Hello and welcome to Revolutions.

Last week, I buried you under an onslaught of information about the course of events in the Río de la Plata and Chile from 1810 to 1815, the principal upshot being that José de San Martín and Bernardo O’Higgins are currently sitting on the east side of the Andes Mountains preparing for their invasion of Chile. Now, this week, we are heading back to Venezuela to take another few spins on the revolving door that was the early revolutionary career of Simón Bolívar. But by the end of today’s episode, the spinning will stop, and he will move forward. 

But I do have one small correction I need to make before we get going. When I was talking about Buenos Aires finally getting a navy so they could go take down Montevideo, I described the guy who helped them organize it as an English deserter from the Royal Navy. But this is not true. And this not true fact was caught by sharp-eared listener Colin Doyle. This guy was actually an Irishman named William Brown, to whom I profusely apologize for identifying as an English deserter because he was neither English nor a deserter. Now, he was an ex-sailor, but he emigrated to the Río de la Plata to make a living as a civilian merchant. This is all an ironic error for me to have made, given that we talked all about how well Irish could do in Spanish America in last week’s episode. So, not an English deserter, but rather Admiral William Brown, who was called the father of the Argentine Navy. And after a lifetime of service to Argentina, died a national hero in 1857 at the ripe old age of 79. So I apologize, Admiral Brown. 

So back in the north, we last left Bolívar in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on New Year’s Eve 1815. And though Bolívar and his Venezuelan brothers had always feared Haitian-style racial revolution, the end result of that revolution that Bolívar witnessed in the Republic of Haiti could not have been as disastrous as Bolívar himself may have believed it would be. The coloreds and blacks lived in basic harmony. I mean, yes, the outward appearance masked deeper divides, but it’s not like Haiti was some anarchic hellscape. Sure, there were not many whites around, you know, because of like Dessalines’ genocide and whatnot, but the ports of Les Cayes and Port-au-Prince and Jacmel were all open for business, and traders from the United States and Great Britain and the Netherlands all ran a brisk trade. And it was actually these international merchant connections that acquainted Bolívar with President Alexandre Pétion, now ten years removed from his assassination of Dessalines and the establishment of a working agreement with King Henri Christophe and the Kingdom of Haiti to the north.

Bolívar met Pétion shortly after he arrived in Port-au-Prince, and the Haitian president made a distinctly favorable impression. Pétion was intelligent, erudite, he was a former General turned statesman ruling a peaceful country with a strong central hand. Basically, Pétion already was everything Bolívar was trying to be. But Bolívar also made a favorable impression on Pétion, and the two fell into an easy friendship, and no doubt spent some time discussing many of the ideas Bolívar had just laid out in a letter from Jamaica about the future history of Spanish America.

Pétion also would have heard Bolívar complain about the lack of support from all the other powers. The British always prioritize their alliances in Europe and the United States kind of betrayed their status as the first independent republic in the Western Hemisphere by ignoring all pleas for aid from Spanish America. So it fell to Pétion to offer the assistance that everyone else refused to give and so it was that the second free republic in the Western Hemisphere, rather than the first, came to the rescue of their republican brothers in South America. 

Pétion now saw himself as a patron of further liberation in the Americas, and he promised as much aid as he could muster for Bolívar’s cause. And this is like real stuff, not just words: 1,000 guns, 30,000 pounds of powder, and seven ships with crews to man them. He also invited his fellow citizens to join the expedition, and so Bolívar wound up with a couple hundred free black soldiers under his command. But this aid did not come without a major condition on Pétion’s part, though. Bolívar had to swear that when Venezuela was liberated, racial equality would be law and slavery would be abolished. This was now a condition Bolívar was ready to accept. 

This represents a major transformation for Bolívar. Until now, he’s been an aristocratic white criollo, liberal and enlightened and all, but never quite breaking out of the world that he had been raised in. Whites on top, mixed-race in the middle, slaves, unnecessary evil. But after five years of failure, Bolívar was now primed to try a different approach. Because look where his narrow, criollo vision had gotten him: losing the First Republic to Monteverde, losing the Second Republic to the Legions of Hell, and now on the verge of losing everything to the Grand Armada of Pablo Morillo. And every time Bolívar had looked to the other side of the lines, he saw a raid against him. All the Pardos and Mestizos Indians, free blacks, and even slaves. The vast majority of the population of Venezuela had just never been with him. Why? He said all the right things, but he never showed a genuine interest in the needs of the vast majority of the population. But Bolívar was now ready to believe that he might actually have to dedicate himself to liberty and equality, true liberty and true equality, if he was going to lead Venezuela to freedom. And living in Haiti for a few months in the midst of his revolutionary crisis had to have helped convince Bolívar that it would not necessarily be the end of the world if liberty and equality were brought to Venezuela. So he accepted Pétion’s terms. 

Bolívar had not come to Haiti alone. He had arrived with a small entourage of loyal officers. And while they lived in Port-au-Prince, other exiled revolutionaries gravitated towards them. By March 1816, the corps of officers included Santiago Mariño, the Liberator of the East, the Pardo colonel Manuel Piar, who had been driven away from Margarita Island by the Morillo Armada. And it’s worth remembering that the last time Piar and Bolívar were together, Piar literally tried to kill Bolívar. Also, there was one of Mariño’s generals, a guy named Francisco Bermúdez. Bermúdez had a grudge against both Piar and Bolívar, going back to the fall of the Second Republic, so he didn’t really get along with anybody. And then there was also a group of officers who had suffered through the siege of Cartagena and fled the city when it fell in December 1815, among them was Colonel Antonio José de Sucre, who was on the verge of becoming Bolívar’s most favorite protégé, but we’re not quite there yet. There were also a few foreign mercenaries in the bunch, the most prominent of whom I am probably going to have to peel off and do a full supplemental about: the always colorful confidence man/revolutionary General Gregor McGregor. Also in there was Bolívar’s Dutch merchant friend, Luis Brión, the guy who had set him up in Jamaica and who had pledged his 24 gun ship to Bolívar’s cause. 

So this was a combustible group of men, to say the least. Not more than half of them were truly loyal to Bolívar. Mariño and Bermúdez and Piar considered themselves Bolívar’s allies, but not his subordinates. And what these guys really were was amongst the first generation of caudillo, a type of military political leader who would become a staple of Spanish American war and politics. Men who forged armies with their own funds, their own regional connections, and their own charismatic leadership. And when we get to the Mexican Revolution, that’s basically just going to be a decade straight of various caudillos overthrowing each other. Bolívar was not a fan of caudillo-style armies. He had said back in the Cartagena Manifesto that independence would only come with a professional standing army doing the work, though, of course, he did expect to be leading that army. 

So, after a great deal of arguing and at least one duel narrowly averted, this group of Generals did agree that it needed a single leader, and they voted to make Bolívar El Jefe Supremo, Commander in Chief of the expedition. Santiago Mariño, the Liberator of the east, would be the second in command and Chief of Staff. But this command hierarchy is not really going to be worth the paper it’s written on once they all get back to Venezuela. 

On March 31, 1816, Bolívar’s expedition set sail. But before they could really get underway, they had to swing by the island of St. Thomas to pick up Bolívar’s mistress, Pepita Machado. Though Bolívar kept his oath to never remarry, he was a well-known lover of women and was always able to find companionship wherever he went. Usually, these were the equivalent of today’s one-night stands. But Pepita Machado was different. She really captured Bolívar’s attention in a way that no woman had since the death of his wife. Pepita came from a criollo Caracas family, and the two met when Bolívar made his triumphant re-entrance into the city in August 1813. The two began a relationship, and this time, instead of quickly moving on, Bolívar remained captivated. Pepita and her family, which usually meant her sister and mother, began traveling with Bolívar’s entourage. But as he was preparing to leave the residence of the city on that terrible exodus to Barcelona in the summer of 1814, because the Legions of Hell were coming, Bolívar refused to let Pepita accompany him. Instead, he put her and her family on a boat out to the Caribbean islands. Pepita ultimately settled in St. Thomas, while Bolívar tried and failed to reignite the struggle for independence in New Granada. And then she stayed on St. Thomas even as he wound up in Jamaica on his way to Haiti. And it was only now that his return expedition to Venezuela was finally putting to sea that the couple made firm plans to reunite. Except that on the way to St. Thomas in early April 1816, Bolívar learned from a passing ship that Pepita, her sister, and mother had departed St. Thomas, headed for Les Cayes, trying to reach Bolívar in Haiti before he departed. Though, Bolívar ordered the fleet to drop anchor while he sent his quickest ship back to Haiti to pick her up. And then, when Pepita finally did arrive and the lovers were reunited after 18 months apart, Bolívar waited one full day, just sitting on quiet seas before ordering the fleet to move on. None of that sat particularly well with his fellow revolutionaries. But the heart wants what the heart wants. 

Now, the situation in Venezuela was pretty grim in the spring of 1816. General Pablo Morillo had sailed away to begin the siege of Cartagena eight months back, leaving in charge the new Captain General of Venezuela, Francisco Tomás Morales. Morales was the General who had ridden alongside Boves in the Legions of Hell. He was the man who had lost that satchel, leading Bolívar to order the execution of a thousand prisoners in Caracas. He had also been the man to ride at the head of those 8,000 men that crushed Bolívar at Aragua – the last battle Bolívar fought before the incident with the 24 crates of treasure left him exiled once again, though, of course, luckily, having just missed Manuel Piar’s firing squad. Well, now Captain General Morales has converted some of the old Legions of Hell into a more formal cavalry arm of the royalist military. And he is currently leading a punitive government focused on rooting out all possible enemies of the state and destroying them. They set up a committee of confiscation which confiscated the property of prescribed patriots, Simón Bolívar’s name being at the top of the list. The committee wound up confiscating over a million pesos worth of property, fully 20% of which was from Bolívar. Others, identified as republicans, were placed into forced labor camps or simply executed in a town square one day. But with the population already reduced by as much as a quarter by the war to the death, it’s not like there was much more killing to be done. 

Morales’ men also started running out of victims because their relentless repression had triggered an exodus of republicans from the coast into the interior grasslands, since it was the one region relatively safe from royalist reprisals. Now, the Llanos may have been where the Legions of Hell had come from initially, but remember, the Legions of Hell had never been an ideological force, right? They followed the caudillo Boves. Wherever he pointed, they rode. After his death, many remained under the leadership of Captain General Morales, but many, if not most, returned to their homes in the Llanos. The war was over. They had won. It was time to count up the booty. But now those returning veterans from the Legions of Hell were intermixing with the refugee republicans and a new mass of cowboy warriors was forming. And they were ready to accept a different version of the gospel and be pointed in a new direction. And with Morales, himself a white guy, now appearing to re-embrace the Ancien Régime which had always come with a heavy dose of racism, the llaneros who had once ridden with the Legions of Hell were now ready to switch sides and transform the war of Venezuelan independence. 

Now, after the armada of Pablo Morillo had moved on, Margarita Island had been left with only a small garrison and after a few months, a small band of republicans had managed to retake it. So when Bolívar finally got the expedition moving again upon reuniting with Pepita, it was to Margarita Island that they sailed, arriving in May of 1816. Upon arrival, most of the senior officers bolted in different directions, each planning to do their own thing. Mariño, Piar, Bermúdez were all natives of the east and were simply picking up where they left off reconnecting old networks, rallying old allies, and using those long relationships they had built to raise more men. These guys were caudillos, raising personal armies. And it’s not like Bolívar wasn’t okay with it. I mean, the ability to recruit was a huge part of what those guys brought to the table. But Bolívar cannot have missed that the title, El Jefe Supremo, wasn’t much more than a title. 

While everyone scattered, Bolívar himself landed troops on the eastern mainland to create a staging area for his own personal project, which was the reconquest of Caracas. When he landed in June 1816 with free black volunteer soldiers from Haiti beside him, Bolívar fulfilled his promise to Pétion and made a sweeping declaration of full liberty to the slaves who had trembled under the Spanish yoke for three centuries. Never mind that Bolívars and their fellow criollo aristocrats were the ones actually minding the yoke. As I said, this is a pretty big turning point: Bolívar’s revolution now stands for emancipation.

Well, yes, it does. But as we’ll see, it’s clear Bolívar was really positioning emancipation as the ideal end state for the Republic of Colombia — an ideal state not likely to be achieved with one grand gesture but rather the gradual elimination of slavery over time. Indeed, in the coming years, even after Bolívar has gone off to Valhalla, the pace of emancipation would remain a contested issue, usually an issue won by the owners rather than the slaves. But that’s all in the future. For the moment, it’s full liberty and emancipation. 

Besides ending slavery, Bolívar also issued a declaration making it clear that the war to the death was now over, that his was no longer an army of terror. Bolívar had come to realize that in the long run, punishing neutrality with death and offering no quarter to the enemy had lost far more support for the republic than it had gained. And he planned to treat civilians and prisoners of war with respect, and he swore that his senior officers would do the same. 

So Bolívar is finally putting the pieces together here. He’s moved decisively towards liberty and equality, ideals that would win him support not just with aristocratic whites, but the whole population. He had abandoned the counterproductive war to the death. He’s trying to forge a single professional army out of a bunch of allied caudillos. But there was still one more blind spot he had to shake before he could finally really let it rip — his focus on Caracas. Bolívar still believed that capturing and holding the capital was the key to victory. It had been the driving thrust of the Admirable Campaign, and despite how that had turned out, Bolívar made capturing Caracas once again the driving thrust of his latest campaign. It had not yet dawned on him that he could actually make considerably more progress by focusing on everything but the capital. But fear not, the fiasco we’re about to discuss will allow Bolívar to shake that last blind spot once and for all. 

Transported by the little navy now run by Luis Brión, Bolívar’s forces cruised west along the coast until they got to a beach serving the coastal city of Ocumare, which is about halfway between the royalist fortresses of Caracas and Puerto Cabello. Bolívar planned to split the royalist line and make a run at capturing Valencia, from which he would then turn and pounce on Caracas. But after landing on July 5, 1816, Bolívar never got off the beach, most likely screwed over by a messenger who had gone over to the enemy. Bolívar sent an advanced force a few miles inland to hold the city of Ocumare proper. And then those guys sent a messenger back, reporting that they were in good position. But this rogue messenger told Bolívar that Captain General Morales was on the way with 8,000 men. Suitably spooked, Bolívar sent the messenger back to scramble up a defense, whereupon the messenger reported to the forward unit that Bolívar had pulled up anchor and sailed away. With the various patriot units now full of confusion, fear, and resentment, the whole operation collapsed in pitiful fashion. Bolívar ordered all the guns and powder that had been offloaded put back on the ships. But believing Morales was right on top of them, the men refused, more interested in saving themselves than a pile of weapons. And then, I kid you not, a couple of professional pirates who had signed up as mercenaries were like, “Well, hey, there’s a bunch of guns laying around.” And with confusion raining, they loaded a pile of guns onto their own ship and just sailed away. Unable to control the situation, Bolívar did finally order a withdrawal, leaving all the Haitian guns and ammo laying on the beach or disappearing with the pirates. This was yet another embarrassing failure in the very mixed early military career of Simón Bolívar. 

Retreating in defeat once again, Bolívar redeposited Pepita and her family on St. Thomas and returned to eastern Venezuela in mid-August, where he received a cold reception from the eastern caudillo generals who wondered why they needed this guy anyway. Bolívar had no native following or home connections in the east, and his expedition to the west had been a disaster. El Jefe Supremo had sailed off and lost all their guns. Meanwhile, the eastern caudillos have been recruiting and seizing control of territory. 

So on August 22, 1816, they staged a coup against El Jefe Supremo. Bolívar got wind of it, tried to make a run for it, but was surrounded near the beach by an angry mob. In the midst of the resulting confrontation, General Bermúdez took out his sword and apparently made a very serious attempt to kill Bolívar right then and there but was stopped by some more level-headed guards. In the ensuing confusion, Bolívar was able to run down and get in a canoe and then paddle out to Brión’s ship, which put back out to sea to the only place that would have them—the Republic of Haiti. In early September 1816, Bolívar was back in Port-au-Prince, now a four-time exile. 

Now, you may have noticed this, but the unmitigated disaster in Ocumare looks an awful lot like Francisco de Miranda’s failed Leander Expedition. And you may have also noticed that it took place almost exactly ten years apart. Miranda sailing away from his debacle on August 13, 1806, while Bolívar departed on July 14, 1816. But there was an even closer connection between the two, because on that very July 14, 1816, on the other side of the Atlantic, Francisco de Miranda breathed his last. 

Now, of course, he had breathed his last free air almost exactly four years earlier after being taken into custody by Bolívar and the other bitter officers of the First Republic in 1812. Miranda had remained in custody in Puerto Cabello until Bolívar’s successful Admirable Campaign when he was put on a ship to Puerto Rico. And then shortly thereafter forwarded on to Cádiz, where he was chucked in the fortress of La Carraca. During the whole length of his final imprisonment, Miranda’s physical health deteriorated, but he never gave up hope that somehow he would get out of this alive. He maintained heavy correspondence with friends and acquaintances across Europe and the Americas, and he also inundated the Spanish government with pleas for clemency. First, these pleas were ignored by the regency, but now they were busy being ignored by the restored Bourbon monarchy. The traitor Miranda had lurked on the edges of the Spanish American Empire, trying to destroy it for over 30 years. Now he was in hand, and they were not going to let him go. 

The end was not pleasant for Miranda. On March 16, he suffered a nearly fatal stroke that left him badly incapacitated. And for the next four months, his broken body struggled through periodic convulsions and exposure to various diseases that passed through the prison. His spirit never wavered, but on July 14, 1816, Bastille Day, his body finally gave up. Miranda was buried in a simple grave in the prison graveyard. But in 1875, La Carraca was torn down, and any body that had been buried in the graveyard was chucked into a mass anonymous grave. And so in that pile somewhere lies the mortal remains of the precursor Francisco de Miranda. 

He never achieved his dream, he never lived to see the independence of Spanish America, but the shadow of Miranda looms over everything. He single-handedly created an international network dedicated to the project of independence — British liberals, American merchants, hell, Catherine the Great of Russia — and then among his countrymen, he had forged a single brotherhood of revolutionaries through his grand Reunion Lodge. And it was that brotherhood of revolutionaries who would see the project through to the end — Bolívar, O’Higgins, and though the two never met, José de San Martín, plus literally hundreds of others who had passed through the house on Grafton Street. The Precursor really is a fitting honorific. Other men starred in the show, but Miranda set the stage, and now he is dead. 

A few months after Miranda’s death, Bolívar was once again sitting in Haiti, perhaps wondering if he was destined to wind up like old Miranda. He briefly considered giving up on Venezuela entirely. He met a revolutionary adventurer recruiting for an expedition to Mexico, and Bolívar nearly signed up. But, I mean, come on, he’s not actually going to quit Venezuela. Especially because at the end of 1816, he started receiving dispatches from the mainland that said things like the caudillo Generals are actually making very good progress in the east. Mariño and Piar, in particular, have conquered great swaths of territory. But also, while they may dislike you, they kind of hate each other even more, and their cooperation is sorely lacking. 

So despite all his failures, Bolívar still seemed to be the one guy who everybody could maybe live with as El Jefe Supremo. So in this way, Bolívar is a little bit like the South American George Washington he’s often described as being: the one man who could bind them all together, except not exactly the same since Bolívar’s hold on his subordinates was never what Washington was able to muster through his own dark night that ultimately did lead to the dawn of independence. 

Now, luckily for Bolívar, President Alexandre Pétion generously waved away the fact that Bolivar had lost all that stuff at Ocumare, and he agreed to outfit the Venezuelan revolutionary for a second time. So on December 21, 1816, Simón Bolívar departed Haiti, this time for the last time. When he landed in republican Venezuela, this time he would stay. He would see Venezuelan independence through to the end, then make a famous march through the mountains to liberate New Granada before turning south to make his way through Quito on his way to Peru and his destined link with José de San Martín, who was just a few weeks away himself from making his own legendary crossing through the Andes in January and February 1817. 

Upon this final return to Venezuela, Bolívar wrote personal letters to each of his Generals, attempting to knit them back together. It was time for them to stop being independent caudillos and instead form a professional army of the Republic. But the Generals remained standoffish. On January 1817, Bolívar landed in Barcelona with about 400 men. But just as he was establishing himself, word came that 4,000 royalists were on the way. And unlike the deception of Ocumare, this report was accurate and so Bolívar sent quick dispatches calling for reinforcements. And though he was not happy about it one bit, Santiago Mariño decided he could not let Bolívar hang out to dry and rode to his aid. So, too, did General Bermúdez, though not happy about it either, and possibly coming to see if he could finally plant that sword in Bolívar’s heart. But when Bermúdez arrived, Bolívar appeared so genuinely grateful, I mean, so genuinely relieved, that he called Bermúdez the Liberator of the Liberator. And this flipped some switch because from this point on, Bermúdez is as loyal a General as Bolívar ever had. 

But missing from this reunion was Manuel Piar, the pardo Colonel who had gone deep into the interior towards the Orinoco River, attacking the province of Guayana and approaching the regional capital of Angostura, which lay a few hundred miles up the Orinoco River.

As he marched, Piar raised an army of indians, mestizos, and pardos drawn from the local population. And not only that, but shortly thereafter, Piar took control of a prosperous network of estates run by some monks that would keep his army fed and supplied almost indefinitely. So as Bolívar huddled with Bermúdez and Mariño, and Colonel Sucre is there too, he finally saw the whole board. Forget Caracas. We will march towards Guayana and the Orinoco River, link up with Manuel Piar, use our combined forces to capture Angostura, and then march west into the plains and link up with the great man that I am going to spend next week introducing you to the Centaur of the Plains, José Antonio Páez. So on March 15, 1817, Bolívar and a small group of officers set out for the Orinoco River. 

General Santiago Mariño, though, did not accompany Bolívar to the Orinoco. He stayed behind near the coast, and Bolívar ordered him to march west to establish a defensive line to prevent any royalist incursions. But as soon as Bolívar was out of sight, Mariño turned east and instead marched back towards Cumaná, where he was comfortable and surrounded by a supportive population. Mariño then proceeded to ignore any further order he didn’t like, most damnably ignoring a distress call from 400 of Bolívar’s men trying to hold a fort at Barcelona. Overrun by that royalist force, the whole garrison was killed, along with hundreds of patriotic civilian sympathizers. Mariño did not lift a finger to help them. 

But Bolívar was about to have more pressing problems than Mariño’s insubordination, or at least that’s how it’s going to be made out, because Bolívar was about to have to deal with the insubordination of Manuel Piar. After a string of successes leading an army he had recruited himself, Colonel Manuel Piar was not much interested in being subordinated to Simón Bolívar and his aristocratic friends. He still harbored resentment against Bolívar for the 24 crates of treasure incident three years before, and he refused to be enveloped by this serial loser who had shown no ability to recruit, organize, or lead a successful army. And now Bolívar is going to waltz up to the army Piar has recruited, organized, and led and say, “Thank you very much. Hand it over.” Not likely. Then, in mid-April 1817, as Bolívar was still making his trek towards the Orinoco, Piar fought a battle against the one real royalist garrison in the region and thrashed it at San Félix. With this royalist force defeated, the civilian peninsular and criollo inhabitants of Angostura abandoned the city, leaving it wide open for rebel occupation. 

Bolívar was thrilled to hear all of this when he finally did show up at the beginning of May, and he really did say, “Thanks, good work, hand it over.” Though, he did have the good sense to make a big show of applauding Piar and promoting him from Colonel to General. But Piar clearly has no intention of actually giving way. Although, for the moment, he bided his time. 

Meanwhile, down on the coast, Santiago Mariño’s insubordination was approaching intolerable levels. In early May, he spread the rumor that Bolívar had either been killed or captured up along the Orinoco. And then, on May 8, 1817, Mariño convened a congress that would allegedly serve as the government of the Third Republic. In reality, it was just ten guys in a room. But they did vote to reinstate the old federalist constitution of 1811, the one so despised by Bolívar, and then they, of course, declared Mariño El Jefe Supremo. But not everyone around Mariño supported these machinations, and about 30 of his officers quit in protest and rode off to join Bolívar, among them Colonel Antonio José Sucre, who is now on the verge of becoming Bolívar’s protégé and heir presumptive. Meanwhile, Mariño’s new government lasted exactly one day because on May 9, 1817, Mariño learned that a royalist army was approaching. He took up arms while the congress bolted, never to reconvene or be mentioned ever again.

Bolívar’s reaction to Mariño’s repeated insubordination, betrayal, usurpation, is going to be anticlimactic in a very telling way, because rather than bring the hammer down on the Liberator of the east, Bolívar would eventually go out of his way to coax Mariño out of hiding and welcome him back into the army. But this leniency towards Mariño is contrasted with his harshness towards Manuel Piar because he does bring the hammer down on Piar hard. And it’s been a lingering stain on Bolívar’s reputation that when he finally decided to make an example of an insubordinate general, that he passed over all the white criollo guys and landed on the one non-white in the senior command. And I’ve seen multiple takes on this. I’ve seen arguments that Bolívar did this deliberately. I’ve seen arguments that it was an unconscious expression of his criollo racism, and also that it was just a coincidence. Whichever it was, certainly doesn’t look good for Bolívar.

Now despite his resentment, General Piar had stayed in the army. But soon he started complaining that he was sick and wanted to retire from the front lines. Bolívar tried to talk him out of it, but Piar was insistent that the illness was terrible. And so finally, on June 30, 1817, Bolívar signed the order allowing Piar to retire. But as soon as he was cut loose, Piar went around telling everybody that he had just been fired because he was colored, that Bolívar and his criollo buddies were as vicious and racist as ever. And getting people to believe this story wasn’t very hard. And pretty soon, the men who had been turned over to Bolívar were defecting back to Piar. But not enough of them, and not fast enough for Piar’s insurrection to work. Bolívar was quickly alerted to Piar’s rebellion and was understandably furious. On July 23, Bolívar signed an arrest warrant and dispatched General Bermúdez to execute it. When Piar discovered Bolívar was onto him, he bolted down to Cumaná and hopefully the protection of Santiago Mariño. I mean, Piar had been among the 45 that Mariño had first led back into Venezuela three and a half years earlier. But Piar was captured and brought back to face the wrath of Simón Bolívar. 

In the meantime, Luis Brión’s little fleet had sailed up into the Orinoco River in support of Bolívar’s official capture of Angostura, which came on July 17, just before Bolívar issued the arrest warrant for Piar. From this point on, Angostura becomes the republican capital of Venezuela, although today you will not find Angostura on any map because in 1846 it was renamed Ciudad Bolívar (Bolivar City). For the next few months, Bolívar and his compatriots would start setting up a real republican government in Angostura, far from any threat posed by royalist forces up on the Caribbean coast. And it was in Angostura that Bolívar dropped the hammer on Manuel Piar. Tried before a special military tribunal, General Manuel Piar was found guilty and shot. His death would long hang over Bolívar. I mean, it still does. And it certainly made it more difficult to convince everybody that he really was now for liberty and equality rather than criollo white supremacy. 

But now holding Angostura, Bolívar did not plan to stay there. He wanted to keep moving. He always wanted to keep moving. And next week, Bolívar will ride west for his rendez-vous with the man who really, more than anyone else, truly secured the independence of Venezuela. Not a fancy rich boy or a career soldier, and certainly not an intellectual radical, but rather a simple cowboy from the Llanos, José Antonio Páez.

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