سیمون بولیفار .. كتاب المائة الأوائل

Simon Bolivar

SIMON BOLIVAR

1783 - 1830 AD

Simon Bolivar is often called (George Washington) of South America for the role he played in liberating five American countries from Spanish rule: (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia). Few political figures have played the role that Simon Bolivar has played in an entire continent.

Bolívar was born in 1783 in Caracas, Venezuela, an aristocracy of Spanish origin, and he was orphaned at the age of nine. During his youth, he was influenced by the idealistic ideas of the French philosophical Enlightenment movement in the eighteenth century, and among the philosophers whose works he read were John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu.

Bolivar visited several European countries, and in 1805, while he was in Rome, he stood at the top of the Laventine Hill and swore his famous oath, which did not rest until he liberated his homeland from the Spanish yoke.

In 1808 Napoleon invaded Spain and placed his brother at the head of the Spanish government, and this action gave the opportunity for the Spanish colonies in South America to strike a blow to gain their independence.

The revolution against Spanish rule in Venezuela began in 1810 when the Spanish governor in Venezuela was deposed. He officially declared the independence of Venezuela in 1811, and in the same year Bolivar became an officer in the revolutionary army, but in the following year the Spanish military teams returned to restore control over Venezuela. The leader of the revolution, Francisco Miranda, was arrested and put in prison. As for Bolivar, he fled the country.

A quarter of the following years witnessed a series of wars where the war was a debate, and the war continued until 1819, when Bolívar led a small, flabby army through the valleys and into the high mountains of the Andes, where he attacked the Spanish teams in Colombia and there. The decisive battle in August 1819, then liberated Venezuela in 1821 and Ecuador in 1822.

Meanwhile, Jose de San Martin, the ardent patriotic man, had secured the liberation of Argentina and Chile from the rule of the Spaniards and pledged to liberate (Peru). The two liberators met in the city of Guayaquil in Ecuador in the summer of 1822, but they could not agree on a plan for cooperation and coordination of their forces against the Spaniards. And since San Martin did not want to anger Bolivar and engage him in a fight, which would have served the Spaniards, he withdrew from the field, resigned from command, and withdrew from South America entirely.

In 1824 Bolívar's armies completed the liberation of what is now called Peru, and in 1825 they defeated the Spanish armies in Upper Peru, which is now called Bolivia.

The following years of Bolívar's life were less successful. Bolivar dreamed of uniting the countries of South America as the United States united, and in fact Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador had formed a republic called Greater Colombia and (Bolivar) became its president, but unfortunately the centrifugal force in South America was much stronger than it was in the English colonies in America In the North, when Bolivar called for a conference of Latin American states in 1826, only four countries attended. What is worse is that instead of new countries joining the future Republic of Colombia, that republic began to dissolve and civil war broke out. In 1830, Venezuela and Ecuador withdrew, and there was an attempt to assassinate Bolivar. And then Bolivar realized that he was an obstacle to peace, so he resigned from his post in April 1830, and when he died in December 1830, he had become listless, poor, and exiled from his country, Venezuela.

Bolívar was an ambitious man, and due to the necessities of the time, he adopted the characteristic of dictatorship, but when the issue came to the test, he did not cling to dictatorship, but curbed his ambition for the sake of the public interest and ideal democracy, and finally gave up all his dictatorial powers. The throne was offered to him once, but he refused it, because he felt that the name (the editor) was much better than the name of the king.