Ana’s Reviews > Simón Bolívar: A Life > Status Update

Bolivar's economic thinking leaned towards free trade with a "larger role" for the State than classical liberalism, but did allow some protectionist tariffs. His finace minister Jose Rafael Revenga: "our country will develop mining before manufacture"

Bolivar's order to pay the troops with confiscated land is thwarted by Congress, that realized the payment in land vouchers. Warlords get hold of their soldiers's vouchers (paying as little as 5% of real value) and become a new landed aristocracy.

February 1819. Bolivar takes his constitutional proposal to the modest goverment hall of Angostura. It is based on the British parliamentary model, and features a hereditary based on the House of Lords and the stablishment of a fourth branch of goverment, the Moral Power. These two innovations do not pass,but Bolivar is elected President. There is not much country to preside over, with Caracas in royal hands.

Bolivar comes back from exile to deal with chieftains that are exploiting racial tensions to hold on to their local power. Bolivar tries to put and end to it by executing one of these caudillos: Jose M Piar.

Social unrest among blacks and pardos, the rise of the llaneros headed by Boves and Morales, and the interests caudillos like Piar, and even the formerly trusty Jose Felix Ribas. At San Mateo, Campo Elias was killed and Ricaurte blew himself up with the arsenal. Feating Boves, refugees march eastward. Bolivar sails to exile again; in Nueva Granada he will fail to recover Cartagena. Defeated, he'll sail to Jamaica.

In three months, Bolivar completes his Admirable Campaign and takes Caracas. Meanwhile in the East a group lead by the ruthless caudillo Santiago Mariño defeats the royalists at Maturin, Cumana, and Barcelona. On jan 2 1814 he is granted supreme power by an assembly, but rules only half of the country.

Bolivar ends a short exile in Curacao and settles in Cartagena. His Manifesto to the Congress explains why the First Republic failed, specially blaming Miranda, the quake and the govt for failing to supress rebels in Coro before they could expand. He was given a small post on the Magdalena river and took it upon himself to clear it for navigation. Thus he was granted an army to invade Tachira and Trujillo.

Bolivar and Miranda start growing apart. Miranda marginalizes him, he is "dangerous". Monteverde, a Canarian officer with a strong hatred towards the white elite, leads a small army from Coro and recovers Western Venezuela for Spain. Miranda, with a larger army, signs a capitulation with Monteverde and tries to flee to Curacao. Bolivar and others arrest him, considering him a traitor.

1808. Napoleon takes Spain, the house of Borbon, to whom Venezuelan elites were loyal, falls. Two tears later, while pro-Borbon gentelemen depose captain-general Emparan, Bolivar remains away. The junta that rules Venezuela is split among those holding power for Fernando VII, proponents of home rule within the Spanish empire and radical independence proponents. Bolivar offers his service as a diplomat -they agree.

As a kid, Bolivar would resist authority, wandering the streets to play with kids of lower classes. He hated his uncle and probably, his teacher Simon Rodriguez also. He was sent to militaty training at 14, then to Europe where the marquis of Ustariz became a father figure/intellectual influence. He married and widowed before the age of 21.