Hello and welcome to Revolutions.

On May 18th, 1804, just a few weeks after young Simón Bolívar arrived in Paris from Spain, the French Tribunate voted to transform First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte into Emperor Napoleon I, transforming the enlightened French Republic into an autocratic empire. Bolívar found himself simultaneously attracted to and repelled by Napoleon’s imperial ascension. Like many liberal idealists, he had come to greatly admire General Bonaparte, who was the heroic great man in every sense of the word, a man to be admired by a guy like Bolívar, whose fanciful ambitions were now starting to harden into a vision of his own future greatness. Everywhere Bolívar looked in France, he saw the fruits of Bonaparte’s victories, and it was impossible to miss the sharp contrast between the energetic glory of Paris and the decaying pettiness of Madrid. Everywhere he looked in France, he saw rich, dynamic advancement. Everywhere he looked in Spain, he saw paper-thin facades that covered a kingdom rotting from the inside out. 

But like many liberal idealists, Bolívar was also dejected by Bonaparte’s decision to drop the pretense of republicanism for overt imperial despotism. Not unlike Beethoven, Bolívar was angry that Bonaparte, the enlightened republican hero, had given himself over to such tyrannical self-glorification. Bolívar did not have a magnificent symphony he could scratch out the dedication page of, but he was still in Paris when the massive celebration of Napoleon’s imperial coronation consumed the city in December of 1804. Bolívar refused to join in the revelry and made a point to shut up his doors and windows on the day of the coronation and tried to tune out Bonaparte’s disillusioning slip into authoritarianism.

If all of that sounded familiar, it’s because I copied and pasted it directly from Episode 5.5, and I wrapped up that little section by saying that the day of Napoleon’s coronation would forever stand as a moment of ironic foreshadowing of Bolívar’s own tragic end. And as we sit here now on the penultimate episode of our series on Spanish-American independence, we have arrived at that ironic, tragic end.

After a decade of flogging centralist executive rule in increasingly explicit terms, the failure of the Convention of Ocaña had led Bolívar to accept the Organic Decree in August of 1828 and become the absolute dictator of Gran Colombia. The Organic Decree was legitimized by nothing more than the vote of a few senior ministers. Colombia no longer had a constitution. It had only Bolívar. The young man who had once shut himself up in his room rather than acknowledge the triumphal coronation of the betrayer Napoleon had, in his old age, become what he hated. 

For Bolívar, it had taken a lifetime of compromises, failures, and disappointments to take him to this final autocratic ascension. And as we’ve seen repeatedly, he really did try to avoid it. And it’s pretty clear that I personally am sympathetic to the idea that this is not how Bolívar wanted things to play out. And even now, he planned for the Organic Decree to be a temporary measure. And when he accepted the title President-Dictator, he also announced yet another constitutional convention that would meet in January 1830 to give representative participatory government another shot. And if you ask me, at this stage in his life, Bolívar has far more in common with Oliver Cromwell than George Washington, if you can even remember that far back. If you’ll recall, Cromwell kept refusing to be King and kept trying to implement a mixed constitution with checks and balances, but everyone else kept doing it wrong. And so he felt compelled to dissolve the government and start over, and then dissolve the next government and start over, and so on and so on. And the same dynamic is at work here now in South America.

But though I honestly do not believe that all of this was mere Machiavellian theater so Bolívar could consolidate power, that belief comes with the benefit of hindsight and with a wealth of personal correspondence and intimate eyewitness accounts to draw from. So I am also sympathetic to those who do not believe that. I mean, imagine how all of this looked from the outside. Let’s face it, both Cromwell and Bolívar kept saying they didn’t want power, and then you turn around and they’re dissolving congresses and parliaments at the drop of a hat and once again claiming all power for themselves. So I certainly wouldn’t say that those who paint a more Machiavellian picture of Bolívar don’t have a strong palette to draw from. And there were plenty of those in Bogotá and beyond in 1828 who were as disgusted with Bolívar’s hypocritical transition to tyranny as he himself had once been with Napoleon. 

Liberals aligned with Santander were apoplectic, and as I said, it’s not hard to sympathize with their attitude. While Bolívar had been off draining the treasury to fight his endless wars, their man Santander had been building up a republic built on liberal principles and the rule of law. And when the Liberator had come home, rather than defend the Constitution of 1821, he had ridden off to Venezuela, pardoned the rebel Páez, and then tried to replace the Constitution with his own authoritarian model. Then, when Vice President Santander had arrived at the Convention of Ocaña with more than enough votes to defeat Bolívar’s scheme, the Bolivarians had stormed off and unilaterally asserted a naked dictatorship. How would you feel about all of this? And with all reasonable means of opposing Bolívar now exhausted, unreasonable means became the only answer. 

Almost as soon as the Ministers of State announced back in June of 1828 their plan to elevate Bolívar to President-Dictator, rumors of assassination plots began to swirl in Bogotá. The swirling rumors started to coalesce into concrete plans after the promulgation of the Organic Decree, because the tyranny was then no longer what he might do, but what he was now doing. Among the President-Dictator’s first acts was to strip Santander of the Vice Presidency and plan his expulsion from the country. Bolívar offered his now-former Vice President a face-saving exit, an ambassadorship to the United States, but he made it clear through intermediaries that Santander needed to take the deal, saying you’ll be leaving one way or the other.

He also ordered the immediate arrest of the rebel General Padilla, who was seized and thrown in a Bogotá jail, a marked contrast to his recent treatment of Páez, and an arrest that will forever be linked with Bolívar’s cold-hearted execution of the pardo General Manuel Piar back in 1817. Bolívar had a bad habit of indulging challenges, insubordination, and outright revolt from his fellow white officers, while imposing a zero-tolerance policy on men of color. These heavy-handed tactics right out of the gates put Bolívar’s liberal enemies were on notice that he did not plan to rule with a light hand, and they started talking in real terms — not just that someone ought to kill the Liberator, but who should do it, with what, and when. 

Now, don’t trouble yourself to remember all the names I’m about to give you, because we’re about to leave South America in the rearview mirror. But for the record, the leading conspirators were the newspaper editor Florentino Gonzalez, an artillery officer named Pedro Carujo, French liberal and probably Spanish spy Augustin Jormais, and Santander’s personal secretary Luis Vargas Tejada. Along with the most staunch of conspirators were a cadre of sympathetic liberals recruited into the plot.

Now, Santander is naturally suspected of being an active member of the conspiracy, but it appears true that both Santander and the conspirators kept each other at a prudent arm’s length. Santander would obviously be the man to take over when Bolívar was dead. So all they really needed was his vague blessing. And when he said, “Well, if somebody were to take out Bolívar, I would, of course, do my duty and serve the nation,” Well, that was all they needed to hear from him. 

Manuela Sáenz tried over and over again to convince Bolívar that something was really going on, but Bolívar dismissed the rumors. And so when it came time to save his life, she practically had to do it all by herself.

The first attempt was planned for August 10, 1828, at a party celebrating the anniversary of the great Battle of Boyacá. Sáenz had been warned that something was afoot, and, unable to get Bolívar to stay away from the party or take any of this seriously, she finally decided to make a scene. Literally an embarrassing scene. It was a masquerade ball with a strict prohibition against men dressing as women and women dressing as men. Sáenz arrived dressed as a man, and when she was refused entry, she kicked up a huge ruckus that so embarrassed Bolívar that he left the party rather than subject himself to everyone’s stares for the rest of the evening. We often speak of dying of embarrassment, but in this instance, Bolívar lived of embarrassment.

Thwarted in their first attempt, the conspirators kept their eyes and ears on Bolívar and were alerted on September 21 that he would be taking a five-mile walk outside of town, accompanied by only two companions. The conspirators hastily cobbled together six men to ride out and gun the Liberator down. But when Santander was notified about what was going to happen, he called it off. He had decided to accept the ambassadorship to the United States and said that he would rather be out of the country if and when some brutal tragedy were to halt Bolívar. That way, there would be no question of his innocence, and he could turn his ship around and come home to a hero’s welcome with his hands nice and clean.

So the date was pushed again to October, but by now upwards of 150 men were in on the active scheming, and it was impossible for word not to get out. But yet still, Bolívar remained ignorant about the now two foiled attempts. After all, he had ducked no bullets and dodged no daggers. The assassination rumors were just that — rumors. And he chided Manuela Sáenz for this overly vigilant paranoia. Besides, he told her, the garrison Commander, Colonel Guerra, had assured him time and again that the security of the President-Dictator was well in hand and no one dared attempt a thing.

But you know what I’m about to tell you next, right? Right. Colonel Guerra was in on the plot, and most of the 150 conspirators were men in his garrison. I can’t get into how surprising it is that Guerra joined the plot. He had been a loyal officer for years, and Bolívar wasn’t wrong to be blind to the threat. But in troubled times, every man makes his own decision about who and what they are loyal to. And by now, Colonel Guerra had decided Bolívar was more of a tyrant than a liberator.

It was Colonel Guerra who actually initiated the third and final attempt ahead of schedule, much to everyone’s consternation. After agreeing to hold off until Santander departed for the United States, a young officer approached Guerra on September 25 and said, “Sir, I have very troubling news. There is a plot to assassinate the president, and it is set for October. We must do something.” Guerra listened with a stony poker face and agreed that something must be done. As soon as the earnest young officer left, Guerra called the other conspirators and said, “We have to move right now, or Bolívar is going to leave the city. I guarantee it. Either we strike tonight, or it’s all over.”

Meanwhile, over in the presidential palace, Bolívar was at that moment actually as perfect a victim as an assassin could hope for. As I’ve mentioned a few times now over the past few episodes, his health was failing badly. He had already almost died in Peru in 1826, and though he had technically recovered, he had never really recovered. He was stricken with repeated bouts of fever and a bad cough that he couldn’t quite shake, both probable signs of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him and was already devouring his lungs.

On the night of September 25, he was once again weak, feverish, and despondent. Manuela Sáenz, too, had a bad cold and was recuperating herself in her own residence down the street, but Bolívar called for her to come and tend to him anyway. Annoyed, she put on her boots and tramped through the cold, damp night, arriving just a little after 6:00 p.m., just as word was going out to the assassins to start gathering in the house of Santander’s secretary, Luis Vargas Tejada. Sáenz tended to Bolívar, and after a bath, they both lay down and went to sleep. And as they slept, men with murder in their hearts gathered just down the street. 

But though 150 men had been in on the plot, only a handful actually turned up, the assumption being that most got cold feet now that the zero hour was actually at hand. But with the assassination all but an open secret, there could be no hesitation for those who did show up, even if it was only about 30 men total, a 50/50 mix of civilians and soldiers. At 11:30 p.m., it was clear that this was all who were going to come, and these men steeled themselves to do what they believed necessary to save the Republic.

At midnight, Sáenz woke up to the sound of barking dogs and shouting, suspecting quite rightly that this was the assassination attempt she had dreaded for so long. She shook the sick Bolívar awake and told him that he was in danger. Bolívar being Bolívar, he grabbed his pistol to go confront his would-be killers, but Sáenz stopped him and said, “No, they’re going to kill you. You have to get out of here.” After a moment of nearly letting pride get in the way of prudence, Bolívar let himself be convinced. With the palace crawling with armed killers, Bolívar went out the window of his room, and, only being on the second floor, the drop to the street posed no barrier. He landed and took off running, apparently bumping into a loyal cook who was himself in flight from the assassins, and the two men took refuge under a bridge.

For a man like Bolívar, who had always charged headlong at his enemies, it had to have been awful to cower helplessly in the dark under a bridge next to a little stream. It was demoralizing. It was damning. And he had hours to stare miserably at his own failures and cowardice. Now, technically, he’s going to live through all of this, but if you ask me, the Liberator died right there under that bridge on the night of September 25, 1828.

Back in the palace, Sáenz did what Bolívar could not. She stood her ground. When the killers finally figured out which room to hit, they burst through the door and found her waiting, sword in hand. They asked where Bolívar was, and she said, “He’s not here.” They tossed the place and pushed her around, demanding an answer until she finally, quote unquote, “relented”, saying that he was upstairs in a conference room. Then she led the assassins on a wild goose chase through the palace, here and there, up these stairs, then down those stairs, and, oh, no, wait, maybe it’s over here. When they finally caught on that she was messing with them, Sáenz dropped the pretense and said, “Haha, yes, he was with me, but he got away, and now you’ll never catch him.” A few of the soldiers, in their rage, pushed her down and started beating her, and possibly they would have beaten her to death, but the newspaper editor, Gonzalez, put a stop to it, saying that they hadn’t come to fight women, and they left her bloody on the floor. 

By now, the general alarm had been raised, and loyal Bolívar soldiers — actually loyal Bolívar soldiers — flooded into the street. By 2:00 a.m., the assassination attempt turned out to be just that: an assassination attempt. With a larger and more loyal force now roaming the streets of Bogotá, the would-be killers scattered into the night. 

When the mood in the town seemed to shift, the loyal cook hiding with Bolívar went out and did a little reconnaissance. He came back and told the now terribly feverish and unwell Bolívar that the coast actually appeared to be clear. Bolívar then emerged from under the bridge and was greeted by surprise jubilation from his loyal officers, who until that moment did not know whether the president was dead or not.

At 4:00 a.m., he was back in the palace. And as bad as Bolívar was, Manuela Sáenz was even worse. She could not even walk after the beating she had received. And looking at her with a mixture of relief, gratitude, and sorrow, Bolívar gave her the title that she still enjoys: the Liberatress of the Liberator. With dawn approaching, Bolívar could only think of one thing to do. He said that he was done. It was clear he was not wanted. He would resign immediately and go into exile to Europe. But the men around him pleaded that he could not take the actions of a few Bogotá radicals as an indication that he was not wanted and, more importantly, that he was not needed. Without Bolívar holding them together, it would all fall apart. And so instead, he went to bed. And in the morning, he woke up and decided not to resign. 

In the days and weeks that followed, Bolívar’s agents fanned out through the city, rounding up the conspirators and then using them to identify still more. Nearly 60 in all wound up apprehended. The entire inner circle was identified and arrested, including Colonel Guerra, who had gone off to play cards when everyone else gathered at Tejada’s house specifically to avoid the charge that he had been involved. Bolívar was crestfallen to find out how deep the betrayal had gone. It wasn’t just Bogotá liberals; it was men he considered family.

He ordered his loyal General Urdaneta, to convene a special tribunal that unsurprisingly handed out death sentences like candy. But not wanting to be the tyrant they accused him of being, Bolívar commuted most of the sentences to exile, and in the end, only 14 men were actually executed. Guerra, of course, among them for mutiny and treason. But as he tried to show mercy, he also approved an execution order for General Padilla, who had not been involved in the plot at all. He had been sitting in a jail cell when this had all gotten going and was surprised in the middle of the night to find himself let out of prison by some of the conspirators. But he was promptly found and rearrested. 

Padilla had nothing to do with it, but the man who had won the final battle against the Spanish in Venezuela was executed anyway. 

Despite it being blindingly obvious to Bolívar that Santander had been the one behind it all. He had to be. After the former Vice President was arrested and thrown in jail, Urdaneta’s tribunal couldn’t come up with any real concrete evidence linking him to the plot. But that did not mean that Santander was going to be let off. Though he planned to eventually exile Santander, for the time being, Bolívar did nothing, and the Vice President instead languished in a jail cell. 

Within a few weeks, Manuela Sáenz had recovered from her injuries, but the physical and emotional toll on Bolívar was still debilitating, and he was now as bitter as he was fragile. And he told the newly arrived French ambassador a few weeks after the attempt,

“My fellow citizens couldn’t kill me with daggers, so they are trying to kill me with ingratitude. When I cease to exist, these hotheads will devour each other like a pack of wolves, and what I erected with superhuman effort will drown in the muck of rebellion.” 

But despite the pleas from the men around him that Bolívar was indispensable, and despite his own sense of indispensability, it should be pretty clear by now that he really was not. In the end, he was not George Washington, the man everyone agreed could not leave. Bolívar was now the man that everyone agreed had to go. Over in Venezuela, José Antonio Páez had long harbored the ambition to break away from Colombia. In Bogotá, Santander and his crew were now happy to let Venezuela go as long as their own control of Colombia was confirmed. Peru had declared their liberation from the Liberator the minute he left town, and of course, Bolivia had established their own independent sovereignty already. In a very real way, everyone in South America was waiting for Bolívar to go so that they could get on with the rest of their lives.

Down in Bolivia, the locals had already turned on Sucre back in April of 1828, and news of the forced departure of Sucre reached Bolívar just days before the assassins broke into the presidential palace. Having won independence, it did not take long for the Bolivians to resent the presence of Sucre and his 2,000 Colombian army, even if they had elected him President. This resentment was secretly being stoked by the leaders of neighboring Peru, not on behalf of the Bolivians, but because they planned to annex the country the minute the Colombians were expelled.

So just as the Convention of Ocaña was gathering, Sucre was hit by a major coordinated revolt. A mutiny among the Bolivian forces, helped along by Peruvian agents provocateurs, led to an attack on President Sucre, and he missed having his brains blown out by mere inches, though he was badly wounded in the arm. This gave a Peruvian army in Cusco the excuse it needed to cross the border to, quote, “protect the precious life of the Marshal of Ayacucho and free the country from factions and anarchy.” And by that, they meant expel the Colombians and take over.

Since Sucre never wanted to be president of Bolivia in the first place, he took this opportunity to listen to his people. He resigned the presidency and departed the country. He had a wife back in Quito that he had hardly seen and was determined now to shed this life of plowing the sea. As he descended the mountains, though, he did not leave behind a nation free from factions and anarchy, but a land filled with factions and anarchy, and Bolivia was led by a series of Presidents who assassinated each other in a succession too rapid to keep up with, and Sucre was frankly relieved to be leaving it all behind, though he was not going to escape that easily.

After Sucre reached the coast, he got on a ship and sailed north, bypassing, of course, the treacherous Lima and landing in Guayaquil. His wife awaited him up in Quito, and he couldn’t wait to get back to her after years of campaigning on behalf of Bolívar’s dreams rather than his own. But he had barely arrived in Guayaquil when he got determined letters from Bolívar. “There has been an attempt on my life. I have survived, but because I cannot be everywhere at once, I cede to you full authority in Ecuador,” which is what they were now calling the old audiencia of Quito. Sucre didn’t want the job, and unlike Bolívar, I mean, he really didn’t want the job. Especially because he was now aware that Bolívar constantly tagging him as heir and giving him all kinds of extraordinary powers was ranking his fellow officers. And in Ecuador, this meant most especially a 27-year-old Venezuelan general named Juan José Flores. 

Flores was originally from Puerto Cabello in Venezuela, and he had joined the patriot army as a twelve-year-old boy during the original war to the death. He was, in fact, so young that when Boves and the legions of Hell captured and sacked Valencia in 1813, they killed everyone else but left Flores alive, because they were amused at this boy playing soldier. Flores then remained attached to Bolívar throughout the wars of independence. He had ridden with Páez and the Llanos. He had fought at Carabobo, Bomboná, and Pichincha. And since the liberation of Ecuador, he had been serving as garrison Commander of Pasto, the strongly royalist city that had caused Bolívar and Sucre the most trouble during their initial run through the country back in 1822. 

As he administered Pasto, Flores began to agree with everyone else in South America: Bolívar is crazy. Peru for the Peruvians, Venezuela for the Venezuelans, Bolivia for the Bolivians—it’s the only way. And as he started looking around, he began thinking Ecuador for the Ecuadorians. As we saw last week, it’s not like the Ecuadorians loved the government in Bogotá and Flores believed that he could harness their anger and make himself the founder of a new nation when Bolívar’s fever dream inevitably broke in the cold, hard face of reality. Bolívar’s order skipping over Flores and giving full authority in Ecuador to Sucre only fueled Flores’s seditious ambitions.

Now, Sucre could see this, even if Bolívar didn’t, and he begged Flores to understand that “I really did not want this job and I’m not going to take it — really.” But circumstances wouldn’t let Sucre get away just yet. 

In November of 1828, another officer in Ecuador, Colonel José María Obando, the former Spanish officer who had defected to Bolívar back in 1822, now defected again. This time, he offered his services to the Peruvians, who wanted to control Ecuador as much as they wanted Bolivia. Obando went into revolt and captured Popayán, a key city on the road from Bogotá to Quito. This revolt forced Bolívar back onto his horse in December of 1828, though he tasked the actual suppression of Obando to another loyal General who had been with him for years, General José María Córdoba, who had fought with Sucre at Ayacucho and was, in fact, known to everyone as the Hero of Ayacucho. He successfully scattered Obando in January of 1829. But by that point, a 5,000-man Peruvian army was already on the move north to envelop Ecuador and steal it from the Colombians. So despite his fervent desire to get away from it all, Sucre could not turn his back just yet, and General Flores joined him in the defense of Ecuador. Whatever his resentments at Bolívar and future plans, letting the Peruvians conquer Ecuador was unacceptable. 

So Flores helped Sucre gather up an army just 1,500 strong to go meet the Peruvians, and after the two sides maneuvered around each other, they finally met at Tarqui on February 27, 1829. Despite being outnumbered more than three to one, Sucre was the superior tactician, and his men were far better trained. They shredded the Peruvians, killing 1,500 and capturing another thousand. The defeat sent the Peruvians back to Peru once and for all, and it also triggered yet another coup in Lima that toppled the existing government, because that’s just how it goes in liberated South America.

In the midst of all this, Bolívar remounted his horse and rode the 600 miles down to Guayaquil to ensure the Colombian claim to the port held up. And there he was, met by the gut-wrenching letter from Sucre. The Battle of Tarqui would be his last. He was resigning from the army and retiring from public life. For years now, Sucre had been the man Bolívar would succeed him. But no amount of begging or pleading would change the would-be heir’s mind. Sucre was not just posturing here; he wanted out. He was done. He offered Bolívar all the moral support in the world and genuine, faithful service, but only as a private citizen — no more a General, and certainly not the heir.

Bolívar would remain in Guayaquil until the summer of 1829, working on a treaty establishing the border between Peru and Colombia with the government in Lima, who harbored less ambitious ambitions than their predecessors. But you’ve got to wonder just what in the world he thought the point of it all was anymore.

Sucre’s abrupt departure threw open the question of who would succeed Bolívar when the Liberator inevitably died. It’s not like people didn’t know that he was dying, and each of his senior officers fancied themselves for the job. To possibly avoid a kind of post-Alexander the Great situation that would pit all the Bolivarian generals against each other — they started taking meetings with various European ambassadors in Bogotá, sounding out the feasibility of a frankly lunatic idea: to recruit a monarch from Europe to come rule them. Now, this was not a new idea; remember, this had been San Martín’s plan for Peru. It was rejected then, but it was resurrected now, with suggestions passing between the Bolivarians and British, French, and American ambassadors. The South Americans said that any monarch needed to be a Catholic, but not Spanish, obviously. And the ambassador representing the reactionary King Charles X of France (you’re going to want to remember that name) positively salivated at the idea of getting a Frenchman on the throne and planting a new French empire in South America. The British, of course, weren’t going to stand for that, and they pushed the Colombians to choose some minor German noble not linked to one of the great powers. The American ambassador, meanwhile, the future 40-day president William Henry Harrison, was so forceful in his denunciation of the whole project that he was nearly expelled from the country for interfering in Colombian internal affairs.

When Bolívar found out about this mad plot, he told his guys to knock it off. I mean, look at how everyone is behaving toward each other. You really think anyone is going to accept an imposed monarch from Europe? Besides, he told them bluntly, what European would be stupid enough to take on this job? By the summer of 1829, he was telling his men explicitly to drop the idea of importing a monarch permanently.

But now, Bolívar’s reputation was such that no one could believe he wasn’t the secret guiding hand behind the royalist scheme, with the secret plan being that Bolívar would reluctantly agree to be king once all the European options had been exhausted. His old comrade Páez was not above disingenuously backing the plan for monarchy in his correspondence with Bogotá, believing that it would indeed lead Bolívar to claim a crown, which would make it easier for Páez to lead Venezuela to true independence. Though it’s not like he really needed much help with that project as it was becoming clear to everyone that the Bolivarian project of a centralist government ruling a large superstate was on the brink of collapse. Gran Colombia was going to die. The only question was when and who would benefit. And by mid-1829, Páez could practically taste independence, especially after he found his old rival Santander thrust into his custody.

After languishing in a Bogotá jail cell, Santander had been led by Bolívarian agents not down to Cartagena, where the former Vice President might start trouble, but over to Caracas, where he would be friendless and isolated. When Santander arrived, Páez guaranteed the safety of his old rival, no doubt aware that if Santander died, it might provoke a response from Colombia. So he did ensure Santander’s safety, just long enough to get the ex-Vice President on a ship to Europe. When the time came, Páez believed that he would now be able to sever Venezuela from Colombia without effort and without complaint.

Far away from home, in Ecuador, Bolívar continued to plow the sea, even though it was now clear to everyone that he would soon be dead and buried. After completing the treaty with Peru, he was stricken by another near-fatal illness that found him coughing up black blood. This illness plagued him as he slowly and painfully made his way back to Bogotá to prepare for the new new constitutional convention that would be held in January of 1830. At that convention, physically and emotionally broken, Simón Bolívar planned to resign the dictatorship and trust the fate of his country to the gods. But the gods would be unkind to him; they chose to play no part in the future proceedings, and instead, leaving the fate of South America to mere mortals.

Next week, we will have our final episode on Spanish American independence, and we will find Simón Bolívar forced to confront the destruction of all that he had worked for, which then led to a confrontation with his own mortality. 

For his entire life, Bolívar had been able to will himself to believe that his will would be enough. But it turned out not to have been enough, and it would not be enough, and it was never going to be enough. There is no happy ending for anyone in the history of South America and after 20 years of plunging into danger in defense of his people, Bolívar would not die heroically on the battlefield or peacefully in his sleep surrounded by a country that adored him. Instead, he would slip away to an uncomfortable death, broken and depressed, lacking the strength even to go into exile.

Bolívar, I’m sorry. You should have stayed in Caracas.

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