The life and times of your archetypal romantic revolutionary

Romantic Revolutionary: Bolivar and the Struggle for Independence in Latin America

After his wife’s death Bolívar went on to Paris where he witnessed Napoleon’s coronation and regularly frequented Fanny de Villars’ celebrated salon. This salon was little more than an upper-class brothel and he apparently took scores of lovers in France but never married again

WHY is less written in the English language about South America than any of the other continents? Could it be because the history of British involvement in the Americas south of Texas — aside from the Caribbean, Guyana and the Falklands — is a history of missed opportunities? Britain invaded Nicaragua, sent armies to Argentina, and made plans to capture Chile and to seize Mexico. But it all came to nothing.

Britain secured only a tiny Central American foothold from Spain, the mosquito-infested territory of British Honduras, now Belize. The rest of Latin America achieved its independence and freedom largely through the vision of its liberators, among whom Simón Bolívar remains pre-eminent.

In Latin America itself, of course, the story never goes away. Newspapers regularly carry comment on the life and works of the independence heroes, filmmakers re-enact the heroics of 19th-century battles and politicians from far left to far right revive their memory.

In truth, however, the fruits of independence were, for long, so grim — not least for the native Indians and black slaves — that details of the independence struggle have been downplayed in Europe and in North America. The slaughter of Latin America’s Indians in the 19th century was greater than in the previous three centuries of comparatively benign imperial Spanish rule.

Robert Harvey was sent to Latin America by The Economist in the 1970s to counter what was perceived as the left-wing propaganda being published at the time in Britain. Later a Conservative MP and member of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, his views slowly mellowed and he writes with passion and verve about the life of Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco, to give him his full name, from his birth in January 1783 to a very wealthy Venezuelan family through to his death of tuberculosis, aged 47.

Simón Bolívar was, as Harvey’s title proclaims, the archetypal romantic revolutionary. Born into privilege, impetuous and vain and an Anglophile too, it was not until the young colonial visited Europe to complete his education that the taper of revolution was lit that sent the young man on a death-defying quest to liberate the northern part of continental South America.

Bolívar married a suitably aristocratic Spanish girl Maria while he was only 19, took her with him back home to his South American hacienda where she died very soon afterwards from yellow fever, aged 21. This tragedy appears to have changed the pattern of Bolívar’s life.

“The death of my wife placed me on the path of politics,” he told a friend.

In 1807, Bolívar returned to Caracas and joined the resistance movement, declaring independence for Venezuela four years later.

Nevertheless, his daring guerrilla tactics, employed against much larger forces, finally broke the chains of Spanish power in New Granada, although not without hideous suffering on both sides.

He soon gave up politics, however, to search for a military solution, devising the ‘Decree of War until Death’ in July 1813, and claiming the title El Liberador.

“Our land shall be purged of the monsters that infest it,” he blazed, but Bolívar’s vision was not restricted to “the burning shores of the Orinoco”. Yet once again, after initial victories he found himself fleeing for his life.

He then risked a near-suicidal march over the Andes to liberate what is now Colombia and later proceeded south to bring independence to the territories that today make up Ecuador. On September 7, 1821, the Gran Colombia (a state covering much of modern Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and Ecuador) was created, with Bolívar as president.

He continued his commitment to liberty with the subsequent conquest of Peru. In 1825, the new nation of Bolivia was created in the spirit that had driven Bolívar himself to achieve so much — revolutionary zeal and enlightenment principles.

In 1826, internal divisions had sparked dissent throughout the nation, and regional uprisings erupted in Venezuela. The new South American union had revealed its fragility and appeared to be on the verge of collapse. By 1828 Bolívar had declared himself a dictator.

Robert Harvey brings to this lively book a lifetime’s fascination with Bolívar and explores the complex personality behind the revolutionary. There is no lack of zest or colour as he relates with panache Bolívar’s deeds and unravels the complexities of the political background against which he operated.

Harvey’s achievement has been to reassess the epic conflict Bolívar was engaged in for a new generation of readers outside the continent, recovering some of the gung-ho nature of the campaigns interspersing it with not a little high romance along the way.