Bolivar: American Liberator (29 page)

In the interim,
Bolívar wrote editorials, memos, letters to anyone he could think of, including one respectfully declining the invitation to take up the reins in the besieged fortress of Cartagena. Little did he know that as he penned those words, Cartagena was littered with corpses, its scant survivors plotting a fevered getaway.

One of Bolívar’s many writings during that time was
an astonishingly prescient letter addressed to
an Englishman in Jamaica who expressed interest in his struggle for independence. More than a friendly missive, this was a masterful
tour d’horizon
. Clearly Bolívar meant it to enjoy wide dissemination. Written in vibrant prose and reflecting a profound grasp of the legacy of colonialism, the letter was read at first only by the small English circle for whom it was intended. It would take more than a dozen years to be retranslated into Spanish. But the letter served as a blueprint for Bolívar’s political thought, and
its ideas would emerge in countless documents during those formative days.

The “Letter from Jamaica” declared unequivocally that the bond between America and Spain had been severed forevermore: it could never be repaired. Although the
“wicked stepmother” was laboring mightily to reapply her chains, it was too late. The colonies had tasted freedom. “Our hatred for Spain,” he declared, “is vaster than the sea between us.”

In turns a paean to the inexpressible beauty of the continent and a shriek of fury at its despoliation, Bolívar’s letter is a brilliant distillation of Latin America’s political reality. His people, he explains, are neither Indian nor pardos nor European, but an entirely new race, for which European models of government are patently unsuitable. Monarchies, to these Americans, were abhorrent by definition; and democracy—Philadelphia style—inappropriate for a population cowed and infantilized by three hundred years of slavery. “As long as we do not have the political virtues that distinguish our brothers of the north,” he argued, “a democratic system, far from rescuing us, can only bring us ruin. . . . We are a region plagued by vices learned from Spain, which, through history, has been a mistress of cruelty, ambition, meanness, and greed.” Most important to the welfare of these fledgling republics, Bolívar insisted, was a firm executive who employed wisdom, dispensed justice, and ruled benevolently for life. His America needed a strong, centralized government—one that addressed the people’s wretched condition, not a perfectly conceptualized, theoretical model dreamed up by idealists on some far-flung shore.

But the “Letter from Jamaica” was more than mere propaganda; it was inspired prophecy. In it, Bolívar predicted that revolution-torn Mexico would opt for a temporary monarchy, which indeed it did. He pictured the loose confederation of nations that later became Central America. Given Panama’s “magnificent position between two mighty seas,” he imagined a canal. For Argentina, he foresaw military dictatorships; for Chile, “the blessings that flow from the just and gentle laws of a republic.” For Peru, he predicted a limbo in which privileged whites would not tolerate a genuine democracy, colored masses would not tolerate a ruling aristocracy, and the constant threat of rebellion was never
far from hand. All these would come to pass. In some countries, one could even say, Bolívar’s visions still hold.

Reduced for the time being, however, to producing revolutionary doctrine, Bolívar was living like a pauper, using what funds he could cadge to contribute to a flurry of rebel ventures that blew in and out of Jamaica along with his erstwhile companions. Most of his financial assistance came from Maxwell Hyslop, an Englishman he had known from Caracas—a merchant who, like Brion, avidly advocated free trade. Hyslop’s loans
afforded him two tiny rooms, a black manservant named Pio, and a hammock.
“I am,” as he reported to Brion in Curaçao, “living in uncertainty and misery.” Eventually he wrote Hyslop that he had lost all patience with his harridan landlady and left her house.

A few days later, on December 10, when a former paymaster in Bolívar’s army, Félix Amestoy, came looking for him at that address,
Bolívar was no longer there. That very day he had found new quarters. But Amestoy didn’t know that. Seeing the hammock in the corner, he decided to take a nap and wait until Bolívar returned. Bolívar’s manservant, Pio, too, had no idea his master had moved. In the black of night, he crept in and
attacked the man in the hammock with a knife, stabbing the body several times. The killing done, Pio made a quick escape through the window, but he was drunk, loud, and, in the course of the murder, his victim had managed to cry out,
“A Negro is killing me!” Shortly after, Pio was hunted down and apprehended. He admitted that foreigners had plied him with liquor and paid
2,000 pesos—an unimaginable sum—to assassinate Bolívar. The courts never determined by whose agency the murder had been contracted, or why. Within a few weeks, Pio was convicted and hanged—his head lopped off, affixed to a stake, and exhibited on Kingston’s Spring-Path.

Many a legend has been made of that fatal night. Some historians claim that Bolívar was saved because he had
lolled abed with Julia Cobier, a wealthy widow renowned for her beauty and brains, whom he’d been romancing. Others say he was off having
dinner at Hyslop’s. Rumors even had it that General Morillo himself had ordered the assassination, and that money had passed from Spanish hands to a
Polish Jew in Kingston, who ended up recruiting Pio to the task. In any case, the incident was enough to unnerve Bolívar. He left Jamaica on December
18 before authorities carried out Pio’s execution. Assisted by Brion and Hyslop, he
sailed with food and supplies for the beleaguered city of Cartagena.

While at sea, however, Bolívar was stunned to learn from corsairs headed the other way that Cartagena had already fallen. The news shouted from bow to bow was grim: The trusty colonel sent as an intermediary—Carabaño—was dead; neither he nor Brion’s battleship had ever made it to Cartagena. Half the city had perished. The unfortunates too weak to escape had been slaughtered indiscriminately. Even after the royalists had taken Cartagena, they continued to fly the rebel flag precisely in order to trap rescue operations like Bolívar’s. Lastly, the patriots who had managed to escape were all headed for Haiti. Bolívar immediately ordered his ship to change course and follow.

There was every reason to choose Haiti. During his four-month stay in Jamaica, Bolívar had been introduced to
Hyslop’s wealthy colleague Robert Sutherland, an Englishman who ran a lucrative shipping trade there. Sutherland traded in cotton and coffee, and essentially controlled import-export traffic out of that island, operating as
Haiti’s de facto minister of trade and finance. But he was also a passionate liberal
and an active gunrunner, selling arms and munitions to revolutionaries. With Sutherland in Haiti, Hyslop in Jamaica, and Brion in Curaçao, Bolívar soon had a solid network of some of the most influential shippers and merchants in the region. But in Sutherland he had something else: an ally who boasted a close friendship with President Alexandre Pétion, one of the heroes of the Haitian revolution. The son of a French father and an African mother, Pétion was a steadfast republican and generous soul, who had made it known throughout the Caribbean that in his country all freedom seekers were welcome. Sutherland had spoken to Bolívar of the importance of establishing a relationship with Pétion and, toward that end, urged him to visit Haiti as his personal guest.

On Christmas Eve, Bolívar landed in the port of Aux Cayes, where many of the fugitives from Cartagena had taken refuge. By New Year’s Day, he was comfortably lodged in the capital of Port-au-Prince.
Sutherland received him and personally escorted him to the gleaming white
presidential palace to meet the great man Pétion. The Haitian president welcomed Bolívar warmly.
“I was immediately drawn to him,” Pétion later confided in a letter, “and I could feel his greatness.” Before long, he offered the Liberator his complete support. When Bolívar said that he would repay Pétion by making him the patron of Spanish American independence, the president replied,
“No, don’t mention my name; my only desire is to see that those who tremble under slavery’s yoke are free: Liberate my brothers, and that will be payment enough.” It was a bold demand: ending slavery would alter the social fabric of South America. But Bolívar already knew that he needed to lure the colored classes to his side. He readily agreed. Within days, Bolívar was given everything he needed to mount a new invasion:
one thousand guns, thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder, a fleet of seven ships, and all the captains and sailors necessary to man them. It wasn’t the vast, muscular support Bolívar had hoped for from Britain or the United States, but it was enough to attempt a reentry.

Straightaway, he called a meeting with his cohort in Haiti, a motley crew of friends and rivals: Santiago Mariño, Manuel Piar, José Francisco Bermúdez, Carlos Soublette, Francisco Zea, Mariano Montilla, the French mercenary Luis Ducoudray, and the dashing Scottish colonel Gregor McGregor, who had
married one of Bolívar’s cousins at the start of the revolution. Among those, Luis Brion was his most steadfast supporter, and it was Brion now who proposed Bolívar as head of the expedition, but Montilla, Bermúdez, and others objected. Montilla even went so far as to
challenge Bolívar to a duel; and
Bermúdez continued his insubordination against Bolívar, which had begun even as they battled the Legions of Hell side by side in the waning days of the second republic. In the end, Montilla and Bermúdez were dropped from the expedition. Mariño, the Liberator of the East, was made chief of staff, with the thoroughly dyspeptic Frenchman Ducoudray as his assistant. But as plans developed, it was Bolívar who took command.

Bolívar busily prepared for the expedition, heartened by the faith of his new sponsor, Pétion; his vital network of European businessmen; and his passionate republican collaborators. All the same, in the course
of those few months, he found time to renew his
affair with the irresistible young Isabel Soublette, who with her brother Carlos had made the harrowing escape from Cartagena. It was a transitory romance, dashed all too soon by the winds of revolution, but like the congenial hospitality of Haiti, it gave him the fleeting illusion of home.

CHAPTER
8

Our people are nothing like Europeans or North Americans; indeed, we are more a mixture of Africa and America than we are children of Europe. . . . It is impossible to say with any certainty to which human race we belong.

—Simón Bolívar

E
ighteen sixteen was the
year without a summer. As Lord Byron put it, the bright sun had vanished and stars wandered
“darkling in the eternal space.” The colossal eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia on April 10, 1815—the largest volcanic event in recorded history—had traveled the globe to spew a fine ash over Europe and the Americas. A year later, the earth’s atmosphere was so saturated with sulfur that brilliant sunsets inflamed the English skies, torrential rains washed away European crops, and a persistent gloom hung over North America. At the time, few imagined that a single geologic event in a remote location could affect the entire globe, and yet there was so much evidence of a
freak imbalance: stinging frosts carpeted Pennsylvania in the middle of summer, killing the livestock; in Germany, harvests failed,
causing a crippling famine; a typhus epidemic swept through the Mediterranean. There were surprising ramifications.
Food riots gripped England and Ireland;
Luddites torched textile factories with renewed frenzy. In a
dark
castle in rain-pelted Switzerland, Mary Shelley wrote the novel
Frankenstein.
In northern Europe, J. M. W. Turner was so
stunned by the fiery skies that he recorded them in magnificent canvases for years to come. In France, rampant disease prompted a
new age of medical discovery. And in the Caribbean, where Bolívar prepared to relaunch his revolution, a perfect calm preceded the hurricane season, which
arrived a month sooner than usual, tossing the sea with singular fury.

Eighteen sixteen also became
the revolution’s cruelest year. There were wholesale beheadings, hangings, firing squads—all in the name of “pacification.” General Morillo had
installed draconian laws to rid Venezuela—Spain’s most defiant colony—of revolutionaries once and for all. The royalists arrested suspects in rural backwaters and relocated them to heavily defended towns, where they could be overseen. Anyone found wandering the countryside was a candidate for the gallows. Morillo’s men burned crops, purged the forests of fruit trees, killed farm animals, impounded horses, and executed any blacksmith capable of forging a lance’s head or any other weapon. Royalist commanders exacted taxes and punitive fines, making themselves rich and powerful in the process. Patriots, on the other hand, were stripped of whatever property they had. In the course of a single year, Venezuela’s
Committee of Confiscation sold land valued at almost one million pesos, thereby funding Spain’s treasury and enabling its army to secure badly needed supplies. More than two hundred haciendas were expropriated—all of them owned by the patriot leadership, including the Palacios, del Toros, and Tovars, many of whom had fled in the mass emigration to the east. But the
largest and most retaliatory confiscation was reserved for Bolívar, who was divested of five estates and numerous smaller properties, valued at a staggering 200,000 pesos.