An unruly orphan from Caracas freed six nations from Spain
Orphaned young and raised largely by an enslaved woman named Hipolita, the boy Simon Bolivar was so neglectful of his lessons that his uncle in Madrid called him very ignorant. That same youth later swore on a hill in Rome to end Spanish rule, and went on to lead six future countries to independence.
Bolivar was born in Caracas in 1783 into one of the richest creole families in Spanish America, descended from a Basque notary who had arrived in the 1580s. The historian John Lynch described his childhood as both privileged and deprived. His father died of tuberculosis when Simon was two and his mother when he was nine, and he came to despise the uncle who cared mainly about his inheritance. At twelve he ran away to his sister's house, and a court sent him to live with his teacher Simon Rodriguez.
Sent to Spain in 1799, he absorbed Enlightenment ideas in Madrid and married Maria Teresa Rodriguez del Toro, who died of yellow fever in Venezuela in 1803. A grand tour of Europe followed, ending in Rome, where he made his vow. Back home by 1807, he promoted independence among wealthy creoles, and when Napoleon's invasion of Spain weakened royal authority, he threw himself into the fight.
His early campaigns ended in exile on Jamaica after Spain retook New Granada in 1815. In Haiti, President Alexandre Petion offered military help on condition that Bolivar abolish slavery in Spanish America. With that backing he founded a third Venezuelan republic in 1817 and in 1819 led his army across the Andes to free New Granada. Over the next six years he and his allies drove Spanish forces from Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and finally, in 1825, Bolivia.
Four of the freed territories were fused into a single state, Gran Colombia, with Bolivar as president there and also leading Peru and Bolivia. Success soured. Disillusioned with the new republics and gradually stripped of his posts, he resigned and died of tuberculosis in 1830. Bolivia and Venezuela both carry his name, and he is honoured across Latin America as El Libertador.
Source: Simón Bolívar
