Bolivia is named after Bolívar, but Sucre was its first president
When Upper Peru declared independence in August 1825, its assembly named the country after Simón Bolívar and offered him the presidency. Bolívar, doubtful the landlocked state could survive, declined and passed the job to his most trusted general, Antonio José de Sucre, the victor of Ayacucho, who was sworn in that same day.
Sucre was born on 3 February 1795 in Cumaná, Venezuela, into an aristocratic family descended from a Flemish nobleman who had governed Cartagena and Cuba. He joined the revolt against Spain in 1814 and rose fast. High on the flanks of the volcano Pichincha, on 24 May 1822, his Patriot army beat the Royalist commander Melchor Aymerich and freed Quito, the territory that would become Ecuador.
On 9 December 1824 at Ayacucho in the Peruvian highlands, Sucre defeated the Spanish viceroy José de la Serna, who was wounded; his deputy signed the Royalist army's surrender. Peru's congress made Sucre a marshal. Entering Upper Peru in February 1825, he found Royalist units switching sides, and the last holdout commander, Pedro Olañeta, died at the Battle of Tumusla in April.
A deputy from Potosí settled the naming debate with a quip: as Rome came from Romulus, Bolivia should come from Bolívar. Bolívar had worried that a nation in the middle of the continent would face endless wars and hoped it would join Peru or Argentina, but cheering crowds from La Paz to Chuquisaca changed his mind. Sucre founded the Bolivian army, yet opposition to Bolívar's circle grew, and he resigned in 1828.
Recalled to fight in the Gran Colombia–Peru War, he beat a Peruvian force twice his size at Tarqui in February 1829. On 4 June 1830, riding toward Quito, he was ambushed on a foggy forest trail at Berruecos in Colombia and killed. General Juan José Flores, who wanted to lead a separate Ecuador, is thought to have seen the popular hero as an obstacle, and one of the gunmen later admitted he had been paid by the regional commander José María Obando. Who ultimately ordered the killing is still debated.
Source: Antonio José de Sucre
