Battle of Bárbula: Simón Bolívar defeats Santiago Bobadilla.
Simn Jos Antonio de la Santsima Trinidad Bolvar y Palacios (24 July 1783 17 December 1830) was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Bolivia to independence from the Spanish Empire. He is known colloquially as El Libertador, or the Liberator of America.
Simn Bolvar was born in Caracas in the Captaincy General of Venezuela into a wealthy creole family. Before he turned ten, he lost both parents and lived in several households. Bolvar was educated abroad and lived in Spain, as was common for men of upper-class families in his day. While living in Madrid from 1800 to 1802, he was introduced to Enlightenment philosophy and met his future wife Mara Teresa Rodrguez del Toro y Alaysa. After returning to Venezuela, in 1803 del Toro contracted yellow fever and died. From 1803 to 1805, Bolvar embarked on a grand tour that ended in Rome, where he swore to end the Spanish rule in the Americas. In 1807, Bolvar returned to Venezuela and proposed gaining Venezuelan independence to other wealthy creoles. When the Spanish authority in the Americas weakened due to Napoleon's Peninsular War, Bolvar became a zealous combatant and politician in the Spanish American wars of independence.
Bolvar began his military career in 1810 as a militia officer in the Venezuelan War of Independence, fighting Spanish and more native Royalist forces for the first and second Venezuelan republics and the United Provinces of New Granada. After Spanish forces subdued New Granada in 1815, Bolvar was forced into exile in the Republic of Haiti, led by Haitian revolutionary Alexandre Ption. Bolvar befriended Ption and, after promising to abolish slavery in South America, received military support from Haiti. Returning to Venezuela, he established a third republic in 1817 and then crossed the Andes in 1819 to liberate New Granada. Bolvar and his allies defeated the Spanish in New Granada in 1819, Venezuela and Panama in 1821, Ecuador in 1822, Peru in 1824, and Bolivia in 1825. Venezuela, New Granada, Ecuador, and Panama were merged into the Republic of Colombia (Gran Colombia), with Bolvar as president there and in Peru and Bolivia.
In his final years, Bolvar became increasingly disillusioned with the South American republics, and distanced from them because of his centralist ideology. He was successively removed from his offices until, after a failed assassination attempt, he resigned the presidency of Colombia and died of tuberculosis in 1830. He is regarded as a national and cultural icon throughout Latin America; the nations of Bolivia and Venezuela and their currencies are named after him. His legacy is diverse and far-reaching both within Latin America and beyond and he has been memorialized all over the world in the form of public art or street names and in popular culture.
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Ponte Palacios y Blanco (English: BOL-iv-ər, -ar, also US: BOH-liv-ar, Spanish: [siˈmom boˈliβaɾ] (listen); 24 July 1783 – 17 December 1830), also colloquially as El Libertador, or Liberator of America, was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Bolivia to independence from the Spanish Empire.
Bolívar was born in Caracas into a wealthy family and, as was common for heirs of upper-class families in his day, was sent to be educated abroad at a young age, arriving in Spain when he was 16 and later moving to France. While in Europe he was introduced to the ideas of the Enlightenment, which later motivated him to overthrow the reigning Spanish in colonial South America. Taking advantage of the disorder in Spain prompted by the Peninsular War, Bolívar began his campaign for independence in 1808. The campaign for the independence of Colombia (Gran Colombia—later New Granada) was consolidated with the victory at the Battle of Boyacá on 7 August 1819. He established an organized national congress within three years. Despite a number of hindrances, including the arrival of an unprecedentedly large Spanish expeditionary force, the revolutionaries eventually prevailed, culminating in the victory at the Battle of Carabobo in 1821, which effectively made Venezuela an independent country.
Following this triumph over the Spanish monarchy, Bolívar participated in the foundation of the first union of independent nations in Latin America, Gran Colombia, of which he was president from 1819 to 1830. Through further military campaigns, he ousted Spanish rulers from Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, the last of which was named after him. He was simultaneously president of Gran Colombia (present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Ecuador), Peru, and Bolivia, but soon after, his second-in-command, Antonio José de Sucre, was appointed president of Bolivia. Bolívar aimed at a strong and united Spanish America able to cope not only with the threats emanating from Spain and the European Holy Alliance but also with the emerging power of the United States. At the peak of his power, Bolívar ruled over a vast territory from the Argentine border to the Caribbean Sea.
Bolívar is viewed as a national icon in much of modern South America, and is considered one of the great heroes of the Hispanic independence movements of the early 19th century, along with José de San Martín, Francisco de Miranda and others. Towards the end of his life, Bolívar despaired of the situation in his native region, with the famous quote "all who served the revolution have plowed the sea".: 450 In an address to the Constituent Congress of the Republic of Colombia, Bolívar stated "Fellow citizens! I blush to say this: Independence is the only benefit we have acquired, to the detriment of all the rest."