South American Wars of Independence

At issue: The liberation of the Spanish American colonies of South America from the domination of royalist Spain

Date: 1808–1826

Location: Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador

Combatants: Spanish vs. Spanish American revolutionaries

Principal commanders:Revolutionary, Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), José de San Martín (1778–1850), Antonio José de Sucre (1795–1830), Bernardo O’Higgins (1778–1842); Spanish royalists, José de La Serna y Hinojosa (1770–1832), Joaquín de la Pezuela, José Tomás Boves (d. 1814)

Principal battles: Chacabuco, Pasco, Boyacá, Carabobo, Mount Pichincha, Ayacucho

Result: Victory by the revolutionaries and the end of Spanish colonial rule in the Americas

Background

In 1808, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte sent his French army into Spain, overthrew the Bourbon monarchy there, and installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as the new king. Napoleon also removed the Spanish royal family from Spain. The Spanish liberals refused to accept Joseph as their ruler. They organized a national junta, pledged their loyalty to the Spanish monarch, Ferdinand VII, and began active resistance to the French invaders. The Spanish colonies in America participated in this movement. However, the colonists were not given equal representation in the newly formed Cortes (parliament) of 1812 in Seville. The failure of the Spanish liberals to meet the expectations of the Americans led to an independence movement that developed throughout Spanish America.

In South America, the revolution proceeded through two great movements. The northern wave, led by Simón Bolívar, a Venezuelan, began in that country and New Granada (present-day Colombia and Ecuador). The southern surge had its beginnings in the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, essentially Argentina and Uruguay. José de San Martín, an Argentinean, became its preeminent military leader.

Action

In an unprecedented military operation, General San Martín moved more than five thousand men, animals, and supplies from the eastern slopes of the Andes mountain range at Mendoza, Argentina. San Martín and his men marched more than thirteen thousand feet up over the Andes, to the plains of Chile. He defeated the surprised Spanish forces in a decisive battle at Chacabuco (February 12, 1817). San Martín sent his main army through the central passes of Los Patos and Uspallata and also dispatched smaller units through northern and southern routes to distract the enemy.

The Argentine general confused his Spanish opposition completely with his tactics. The royalists lost five hundred dead; San Martín suffered but twelve losses. The independence of Argentina and Chile was secured as a result. Chacabuco went down as San Martín’s greatest military victory.

San Martín assigned the leadership of one of his three armies in the battle to Bernardo O’Higgins, the son of Ambrosio O’Higgins, an Irishman in the Spanish colonial service. The younger O’Higgins became the supreme dictator of a liberated Chile, but was forced to abdicate in 1823 and had to spend the rest of his life in exile in Peru.

The Spanish viceroy of Peru, Joaquín de la Pezuela, sought to hold that colony for the Spanish crown by arranging a treaty with San Martín, but the two sides could not come to terms. In May of 1821, revolutionary forces under a subordinate of San Martín defeated Pezuela at Pasco, a short distance northwest of Lima, leading to the occupation of the city itself. Following his defeat, Pezuela was forced to give up control of the crown’s army in Peru to General José de La Serna y Hinojosa. The royalists then broke off contact with the revolutionaries and moved their disorganized army into the sierra of Peru’s interior, away from Lima.

In the north, Simón Bolívar had similar successes against the royalist forces in New Granada (later Colombia). Crossing the rugged Andes from Venezuela, he met the Spanish army at Boyacá, Colombia, on August 17, 1819, and defeated the Spanish forces. Bolívar’s march through the Granadian Andes matched the impressive tactics of San Martín at the Battle of Chacabuco in the south. Again the revolutionaries had surprised the Spanish forces by arriving at the battle scene by way of a totally unexpected route. This specific conflict resulted in the liberation of New Granada from Spanish rule.

General Bolívar decided to combine his forces in Venezuela. His intention was to confront the Spanish in an all-or-nothing effort. The revolutionary general learned of a little-known route near the battlefield that would put him behind the Spanish forces. Bolívar then dispatched a portion of his army to attack the Spaniards from the rear. Caught between the two patriot forces, the royalists fled the battlefield.

The defeat of the royalist forces at Carabobo, Venezuela, on June 24, 1821, by Bolívar and his followers secured that country’s independence. However, it left Venezuela in desperate economic straits. The fighting between the royalists and the revolutionaries had proven to be especially bloody in this country. Atrocities were committed by both sides. Earlier in the Venezuelan campaign, the activities of the Spanish general José Tomás Boves were particularly sinister. He personally supervised the massacre of innocent women and children as well as the men he fought. Boves himself was killed in battle at the end of 1814.

The victory allowed Venezuela’s newly independent citizens to enjoy the fruits of their freedom. They rebuilt the political structure, utilizing more democratic concepts. Venezuela’s leaders effected the changes by using moderate rather than draconian techniques, thus ensuring the support of not only the large landowners but also the smaller farmers.

The new government undertook the gradual emancipation of its large black slave population as well. The decision to end slavery proved to be an astute one. The royalist forces had used the promise of freedom to enlist the blacks in their cause.

In Ecuador, General Antonio José de Sucre, Bolívar’s most talented and faithful subordinate, met the royalist forces on the slopes of Mount Pichincha, outside of Quito, the capital, on May 24, 1822. In a three-hour battle, the Spanish troops were decisively defeated. Eleven hundred soldiers, 160 officers, 14 pieces of artillery, and 1,700 muskets ended up in the control of Sucre’s forces.

Sucre proved to be a generous victor. The revolutionary leader allowed the Spanish soldiers to leave the country for their homeland without any interference on the part of the American forces. He even permitted the Spanish officers to retain their sidearms and horses.

Sucre’s victory at Pichincha ended Spanish rule in Ecuador, the third of the Spanish northern colonies to fall. Only Peru remained to be finally liberated by the revolutionary armies. The question arose as to how this movement was to be carried out. Both Bolívar and San Martín had pledged to free Peru from Spanish control. The two great generals met at Guayaquil, now a port city of Ecuador, on July 26 and 27, 1821, to discuss plans for a campaign to bring about the final defeat of the royalist army in Peru. Bolívar did not favor San Martín’s proposal to establish a monarchy in that country under a European prince, independent of Spain. The Argentinean offered to join forces with Bolívar in Peru’s final liberation, and even expressed a willingness to serve under him.

No agreement could be reached between the two leaders, so San Martín decided to resign his position as protector of Peru and withdraw from the country. He left its final conquest to Bolívar and Sucre. San Martín felt that to fight with Bolívar over control of Peru would be counterproductive to achieving that country’s independence. At this point in time, San Martín’s contribution to the South American independence movement had, for all intents and purposes, ended.

So the responsibility to free Peru lay with Bolívar and his army. In the last great battle of the South American wars of independence, Bolívar’s General Sucre again demonstrated his tactical skills and, on December 8, 1824, defeated the Spanish at Ayacucho. He took the viceroy, José de La Serna y Hinojosa, captive as well. From that point on, Sucre’s task consisted of accepting the surrender of one royalist garrison after another. He also liberated Upper Peru with very little effort. The citizens of that newly independent colony voted to name their new republic Bolivia, after the man who became known as the Great Liberator.

Aftermath

The life of Bolívar ended in disappointment and tragedy. It had been his hope to combine Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru into one political entity, but he could not achieve that goal. Venezuela rejected him. Colombia and Peru fell to fighting. In 1828, he assumed dictatorial powers in Colombia to preserve internal order and maintain national security. During the same year, he barely escaped assassination at the hands of a group of liberals seeking to wrest power from him. In 1830, he resigned as president of Colombia and left Bogotá, saying, “America is ungovernable. Those who serve the revolution plough the sea. The only thing to do in America is to emigrate.” He died in December of 1830 at Santa Marta on Colombia’s coast. He was only forty-seven years old.

San Martín, the architect of Argentine independence, also lost faith in the ability of the South Americans to govern themselves democratically. He spent the last thirty years of his life in self-imposed exile in France. In ill health during his final years, he died in August, 1850, at Boulogne. In 1880, the Argentine government had the old soldier’s remains disinterred and reburied in the cathedral at Buenos Aires.

Sucre, Bolívar’s loyal supporter and lifelong friend, suffered the most tragic death. Following his role as a military leader in Peru and Bolivia, he agreed to assume the first presidency of the latter country. He served for two years, introducing a set of laws and a political structure that launched Bolivia on the road to permanent statehood. He retired to Ecuador and occupied himself with the management of his estates in the private sector. While traveling through the Berruecos Mountains on his way to Quito, the thirty-five-year-old grand marshal of Ayacucho was ambushed and assassinated by political dissidents.

Bibliography

Fuentes, Carlos. The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

Lynch, John. The Spanish American Revolutions 1808–1826. 2d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.

Robertson, William Spence. Rise of the Spanish-American Republics. New York: Free Press, 1946.