Simon bolivar biography venezuela

Simón Bolívar

Venezuelan statesman and military officer (–)

"Bolívar" redirects here. For other uses, see Bolívar (disambiguation) and Simón Bolívar (disambiguation).

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Bolívar and the second or maternal family name is Palacios.

Not to be confused with Simone de Beauvoir.

Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios Ponte y Blanco[c] (24&#;July &#;&#; 17&#;December ) was a Venezuelan statesman and military officer who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia to independence from the Spanish Empire.

He is known colloquially as El Libertador, or the Liberator of America.

Simón Bolívar was born in Caracas in the Captaincy General of Venezuela into a wealthy family of American-born Spaniards (criollo) but lost both parents as a child. Bolívar was educated abroad and lived in Spain, as was common for men of upper-class families in his day.

While living in Madrid from to , he was introduced to Enlightenment philosophy and married María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaysa, who died in Venezuela from yellow fever in From to , Bolívar embarked on a Grand Tour that ended in Rome, where he swore to end the Spanish rule in the Americas. In , Bolívar returned to Venezuela and promoted Venezuelan independence to other wealthy creoles.

When the Spanish authority in the Americas weakened due to Napoleon's Peninsular War, Bolívar became a zealous combatant and politician in the Spanish-American wars of independence.

Bolívar began his military career in as a militia officer in the Venezuelan War of Independence, fighting Royalist forces for the first and second Venezuelan republics and the United Provinces of New Granada.

After Spanish forces subdued New Granada in , Bolívar was forced into exile on Jamaica. In Haiti, Bolívar met and befriended Haitian revolutionary leader Alexandre Pétion. After promising to abolish slavery in Spanish America, Bolívar received military support from Pétion and returned to Venezuela. He established a third republic in and then crossed the Andes to liberate New Granada in Bolívar and his allies defeated the Spanish in New Granada in , Venezuela and Panama in , Ecuador in , Peru in , and Bolivia in Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, and Panama were merged into the Republic of Colombia (Gran Colombia), with Bolívar as president there and in Peru and Bolivia.

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  • In his final years, Bolívar became increasingly disillusioned with the South American republics, and distanced from them because of his centralist ideology. He was successively removed from his offices until he resigned the presidency of Colombia and died of tuberculosis in His legacy is diverse and far-reaching within Latin America and beyond.

    He is regarded as a hero and national and cultural icon throughout Latin America; the nations of Bolivia and Venezuela (as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) are named after him, and he has been memorialized all over the world in the form of public art or street names and in popular culture.

    Early life and family

    Simón Bolívar was born on 24 July in Caracas, capital of the Captaincy General of Venezuela, the fourth and youngest child of Juan Vicente Bolívar y Ponte&#;[es] and María de la Concepción Palacios y Blanco&#;[es].

    He was baptized as Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios on 30 July. The first of Bolívar's family to have emigrated to the Americas was a similarly named minor Spanish governmental official named Simón de Bolívar, who had been a notary in the Spanish Basque region, and who had later arrived in Venezuela in the s.

    The earlier Simón de Bolívar's descendants had served in the colonial bureaucracy and had married into various wealthy Caracas families over the years. By the time Simón Bolívar was born, the Bolívar family was one of the wealthiest and most prestigious criollo (creole) families in the Spanish Americas.

    Simón Bolívar's childhood was described by British historian John Lynch as "at once privileged and deprived." Juan Vicente died of tuberculosis on 19 January , leaving María de la Concepción Palacios and her father, Feliciano Palacios y Sojo&#;[es], as legal guardians over the Bolívar children's inheritances.

    Those children – María Antonia&#;[es] (born ), Juana&#;[es] (born ), Juan Vicente&#;[es] (born ), and Simón – were raised separately from each other and their mother, and, following colonial custom, by African house slaves; Simón was raised by a slave named Hipólita&#;[es] whom he viewed as both a motherly and fatherly figure.

    On 6 July , María de la Concepción also died of tuberculosis. Believing that his family would inherit the Bolívars' wealth, Feliciano Palacios arranged marriages for María Antonia and Juana and, before dying on 5 December , assigned custody of Juan Vicente and Simón to his sons, Juan Félix Palacios and Carlos Palacios y Blanco&#;[es], respectively.

    Bolívar came to loathe Carlos Palacios, who had no interest in the boy other than his inheritance.

    Education and first journey to Europe: –

    As a child, Bolívar was notoriously unruly and neglected his studies. Before his mother died, he spent two years under the tutelage of the Venezuelan lawyer Miguel José Sanz at the direction of the Real Audiencia of Caracas&#;[es], the Spanish court of appeals in Caracas.

    In , Carlos enrolled Bolívar at a rudimentary primary school&#;[es] run by Venezuelan educator Simón Rodríguez. In June , Bolívar fled his uncle's custody for the house of his sister María Antonia and her husband. The couple sought formal recognition of his change of residence, but the Real Audiencia decided the matter in favor of Palacios, who sent Simón to live with Rodríguez.

    After two months there, the Real Audiencia directed that he be returned to the Palacios family home.

    Bolívar promised the Real Audiencia that he would focus on his education and was subsequently taught full-time by Rodríguez and the Venezuelan intellectuals Andrés Bello and Francisco de Andújar&#;[es]. In , Rodríguez's connection to the pro-independence Gual and España conspiracy forced him to go into exile, and Bolívar was enrolled in an honorary militia force.

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    When he was commissioned as an officer after a year, his uncles Carlos and Esteban Palacios y Blanco&#;[es] decided to send Bolívar to join the latter in Madrid. There, Esteban was friends with Queen Maria Luisa's favorite, Manuel Mallo.

    On 19 January , Bolívar boarded the Spanish warship San Ildefonso at the port of La Guaira, bound for Cádiz.

    He arrived in Santoña, on the northern coast of Spain, in May A little over a week later, he arrived in Madrid and joined Esteban, who found Bolívar to be "very ignorant." Esteban asked Gerónimo Enrique de Uztáriz y Tovar, a Caracas native and government official, to educate Bolívar. Bolívar moved into Uztáriz's residence in February and was educated in the Classics, literature, and social studies.

    At the same time, Mallo fell out of the Queen's favor and Manuel Godoy, her previous favorite, returned to power.

    As members of Mallo's faction at court, Esteban was arrested on pretense, and Bolívar was banished from court following a public incident at the Puerta de Toledo over the wearing of diamonds without royal permission. Bolívar also at this time met María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaysa, the daughter of another wealthy Caracas creole.

    They were engaged in August , but were separated when the del Toros left Madrid for a summer home in Bilbao. After Uztáriz left Madrid for a government assignment in Teruel in , Bolívar himself left for Bilbao and remained there when the del Toros returned to the capital in August Early in , Bolívar traveled to Paris while he awaited permission to return to Madrid, which was granted in April.

    Return to Venezuela and second journey to Europe: –

    Bolívar and del Toro, aged 18 and 21 respectively, were married in Madrid on 26 May The couple boarded the San Ildefonso in La Coruña on 15 June and sailed for La Guaira, where they arrived on 12 July.

    They settled in Caracas, where del Toro fell ill and died of yellow fever on 22 January Bolívar was devastated by del Toro's death and later told Louis Peru de Lacroix, one of his generals and biographers, that he swore to never remarry. By July , Bolívar had decided to leave Venezuela for Europe. He entrusted his estates to an agent and his brother and in October boarded a ship bound for Cádiz.

    Bolívar arrived in Spain in December , then traveled to Madrid to console his father-in-law.

    In March , the municipal authorities of Madrid ordered all non-residents in the city to leave to alleviate a bread shortage brought about by Spain's resumed hostilities with Britain. Over April, Bolívar and Fernando Rodríguez del Toro&#;[es], a childhood friend and relative of his wife, made their way to Paris and arrived in time for Napoleon to be proclaimed Emperor of the French on 18 May They rented an apartment on the Rue Vivienne&#;[fr] and met with other South Americans such as Carlos de Montúfar, Vicente Rocafuerte, and Simón Rodríguez, who joined Bolívar and del Toro in their apartment.

    While in Paris, Bolívar began a dalliance with the Countess Dervieu du Villars, at whose salon he likely met the naturalists Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, who had traveled through much of Spanish America from to Bolívar allegedly discussed Spanish American independence with them.

    I swear before you&#; that I will not rest body or soul until I have broken the chains binding us to the will of Spanish might!

    Simón Bolívar, 15 August

    In April , Bolívar left Paris with Rodríguez and del Toro on a Grand Tour to Italy. Beginning in Lyon, they traveled through the Savoy Alps and then to Milan. The trio arrived on 26 May and witnessed Napoleon's coronation as King of Italy. From Milan, they traveled down the Po Valley to Venice, then to Florence, and then finally Rome, where Bolívar met, among others, Pope Pius VII, French writer Germaine de Staël, and Humboldt again.

    Rome's sites and history excited Bolívar. On 18 August , when he, del Toro, and Rodríguez traveled to the Mons Sacer, where the plebs had seceded from Rome in the 4th century BC, Bolívar swore to end Spanish rule in the Americas.

    Political and military career

    Main article: Military career of Simón Bolívar

    By April , Bolívar had returned to Paris and desired passage to Venezuela, where Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda had just attempted an invasion with American volunteers.

    Britain's command of the sea after the Battle of Trafalgar obliged Bolívar to board an American ship in Hamburg in October Bolívar arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in January , and from there traveled to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. After six months in the United States, Bolívar returned to Philadelphia and sailed for Venezuela, where he arrived in June He began to meet with other creole elites to discuss independence from Spain.

    Finding himself to be far more radical than the rest of Caracas high society, however, Bolívar occupied himself with a property dispute with a neighbor, Antonio Nicolás Briceño&#;[es].

    In –08, Napoleon invaded the Iberian peninsula and replaced the rulers of Spain with his brother, Joseph. This news arrived in Venezuela in July Napoleonic rule was rejected and Venezuelan creoles, though still loyal to Ferdinand VII of Spain, sought to form their own local government in place of the existing Spanish government.

    On 24 November , a group of creoles presented a petition demanding an independent government to Juan de Casas, the Captain-General of Venezuela, and were arrested. Bolívar, though he did not sign the petition and thus was not arrested, was warned to cease hosting or attending seditious meetings. In May , Casas was replaced by Vicente Emparán and his staff, which included Fernando Rodríguez del Toro.

    The creoles also resisted Emparán's government, despite his friendlier disposition towards them.

    By February , French victories in Spain prompted the dissolution of the anti-French Spanish government in favor of a five-man regency council for Ferdinand VII. This news, and two delegates that included Carlos de Montúfar, arrived in Venezuela on 17 April Two days later, the creoles succeeded in deposing and then expelling Emparán, and created the Supreme Junta of Caracas, independent from the Spanish regency but not Ferdinand VII.

    Absent from Caracas for the coup, Bolívar and his brother returned to the city and offered their services to the Supreme Junta as diplomats. In May , Juan Vicente was sent to the United States to buy weapons, while Simón secured a place in a diplomatic mission to Britain with the lawyer Luis López Méndez&#;[es] and Andrés Bello by paying for the mission.

    The trio boarded a British ship in June and arrived at Portsmouth on 10 July

    The three delegates first met Miranda at his London residence, despite instructions from the Supreme Junta to avoid him, and thereafter received the benefit of his connections and consultation. On 16 July , the Venezuelan delegation met Britain's foreign secretary, Richard Wellesley, at Apsley House.

    Led by Bolívar, the Venezuelans argued in favor of Venezuelan independence, which Wellesley stated that it was intolerable for Anglo-Spanish relations. Subsequent meetings produced no recognition or concrete support from Britain. Finding that he had many shared beliefs with Miranda, however, Bolívar convinced him to come back to Venezuela.

    On 22 September , Bolívar left for Venezuela while López and Bello remained in London as diplomats, and arrived in La Guaira on 5 December. Although the British government wanted Miranda to remain in Britain, they could not prevent his departure, and he arrived in Venezuela later in December.[d]

    Venezuela: –

    While Bolívar was in England, the Supreme Junta passed liberal economic reforms and began to hold elections for representatives to a congress to be held in Caracas.

    It had also alienated Caracas from the Venezuelan provinces of Coro, Maracaibo, and Guayana, which professed loyalty to the regency council, and began hostilities with them. Co-founding the Patriotic Society, a political organization advocating for independence from Spain, Bolívar and Miranda campaigned for and secured the latter's election to the congress.

    The congress first met on 2 March and declared its allegiance to Ferdinand VII. After it was discovered that one of the men leading the congress was a Spanish agent who had escaped with military documents, however, discourse – which Bolívar was prominent in – changed decidedly in favor of independence over 3 and 4 July.

    Finally, on 5 July, the congress declared Venezuela's independence.

    The declaration of independence created the first Republic of Venezuela. It had a weak base of support and enemies in conservative whites, disenfranchised people of color, and the already hostile Venezuelan provinces, which received troops and supplies from the Captaincy-Generals of Puerto Rico and Cuba.

    On 13 July , the republic raised militias to fight the pro-Spanish Royalists. The congress appointed Francisco Rodríguez del Toro&#;[es], the Marquis of Toro&#;[es], to command these forces, which opened a breach between Bolívar and Miranda. Bolívar and del Toro were close friends, while del Toro and Miranda and their families were enemies.

    After he failed to suppress a Royalist uprising in the city of Valencia later in July, the congress replaced del Toro with Miranda, and he recaptured Valencia&#;[es] on 13 August. As a condition of assuming command of the Republican forces, Miranda had Bolívar stripped of his command of a militia unit. Bolívar nonetheless fought in the Valencia campaign as part of del Toro's militia and was selected by Miranda to bring news of its recapture to Caracas, where he argued for more punitive and forceful campaigning against the Royalists.

    I left my house for the Cathedral&#; and the earth began to shake with a huge roar.&#; I saw the church of San Jacinto collapse on its own foundations.&#; I climbed over the ruins and entered, and I immediately saw about forty persons dead or dying under the rubble.

    I climbed out again and I shall never forget that moment. On the top of the ruins I found Don Simón Bolívar&#; He saw me and [said], "We will fight nature itself if it opposes us, and force it to obey."

    Royalist historian José Domingo Díaz&#;[es], quoted by John Lynch

    Beginning in November , Royalist forces began pushing back the Republicans from the north and east.

    On 26 March , a powerful earthquake devastated Republican Venezuela; Caracas itself was almost totally destroyed.

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    Bolívar, who was still near Caracas, rushed into the city to participate in the rescue of survivors and exhumation of the dead. The earthquake destroyed public support for the republic, as it was believed to have been divine retribution for declaring independence from Spain. By April, a Royalist army under the Spanish naval officer Juan Domingo de Monteverde overran western Venezuela.

    Miranda, retreating east with a disintegrating army, ordered Bolívar to assume command of the coastal city of Puerto Cabello and its fortress, which contained Royalist prisoners and most of the republic's remaining arms and ammunition.

    Bolívar arrived at Puerto Cabello on 4 May On 30 June, an officer of the fort's garrison loyal to the Royalists released its prisoners, armed them, and turned its cannons on Puerto Cabello.

    Weakened by shelling, defections, and lack of supplies, Bolívar and his remaining troops fled for La Guaira on 6 July. Believing the republic to be doomed, Miranda decided to capitulate, shocking Bolívar and other Republican officers.

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    After formally surrendering his command to Monteverde on 25 July, Miranda made his way to La Guaira, where a group of officers including Bolívar arrested Miranda on 30 July on charges of treason against the republic. La Guaira declared for the Royalists the next day and closed its port on Monteverde's orders. Miranda was taken into Spanish custody and moved to a prison in Cádiz, where he died on 16 July

    New Granada and Venezuela: –

    Bolívar escaped La Guaira early on 31 July and rode to Caracas, where he hid from arrest in the home of Esteban Fernández de León&#;[es], the Marquis de Casa León&#;[es].

    Bolívar and Casa León convinced Francisco Iturbe, a friend of the Bolívar family and of Monteverde, to intercede on Bolívar's behalf and secure escape from Venezuela for him. Iturbe persuaded Monteverde to issue Bolívar a passport for his role in Miranda's arrest, and on 27 August he sailed for the island of Curaçao.

    He and his uncles' Francisco and José Félix Ribas arrived on 1 September.

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    Late in October, the exiles arranged for passage west to the city of Cartagena to offer their services as military leaders to the United Provinces of New Granada against the Royalists. They arrived in November and were welcomed by Manuel Rodríguez Torices, president of the Free State of Cartagena&#;[es], who instructed his commanding general, Pierre Labatut, to give Bolívar a military command.

    Labatut, a former partisan of Miranda, begrudgingly obliged and on 1 December placed Bolívar in command of the man garrison of a town on the lower Magdalena River.

    While en route to his posting, Bolívar issued the Cartagena Manifesto, outlining what he believed to be the causes of the Venezuelan republic's defeat and his political program.

    In particular, Bolívar called for the disparate New Granadan republics to help him invade Venezuela to prevent a Royalist invasion of New Granada. Bolívar arrived on the Magdalena River on 21 December and, in spite of orders from Labatut to not act without his direction, launched an offensive that secured control of the Magdalena River from Royalist forces by 8 January In February, he joined forces with Republican colonel Manuel del Castillo y Rada, who requested Bolívar's assistance with stopping a Royalist advance into New Granada from Venezuela, and captured the city of Cúcuta from the Royalists.

    In early March , Bolívar set up his headquarters in Cúcuta and sent José Félix Ribas to request permission to invade Venezuela.

    Though rewarded with honorary citizenship in New Granada and a promotion to the rank of brigadier general, that permission did not come until 7 May because of del Castillo's opposition to the invasion.

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    When a limited invasion was permitted, Castillo resigned his command and was succeeded by Francisco de Paula Santander. On 14 May, Bolívar launched the Admirable Campaign, in which he issued the Decree of War to the Death, ordering the death of all Spaniards in South America not actively aiding his forces. Within six months, Bolívar pushed all the way to Caracas, which he entered on 6 August, and then drove Monteverde out of Venezuela in October.

    Bolívar returned to Caracas on 14 October and was named "The Liberator" (El Libertador) by its town council, a title first given to him by the citizens of the Venezuelan town of Mérida on 23 May.

    On 2 January , Bolívar was made the dictator of a Second Republic of Venezuela, which retained the weaknesses of the first republic.

    Though all of Venezuela but Maracaibo, Coro, and Guayana was controlled by Republicans, Bolívar only governed western Venezuela. The east was controlled by Santiago Mariño, a Venezuelan Republican who had fought Monteverde in the east throughout and was unwilling to subordinate himself to Bolívar.

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  • Venezuela was economically devastated and could not support the republic's armies, and people of color remained disenfranchised and thus unsupportive of the republic. The republic was assailed from all sides by slave revolts and Royalist forces, especially the Legion of Hell, an army of llaneros – the horsemen of the Llanos, to the south – led by the Spanish warlord José Tomás Boves.

    Beginning in February , Boves surged out of the Llanos and overwhelmed the republic, occupying Caracas on 16 July and then destroying Mariño's powerbase on 5 December at the Battle of Urica, where Boves died.

    As Boves approached Caracas, Bolívar ordered the city stripped of its gold and silver, which was moved through La Guaira to Barcelona, Venezuela, and from there to Cumaná.

    Bolívar then led 20, of its citizens east. He arrived in Barcelona on 2 August, but following another defeat at the Battle of Aragua de Barcelona on 17 August , he moved to Cumaná. On 26 August, he sailed with Mariño to Margarita Island with the treasure. The officer in control of the island, Manuel Piar, declared Bolívar and Mariño to be traitors and forced them to return to the mainland.

    There, Ribas also accused Bolívar and Mariño of treachery, confiscated the treasure, and then exiled the two on 8 September.

    Bolívar arrived in Cartagena on 19 September and then met with the New Granadan congress in Tunja, which tasked him with subduing the rival Free and Independent State of Cundinamarca. On 12 December, Bolívar captured Cundinamarca's capital, Bogotá, and was given command of New Granada's armies in January Bolívar next grappled with del Castillo, who had taken control of Cartagena.

    Bolívar besieged the city&#;[es] for six weeks. His change of focus allowed the Royalist forces to regain control of the Magdalena. On 8 May, Bolívar made a truce with del Castillo, resigned his command, and sailed for self-exile on Jamaica as a result of this error. In July, 8, Spanish soldiers commanded by Spanish general Pablo Morillo landed at Santa Marta and then besieged Cartagena