Artie Mead: ‘Hello everyone, and welcome to the first discussion episode of the second season of The History Buff. I am joined today by Eliecer Colina, fellow history buff and a writer. He has a BA in political science with special interest in political theory, history, and economics. Yeah, and he’s also Venezuelan, so he has a local knowledge of Latin American history and politics. Welcome, Eliecer. Thank you for joining me.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Thank you for having me.’
Artie Mead: ‘Absolute pleasure. Cool. So the topic that we’re going to discuss today is something that I am really fascinated about, and that is of a project, I guess you could have called it, of Gran Colombia. So basically, in a nutshell, I guess what you could say, it was a political project that basically incorporated the lands of what is now Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and a little bit of Peru and Brazil.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, we wanted to add a little bit of Peru and Bolivia, and also Cuba and Spanish Haiti, today known as the Dominican Republic, were in tentative talks to join the Union, if it were to be successful.’
Artie Mead: ‘If it had worked out, yes. Okay. And yeah, it only lasted from 1819 to 1830. Am I right?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yeah.’
Artie Mead: ‘Cool.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Just barely a decade.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay. Yeah, exactly. So, cool. Well, I guess in order to understand this, we have to first go back to— all the way back to the beginning of the century when you basically had Napoleon’s alliance with Spain. So, do you want to introduce that topic to us?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, basically at the late period of the eighteenth century, basically you got the Revolutionary War in America and you also got the French Revolution, two parallel events that coincided with the moment of overthrowing monarchies and things. So, you got Napoleon rise to power, he gets in control of the European continent, and his French armies are devastating Austria and all the other enemies that he encounters. So, Spain had no other option, being in the same geographical area, to forge an alliance with Napoleon. It was a strong-arm alliance, but it was beneficial to both of them since Spanish and French already had a lot of connections. So, the thing that triggered the— basically, the forming of the Revolutionary War in America was that the Spanish let the French army into their country to quell a rebellion and also to threaten Portugal because Portugal was not trying to ally with Napoleon. But when the French entered and when Napoleon found out that the Spanish monarchy was really ineffective and corrupt, he basically decided, “Well, you’re not going to be useful as an ally. So, I’m going to dethrone the current Spanish king, and I’m going to assign my brother as the new Spanish king.”
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, I think it was Joseph Bonaparte. And then when the new usurper came, all the colonies were like, “Well, our previous king was already dethroned. The usurper king, are we going to follow him?” And then, basically, there were, from the other side, they were a group of men, very specific revolutionary-minded men with liberal ideas that they got from Washington and the French and everyone else. And they said, “Well, we actually don’t need a king, so we can do our own thing.” So, then the Revolutionary War in America was basically deciding: are we going to stay loyal to this king, or are we going to become independent republics?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yeah. And the thing that fascinates me is that Spain, the Spanish Empire, it was, you know, one of the biggest empires the world has ever seen, you know, ruled over pretty much most of South America and Central America, and also, obviously, North America as well. Yeah, by the early 1800s, as you say, it’s very corrupt.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, it’s very fragmented. And the previous century, the Spanish Armada was kind of like a fear, something to be reckoned with. The armies of Spain were fairly good at what they did, but then the fractures of the system started to really come down at the late eighteenth century, beginning of the nineteenth century.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes. And you had power vested in the hands of the prime minister at the time. I believe his name was Godoy.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes.’
Artie Mead: ‘Um, and it’s more to remember, at that point, Napoleon is trying to cut off Britain with his, what’s it called?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, his trade embargo, basically.’
Artie Mead: ‘His continental system, I think.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘His continental system, the trade embargo that was trying to isolate Britain at the time. It was the ultimate war, that he was going to invade Britain if he could, but he couldn’t manage to consolidate the continent.’
Artie Mead: ‘Exactly. So, I mean, I guess this leads us nicely into the next topic, because obviously, yeah, you have the weakening of authority in Madrid, and this impresses on someone who would come to be very pivotal. And would you like to introduce him?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes. Basically, the main character of the story of Gran Colombia and of the story of the Spanish independence, the revolutionary war in America was from Spain, basically, was Simón Bolívar. He was the main character that proposed this project. He’s the main ideological force that unites all these countries to form Gran Colombia. It was basically his idea, instilled by a bunch of influences on him, that he wanted to have, like, a free America, but also like a powerful America, like a Latin American continental power, basically to counterbalance the U.S. in some way.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right. He actually comes from a very rich family. His father was, I believe, a merchant or some very rich colonial administrator.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes. He was basically a colonial administrator merchant. He had some sort of trade deals back in Caracas. He was so aristocratic that his actual name is kind of like— I can say the full name—it is Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Ponte y Palacios Blanco.’
Artie Mead: ‘Wow.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘That’s all the last names combined. He was so aristocratic, and he was the marriage of two powerful families. Obviously, the Bolívars and the Palacios Blanco was his mother’s family. So he was kind of like in the prime position to do that.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay, and basically he’s born in Caracas, but he has a very sad childhood, doesn’t he, because his parents die whilst he’s very young? And then he’s sent to go and live—he and his brothers are sent to live with his grandfather, but his grandfather then dies very shortly after.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes.’
Artie Mead: ‘And then he’s sent to go and live with his uncles, who he hates. And he goes to then go and hang out with the sort of poorer people in Caracas, doesn’t he? And this really has an effect on him.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes.’
Artie Mead: ‘Well, I mean, I guess that is a nice sort of intro to Simón Bolívar. So he gets all this military experience from a very young age, and then he manages to secure Venezuelan independence. So do you want to talk to us briefly about that?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes. To talk about that, I think we need to refer to Bolívar’s main mentor. I think he would be basically his Aristotle to Bolívar’s Alexander the Great. That would be Francisco Miranda. He was the main teacher that taught him how to be a military strategist. He also taught—kind of like induced him into the liberal thinking. They were both Freemasons. So Miranda was basically the guy who set them in his way to be successful. Miranda himself couldn’t actually secure Venezuelan independence, but Bolívar actually managed to do it after a lot of attempts—there were like two or three republics that were overthrown by the Royalist army—but then, in the end, he managed to actually secure the independence of Venezuela by the late, I think, 1814. And he basically got political control over the region, but Venezuela was not yet independent. That’s when he actually started a revolutionary march towards Colombia. And then he went down to Peru, and then to what is now Bolivia and Ecuador.’
Artie Mead: ‘So what do you think are the key ideals and visions that Bolívar had for Gran Colombia when he was thinking about it?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Okay. He had two major trenches that he wanted to send. You have the theoretical or ideological front: he was basically this instructed individual in the ways of literature. He believed in free men and the right, basically, of self-governance. So his idea was, “We are the Americans, so we are the Latin Americans, so we are to govern ourselves, and we are brothers.” You know, in the sense of Venezuelans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, and Peruvians. So we were basically just brothers in the same continent. So we ought to join together and become like a power. And he looked at, obviously, the U.S. as an inspiration of a newborn American power. He wanted to do the same thing in the lower hemisphere, in the Southern Hemisphere, to be a power. That was his ideal.’
‘And then we’ve got the practical sense that is also related. That is he wanted to create a political union, a powerful country that could rival the Empire of Brazil, that was also gaining strong force within the continent. And he also wanted to basically rival the other vice kingdoms that Spain used to have, like, for example, Mexico. And the Rio de la Plata, which is currently Argentina. So he wanted to be basically in the middle. He wanted to build a strong empire that could rival all of those three other axes of power—Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico.’
Artie Mead: ‘Exactly. And so he basically manages to form Gran Colombia in 1819. And, as you said at the beginning, it incorporated what was New Granada. And I think it was known as the Viceroyalty of Venezuela.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘No, no. Nueva Granada was a vice kingdom. It was the, let’s say, the lesser vice kingdom of all of them. And then you’ve got the General Captaincy of Venezuela. It was another province captaincy, and Ecuador didn’t yet exist. It didn’t exist yet. It was the southern provinces of Nueva Granada. That was Guayaquil—that was Ecuador at the time. But Ecuador itself didn’t exist as an independent thing. And Peru was combined with Bolivia at the time.’
Artie Mead: ‘Exactly. And so, but it’s decided basically between these, the elites in these nations for Gran Colombia, and Bolívar installs his generals in, as presidents, in some of these countries. And I guess one of the, one could argue, major mistakes that Bolívar made is that he tried to make it far too centralised. Is that right?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, uh, the main dichotomy of the Gran Colombian project was between Federalist and Centralist. Bolívar was a centralist. He saw the figure of the great leaders. He basically tried to mirror similar aspects of Napoleon, that he wanted to be like the president, but it was a—he said president, but it was basically a dictatorship because it was a lifelong presidency that he could actually just choose his successor. So some of his generals said, well, this is basically a monarchy. So we traded a monarch for another. And the Federalists were all his generals. Each one of them wanted to rule their own piece of land and wanted, let’s join the—like, to the international sphere, we’re going to be together, but within our national borders, we’re going to do our separate thing, and each one of us is going to have our own presidents.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And all political systems, and they wanted to do more like a federal system, like with Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, and Peru all got to have their own presidents. But then, when they come to international matters, they could be like a joint-together force and army, like a common, like the 13 colonies—a common army, a common identity. But as separate federal entities that could actually be more easily governed by their own leaders.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes. Another mistake that he makes, and something that pisses off his homeland, is the fact that he chooses Bogotá as the capital. And so, after this, the elites in these other countries obviously are pissed off, and so this leads to the Constitutional Convention of 1821. So they come together, and do they write a constitution, or does he basically write one and present it to them?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, they did actually write a constitution, but the input was, like, 90% Bolívar, 10% everyone else.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So he started the Constitutional Convention just to give you, like, a spirit of something like the quote that he gives, one of the parts of his speech said as follows: “Only in a profound respect of the sovereign will would obligate me to submit to the formidable weight of the supreme magistracy. The gratitude owed to the representatives of the people also imposes on me the pleasant obligation of continuing my service to defend, with my goods, with my blood, and even with my honour, this constitution which embodies the rights of the brotherly peoples bound together by liberty, goodness, and glory.” That’s what his—’
Artie Mead: ‘Very reminiscent of the American Constitution.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘It’s very, very reminiscent because he was taught to. He was also a writer, and Miranda was an acquaintance with Washington. So he told them about the American Constitution, and he said something similar: “We are together as brothers. Together, we’re going to bound this— you know, we are bound by the will of the independent people, of the free people, to make this project work.” And then he— all the representatives couldn’t oppose Bolívar. Even his best generals couldn’t say no to him, basically.’
Artie Mead: ‘I mean, I’ve had a look at the Constitution of Gran Colombia. And to be honest, to me, for the time, it seems like quite a progressive constitution. You know, it included representation, individual rights, citizenship, and I think it also then does, I think, specify federalism.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, that’s the thing. Bolívar and his ideals, his speeches, and his intent was to be a progressive, free man, with rights of man, everyone gets representation, fair hearing, and federalism. That was the idea that he was taught, but then there existed the political reality of him wanting to unite all of them, and that’s what it got to—like a difference between his ideal and the reality. And in reality, Bolívar was more authoritarian than what his writings would suggest.’
Artie Mead: ‘And he said to the people assembled at the Constitutional Assembly, basically, take it or leave it.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, basically. And even his best generals, like, for example, Páez—even Páez had a lot of military power, but even he couldn’t rival Bolívar’s image and political capital at the time—so he just had to basically bend the knee and say, “Well, yes, let’s try it your way for now.” And that’s important that most of the generals said, “Let’s try it.” But behind each other’s backs, when they were drinking coffee or whatever, they said, “Just for now. Let’s— let him do this thing now.”’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah. And how do you think Bolívar navigated the tension between centralism and federalism in the political structure of Gran Colombia, or do you think he didn’t?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘I think that he basically didn’t. I think he was ideally, like I said, more inclined to federalism because that was his main inspiration, but in reality, his methods or his practices were more military and basically they were hierarchy, “You do as I say, I’m the general, you have to obey me.” That’s the structure. And then, in reality, he tried to apply a very militaristic, hierarchical way of rule. And that’s when communication started to break down, because to be an effective military leader, you have to have direct and, basically, connection with your subordinates, meaning that they have to be connected to you, and the hierarchy has to work.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘But the problem is that the hierarchy was not working, and there was a major disconnect between what Bolívar said in Bogotá and what people in Caracas wanted to do, or people in Quito wanted to do, or people in Bolivia or wherever Peru wanted to do. So Bolívar could say from Bogotá, “You will do this,” and by the time that the horse came with the message and the letter exclaiming what we’re going to do, basically everything had happened. For example, Sucre, one of his, basically, lifelong friend and also a general, basically independently separated Bolivia from Peru and gave them independence. But then after that, Bolívar chastised him because he didn’t actually want him to do that. But then Sucre said, “Well, that was what you told me, what I thought that you wanted me to do was to liberate Bolivia and give them independence.” But Bolívar actually said, “No, I wanted them to join the Gran Colombia project.”’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And there was a discussion about that, but it was a delay and misunderstanding in the orders. That also happened, and that happened throughout the whole Gran Colombia project. There was a major disconnect between Bogota and Nueva Granada, and then all the provinces were kind of like doing their own thing because communication was—the infrastructure wasn’t there to relay information. So each local leader had to basically do what, the best that they could with the semblance of a constitution that Bolívar said, but there was—’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, because he was saying to them, “You have to work together now.” But, you know, they’d actually been managed separately for a very long time.”’
Eliecer Colina: ‘For a very long time. So, so each aristocracy didn’t want to like merge. So the merchant class in Caracas aristocracy wasn’t nearly as joined with the Quito aristocracy or the Guayaquil or the Peruvians. They didn’t want to do that.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘They all had their own political structures. They all have their own empires. Well, not empires, like. They all have their own businesses to run, their own lands to run, their own history and that basically to be told that you’re, for example, is like somebody told you today that you have to coordinate with your third-degree cousin from your mother’s side.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And then you have to work with him to establish a political system. And then you don’t even know each other. You live too far away. There’s no way then, then that that’s where the problems start.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, exactly. I also want to talk a little bit about what was the situation like in the territory of Gran Colombia at the time?’
Artie Mead: ‘What was like the social and economic situation? Was it good? Because obviously these sorts of things are the things that really contribute to, you know, discontent among the population and things, you know, was Bolívar trying to do good things like, you know, with the economy, land reform, slavery, social inequality, or any of that stuff?’
Artie Mead: ‘Was, was any of that, you know, having a good effect?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘There is, uh, two major issues. We have just come from a independence war, which to some scholars, they think that the revolutionary Spanish independence war is mostly a civil war. So that left a lot of social fractures within the countries because it was brother against brother, cousin against cousin.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And we were raised together, but now we need to kill each other because you’re a Royalist and I’m a freedom fighter. So that costs a lot of money. Because—’
Artie Mead: ‘Some people were Royalists, you know, and they wanted to stay part of Spain.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes. They didn’t want to be a part of the, of this new, like at the time.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Heretical project of independence, and then, and I say heretical with a intent because most of the society was Christian Catholic. So by disobeying your king, you’re basically disobeying the will of God in a way. For example, in Caracas, there was an earthquake, I think in 1811, there was the earthquake and some of the priests and the bishop said that it was a God-given sign that the revolution was a mistake, that we should have stayed with Spain.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘I’m saying things happening all the other countries at the major economical people of having brother against brother burn lands and remember that this point the most of the economy is agriculture but then you have the, same differences brother against brother businesses go down everything is burn we’re trying to rebuild a society but also we have this really.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Underbelly, this underbelly of slavery and class, class conflict with the Spanish were much more discriminatory in the classification of individuals. For example, you were Spanish from Spain. It was. Very different and you were being discriminated if you try to mingle with the Spanish who were born in America even though they were both.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Spanish and maybe in the same the Caucasian the place where they were born make them different and even some authors like for example there is an author that I like who wrote a book his name is like the name of the book is From the Good Savage to the Good Revolutionary. By a Venezuelan journalist.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And the main thesis of the book is that because of the being of the good savage, that, you know, the Rousseauian good savage, the main thesis of the book is that in Latin America, we never actually got over the structures of the slavery mindset.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, the author of the book is Carlos Rangel. And his main thesis is that we have ingrained in us this slave.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Owner and slave mentality, meaning that we still have the dichotomy of people work in the fields, and we wanted to implement this progressive society of free men, but we actually didn’t have a populace for it. A lot of people were either hyper-aristocratic with a lot of power and a lot of money, and there was the lower class, and the lower class had a complete disconnection, the slaves and the serfs.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And the mixed race people had a complete disconnection with the elite idea of what the country should be. So we have a social disconnection from the major populace, the economics is not there because when there is a war, an upheaval, businesses don’t run. And then we have this slavery mindset that doesn’t allow people to be free owning business owners or free working men.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Exactly.’
Artie Mead: ‘So basically, this means that Gran Colombia is essentially doomed from the beginning because the foundations are so rotten. Basically, the rotten leftovers of Spanish imperialism means that Gran Colombia’s foundations are very weak.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes. Basically, that means that the whole political project is just, is held together by Bolívar’s will and charisma.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And the problem with that is that the moment that he’s not there or he goes on a trip or he gets sick or whatever, all the chips, all the cards on this house of cards start to tumble because it is just held together by his political ambitions and will. And basically charisma to convince others to follow him.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘But in the reality, when the check comes, when you have to pay, when the economics are not there, the people are not there and the leaders are not there. Everyone started to notice that the spell of Bolívar’s ambition was starting to fade away. And then the reality was that. Okay, this is not working. We need to do our own thing.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘We need to separate or else we’re going to collapse and we’re just not going to function.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right. What was each constituent country’s vision for Gran Colombia? Because they probably all had competing visions for it, didn’t they?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes. Basically, the major players, obviously, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘First, Ecuador, I think, it wanted to be independent. Ecuador had a lot of distinctions with Bogotá, and the, I think it was called the Royal Assembly of Quito, was a distinct political entity for a while, so they were aiming to be independent from Colombia. Ecuadorians said that they weren’t Ecuadorian at the time but they wanted to be independent so the idea of joining was basically forced out of them because they actually just wanted, hey thanks Bolívar but we actually wanted just to be our own little piece of land.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Eventually they were, but at the time they couldn’t do it. So they actually didn’t want to be the capital. They just wanted to be their own thing. And then you got the major discrepancy. Venezuela, like I said, had the most generals in the war, had the main fighting force of Bolívar, was from Venezuela. And most of it just generals, all of them wanted Caracas to be the capital, but Venezuela was one of the weaker constituencies.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So they didn’t have a lot of economic power, even though they had the military ambition and power. Caracas was, even though it was fairly good logistically as a capital, because it’s in the middle of the mountain and it’s well guarded, it was directly near the coastline, so it was very highly likely to be invaded if the Spanish were to send the armada, they could just arrive at the shores and then.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Go up the mountain and invade Caracas. That would have put the project in jeopardy. And then Bogotá in Nueva Granada basically also wanted to be its own thing, but it could have been content with being the capital, but they actually didn’t want it to basically carry the burden of also trying to help Ecuador and Venezuela.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So even from most dominant, it was the economically most dominant, right? Yeah, it was the economically most dominant of the three. So basically Colombia was left with the bill and they said well I don’t want to pay for them I don’t want to help them get on their own feet because I already have my own issues I’ve got my own money so I could be covered myself as an independent but you’re asking me to take basically my two little brothers and basically just try to raise them to my level.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And that’s instead of raising all of those together to be a good economically, most of the Colombians just thought that we’re going to sink together with trying to handle this and pay for this is going to basically put us in a lot of debt, which they were right. So each nation at the end of the Gran Colombia was gifted a huge amount of debt because of Bolívar’s intent as a political union.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So none of them actually really look back on it, like with a lot of warmth or anything. They actually see it just like a, like a really strife or period.’
Artie Mead: ‘So, I mean, I guess that leads us on nicely to the dissolution of Gran Colombia. So I guess you could say, yeah, the causes were, yeah, no infrastructure, no communication between the capitals.’
Artie Mead: ‘You know, well, also no communication really between the sort of people of the regions, you know, and then through that disagreements over the structure of the state, federalism versus centralism, and also the people from these different constituent states, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, but also Panama, a bit of Peru and a bit of Brazil, didn’t feel Gran Colombian.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘They didn’t feel Gran Colombian at all, because they were separate and they were kind of like the alliance of the lesser provinces of the Spanish colonies, but they actually didn’t look at each other like very brotherly, as in the constitution stated. And if you factor in the idea that it wanted to be mostly a politically economic block, when you try to add Cuba and Haiti or Spanish Haiti, what is now the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, to the equation, you realise that that is not.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘A lot of cultural connection. There is not like a, like a path. There’s no joint, there’s no joint sense of identity. That’s one of the major things—there was not like a Gran Colombian identity formed, and it didn’t have any time to form because it was just like a ten-year thing, and it was.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘At the end of the major process that was the colonies, so each of them didn’t have the impetus to actually become one with each other. So each of them just started to basically do their own thing, even though Bolívar.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Explicitly told them not to do that. Each of them, even though they were browbeaten by Bolívar’s ideals, the reality was overwhelming. Each of them could only handle their own land, their own—even within their own land. They couldn’t handle everything that was happening.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right? And so yes, that basically means that by 1830 it’s all over. So reality caught up with the legality. And so yes, each country goes their own way. Did it happen—did the dissolution happen in a messy way, or was it fairly peaceful and did it just sort of dissolve?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Into the night?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘At the end of the Gran Colombian dissolution, it was kind of like both, but it was both in, like I said, in the real sense and in the legal sense. In the legal sense, it died like with a whimper. It was like an act that was signed, and the current stated president was kind of like, just signed this—we’re over. Legally.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘It was kind of like a whimper. I get it, it died, basically. The reality is, militarily and politically, it was very chaotic. It was like we’re here, and then, for example, Bolívar—you have to understand that at the beginning of the project, while the war was very optimistic, he had a good attitude, he was willing to work with people, but each year he started to accrue more power.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘He grew more dictatorial. He was hardened. He was getting more and more obsessed with power. And even his generals and friends told him, “You’re going down a path of—you’re going to alienate all of us. And you’re going to end up in a—with our friends. And none of us are going to back you up when the time comes.”’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And lo and behold, the time did actually come, where Bolívar’s charisma was basically on the floor, and his former best allies and friends and generals were basically saying, “You’re off the rails. Your ambition for power has led you astray, so I am not going to listen to you anymore.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘I respect you. Thank you for helping us with the revolution. But now I have to basically put a stop to you before you do more damage.” That was one of the things that, for example, Páez, one of his—the major generals of the war, actually had to talk to him. And even at the time, Bolívar, with his ambitions, he couldn’t argue against Páez.’
Artie Mead: ‘Páez was also the head of Venezuela, wasn’t he?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, Páez, José Antonio Páez, was the best general in the independence war. And he was the representative of the Venezuelan idea. He was—yeah, a little brief about his history. He was born basically lower money. He was like a lower-class aristocrat. He wasn’t aristocratic at all.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Sorry. He was a lower-class white. And then he started to get really good at the military thing. And he got a couple of victories, and then he actually had the military tactical prowess to actually do a lot of manoeuvring around the Spanish armies. And he got the respect of the mostly fighting force of Venezuela.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘It’s called Lanceros. It was a specialised army unit, which, in its own way, has its own history of what he did. But then he just basically took the position of the Venezuelan leadership. He was saying, “Well, I’m unofficially the representative for Venezuela as the most prevalent military leader.” And then he actually became the first president after his conspiracy to separate Venezuela was successful. And it was a conspiracy in just the term because it was explicit.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘He just said it, and he said it to Bolívar to his face. And then, he actually just did it. He had separated Venezuela and became the first president. He served, like, three terms after that. And he was really involved in the idea of Venezuelan nationalism because he was obviously being in the war and fighting and having a lot of military experience.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘He said, “Well, we granted ourselves our independence, so we ought to handle this ourselves. So we need to join, we need to, we are, we.” And then you got from the other side, you have Santander. Santander is also one of the major generals of the independence war, but he’s Colombian. He’s from Bogotá. He’s very similar to Bolívar.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘He was the son of an aristocrat. And he was also good at the military experience. And he also—he was the vice president of Colombia, explicitly. He had the title. But even he had his own reservations, and the New Granada aristocratic class was whispering in his ear, “Hey, I know that Bolívar’s your friend and that he helped us, but, like, we don’t want this to go on.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘We don’t want to join with these other provinces. We want to do our own thing. Colombia is ours. So we trust you to basically do the same as Páez, to just tell Bolívar that this is not going to work.” And then he became the first Colombian president after the separation.’
Artie Mead: ‘Okay, and so if you could put a date on when Gran Colombia dissolved, is there a specific date, or was it a sort of process?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Well, you can say that each of the countries has basically their own day.’
Artie Mead: ‘Oh, when they declared independence.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Because basically, when they declared independence, it was actually just, like I said, it died with a whimper at the end. So it was legally dead, I think, in 1831, if I’m not mistaken. I think it died at that point, 1831.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘That’s when Ecuador and Colombia, they, I’m sorry, Ecuador and Venezuela decide to leave Gran Colombia. They send the declaration and then it’s over. You can just, like I said, you can face the reality that there was never really an effective Gran Colombia. So they were just putting. Pen to paper, we’re separated, we’re over, even though, like for example, like a marriage, the wife has been living out of the house for 10 years and then she finally signs the divorce papers.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘That was kind of like the example. So for politically, they were separated for a long time, even before legally they were.’
Artie Mead: ‘Right. So I guess what you could say is this failed political pet project of Bolívar. It’s partly because, well, a lot because his ego got in the way, but then also, would you say it’s because obviously the caste system that was implemented by the Spanish.’
Artie Mead: ‘So as we said, as we were talking about earlier, these rotten foundations that were left by decolonialization, well, that had been left by colonialization and then when the Spanish had left, that they had left behind meant that Gran Colombia never really had a chance.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, I would say basically, and you can see it just to put out a specific date on it.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘It was on October 20th, 1831, uh, that New Granada as a Republic was established. And like I said, Santander was the first presidency, but then the moment simply when the, it was a convention actually in April 31 with the general at time, the vice president, I think was Rafael Urdaneta, he just surrenders to the other vice presidency, and then it’s abolished on November 21, 1831.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘But like I said, it was putting a final nail in a coffin that was already six feet underground. They were already dead. So it wasn’t like something that it could be done. So I think to be honest, as a historian, I think that Gran Colombia never really had a shot. Drew a lot of parallels to the, like, how do you call this the Roman empire?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Like when you try to the attempts to revive the Roman empire after the fall, I think that that was, it was very similar historically when you have a Frederick, I think, Redbeard, Frederick, I think where he was. The sacred Roman empire. It was a similar parallel where the issue was just the leadership, but the economics wasn’t there, that people weren’t there, the national identity wasn’t there, all the ingredients needed to make a country successful, basically.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Well, they weren’t there. And I think one of the major factors that we haven’t mentioned is the military one. Basically, since Gran Colombia did not have a major enemy to fight, it didn’t have the capacity to form a new identity around that enemy basically. They were just stuck fighting each other. Naturally, they never actually left that mindset of the independence war of civil war, brother against brother.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So it just became nation against nation. It was Peru against Colombia and then Peru against Ecuador and Ecuador against Bolivia and then Colombia against Venezuela and Venezuela against Colombia. And then it left kind of like this mark on the continent that we still see today, even in places when you don’t notice, like in football. Football, we are very, very tribal, very divided.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘We are very nationalistic in that sense. So if we never managed to actually join and we never actually were forced to join, so we just remain with this everlasting rivalry between nations so we each wanted to outdo each other and like I said, the economics also wasn’t there because of the.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Agricultural system, slavery-based labor market didn’t allow people to work and to produce. And by not being productive, a lot of them became a burden. And by being a burden, the structures of the state couldn’t work because there was no money, there were no taxes. So we need to accrue a lot of debt to actually maintain this kind of like Gran Colombia project. It was sustained by a lot of interest and debt.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And at the end, each country just got, “Hey, we got to go our own way.” And then each one had to accrue and just pay up all that and then get new debt in new money to actually establish their own country after that experiment. So there wasn’t a capacity to it. I think historically the facts weren’t there and also like I said, the social factor.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘The hierarchical aristocratic and then peasant dynamic did not allow common man to form an identity with Gran Colombia. So the Gran Colombia was mostly just something that the aristocracy, and even not even the aristocracy, was just a Bolívar’s idea and he influenced people on it, but nobody was convinced about it.’
Artie Mead: ‘Cool. Super interesting. All super interesting. I have two questions that I think we could probably finish up with. So the first is, what happened to Bolívar?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Okay, so like I said, Bolívar, like we have established before, he drew a lot of parallels with Napoleon and just like Napoleon, he met a very tragic and bitter end.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And after being the dictator or the president of Gran Colombia, the freedom fighter to end all freedom fighters, he was actually called a lot.’
Speaker 4: ‘Yeah.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘He was, or he was their figurehead of the independence. So after being that and having all the power, all the generals, having defeated the Spanish Empire and decolonized the Americas, like I said, he was on a downward spiral, personally and politically. He had burned all of the bridges that he had built with the alliances in Venezuela and Colombia and Ecuador, his businesses were basically unattended and got railed into the ground, so he didn’t have any money. So he was borrowing money to try to survive.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And then, before he got the chance to basically exile himself, he just made a stop in a Colombian town, and he got sick with tuberculosis, and he basically died.’
Artie Mead: ‘What about, what about was this?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘This was, uh, Bolívar’s death. It was around December 17 of 1830.’
Artie Mead: ‘Oh, wow. It was some time after the dissolution of Gran Colombia.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Straight after the factual dissolution, when Venezuela and Ecuador declared and, uh, that your, uh, structure, the legal structure was still there. It was abolished a year later, but Bolívar also died before that. So he was dead December 17 of 1830 in Santa Marta. And he died basically in an impoverished state with a borrowed shirt, a borrowed horse, nothing to his name to really claim, no wife, no children.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And his friend Sucre was dead. Páez was in Venezuela, and Flores was in Ecuador, and none of his major generals or friends or family was there. He was basically attended by a local doctor, some strangers, and he died, and then he was buried. And even though he, he, later everyone like, were sorry that this happened, then his, I think his remains were returned back to Caracas after that.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘But it was like a really tragic, sad death because he wanted to do more. He always aspired to create something great, and he actually kind of did but not in the way he intended. So at the end, he kind of just goes down basically as a broken or beaten man, having realized that even though he did a lot of liberating, he did, he did everything that he could on that front, he couldn’t manage, he couldn’t manage to construct anything.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘He couldn’t construct the structures that he wanted to. He could liberate people—that he was very good at—but he was…’
Artie Mead: ‘That he did ultimately, you know, he’s basically the man responsible for it. You know, liberating vast swathes of northern South America from Spanish rule. And, you know, what’s a shame is that he probably wanted the George Washington ending, where he, you know, became president and, you know, was a very great president, you know, printed on money and, you know, remembered in that way.’
Artie Mead: ‘But how is he remembered now in Colombia and Venezuela?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘In Colombia and Venezuela, he’s obviously now, after his tragic end, at the moment, he was in the… the historical moment he was unpopular because of his recent dictatorial tendencies and his kind of like his heel turn—I don’t know if you know—in wrestling terms. He kind of like turned evil at the end, so that’s why he died tragically. But then history kind of like passed on the wounds of the war, and then each country established itself and then it says, “We actually do have like a George Washington figure.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘We do have a national hero, and Bolívar is the national hero for these poor Venezuelans and Colombians and Ecuadorians. He’s a major, he’s the major historical figure for all of them. So he now is revered, and then we have provinces named after him. And for example, in Venezuela, each town that is considered like a city has to have a Bolívar square.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And if it doesn’t have a Bolívar square, it’s not considered like a major town. So each town has to have their own Bolívar square. And his history is taught to kids in primary school, secondary school. We have historians, analysts about it, a lot of paintings. So at the end, even though in the moment he wasn’t recognized by Washington here, later down the line, he did actually get the grand treatment as the figure of history that he wanted.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘He had the paintings and then the coin. For example, in Venezuela, we use the Bolívar as a currency. So he’s plastered all over the iconography and then the painting.’
Artie Mead: ‘So he probably did get, ultimately, he probably did get the recognition that he wanted, it’s just that his political project didn’t survive.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, it’s basically he got the recognition that he wanted, but tragically, as history always happens, he got the recognition decades and centuries after his death.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So he was later basically redeemed by the popular. The popular ideals, the country’s national sentiments that actually really indicated most of what he said. And it’s, it’s funny because he actually did predict some of the future. He did realize that by not forming Gran Colombia, we basically did trade one imperial power for another.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘In this case, being the U.S. He was eventually right that the U.S.—because that’s what his aim was—to basically be the United States of the South. Of Latin America or South America, basically.’
Speaker 4: ‘Yeah. And…’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Then we got into the sphere of influence of the U.S. And right now he has gained popularity with the people of Colombia and the former states of Gran Colombia. But now, for historians, it’s really tragic that he couldn’t actually at the same time manage to consolidate that because most of the people now realize that his vision was probably right. We needed like a stronger united front.’
Speaker 4: ‘In the international…’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Sense and the economic sense. And the turmoil of not being that has kind of left us historically stranded. So we are basically part of America, part of the greater new world project. But Latin America itself has never managed to rise to a developed state as a unified region.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Even though there’s one major book or movie I really like, it’s not about Bolívar, it’s about another figure that is called Boves. He said this thing at the end of the movie—the movie is called Taita Boves, and he was another figure of the independence war. He said at the end of the movie, he dies by the will of his own people.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘He gets kind of betrayed when he gets killed. And this man said something that I really resonate with. He says, “I condemn all of you to be wandering time looking for a taita,” and that means, “I condemn all of you to eternally look for a leader that’s never coming.”’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And then you realize that most of the Latin American countries had that thing—that longing for a leader that Bolívar was. And then he’s there, like spiritually, but never politically materialized. Like for example, the U.S. had Washington, Jefferson, and a lot of organization of great leaders. But even into the late, you got, like, for example, Lincoln. Lincoln was kind of like the great consolidator of the U.S. after that.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And we never got that figure. We had some presidents; we had the dictators. But we also get this longing for a leader, and that’s—you are reflected that each Latin American country is basically still with the mindset that they want a great leader, a great man of history, to lead them to prosperity. And Bolívar saw that.’
Artie Mead: ‘I guess Bolívar is that, but he just doesn’t have, unfortunately, the political success of the United States.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes. He’s got that emotional factor, but unfortunately, his political project, Gran Colombia, didn’t get off the ground and all of that kind of stuff.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So he couldn’t actually manifest. He has the icons, he has the speeches. He has the paintings, the grand stature. He doesn’t actually have the historical track record to have been successful. To found a country and that’s due to a lot of reasons. Like I said, there are a lot of reasons for that. And he couldn’t actually manage to find a successor. So his political will kind of died with him. So then each one of the countries started, did their own thing.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So just to finish up, then Colombia, Venezuela got founded, Ecuador got founded, and then Peru and Colombia also have territorial disputes. After that, Bolivia and Peru also have territorial disputes after that.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Okay. And Ecuador, we inherit a lot of debt. So there was a lot of money to be owed. So after this Gran Colombia project, each country is founded. Each country gets a military dictator—well, not dictator, a military president. And most of them served like 30 or 40 years.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Santander, he dies young. So he… presidency to another guy, but he also served like a couple of terms. Páez also did that and then he got the throne and then came back. Flores also served three terms as presidency and then they all kind of like put the countries back together. So at the end, they kind of managed to do it.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘At the end, they never actually… they were politically effective, but they were not transcendent and they were not iconic. They were good administrators, or at least good military generals, or at least good presidents enough to maintain the countries together. But they lacked what Bolívar had—the greater-than-life character, the speeches, the icons, the things.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So most of them are not as remembered as Bolívar, because even though they were better in the day-to-day stuff of actually managing a country, none of them had the grand ideals, the grand ambition to be… well, they did have ambition, but not that great.’
Artie Mead: ‘And that sort of leads me on to the second question that I wanted to ask: how is it remembered today in the countries that formed Gran Colombia?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And there you have, like, two camps: the camp of the history buff, like us, or like the hypothetical thinkers of history that say, “Well, what would have happened if, for example, Bolívar was more effective or his alliances were great, or if he had just had a little bit more of technological advancement, like 30 or 40 years later with a telegraph or something, that could have actually sustained the countries together?”’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So by the history buffs, by the aristocratic classes, it’s remembered kind of with a little bit of somberness, like, “Damn, we could have been great. Damn, we could have had a lot of international power. We could have been like a transatlantic… the Caribbean could have been ours, basically Cuba and Haiti. And we could have projected ourselves in history throughout the seas and have our own identity and be great economically.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘For example, specifically Ecuador and Venezuela, a century later, we got oil. So can you imagine having the Gran Colombia state together, and then we managed to get the oil that we currently have? Both Ecuador and Colombia have… Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela have major oil reserves. So we could have been basically like a Saudi Arabia—like ridiculously, ridiculous amounts of money could have gone in if we got the economics of oil into the mix.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘But it couldn’t happen. History wasn’t there. Technology wasn’t there. So history buffs are kind of sad about it. But the general populace, each of us learns that history of Gran Colombia as a primary school teaching. But most of the general populace, like I said, the disconnection between the aristocracy and the lower-class people, is that for most of us, it was like a… it was Bolívar’s thing.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And we respect him as our founder, leader, and things. Yeah. But then immediately after Gran Colombia, the subjects teach each of us why our countries were founded. And now we focus on, for Venezuelans, Páez, for Colombians, Santander, and for Ecuadorians, Flores. And then each of them gets to learn why their own respected leaders decided to separate.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And they had all the reasons to it. And then they had all the legal and political and economic reasons to separate. And then most of us don’t remember Gran Colombia as a grand thing. So if you ask the average Latin American citizen, they might know about it, and they might tell you, “Well, it was kind of like an interesting time. It was at the end of the war, but it was never going to work.” So it’s not really nostalgic for it. So like I said, since the unity never actually manifested the identity.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Each Latin American country gets their own national identity. So Venezuelans, Colombians, and Ecuadorians, people from Panama, Peru, and Bolivia, each of them start to create their own national identity, their myth, their founding myth, their icons, their own flag, their own national anthem. And, like I said, you can see it today in football. Each of our teams is highly competitive, and we… everyone’s very proud with their yellow football shirts.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yes, everyone is super proud. That’s what I love though. When I was in Colombia a couple of years ago on match days, everyone, the whole country is wearing their yellow football shirt. And it’s very endearing. It’s very sweet.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘It’s very, very nice. Actually, it creates like a really powerful feeling. In Venezuela, we have the war shirt for our team, and we do the same things. And we, of course, it’s football; it’s more tribal and rivalry, but we… you can see the trace better than war. Obviously, we never actually fought that many wars within each other. It was more like an economic, political rivalry, but never actually… we didn’t do the whole Germany-France thing of invading and killing each other all the time. It was… there were some territorial conflicts, but like I said, most of the inheritance for the lower common man is like, “Yes, Gran Colombia existed, but now we have a football rivalry.” That’s the extent to which Gran Colombia has persisted in the general unconsciousness of all of us.’
Artie Mead: ‘I think that leads us nicely to a close. Um, it’s been super interesting talking about this. It’s something that I’ve been interested in for a while now, so I really appreciate you coming on here, Eliecer, and engaging with me on this topic. So yeah, thank you for all your input. And yeah, is there anything more that you’d like to say before we finish up?’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Before finishing, I would like to say that I think that it’s good that there are episodes on this because I think there are a lot of parts of the world that get overlooked with their interesting history, Latin America being one of them. Southeast Asia also, or Far East Asia, or big parts of Africa—there’s a lot of really interesting history and characters.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘And there, like I said, there ought to be more podcasts or episodes or even movies or series about these characters, because they’re really important to, well, to our people, but to each of the people that, to each one that is interested in history. Just like I read about Napoleon, I think French people also need to read about Bolívar because they’re kind of like parallels to each other. They did a lot of things in common.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘So there are a lot of things that history can teach us from other people’s perspectives that lead us to be more in tune, even with our own society and our own history. And we understand we have these weird connections that we didn’t know we had, but we actually did.’
Artie Mead: ‘Yeah, exactly. No, and that’s why I want to do these sorts of episodes. I don’t want to be too Eurocentric. So thank you for helping me be less Eurocentric, because yeah, as you say, the history in every part of the world is equally as interesting. So yeah, thank you for helping me explore the topic, this very interesting topic of Gran Colombia.’
Artie Mead: ‘And yeah, please do join me again soon for talking about another topic. Um, thank you so much, Eliecer.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Bye.’
Artie Mead: ‘Bye.’
Eliecer Colina: ‘Yes, you’re welcome. I will be glad to do another talk with you.’
Artie Mead: ‘Wonderful. Okay. Well, thank you very much for listening, everyone, and see you next time. Bye.’
Artie Mead: ‘Hi guys, just a quick heads-up. This episode was shortened to fit within the time limit. If you’d like to catch the full-length version and even watch the video, head over to The History Buff Patreon page. Your support means the world to me. Until next time, take care and stay tuned for more exclusive content on Patreon. Cheers.’