” in the Archives of the Archbishopric of Caracas, titled
San Matheo. Año de 1765. Autos y sumarios contra Don Juan Vicente Volíbar sobre su mala amistad con varias mujeres.

When the bishop of Caracas, etc.:
This was Diego Antonio Diez Madroñero.

“fearing his power and violent temper”:
Madariaga (Spanish edition), 67–72.

“this infernal wolf,” etc.:
Ibid.

“loose ways with women”:
Ibid.

“by force of law”:
Madariaga,
Bolívar
(English edition, and hereafter), 24.

sent to the convent at four:
Ducoudray,
Memoirs
, I, 40.

on the corner of Traposos:
Mijares, 8.

elite were close acquaintances:
Ferry,
The Colonial Elite
, 218.

a baby had just been born:
www.euskalnet.net/laviana/palacios
.

decorated the heavy sideboards, etc.:
Carlos Borges, in Restrepo de Martínez, 24.

“incapable of filling”:
Viscardo y Guzmán, 69.

a sentiment held for years:
Norman Fiering, ibid., vii.

A Bourbon minister mused:
Manuel de Godoy, as quoted in Lynch,
Simón Bolívar
, 7.

“The Indies and Spain are two powers”:
Charles de S. Montesquieu,
The Spirit of Laws
, II (Cincinnati: Clarke, 1873), 51.

letter proposing revolution, etc.:
Juan Vicente de Bolívar, Martín de Tobar, and Marqués de Mixares to Miranda, Caracas, Feb. 24, 1782,
Colombeia
, II (Caracas, 1979). The editor of this collection remarks that the letter may be inauthentic. Miranda’s biographer Karen Racine (
Francisco de Miranda
, 27–28) claims it is probably a forgery; she suggests it was written by Miranda himself. Even so, it is a reflection of the sentiments of Venezuelans of his time and class.