Simón Bolívar: Cartagena Manifesto (1812)
The Cartagena Manifesto, written on December 15, 1812, by Simón Bolívar, was a key document in the Spanish American wars of independence that took place in Mexico and South America from 1808 to 1829. Bolívar, who was to become one of the chief liberators of the nations of South America from Spanish rule, was Venezuelan, but after the collapse of his nation’s First Republic, formed at the beginning of the Venezuelan War of Independence (1811–1823), he departed to live in exile in modern-day Colombia. In the city of Cartagena de Indias (Cartagena of the Indies), he wrote a manifesto outlining what he perceived to be the causes for the First Republic’s collapse. In doing so, he implicitly outlined what he believed should be the shape of a future Venezuelan republic or of any South American republic. More explicitly, his goal in the Cartagena Manifesto was to seek support for an invasion of Venezuela to oust the Spanish.
At least in part as a consequence of the Cartagena Manifesto, and certainly in large part due to Bolívar’s leadership, Venezuela effectively achieved its independence in 1821. Bolívar also lent aid to revolutions in other countries, helping to liberate Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina and thus earning the sobriquet “Liberator of Five Nations.” Because of his role and those of numerous other revolutionaries, Spanish rule in continental Central and South America, which dated back to the late fifteenth century, came to an end. After the early nineteenth century’s wave of revolutionary activity, only Puerto Rico and Cuba remained under Spanish control, a state of affairs that lasted until the Spanish-American War of 1898.
Discussions of South American history during this period are complicated by the nomenclature used to refer to the states. In the modern world, the various nations of South America—Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and others—are established independent countries. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, these nations were in essence provinces of larger polities ruled by Spain. Borders were shifting, and Spain’s territories were often carved up and recombined into new political entities. Venezuela, for example, began as a province of Spain’s Viceroyalty of Peru. Later it was part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada and then what was called a captaincy general—all referring to administrative units of Spain’s New World colonies. Accordingly, in historical context, modern country names such as “Venezuela” and “Peru” serve as shorthand devices for referring to the regions that would eventually become these nations.
