Book review: “Bolivar: American Liberator” by Marie Arana

The meeting in the port city of Guayaquil in what is now Ecuador on July 26, 1822, was a striking moment in world history although, in import, it was little more than a footnote.

Newly arrived was 44-yar-old José de San Martín, the Argentine military leader who, over the previous decade, had been a major figure in the wars for independence of Argentina, Chile and Peru. Now, however, his star was setting, and, after this conference, he would go into a long, quiet retirement.

Rising to greet him was the 39-year-old Simon Bolivar who would be known to history as the Liberator.

Over the previous five years, he had been the moving force in bringing independence to the Spanish colonies of Venezuela, New Granada (present-day Columbia), Panama and Ecuador, a group that he merged in the short-lived Greater Columbia.

Over the coming three years, he would drive the Spanish out of Peru and Bolivia. And, in 1825, he would simultaneously serve as president or dictator of those two new nations as well as Greater Columbia. Now, he was riding high, but, by 1830, he would be a man without a country, living in poverty and dying of tuberculosis.

In Bolivar: American Liberator (2013), Marie Arana describes the moment when the two men laid eyes on each other:

When [San Martin] finally entered the house, Bolivar and his officers were there to receive him in the vestibule.  Agile, animated, filled with the sudden energy of a man who has been handed every advantage, the Liberator strode forward and vigorously shook his guest’s hand.

 

“Will and a genius for leadership”

Here, Arana writes, were two warrior heroes who “had executed one of the most remarkable pincer movements in military history” — and they did so without collaborating, acting instead independently.

And yet, in the blink of an eye, just ten years or so, they had liberated “a prodigious landmass that stretched half the globe from north of the equator to Antarctica.” Nearly a full continent of what had been Spain’s colonies at the turn of the century were now free of European rule.

And, as important as San Martin had been, he couldn’t hold a candle to Bolivar:

At the end of that savage chastening war [against Spain], one man would be credited for single-handedly conceiving, organizing, and leading the liberation of six nations: a population one and a half times that of North America, a landmass the size of modern Europe…

Yet, with little more than will and a genius for leadership, [Bolivar] freed much of Spanish America and laid out his dream for a united continent.

 

“An era of discontent”

Bolivar had high hopes for a South America that would be a fraternity of nations, able to go toe-to-toe with the United States and the rest of the world, but it was not to be.

Winning independence was one thing, but creating working democracies was quite another.  Indeed, in 1825, when Boliver was ruling three nations at the same time, the center was not holding, as Arana writes:

If Bolivar was at the zenith of his career, Spanish America, as a whole, appeared to be heading toward its nadir.  From the deserts of Mexico to the pampas of Argentina, independence had brought not a bright new world, but a dizzying surfeit of obstacles.  Fatigue was soon overtaken by irritability, ushering in an era of discontent.

“Deepest of flaws”

Unlike the United States, the former colonies of Spanish America were unable to organize the bulk of the continent as a single, unified country.  The geography was too vast, the populations too diverse.  And they were victims of the past three centuries.

To complicate matters, Spain had never encouraged camaraderie among its colonies — travel and commerce had been forbidden and punished by death — and so for three hundred years the colonies had answered to Madrid as spokes to a hub, with no contact whatsoever among them.  They did not know one another well enough to be fellow citizens.

An important thread throughout Bolivar: American Liberator is the desire of the Spanish America for freedom but an unreadiness to take it up.  Arana calls it “the character of a continent.”

The American-born were hungry for liberties, yet unaccustomed to freedom; resourceful, yet unacquainted with self-rule; racially mixed, yet mistrustful of whatever race they were not.  For three hundred years of authoritarian rule, Spain had carefully instilled these qualities.

Because Madrid had discouraged, even outlawed, education, few of the newly freed people were literate.  There was “no collaborative spirit, no model for organization, no notion of hierarchy.”  And, regarding these deep-set divisions, she adds:

Bolivar was particularly aware of this deepest of flaws, predicting a fragmentation that remains prevalent to this day.

 

Several stories

In Bolivar: American Liberator, Arana is telling several stories.  One, of course, is the large, sprawling, unorthodox life of Bolivar, a figure at once very human, especially in his dalliances with scores of young women, and, at the same time, seemingly superhuman in all of his accomplishments.

A second story is that of Spanish America.  Arana’s biography of Bolivar is also, in its way, a biography of each of the six nations he founded.

And then there are all the stories of the many major figures who worked with or against Bolivar in this political reshaping of the continent.

For example, here is Arana’s description of General Jose Antonio Paez in 1820:

Paez was thirty at that time, and in full flower of his vigor. He was not tall, but he was broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, built like a bull — the upper half of his body at odds with his spindly legs.  His hair was wavy, leonine, bleached by relentless sun; his neck thick and muscular.  He was robust and florid where Bolivar was thin and gaunt….

Paez may have been a rube, a ruffian, the untamed Lion of the Apure, but in time he would become a national figure, world diplomat, habitue of the salon.  Bolivar, on the other hand, despite his small frame and wiry body, would go on to perform Herculean feats of physical endurance.

 

“A fanatical partisan”

And here is how Arana describes Manuela Sáenz, the Ecuadoran revolutionary who was knee-deep in the rebellion in Lima:

She was a natural negotiator, a sparkling conversationalist, eager to inject herself into the arteries of intrigue that coursed through the nervous City of Kings. A fierce anti-royalist, she became a regular in patriot circles, and like any woman in the revolutionary effort, she served as spy, courier, and recruiter.

And, then, she met Bolivar, and soon enough she was his lover and later a member of his military staff:

A dedicated patriot before she had ever met him, she was a fanatical partisan of his cause, an excellent horsewoman, comfortable around men, known to savor a good cigar…He would find Manuelita impossible to resist. 

 

“A living ghost”

But throughout Arcana’s book, Bolivar is always at center stage, not just in what he does but in who he is, what he looks like physically, how he touches people with his words and ideas and energy.

Even at the end.  Arcana writes:

In forty-seven years of life — traversing more than 75,000 miles of hard terrain — Bolivar had been the essence of vigor.  He had rarely experienced physical weakness, much less the spiritual anguish that so often accompanies it.

Now, though, he sends a message to a friend that he is “old, sick, tired, disillusioned, besieged, maligned, and badly paid.”  In his final days, he is wasting away.

To find himself so suddenly helpless — unable to overcome simple fatigue, unable to ride or walk for even a short distance — was disorienting.  By October [1830], it was clear that he was too incapacitated to do more than dictate letters from bed.  He had shooting pains in his abdomen, an angry cough, and his appetite had dwindled emphatically.

By December, the end was near.  In his bed, Bolivar was “a living ghost” who “could hardly keep his eyes open, hardly talk, hardly breathe.” And, then, at 1 p.m. on December 18, his “soul passed from his shattered body.  His lips went white, his brow softened in beatific repose.”

But, before he left, Arcana writes, he “remade a world.”

 

Patrick T. Reardon

2.27.25