Bolivar: American Liberator Read online

  But Miranda and Bolívar could not have agreed more on central questions of independence. When they were alone, they discussed the gritty questions of founding a republic, and every particular it entailed. In countless countries Miranda had visited, he had always made a point to study its public services—to take notes on how Philadelphia or Vienna served their urban populations, and how drastically these services were neglected in Madrid. He spoke of irrigation, mines, schools, museums, penitentiaries, public health, and the fine details of administration, and Bolívar listened with fascination. They spoke, too, of the public morality essential to any democracy, and spent long hours discussing the singular example of the United States. Dazzled by the older man’s worldliness and wisdom—but mostly by his record as a man of military action—Bolívar implored him to return and rejoin Venezuela’s struggle for independence.

  Miranda balked. He had seen Venezuelan indifference at first hand and did not believe that he would ever be welcomed as a leader. As summer grew into autumn, Bolívar used all his powers of persuasion to convince the general that he was wrong.

  Those weighty conversations between Miranda and Bolívar did not always take place in Miranda’s library. The two appeared everywhere together—at the opera, the theater, in Piccadilly, at the Royal Observatory, or strolling through Hyde Park or Kew Gardens—and the London papers breathlessly reported their outings. They must have made an eccentric pair, ambling through London’s streets: the elegant, handsome older man with the irrepressible, highly strung youth, conversing spiritedly in Spanish, stopping to argue their points. Miranda introduced Bolívar to the portraitist Charles Gill, a student of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, and evidently to his tailor, too, for Gill’s portrait of Bolívar in London depicts him in a dashing jacket with a high collar and a black cravat—the very picture of English period elegance. His hair is slicked back, his chin hard with purpose, his eyes lit with resolve.

  Bolívar also managed to navigate the city on his own. Many years later, he told of a “singular adventure” at a London brothel that both amused and amazed him. In the course of negotiating his desires with one of the prostitutes, he made a request that infuriated her, and she accused him of being a homosexual. She raised such a ruckus that the entire house came running, and when he tried to calm her with a few banknotes, she threw them scornfully into the fire. She didn’t speak Spanish and he didn’t speak English, so there was no hope of correcting her misapprehension. As he later related to friends, he ended up exiting the house of pleasure “with far greater urgency” than he had entered it. Little could he have known that the woman probably feared for her life. Only weeks before, on July 8, the London police had raided the White Swan, a Vere Street “molly” house, as transgender clubs were then called, and arrested a group of suspects. An angry mob followed the accused homosexuals to Bow Street Station, knocking them down, pelting them with mud, and threatening far worse. The men were charged with attempted sodomy; a number of them were hanged. The prostitute clearly had England’s harsh laws in mind when she voiced her objections. For Bolívar, however, that incident became a striking metaphor for the vast cultural distance that separated London from Paris. Two years before his death, he still had a vivid memory of it.

  ON SEPTEMBER 22, 1810, BOLÍVAR left London for Caracas on a sleek eighteen-gun sloop, the HMS Sapphire. He had intended for Miranda to travel with him and indeed Miranda had his luggage and sixty-three books carried on board with that objective in mind. But Lord Wellesley thought it unwise to allow the old revolutionary to make his voyage home under a British flag. The Sapphire sailed without him, arriving in La Guaira on December 5 and delivering Bolívar alone. Miranda managed to book himself on a far less comfortable packet boat, and reached Venezuela on December 10. López Méndez and Bello decided to stay on in the house on Grafton Street, where they continued Miranda’s diplomatic efforts and went on to play very different roles in the revolution.

  Bolívar was dismayed to see what had become of Venezuela in his absence. While he had been touting unconditional independence in the drawing rooms of London, the Caracas junta had cemented its ties to Ferdinand VII, weakened its influence in the provinces, and splintered into a score of bickering factions. The jealousies between Coró, Maracaibo, and Caracas had festered and, in the opinion of one traveler, “a deadly animosity exists, for which I fear much blood will yet be shed.” The junta seemed wholly unaware of the civil unrest beyond the capital. The blacks and pardos did not trust the Creole government and were saying so openly, declaring a steadfast loyalty to the Regency. The royalists were busily recruiting the lower classes to their cause. Blind to those realities, the junta had set out to mimic the government of the United States of America, although that example—born of a rare ethnic and ideological solidarity—was singularly unsuitable for a populace that had no uniformity of race, class, or experience, and so couldn’t agree on much of anything.

  Worried that Miranda would feel he was stepping into a quagmire, Bolívar went about trying to rally support for him. But it wasn’t easy to persuade men who felt Miranda was a poseur—or, worse, a deserter—that they should bury their resentments and give the old general a hero’s welcome. When Miranda arrived on December 10, Bolívar raised a good crowd to meet him at La Guaira, but the only member of the junta who was there to greet him in any official capacity was the fearless Deacon Cortés de Madariaga. The junta itself had decided to put the best face on an awkward state of affairs by issuing a frigid salutation.

  That day, Bolívar was merely an austere figure in the milling throng. Beside him, in splendid robes, Cortés seemed to tower over him. They watched from the pier as the British brigantine Avon approached, ferrying the great man from Curaçao. Expecting to be greeted as the leader of the newly formed Venezuelan government, Miranda had dressed to honor the occasion. He appeared on the prow of his ship in the glorious old uniform in which he had led French troops in the battles of Maastricht and Neerwinden. The coat was sky blue, the trousers white, the vivid tricolor sash of the Great Republic across his breast. He was a barrel-chested man—full-lipped, straight-backed—but he looked a good decade older than his years. His thinning hair was powdered and pulled into a scrawny tail. In one ear, he sported a single gold ring, as was the fashion among European gentlemen of his generation.

  The royalist historian José Domingo Díaz made the observation:

  I saw Miranda enter in triumph, welcomed as a gift from heaven, with all the hopes of the worst rabble-rousers resting on him. He was then about sixty-five years of age, serious looking, tirelessly loquacious, altogether too friendly toward the dregs of society, and ever ready to boost their hopes. The wildest saw him as a political sage, the only one capable of heading the government; moderates with more rational minds, on the other hand, saw him as a looming danger.

  So it was that the general came home after his bumbling 1806 invasion. It was soon clear to Miranda that Bolívar, the “wildest” of them all, had overestimated the enthusiasm with which his countrymen would receive him. He would come to learn that even Cortés de Madariaga—despite his presence on the dock—had bombastically opposed his return, threatening to leave Venezuela if Miranda were allowed reentry. The priest had appeared only to deliver the junta’s pointedly cold salutation. As Miranda traveled to Bolívar’s house, where he would lodge for the next few days, he began to absorb the reality of his situation. For all of Bolívar’s fine words, Venezuela was unprepared for drastic change. He would have to grasp the reins. They would not be handed to him.

  What was handed to him three weeks later was a title of lieutenant general with an equivalent salary and benefits. These were hardly satisfactory, he complained, for a dignitary with his experience. Miranda insisted he be named a full general and paid commensurate wages. When his objections went ignored, he decided to mount a political campaign to rouse the public on his behalf. Such an effort might have seemed normal enough in England, but in Venezuela, emerging from the twilight of colonialism, it stru
ck the Creoles as outlandish. Even so, with Bolívar’s help, he managed to win a seat in congress as the representative of the province of Pao. Bolívar, on the other hand, made no effort to run for election or seek a government position. Indeed, in the bureaucratic shuffle, the junta had demoted him from lieutenant colonel to captain. Undaunted, he threw himself wholeheartedly into assisting Miranda. Together, they took over a party called the Patriotic Society and Miranda did what any modern politician would do in a run for election: make speeches; call on powerful people in the community; write hectoring pieces for his party’s newspaper, El Patriota de Venezuela.

  In time, Miranda took control of the Gazeta de Caracas, the capital’s journal of record. The junta’s leaders, all of whom were in their thirties, were hardly fazed. They considered him pompous, laughable, and—most damning of all—hopelessly out of step with the times. Nevertheless, Miranda’s efforts began to pay off with the colored classes, a logical enough development for a candidate whose father had been forced to prove his “cleanliness of blood.” In popular assemblies, the pardos gathered to flex their collective muscle and make demands. Little by little, they took positions that were formerly reserved for whites; they penetrated high posts in the military. The rich Mantuanos were aghast. In March of 1811, they responded with a large-scale reorganization of the government: thirty-one representatives, all from landed families, joined congress, the majority of them in favor of King Ferdinand’s rule; in place of the junta, an executive body of three rotating presidents was put in place. By June, however, those three newly anointed officials awoke to a new reality. For all their efforts, there was little doubt who had the overwhelming support of the people. Miranda’s Patriotic Society was well in the lead.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Rise and Fall of Miranda

  Liberty is a succulent food, but hard to digest.

  —Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  For all Miranda’s and Bolívar’s abounding successes, not everything was right between them. First, there was the matter of Miranda’s extreme arrogance, which even the fussy Mantuanos found insufferable. He was flagrantly egotistical, a name-dropper, incapable of responding to praise with praise. The former head of the junta, Juan Germán Roscio, was aghast at his behavior at banquets given in his honor: “He listened to toasts with enormous satisfaction and then simply let them pass, as if everyone there were his inferior. The polite expressions so familiar to people of good breeding never once left his lips.”

  Bolívar’s irritation with Miranda was compounded by the animus between him and the Marquis del Toro, one of Bolívar’s oldest and dearest friends. The hostilities had begun years before, when the marquis received more than one letter from Miranda suggesting that he take advantage of Napoleon’s Spanish invasion to create a local junta and break relations with the madre patria. The marquis would later become one of the most ardent supporters of independence, but at a time when so little was known, his first reaction was to report Miranda’s letters to the presiding captain-general, who, in turn, reported them to Cádiz. Miranda would never forget it. Difficult to forgive, too, was Bolívar’s unequivocal loyalty to the marquis. Not only had the del Toros and Bolívars enjoyed a warm friendship for generations; the marquis was an uncle to María Teresa, Bolívar’s dead wife.

  The uneasy relations between Miranda and del Toro came to a head when the congress decided to pass over Miranda’s considerable military experience and place the Marquis del Toro in command of the newly formed War Department. It was a surprising dismissal. There was simply no one in Venezuela, the proud marquis included, who could match Miranda’s credentials as a warrior. Bolívar was torn, but he refused to be disloyal to his wife’s uncle. And so, despite the shared dreams and ambitions, a seed of mistrust was sown. When in June congress discussed the possibility of a military assignment for young Bolívar, the old general pronounced—perhaps not unreasonably—that Bolívar was unprepared for a post of any consequence. He was too raw a soldier, Miranda sniffed, too impulsive.

  This bickering was soon dwarfed by an uproar in congress, when it was discovered that one of the newly appointed members, Feliciano Montenegro y Colón, was actually an agent for the Regency and had absconded with the War Department’s plans. The flagrant theft had an electrifying effect on the fledgling government. Why were Venezuelans continuing to pledge loyalty to a king who would send spies to steal precious documents? On July 1, Cristóbal Mendoza, a member of the executive triumvirate that rotated the presidency, condemned this affront publicly and announced that perhaps the moment had come to discuss total sovereignty of the nation. Hearing these words, the citizens of Caracas, who had always leaned toward total independence, stirred with excitement. The halls of congress burst to life as men, women, and children poured in to hear the arguments. One by one, representatives made their way to the podium, some cautioning prudence, others thundering their outrage against Spain and the Regency. Members of the Patriotic Society, too, clamored to make their censure known. On the night of July 4, Bolívar took the floor at a special meeting of the society, arguing in strong, unequivocal terms for absolute independence. “Let us valiantly lay the cornerstone of South American liberty!” he cried. “To hesitate is to perish!” A British traveler who was present recalled:

  Among all the rest, young Bolívar stood out for his piercing voice, his agitated, imperious manner, and especially for the unforgettable fire in his eyes, which burned with all the intensity of a conquistador’s or a visionary’s. He was small in stature, thin, lightly tanned, with an angular brow and sunken temples, small hands and feet, and the dress of a European gentleman. . . . I listened to him speak and, although I didn’t know the language perfectly, I understood him to say that he would die before he would allow his country to be a slave to Spain. He was a commanding presence in that hall and everyone seemed to know it. They told me he was a nobleman of considerable wealth, but that he was willing to give all of it for his country’s freedom. It seemed to me that the young man was destined either for an early death or extraordinary heroism.

  All night long, young revolutionaries, fueled by drink and fury, swarmed the streets, defacing the property of the crown. The next morning, on July 5, the halls of congress teemed with greater ferment. Miranda took the floor and gave a report on the most recent dispatches from the Spanish peninsula: the Duke of Wellington had just defeated the armies of Napoleon’s greatest marshal, Masséna, for the second time. Soon Spain would be free of Napoleon, and its generals would turn their attention to subduing the colonies and unraveling all the freedoms they had put in place. If they cared about the future of Venezuela, he said bluntly, now was the time to act.

  It was an irresistible appeal. That afternoon, the question of separation from Spain was put to a congressional vote; it passed with only one dissenting voice. The acting president of the triumverate, Cristóbal Mendoza, declared absolute independence and the first republic was born. Miranda triumphantly unfurled his tricolor banner—yellow, red, and blue—and Caracas went wild with jubilation. Late into the night, revelers delivered ecstatic speeches on the plaza, ripped Spanish flags to shreds, broke into private homes to destroy portraits of the king, and the royalists cringed, fearing the wrath of Cádiz and the vengeance of heaven.

  For Bolívar, the joys of that seminal victory were soon tempered by sorrow. He learned that his brother, Juan Vicente, had died in a shipwreck on the way home from his diplomatic mission to the United States. It would be a while before Bolívar would know the details of his brother’s demise, but eventually he would understand that not much of that trip had gone well. Luis de Onís, Spain’s ambassador in Washington, had duped Juan Vicente into believing that the Regency was about to recognize the Venezuelan government, and so the gentle-hearted Juan Vicente spent the 70,000 pesos entrusted to him not for guns, but for farm equipment—not for swords, but plowshares. As his ship made its way south, it ran into a hurricane off the coast of Bermuda. Both he and his cargo were dashed into rocks by a merciless
August wind.

  EVEN AS THE BLOODIED HEAD of Mexico’s ferocious rebel priest Miguel Hidalgo swung from a rooftop in Guanajuato so that the world could see how Spain dealt with revolutions, republican Venezuela was caught up in the euphoria of its newly declared independence. Patriot gangs in Caracas rounded up Spaniards and royalists and stripped them of all weapons. Blacks taunted the wellborn, addressing them as “citizens” and menacing them in the streets. Pardos were granted high posts in the military and welcomed at balls and celebratory dinners. Some, reported one Englishman, “carried insolence so far as to demand in marriage the daughters” of former (white) magistrates. Even so, King Ferdinand’s loyalists were not easily cowed. Within days they organized a retaliatory uprising in northwest Caracas, where they gathered with cutlasses, muskets, and improvised tin shields. “Long live the king!” they cried, riding against the new masters. “Death to the traitors!”

  But it was a shabby show of force and patriot troops succeeded in rounding them up quickly: sixteen prisoners were lined up against a wall and shot, then hanged, after which their heads were shoved onto stakes and displayed—Hidalgo-style—in every corner of the city. The retaliation was swift and brutal, but even the mild-mannered intellectual Juan Germán Roscio, chief architect of the new government, approved it. “Unless we spill blood, our rule will be seen as weak,” he wrote his friend Andrés Bello, who was still living in Miranda’s house in London.

  Although the framers of the new republic claimed the establishment of a full democracy, it soon became clear that democracy would have a different face in Venezuela. Only citizens who owned property would have the right to vote; others would merely have the right to “enjoy the benefits of the law without participating in its establishment.” Bolívar was dismayed. Miranda, who originally had envisioned a unified America under the rule of a hereditary Inca, was equally distressed, but their views were largely ignored as congress set out to fashion a constitution. Miranda and Bolívar may have disagreed on some points—Bolívar wanted all Spaniards expelled, while Miranda was willing to let them stay—but they agreed completely on the notion that the new republic would need, more than anything, a united purpose and a strong central government to deliver it. Congress, on the other hand, favored a loose federation of states that would preserve old ruling factions, and it set out to write a constitution that would ensure that existing class structures prevailed. The result was anything but egalitarian. The military remained segregated (even the black militias were to be headed by whites); the slave trade was suspended, but slave owners could keep the slaves they had; and although pardos were told they were now free from “civil degradation,” they were given no ballot and no franchise in the future of the republic. The constitution, in short, handed all power to rich whites, and it fooled no one.