simon bolivar vs american system
Post on 05-Apr-2018
229 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
1/12
NEW SOLIDARITY April 23, 1982 Page 4
Simn Bolvar:
Britain's Agent Against The American System
by Cynthia Rush
British liberator Simn Bolvar: "Only in
England's shadow can South America
assert its freedom," he tried to convince
his people.
The British Crown in the early 1800s had a fundamental problem, which was
created largely by the success of the American Revolution. How could
Britain break away South America from Spain without running the risk of
the colonies following the success of the North American model? Britaincould not simply invade, because the battles of the American Revolution had
discredited such a strategy.
The solution: an "independence" movement whose leadership the British
would control, and other supposed opposition to this leadership which they
would also control It was a tactic they would later perfect and use in various
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
2/12
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
3/12
intimate associate of British East India Company founder Jeremy Bentham
and his cohort James Mill. A deserter from the Spanish army and student of
Rousseau, Miranda had petitioned William Pitt the Younger as early as 1790
to financially and militarily support a plan to liberate Venezuela, in which he
suggested that exiled Jesuits living in Europe play a major role. "The Jesuits
have done more good to South America than any other set of men or
religious order that ever went to the continent," Miranda wrote, and their
suffering in exile "had caused them to decide to fight for Latin American
independence influenced by the liberal ideas of the French revolutionaries."
Thus they would be of particular use to the British Crown.
Bentham and Mill aided Miranda by publishing the tracts of such radical,
pro-independence Jesuits as the Peruvian Vizcardo y Guzmn in the
Edinburgh Review and the Statesman magazines. Pitt personally set up many
exiled Jesuits with generous pensions in London in exchange for intelligenceon political developments in South America.
While waiting for Pitt to commit troops and financial resources to liberate
Venezuela, Miranda lived comfortably on his own pension and ran the
"Lautaro Lodge," the first of many British-financed secret societies operated
out of London and in South America to teach the "laws of liberty" to many
would-be liberators. Bolvar, Jos de San Martn of Argentina, and
Bernardo O'Higgins of Chile passed through the lodge to be schooled in the
anti-humanist doctrines of Bentham, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire.
Here, Miranda explained his conception of government for South America:it should include a House of Nobles and House of CommonsBritish style
and an Inca or hereditary sovereign. He modestly proposed himself for
the latter post.
Simn Bolvar's psychological profile qualified him well for service to the
British crown. The son of a wealthy and aristocratic Caracas family, he
lacked any serious intellectual capacity or military competence, as his
cowardly performance on the battlefield would later demonstrate. While his
childhood studies included large doses of Montesquieu and Voltaire,
according to one reliable chronicler, the young Bolvar had difficultyconcentrating on even these works. He preferred "light French novels." A
visitor to Bolvar's camp some years later would note:
He cannot attend with assiduity to business for more than two
or three hours in a day, during the greater part of which he is
sitting or laying down upon his hammock talking about
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
4/12
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
5/12
indifferent matters with his favorites and flatterers . . . he is
greatly inclined to adulation and is very vain.
The idea of leading an independence movement,as it was presented to
Bolvar by Miranda, fed the young man's vanity and delusions of grandeur.
Having witnessed Napoleon's coronations in Paris and Rome during anearlier trip to Europe, the future Liberator envisioned himself an Emperor
who, after achieving glory in South America would spend his final days in
retirement in Europe. Napoleon's coronation in 1804 "thrilled me," Bolvar
later wrote, "less by its glamour than by the love accorded the hero by this
great people. . . . This universal expression of all hearts . . . seemed to me to
be the pinnacle of man's desires. . . . What glory would descend on me if I
could become the Liberator of Venezuela!" In December of 1810, Bolvar
returned to Caracas with Miranda, with assurances of British political
support and discreet military aid and financing, for the purpose of"liberating" Venezuela from the Spanish and for the British.
How to Win South America
Great Britain had its sights trained on South America long before the
independence movement was launched in the early 19th century. During the
preceding 150 years it had attempted to break Spain's commercial monopoly
with South America, and particularly during the mid to late 18th century,
worked with the Society of Jesus to foment Jacobin uprisings against the
Spanish Crown. The famous 1781 Comunero Revolt in Nueva Granada(Colombia) and the 1784 Tupac Amaru rebellion in Peru were products of
this work.
The success of the American Revolution confronted Britain with a
fundamental problem, however. British troops could not simply invade
South America and establish the Empire's "benevolent" rule. The battles in
North America had discredited such a strategy. As Spain's ally following
Napoleon's 1808 invasion of that country, England could not publicly
support an invading force in South Americaalthough the duplicity it later
practiced in this matter is notorious.
While more direct military intervention was delayed until 1816 and 1817,
Viscount Castlereagh and his successor George Canning directed surrogate
warfare from the War and Colonial Office. They approached the South
American independence movement as the British have historically run all
their counterinsurgency operations; covering all sides.
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
6/12
There was little difficulty in getting the suggestible Bolvar to mouth off
whichever formulas suited the Crown's needswhether of the "left" or of
the "right." The Liberator's every utterance was a regurgitation of the
retrograde philosophies which guided the Empire's colonial policy. In his
famed "Jamaica Letter" of September 1815, Bolvar wrote, "I cannot
persuade myself that the New World can at the moment, be organized as a
great republic . . . institutions which are wholly representative are not suited
to our character, customs, and present knowledge."
In the constitution he proposed at Angostura in 1819, and in his later
"Bolivian" constitution of 1822, Bolvar outlined a feudal-monarchical form
of government for South America not unlike Miranda's earlier proposals.
This included a lifetime president, in his own words "the most sublime
inspiration amongst republican regimes," and a hereditary Senate or House
of Lords which "can interpose itself between the violent demands of thepeople and the great powers of the government during periods of political
unrest."
What apologists for Bolvar have described as his efforts to avoid "mob
democracy" was in fact a police state capable of enforcing a British
economic policy of free trade and raw materials looting, while maintaining
the population in a state of cultural and economic backwardness.
Bolvar glorified the "enormous and strictly warlike government" which
characterized the Roman Empire because it demonstrated "what politicalvirtues can accomplish and the relative unimportance of institutions."
(emphasis added) He explained that the North American constitution or
political system was inappropriate for a population whose cultural and ethnic
diversity "made it impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy
where we belong in the human family." Yet he hastened to add that "no
matter how closely we study the composition of the English executive
power, we can find nothing to prevent its being judged the most perfect
model for a kingdom, for an aristocracy, or for a democracy. Give
Venezuela such an executive power . . . and you will have taken a great step
toward national happiness." The Liberator also stressed that such a form ofgovernment, and a strong alliance with Britain, would permit greater control
over the "numerical preponderance of the aborigines."
The more difficult task Britain faced was how to subvert and control those
honest republican forces repulsed by Bolvar, and sympathetic to the
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
7/12
American Revolution. For this task, the Crown relied on its arch-agent and
founder of the British East India Company, Jeremy Bentham.
Through his own efforts and those of paid agents, Bentham seeded his
proposals for constitutional law, political economy, educational and prison
reform within the South American independence movement as an enlight-ened, "liberal" alternative to Bolvar's more overt tyranny. Hardly an
alternative, Bentham's charlatanry was a direct attack on the conceptions of
natural law, Neoplatonic humanism, and commitment to scientific and
technological progress which had developed on the continent in the late 18th
century with the encouragement of the Bourbon King Charles III and his
ministers.
Primitive agriculture in Brazil. Bolvar told his people they need not aspire to
a future other than agriculture and raw materials extraction, and should not
seek to use the United States as a model.
Bentham's tactic was to focus on the constitutions of the newly independent
statesto prevent them from modeling their governments or constitutions
on those of the United States. Confident that the continent's economic and
cultural backwardness would facilitate its manipulation, Bentham boasted in1810 that countries like Venezuela were "disposed to receive instructions
from England in general, and from your humble servant in particular.
Whatever I give them for laws, they will be prepared to receive as oracles. .
. ."
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
8/12
Although Bolvar made much of his "disagreements" with Bentham, he
nonetheless found the agent's constitutional proposals quite attractive. At
the 1819 Angostura Convention, Bolvar announced that the constitutions of
the South American nations should incorporate the Benthamite principle of
an external "moral power." Based on the premise that man is inherently evil,
the proposed Chamber of Morals was designed to have jurisdiction over
"youth, the hearts of men, public spirit, good customs and republican ethics,"
A totally independent body with jurisdiction over the government itself, the
so-called Areopagus would act at the first signs "of selfishness . . . idleness,
corruption and evil example" on the part of the citizenry. Its responsibilities
also included control over the national debt, foreign treaties, and school and
university curricula.
Such an external, controlling power was necessary, Bolvar explained
because the population or "mass" as he called it:
is unaware of their best interests . . . they constantly endeavor to
assail them in the hands of the custodiansthe individual
clashes with the mass, and the mass with authority. Honest
patriots recognized these proposals for what they were. Juan
Germn Roscio, author of Venezuela's 1810 constitution and the
man whose writings later inspired Mexico's Benito Juarez,
characterized the Chamber of Morals as a "moral inquisition . . .
no less sinister nor less horrible than the religious one." Repub-
lican leader Francisco de Paula Santander in 1829 characterizedBolvar's entire constitutional package as a monster that must
disturb public order . . . so complicated and absurd a system had
to keep the state in continual agitation and engender the spirit of
insurrection as the only remedy for containing the President or
driving him from his post. . . .
An Unsuccessful Beginning
As Miranda and Bolvar had determined in London, Venezuela was to be the
first real test of whether Britain could successfully "liberate" the SouthAmerican colonies, and crush any troublesome republican forces.
Venezuela was a particularly important target. When the colony declared its
independence on July 5, 1811, Juan German Roscio presented the new
constitution, modeled on that of the United States. The document was
translated and circulated in Washington as evidence of the republican nature
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
9/12
of the new government. Venezuelan patriots looked toward the United
States for sympathy and financial and military aid. Moreover, they deeply
distrusted Great Britain's motives in offering aid to the pro-independence
forces.
It was this republican sentiment that Miranda and Bolvar were expected toquash upon their return to Caracas in December of 1810. In order to do so
Miranda finagled himself into the post of Supreme Dictator after July of
1811. As it turned out however, neither Great Britain's backing nor its
colonialist theory aided Miranda in carrying out his assigned task. His cruel
and oafish behavior provoked strong opposition among political circles.
This, together with a series of military defeats and the instability created by
his incompetence to rule brought his career to an ignominious close in
March of 1812, when he formally capitulated to the Spanish commander
Monteverde.
Alexander Scott, then U.S. envoy to the Venezuelan port city of La Guaira
wrote to Secretary of State James Monroe in November of 1812:
By men of discernment, his [Miranda's] ambition and
cowardicequalities seldom unitedwere discovered and they
anticipated the fate of their unhappy country . . . whether he
was an agent of the British government, as he now states, or
whether his conduct resulted from a base and cowardly heart, I
cannot decide . . . [he is] a brutal, capricious tyrant, destitute ofcourage, honor and abilities. Thus has terminated this unfortun-
ate revolution.
Bolvar, who was still serving his apprenticeship under Miranda during this
early period, bought his own freedom by delivering his mentor into the
hands of the Spanish, and saw him carted off to Spain where he died in
prison in 1816. The Spanish commander had issued Bolvar a passport as a
reward for delivering Miranda, and the would-be liberator made plans to
travel to Spain to enlist in the Duke of Wellington's army. He only changed
his mind when he learned that his family's property had been confiscated bythe Spanish, and traveled instead to the port city of Cartagena in neighboring
Nueva Granada from where he safely "analyzed" why the First Venezuelan
Republic had failed.
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
10/12
Perfecting a Strategy
Miranda's clumsy escapade in Venezuela from 1810-12 proved to Great
Britain that it would require a more sophisticated strategy if it were to ensure
the outcome of the Independence Movement. Bolvar was to be the tool of
that strategy.
Bolvar's "Cartagena Manifesto," issued in December 1812, struck the first
ideological blows at the influence of the American Revolution in Venezuela.
Manipulating the acute problems independence had posed for an
economically and culturally backward, largely mestizo population, Bolvar
claimed:
What weakened the Venezuelan government was the federal
form it adopted in keeping with the exaggerated precepts of the
rights of man; this form, by authorizing self-government,disrupts social contracts, and reduces nations to anarchy. . . .
(emphasis added)
Six months later, in June of 1813, Bolvar issued his declaration of a "War to
the Death" shortly before retaking Caracas from the Spanish with the aid of
a newly reconstituted army. The policy was ostensibly aimed at native-born
Spaniards. "Though you be neutral," he told them, "you will die . . . unless
you actively espouse the cause of America's liberation." Americans, "you
will live even if you have trespassed."
The "War to the Death" permitted Bolvar to eliminate any remaining
Spanish persons whose activities threatened British colonial aims. Its real
purpose however was to devastate and plunder the entire region, sowing a
chaos out of which no republican government could ever be erected. At the
head of a Wallenstein's army made up largely of untrained and generally
unpaid peasants and slaves, Bolvar oversaw hideous atrocities, deaths and
pillage of the countryside, inviting similar levels of barbarity from the
Spanish troops.
Two years of marauding by Bolvar's armies reduced Venezuela to ruin. In1816, the consul of Caracas reported that the country had lost between
eighty and one-hundred thousand people in casualties and emigration. The
haciendas of the province were destroyed; livestock was wiped out and the
richest agricultural valleys devastated and emptied of people; peasants and
slaves fled, and merchants sent capital and other valuables out of the
country. Between 1810 and 1815, the population of Caracas decreased from
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
11/12
32,000 to 11,720. The population of the entire province declined by 50,000
in the same period.
By the middle of 1814, Bolvar's barbarity and incompetence allowed Spain
to retake large portions of Venezuela, and the Liberator and his troops took
refuge in Nueva Granada. Although he sought to repeat his maraudingoperations there, sentiment against him on the part of the population and
military commanders who found his ineptitude and delusions of grandeur
abhorrent, prevented him from applying the War to the Death directly.
In his memoirs, Bolvar's Irish aide de camp Daniel F. O'Leary wrote that "in
Nueva Granada . . . the troops of Venezuela were looked upon with much
envy and not a little aversion. . ." Reports of atrocities Bolvar's troops had
committed in Venezuela "had so deeply offended the constituted authorities,
that the people began to feel justified motives of alarm. . . ."
To try to win military backing and favor for himself, Bolvar entered into the
civil war which had wracked Nueva Granada since 1812. A violent debate
over whether the country should be ruled by a federalist or centralist form of
government manipulated by British agents on both sideshad created
chaos, economic collapse, hatred, and disunity among republican forces.
Bolvar entered the war on the side of the more numerous federalist forces,
which counted among its ranks the outstanding republicans Camilo Torres
and the talented botanist Francisco Jose de Caldas. Torres and other leading
intellectuals had in 1812 declared the independence of the United Provincesof Nueva Granada and had drafted a constitution modeled on that of the
United States.
Insinuating himself into the military leadership of the Federal Union, Bolvar
led its forces against the centralist holdout Santa F de Bogot in December
of 1814. He promised his attack would leave "no royalist alive," but added
"millions of innocent victims will perish. . . . My troops are comparable to,
and even better than the best of Napoleon. Santa Fe shall be a terrifying
sight of desolation and death. I shall bring two thousand firebrands alight to
reduce to embers a city which would be the grave of its liberators."
The Liberator fulfilled his promise. After fierce resistance from Bogota's
population, the federal troops took over the city and looted it savagely for 48
hours. One observer wrote:
The excesses and cruelties committed, particularly against
-
7/31/2019 Simon Bolivar vs American System
12/12
females, were horrible, and his troops loaded themselves with
gold, silver, and jewels of every kind . . . when many inhab-
itants of Bogota made him the strongest representation against
such behavior, he replied in an angry tone that he was
authorized by the laws of war to act as he did, because the
inhabitants of the city had resisted his troops, and deserved
punishment.
Flaunting his disdain for scientific and human advancement, the Liberator
sat back while his troops looted and destroyed Bogota's National Observa-
tory, the first of its kind built in South America and a monument to the work
of scientists like Charles III's envoy Celestino Mutis and his protg
Francisco Jos de Caldas. Historian J. M. Restrepo, a contemporary of
Bolvar, commented:
For all the lovers of science, the looting that the invading troops
committed in the Observatory was most painful. The building
suffered very much and the soldiers took away or destroyed the
books, instruments, and invaluable papers contained therein.
On his own behavior, Bolvar pompously reported,
More humane to the people of Cundinamarca [province in
which Bogota is locatedCR] than its own government, I
abstained from what was allowed me by the laws of war on the
major part of the city, occupied by my troops.
(To be continued)
top related