Bolivar: American Liberator (58 page)

BOLÍVAR SAILED FROM LIMA ON
September 3, 1826, promising to return. Indeed he hoped that once his Federation of the Andes was securely in place, he would come back on regular visits, overseeing the country’s fortunes. But he would never see Peru again.

By September 13 he was in Guayaquil, where he was received as a hero. He was, in essence, without an army—he had sent the many thousands of Colombian troops in Peru to serve elsewhere—and it must
have struck him as peculiar to be back on that hard-won soil without his trusty legions.
“I come to you with an olive branch” were the first public words he uttered.
That olive branch was his new constitution, but he did not say so right away. He went on to say all the things that Santander and his skittish legislators in Bogotá hoped to hear: He did not aspire to be a dictator; he did not care about political parties; he wanted only to bring harmony to Colombia’s troubled shores.
“Once more, I offer you my services,” he said, “services of a brother. I don’t want to know who has been at fault here; I have never forgotten that we are blood brothers, comrades in arms. I come offering an embrace. . . . Here, in the depths of my very being will I carry you, Granadans and Venezuelans alike, the just along with the unjust, the entire liberating army and every last citizen of this great Republic.”

But as he moved north, traveling through Quito and Pasto, he exercised every extraordinary faculty he had ever been granted. Technically, he was a returning general—without doubt, a very victorious one—but his presidency had been annulled more than a year before;
it was not his place to govern until he reached Bogotá, was formally conferred the presidency, and officially took up the reins. All the same, he was troubled by what he saw.
“Everywhere I look,” he wrote Santander, “I see only misery and disgust.” Citizens felt disconnected from their government; local institutions were in shambles. For all of Santander’s laws, the engine of Greater Colombia appeared to have stalled completely.
The only way to solve it, as far as Bolívar was concerned, was to return power to the people, renew the social contract, give the outlying electoral colleges more control. To him, a citizen’s rights were far more important than any body of statutes.

As he went, he tried to reassure the unhappy public by
issuing government appointments, abrogating others. He commuted sentences, gave military promotions to officers who appealed to him, encouraged disgruntled citizens to come forward with protests against Bogotá’s laws.
He chafed at his aide O’Leary for taking sides with Santander against Páez. And, in the end, he decided that what he needed was more power, not less. He wrote to the vice president,
“A dictatorship would solve everything. . . . With constitutional laws you can do nothing about Páez. Authorized by the nation, I can do all.” Even as he publicly
claimed to
abhor the word “dictator,” he now privately worked toward being acclaimed one. As he proceeded north,
it was precisely what came to pass. The people of Guayaquil and Quito, dismayed by Bogotá’s laws and irked by its ignorance about their needs, were only too happy to call Bolívar their dictator.

Santander was furious. According to him, a dictatorship was beside the point, entirely unnecessary in a republic whose laws and institutions—if obeyed—did the work of governing. The established order did not need to change; the disorderly people did. It was true that he had begged Bolívar to come back and restore the peace, but he had meant for the Liberator to come as a figurehead, a symbol. If Bolívar was angling to install his presumptuous Bolivian constitution and upend all the laws put in place in the past five years,
Santander wanted no part of it. He
had already warned Bolívar to steer clear of governing, as it would only destroy a warrior’s glory. He decided to come out and meet the Liberator before Bolívar entered the capital and did any harm.

Bolívar was well into Popayán—350 miles from Bogotá—before he knew how unwelcome he was in Santander’s country. It was there that he
began to see newspapers out of the capital, filled with hostile editorials against him. It was there, too, that he began to hear that the majority of Granadans thought that the 1821 constitution was best; that they didn’t agree with his notions of Pan American unity and constitutional reform; that they were all for Santander’s laws and the primacy of Granadans over Venezuelans. They even seemed willing to go to war against Páez to prove it. Bolívar
had told Santander months before that laws alone would not bring discipline to the turmoil. An obsession with laws was what had driven Páez to rebel in the first place. What the republic needed now was a strong military hand and every effort to preserve the union. He wrote to Santander again with an even firmer message, reprimanding him for feeding the burgeoning ill will:
“I fear that Colombia is lost forever,” he lamented. “The old constitution and the laws have reduced the country to a Satan’s palace, ablaze in every corner.” He threatened to reject the presidency unless congress convened to decide the important questions. But there was no denying he was chastened by the disapproval. Less confident now,
he wrote to
Sucre and Santa Cruz, telling them to do what they thought best in Bolivia and Peru, even override him, if that was what the people wanted. But as he made his way through the vast, unfriendly republic, taking the grueling mountain route he had taken years before,
suffering the pain of inflamed hemorrhoids, he couldn’t help but burn, too, with a consuming fury.

Santander met Bolívar on the outskirts of the capital, before the Liberator began his final ascent to the plains of Bogotá.
He was determined to disabuse Bolívar of any duplicity on his part or any bad faith on the part of the government. The meeting was genial, polite, with Santander’s every effort directed at personally reassuring his chief. For all intents and purposes, the vice president’s strategy worked. They agreed that when they reached Bogotá, Bolívar would resume the presidency under the old constitution—at least for the time being—and that he would take up the extraordinary faculties that the constitution provided in times of peril.

But this rapprochement between Bolívar and his vice president was sorely tested when the Liberator actually made his entrance into the city on November 14. Instead of the wild, exultant acclamations he had received elsewhere for his attendant victories, Bolívar was
met with only a few “Vivas!” in his name. The welcome was surprisingly reserved—even grudging—and made largely by supporters of the vice president. The loudest cheers, to the Liberator’s dismay, were for the
very
old constitution of 1815—the charter that had formed the original republic of New Granada. There were no triumphal arches, no clamoring masses. The only plaudits were on billboards, and they screamed:
Viva la constitución!
As a chilling rain began to drizzle down, Bolívar found himself riding into the capital virtually alone. At the city limits, he was welcomed with a small ceremony in his honor. But when the presiding official whined on about how the army had violated the republic’s laws, Bolívar erupted. He cut off the speaker, ended the harangue, and insisted that patriots should be
“celebrating the army’s glories, not nattering on about its violation of a few laws.” He was livid. When the heavens finally parted to release a drenching rain, all hopes of a triumphal reentry were dampened completely.

The morning sun over Bogotá brought a brighter day. The civic,
military, and religious leaders of Colombia greeted Bolívar warmly in the presidential palace and he reciprocated with generous words. Santander made
a dazzling, conciliatory speech, in which he congratulated the Liberator, praised the army’s astonishing victories, and claimed to be the president’s loyal friend. It seemed, too, as conversation continued, that Bolívar’s
vice president was not completely averse to his Federation of the Andes. Although he didn’t say it quite yet, Santander was all for dividing Greater Colombia into separate states, and as long as he ruled New Granada, he was willing to go along with the idea of some form of federal system. The blue sky of possibility seemed to gleam over them now.
Vivas!
for the Liberator rang throughout the capital, and there was
talk of a bold, new day. By the end of it, the president and vice president were embracing warmly. It would be their last amicable exchange.

Bolívar did not stay long in Bogotá. A mere ten days after his arrival and two days after being granted dictatorial powers, he was en route again, riding over the same terrain he had crossed when he had descended so spectacularly over the Andes and overpowered the Spaniards at Boyacá. It had been seven long years since that historic moment, and he was all the worse for wear. He was exhausted, unwell, not the warrior he once had been. But he was determined to bring Páez in line and rescue the foundering republic. He wrote to the Lion of the Apure sternly, preparing him for the pending encounter:
“General Castillo opposed me and lost,” he warned. “General Piar opposed me and lost. General Mariño opposed me and lost. Generals Riva Agüero and Torre Tagle both opposed me and lost. It would seem that Providence curses my personal enemies to hell-fire, Americans and Spaniards alike.” But he ended with an outstretched hand: “I believe in you as I believe in my own sword, and I know that it will never be directed against my heart.”

When he arrived in Puerto Cabello, Páez was afraid to see him. By then, the truculent plainsman was unwaveringly committed to seceding from Greater Colombia. Santander had stripped Páez of the title of supreme chief of Venezuela and further insulted him by summoning him to Bogotá to be tried for military crimes. Outraged, Páez had ignored the order and made clear that he was poised to go to war to free his country from Bogotá’s clutches. He was, after all, the hero of the
Battle of Carabobo, liberator of Puerto Cabello—and Venezuelans were firmly on his side. The great Colombian generals
Bermúdez and Urdaneta had declared in no uncertain terms that they would never take up arms against him. This was precisely why Santander had asked Bolívar to intervene.

But hearing of Bolívar’s tenure in Bogotá and his evident solidarity with Santander, Páez assumed that the Liberator was now on the opposing side, especially when it became known that
Bolívar was advancing on Venezuela with Santander’s army. As Bolívar labored over the Andes, fording rivers, covering more than seven hundred miles in the course of twenty-eight days, Páez began to mount a campaign to raise Venezuela against him. He spread the rumor that Bolívar had set out to make himself king—a preposterous fabrication, given the fact that it was Páez himself who had sent emissaries to beg Bolívar to take up the crown. He tried to persuade pardos and blacks, whose opportunities had improved markedly since the revolution, that Bolívar would be like the Mantuanos of old—avaricious, cruel, and adamant about keeping the colored people down.

Bolívar had two choices: negotiate with Páez or see the republic he had toiled to create slide calamitously into civil war. Arriving in Puerto Cabello on December 31, he wasted no time.
He issued a unilateral decree granting Páez amnesty for his rebellion, confirmed his title as supreme chief of Venezuela, and invited him to parley. Granadans and Venezuelans were both citizens of Colombia, Bolívar boomed, his voice still electrifying, though the body was frail. He told them they were what they always had been: brothers, comrades in arms, sons of the same destiny. He implored them to see reason and put bitterness behind them.
Were they so short of enemies, he scolded, that they would turn on each other in fratricide? To
Páez, who in past months had lost much of the support he had ever had among the Venezuelan people, Bolívar wrote,
“Enough of the blood and ruin. . . . I came here because you called me. If you want to see me, come. Even Morillo did not mistrust me, and he and I have been friends ever since.” Bolívar assured Páez that he had nothing to lose, everything to gain; all he had to do was recognize the Liberator’s authority. Páez accepted immediately. On January 4, 1827, he rode out to meet Bolívar in Valencia;
but he appeared with armed
guards on the chance that the lure was a ruse. Bolívar came alone. When he saw the stout, burly bear of a man without whom he could not have won his America’s independence, he strode forward and took him into his arms.
Páez later wrote that it was an embrace from which he could hardly release himself: their swords became tangled, locking fast so that the two couldn’t break free.
“A good omen,” Bolívar chuckled, and smiled broadly. But as they struggled to separate their weapons, Páez couldn’t help feeling
a shudder of dread.

WITH ONE EMBRACE, BOLÍVAR HAD
saved the republic. He had always known how to manage his generals. His flexibility in war, his aptitude for employing just the right combination of cordiality and muscle, his natural sympathy for soldiers had served him well among military men. It was dealing with the politicians that would test his patience. He had said so many years before, in 1821, and it would resonate with ever more meaning now:

When catastrophe forced weapons into my hands and history called me to liberate my country, I put myself at the head of a military venture that has labored for more than eleven years, never dreaming I would be asked to lead governments. With firm resolve, I swore I would never do it. I pledged with all my heart that I was but a soldier, that I would serve only in war; and that, when peace finally came, I would move on to the role of citizen. Ready to sacrifice my fortune, my blood, my very name for the public good, I cannot say I am ready to sacrifice my conscience. I am thoroughly convinced I have no capacities for governing Colombia. I know absolutely nothing about rule. I am not the adjudicator a thriving republic needs. Soldier by necessity and inclination, my destiny has ever been in the battlefield, the barracks.

History had forced his hand. Knowing only one way to manage—the military way, from the top down—he forged on with the enterprise. At every turn, he was given ample encouragement: Every republic he liberated had come to believe, even grudgingly, that Bolívar had an uncanny ability to deal with Gordian knots. If he were present, if he
unleashed his spellbinding rhetoric, he could tame a whirlwind, and a whirlwind is what many feared would come without the Liberator at the helm. Caught up in this notion of invincibility, Bolívar began to believe that only he could set things right.
“I, too, shall play the game of politics,” he had told Santander, and he proceeded to do just that.