Dreams and destinations
Raymond Carr
LIBERATORS by Robert Harvey John Murray, .E25, pp. 561 It is a bold man who would attempt to chronicle Latin America's 20 years of con- fused struggle for independence. Robert Harvey describes it in terms of the libera- tors who led it. They are, to him, heroes of a great epic. His splendid portraits of their private failings and public achievements constitute the core of his book.
The difficulties of governing colonies thousands of miles from the metropolis and sending armies to repress them once they have revolted had been revealed in the loss of Britain's colonies in North America in the 1780s. The lesson was not lost on a minority of native-born creoles who had developed a sense of their identity as `American' patriots, resenting their status as second-class citizens of the Spanish empire. If the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, who had started his career as a Spanish officer, and whom Harvey describes as 'a howling snob', had been flat- tered and promoted in Madrid instead of being cold-shouldered as an 'American', he might not have become the great advocate of independence for Latin America.
His first attempt to liberate Venezuela in 1806 ended in a fiasco. New prospects opened when in 1808 Napoleon invaded Spain, deposed and imprisoned King Ferdi- nand VII and set his brother, Joseph, on the throne. To the creoles Joseph was a usurper; they formed juntas — ad hoc com- mittees — to administer local affairs, at first in the name of Ferdinand VII. But this was merely a staging post. The junta of Caracas appealed to Miranda, in exile in London, to lead a war of independence from Spain. Among the delegates to Lon- don was Simon Bolivar, a rich young creole planter, an admirer of Miranda, imbued with the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment. On his return Miranda got a tumultuous welcome in Caracas, and Venezuela was declared an independent republic in 1811. But after his improvised army of peasants was defeated, he signed an armistice with the Spanish commander in July 1812. Boli- var regarded this as the act of a traitor and a coward and arrested him, and he was handed over to the Spanish to die in chains in Cadiz dungeon. Bolivar was allowed to escape into exile. It was an unsavoury episode, but it left Bolivar as the future lib- erator of a continent.
Whereas Miranda was an exhausted voluptuary, Bolivar was a man of indomitable energy who refused to accept repeated defeats. His first attempts to lib- erate Venezuela ended in disaster and his exile. Harvey is at his best vividly describ- ing what must count as one of the most daring exploits in military history, explica- ble only by Bolivar's capacity to drive his men to superhuman efforts. Returning to eastern Venezuela, he led his army of 2,000 across flooded plains where his men's clothes rotted in the mud and over the High Andes where they froze at 12,000 feet to liberate New Granada — modern Colombia — and from there to liberate Venezuela. As dictator of the new republic of Gran Colombia, composed of Venezuela and Colombia, he turned his army to attack the heartland of the Spanish empire in South America, the viceroyalty of Peru. On his way in July 1882 at Guayaquil, in mod- em Ecuador, he met Jose de San Martin, the one liberator whose achievements must rank second only to his own.
San Martin had served with distinction in the Spanish army. Bolivar was a gifted mili- tary amateur, San Martin a professional soldier, a stern disciplinarian, who rose at 4 a.m. to tackle his paperwork. Suffering a Pauline conversion to the cause of inde- pendence, he returned to Argentina which he had left as a boy of seven. All Argentini- ans saw that their own security as an inde- pendent republic demanded that the power of Spain must be broken in Peru, but attempts to attack overland ended in disas- ter. San Martin conceived a plan of striking strategical daring: after training an army, in a meticulously planned campaign he crossed the Andes to liberate Chile and take Lima from the sea. His navy was com- manded by Lord Cochrane. Robert Harvey delights in the eccentricities and enthusi- asms of one of nature's rough diamonds. Inventor of 'explosion' ships that would burn enemy ships and 'sink vessels' that would gas their crews, Cochrane was the son of a bankrupt Scots earl. Determined to restore the family fortunes, he got involved in a stock exchange hoax. In dis- grace he accepted the command of the Chilean navy. He planned en route for Chile to rescue Napoleon from St Helena and install him as emperor of Latin Ameri- ca, a characteristically madcap venture that Napoleon's death brought to nothing.
San Martin, whose caution exasperated Cochrane, starved Lima, the capital of the viceroyalty of Peru, into surrender but did not destroy the royalist army. It was now that his face-to-face interview with Bolivar took place. They did not hit it off. San Martin had developed a pathological dis- taste for any public demonstrations and tri- umphant entries; Bolivar basked in the admiration of crowds. He regarded San Martin as a crusty conservative lacking in `sublimity'; to San Martin Bolivar was 'full of childish vanity' — those who met him noted his daily care of his teeth — given to dancing with female admirers. The upshot was that San Martin, perhaps weakened by his addiction to opium, handed over to Bolivar the task of defeating the last royal- ist armies in Peru. This was achieved by his favourite young commander, Sucre, at Ayacucho in September 1824, the decisive battle of the liberation struggle.
Having fought some 30 battles and trav- elled 20,000 miles on horseback, Bolivar, as dictator of Gran Colombia and Peru, `could claim to rule', Harvey writes, 'one of the greatest empires of any military leader in history, some three million square miles in extent'. He is 'among the greatest men in world history'. Such greatness is not widely admired in a society whose heroes are moronic millionaire footballers.
The problem of new states created by wars of liberation is the formation of stable governments once the fragile unity of the war has frayed. Bolivar, from the outset, believed that Latin Americans 'lacked the virtues that characterise true republics', representative governments were 'unsuit- able to our character and customs'. The solution was a strong executive power rep- resented by a life president. But in Har- vey's words, Bolivar's military empire unravelled'. Bolivia and Ecuador went their separate ways as independent states. Venezuela and New Granada were drifting apart in a civil war. Bolivar rode 2,000 miles from Lima to rescue the situation as dictator of Gran Colombia. There the most redoubtable of his eight mistresses, Manuela Saenz, pushed him out of a win- dow in Bogota to save him from assassina- tion by his political enemies. 'South America', he concluded, 'is ungovernable. If it were possible for any part of the world to revert to primordial chaos, that would be [South] America's final state.' Burnt out, he contemplated going to Europe but he died of tuberculosis in December 1830. `Since', he had written, 'I am unable to secure the happiness of my country, I refuse to rule it.' His last words were, 'Let's go, let's go. These people do not want us here.'
For Harvey, the political failures of the liberators give them the status of tragic heroes. Sucre, victor of Ayacucho, was assassinated. San Martin died in genteel poverty in Boulogne. Emperor Pedro, who had guided Brazil to independence from Portugal, threw in the sponge rather than be 'degraded' by his political opponents. O'Higgins resigned as an authoritarian reformist in the Chile he had liberated, to die as a farmer in Peru. 'My experience', he wrote, 'has convinced me that our peoples will only find well-being under compulsion, but my repugnance for compulsion is so great that I am loathe to employ it even for their well-being.'
Modern liberators of their countries from colonial bondage show no such nobility. Determined to retain power at all costs, they resort to compulsion at the price of ruining the well-being of their peoples.
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