Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
President Bolívar found that, daunting as it was, the liberation of
South America had been an easier task that governing it. As president
of Gran Colombia—a hybrid nation of Venezuela, Colombia, and
Ecuador—he ruled from the old viceroy's palace in Bogotá. Late in
1826, his former comrades in arms rebelled and established Venezuela
as its own independent nation. Ecuador fell away, too. Then, Bolívar
narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Colombia. Bitter and sick
of body as well as heart, Bolívar renounced his shattered presidency
in 1830 and traveled to the coast to follow San Martín into European
retirement. He took to bed in Santa Marta, Colombia, and shortly before
dying, penned his final epitaph to the independence of Latin America.
His reference to the social causes of instability serves as a testament to
the racial and ethnic inequalities that had been nurtured during colo-
nial rule. “America is ungovernable,” Bolívar wrote. “The only thing to
do in America is to emigrate” (Groot 1893, V: 368).
Alone among South America's two liberators, José de San Martín sur-
vived to survey his handiwork—though from afar. He lived out his days
in Paris, resigned that neither he nor anyone else could have prevented
the political disintegration of Spanish America. He died in 1850 as the
political turmoil in his native land continued. The former leader of the
popular revolution, José Gervasio Artigas, also died that same year in
his Paraguayan exile. The titans of independence by then had all passed
from the scene, but Argentina was still far from forming a nation.
