Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution – Book Excerpt – Chapter 3: Simon Bolivar

Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution – Book Excerpt – Chapter 3: Simon Bolivar

Peter Polack

Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution by Peter Polack

Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution – Book Excerpt – Chapter 1: William Wallace

Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution – Book Excerpt – Chapter 2: George Washington

Simon Bolivar

Simon Bolivar made a successful career of failures, defeats, elimination of competing fellow countrymen and repeated exiles manifested in the numerous early short-lived republics of Venezuela.

After a coup and unilateral declaration of independence by Venezuelan leaders in 1810, Bolivar, then a colonel, was put in charge of the fortified coastal town of Puerto Cabello in 1812 which he soon lost to the advancing Spanish forces, in part due to the defection of his fellow commander, Francisco Vinoni. It was not an auspicious beginning for the man regarded as El Libertador or more recently American Liberator.^[i]

Captain General Simon Bolivar

Iamcharles66/Wikimedia Commons

A recurring characteristic of nationalist and guerrilla movements is the jockeying for power among the leadership whereby sub-groups are formed to push a particular person or cabal into the position of ultimate leadership, and maintain that appointment. Many early leaders of the Cuban Revolution and possible future competitors to Fidel Castro soon disappeared from public view by incarceration or death such as Huber Matos and Camilo Cienfuegos. As the saying goes it is better to be on the inside looking out than the outside looking in.

Bolivar went on to join the independence movement in the united provinces of New Granada which approximated to modern day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama before it was put down by Spanish forces in 1816.^[ii] During this period of his life, Bolivar successfully attacked and captured several towns and cities before being granted permission to continue the Venezuelan liberation movement.

The road to Venezuelan independence and confirmation that Bolivar was a capable military leader began in the little known, or remembered, Colombian town of Cucuta that lay just west of the Venezuela border. Ordered to attack an eight hundred strong force of Spanish soldiers under General Ramon Correa, Bolivar began to display the making of a guerrilla leader when he came upon the Spaniards guarding a high mountain pass. He responded by sending a false letter that his counterpart, Colonel Castillo, was advancing on Pamplona to the south.

The letter was deliberately intercepted, and the Spanish force turned and left the choke point for Cucuta.

Bolivar and Castillo, with a force half the size of their target, then crossed the Zulia river and attacked Cucuta on the morning of 28 February 1813, the last Sabbath of Lent.

The Spanish general was taken by surprise and rallied his troops who fled in the face of an uphill bayonet charge ordered by Bolivar who was not yet thirty years old. The defeated Spanish invaders had twenty dead soldiers and tens of wounded whereas Bolivar incurred only a tenth of that.

His small but victorious army was rewarded with supplies, munitions and Bolivar promoted to general by a grateful Colombian government in waiting.^[iii]

Cannon Exhibit Cucuta Colombia

Ricardocolombia/Wikimedia Commons

The following June in the western state of Trujillo an empowered Bolivar famously issued a Decree of War to the Death whereby Venezuelan guerrillas were absolved of all acts of violence, murder or atrocities against Spanish citizens in Venezuela:

Today this would be cause for an International Criminal Court prosecution for genocide similar to that recently faced by convicted Serbian and African leaders. The court was created in 2002 by the Rome Statute of the United Nations but facilitators of the earlier unlawful detention of political opponents, many of whom succumbed to disease or death, in Africa, the Caribbean, Malaya and Kenya have escaped punishment while still walking among us.

This was when the scion of an upper-class family conservative in his views became not only a guerrilla in the true meaning, but a ruthless leader who prepared his followers to make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause and instill widespread fear in the enemy.

Conquest massacres were not a new phenomenon of the time, having been pioneered throughout the New World by Spanish adventurers and conquistadors, who decimated native Indians with wild abandon, often by importation of disease. Early independence movements felt the hard toe of Spanish oppression with executions, incarcerations or simple exile, covering their actions by the thin veneer of government authority and judicial executions.

One, possibly unforeseen, significance of the decree lay in its adoption by future generations of rebels spinning Bolivar’s message so that violence and extrajudicial killings were a necessary part of any liberation movement and by extension, a particular political ideology. Some guerrilla movements would utilize this as a manifesto of operation in their political struggles by applying this sentence to their own countrymen, writ large the FARC insurgency since 1964 but now apparently ended after many decades.^[iv]

This concept has even extended to the Venezuela of Bolivar’s birth where it is the government not guerrillas who are applying this maxim against political opponents and even people in the street. Guerrilla leaders too often follow the writings and history of Bolivar, without separating wheat from the chaff, the excess of robotic adherence.

After Trujillo, Bolivar continued marching east at speed towards the capital city of Caracas as part of what became known as the Admirable campaign, with little resistance from pro-Spanish forces.

Guerrilla forces have to be sensitized to the sway of a conflict allowing them to take advantage of the smallest gain. Riding on the back of recent victories, just like Washington, Bolivar experienced increasing support and men rallying to his columns, including enemy deserters.

A second and perhaps more important reason is that the inevitable poorly supplied guerrilla army with limited logistical support must make haste while supplies, and most necessary, indigenous support is at a high. At all times in the caravan to Caracas, Bolivar was aware of threats of large pro-Spanish forces in neighboring provinces, but he kept his eye on the prize.

Bolivar made his final advance on Caracas, a city in confusion as government officials fled with no significant military defences available, to arrive at an open city on 6 August 1813, El Libertador. Celebrations commenced with a parade accompanied by flowers, young girls in white and church bells after which Bolivar declared the Second Republic of Venezuela. It was not to last.

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Casemate Publishing will release Guerrilla Warfare: The Revolution Kings by Peter Polack in October 2018. Guerrilla Warfare: The Revolution Kings is a compendium of prominent guerilla leaders worldwide including William Wallace,George Washington, Simon Bolivar, Mao Zedong and King Ibn Saud. The book profiles each leader and analyzes their military strategy for readers interested in biographies, military history or the history of the countries included in the book. He is the author of Last Hot Battle of the Cold War published by Casemate in 2013. His most recent book was Jamaica, The Land of Film published in 2017.He was a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Warfare and his most recent article, Syria: The Evolution Revolution was published in the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center magazine. In 2014 he became a part time reporter for Reuters News Agency mainly reporting on the Cuban refugee crisis in the Cayman Islands. He is presently researching his next book Colombia Victory a review of recent successful counterinsurgency strategies by the National Army of Colombia.

End Notes