THE DEATH OF THE LIBERATOR
THE DEATH OF THE LIBERATOR
South American History at the Crossroads - Simon Bolivar in Santa Marta
Since reading literary Nobel Prize winner García Márquez's book about him, I have always been fascinated by the life of arguably South America's biggest hero: Simon Bolivar. He found his inglorious end in Santa Marta, the second oldest colonial town in the Americas. The city, on the Colombian Caribbean coast, located 235 kilometers west of famous Cartagena, is as little known outside Colombia as the circumstances surrounding the death of the Liberator, the man who rode into countless battles to free the continent of Spanish colonial rule.
From downtown Santa Marta, I took a blue municipal bus towards Bonda. I had counted out 2800 pesos, 'dinero al mano' – money in hand, as I had been advised, as not to have to pull out my wallet in a public place nor hold up the people who barreled into the bus behind me. I squeezed myself into one of those tiny bus seats not designed for a northern European woman with the ample body of a Valkyrie.
A fifteen-minute bus ride up the Avenida del Liberador took me to the entrance of the old sugarcane plantation, which was once in the countryside and is now across from the Buenavista shopping center on a busy street. The name La Quinta San Pedro de Alejandrino refers to the statue of a saint that the original owner had imported from Spain at great expense. To this day, imported stuff is particularly valued all over South America.
A large sculpture with allegorical figures stood in the middle of overgrown shrubs to the left of the tree-shaded road leading to the property. I assumed there had been some landscaping around it once upon a time. After paying my entrance fee, foreigners paid a few thousand pesos more. I entered the grounds of the hacienda, which also has a botanic garden.
It took me a moment to realize that only the humble ocher-painted buildings were part of the original 17th-century estate, while the imposing white structures were added in the 1930s. It struck me that if the impoverished Bolivar had only had a fraction of the money available that it had cost to build this oversized Altar de la Patria - alter to the fatherland, it might have prolonged his life. The long corridors of the whitewashed Museo Bolivariano, which featured some contemporary art, are encrusted with memorial plaques of men seeking a bit of immortality by placing their inconsequential names next to that of the Liberator. Looking at the imposing white building, it seemed sad and ironic.
At Bolivar's comparably young death at 47, only a handful of loyal friends were there to say farewell to a man who barely owned a shirt to be buried in but had changed South America’s history for good. Simon Bolivar arrived at the Quinta in 1830. He believed it would only be a short stop to regain his strength before departing for exile in Europe. But he would never leave.
Before his arrival, he had lost the support of many of his former allies, who saw him as an autocrat in the Bonaparte tradition and were disillusioned with his leadership. Some, like Santander and Sucre, turned against him, leading to strife and power struggles. Bolívar faced opposition from various political factions with conflicting ambitions and ideologies.
But what would have happened if they had chosen to support Bolívar's efforts to create a united South American federation known as Gran Colombia? Santander, for example, as a good administrator, could have taken over the country's running as a chancellor. At the same time, Bolivar's panache would have made him an ideal president with representative tasks. A federal system that honored regional differences could have united Latin America, which would have become a formidable force, able to stand up to the hegemony aspirations of the United States that were to follow in the next two centuries. Regional separatist movements played right into the designs of those foreign powers who felt that a continent divided into small countries was far easier to exploit.
Did Simon Bolivar foresee any of these developments? At the time of his death, he seemed overwhelmed by the adversarial circumstances surrounding him. García Márquez's book 'The General in His Labyrinth' alludes to Bolivar's last words: "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?".
The diagnosis of the cause of his death was tuberculosis. Venezuela's current president, Maduro, authorized further investigations with the conclusion that Bolivar might have been poisoned. My theory is that he died of a broken heart when friends became foes, and he saw his dream of a united Pan-American country dissolve before his eyes.
