Simón Bolívar

Their life

The "Liberator" who led much of South America — Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia (named for him) — to independence from Spanish rule. A brilliant, restless military and political leader who dreamed of a united Latin America and fought across a continent to free it.

Known for

• Liberating Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia
• The crossing of the Andes
• Victory at Boyacá and Ayacucho
• Founding Gran Colombia
• The Jamaica Letter
• Dream of Spanish American unity

The road they walked

Simón Bolívar was born into one of Caracas's wealthiest Creole families in 1783, a class that owned land and slaves but was barred from real power in a colony run for Madrid's benefit. Orphaned by age nine, he was raised largely by tutors, chief among them Simón Rodríguez, who fed him Rousseau and Locke long before he had any cause to apply them. As a young man he traveled to Europe, and in Rome in 1805 he climbed the Monte Sacro and swore, before Rodríguez, that he would not rest until his homeland was free of Spanish rule — a vow that reads today less like youthful bravado and more like a life's outline.

The opening came in 1808, when Napoleon's invasion of Spain shattered the fiction of a legitimate crown and colonial elites across the Americas began asking who, exactly, they owed obedience to. Venezuela declared independence in 1810 and 1811, and Bolívar threw himself into the fight — but the First Republic collapsed within a year, the start of a brutal pattern of defeat, exile, and return that would define his career. He fled to New Granada and then Jamaica, where in 1815 he wrote the Jamaica Letter, laying out his vision of a free, united Spanish America while his own cause looked all but dead. Aid from Haiti's president Alexandre Pétion helped him relaunch the war, and from 1817 onward he rebuilt an army in the Venezuelan plains, absorbing the fierce llanero horsemen who would become his most effective troops.

What followed was one of the more audacious military campaigns in modern history: a march over the Andes in 1819 that caught Spanish forces by surprise and won New Granada at Boyacá, followed by victories at Carabobo, Pichincha, and finally Ayacucho in 1824, which effectively ended Spanish rule in South America. Along the way Bolívar founded Gran Colombia, met San Martín at Guayaquil in a still-mysterious private conference that left San Martín withdrawing from the struggle, and saw a new nation named Bolivia in his honor in 1825. But the union he wanted — a confederated Spanish America able to stand against outside powers — proved harder to hold than to imagine. By the late 1820s Gran Colombia was splintering under regional rivalries, he was ruling by decree to keep it together, and an assassination attempt in 1828 nearly killed him. He resigned the presidency in 1830, a man who had freed a continent and watched it come apart in his hands.

How their story ended

Bolívar died on December 17, 1830, near Santa Marta, Colombia, on his way to exile in Europe, having resigned power and watched Gran Colombia dissolve into separate republics. Most historians attribute his death to tuberculosis, though the abruptness of his decline has fed persistent, unproven theories of poisoning. He died poor and largely disillusioned, reportedly remarking that he had 'plowed the sea' — a bleak epitaph for a man who, within two decades, had helped end three centuries of Spanish rule in South America.

In their words

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