Despite their genuine admiration for Bolivar, constituents understood that Bolivars argumentation in favor of hereditary principles of political power was very weak (not to say confusing), and that an institution imitating the British House of Lords would be nothing but a setback to old aristocratic times. Helg, A. In an oft-quoted passage of the Angostura Address, he argues: The continuation of authority in the same individual has frequently proved the ruin of democratic governments. The morality of slavery was by no means a settled debate during the time of the Angostura Address. Bogota: Random House. This time, he wandered throughout the Caribbean. Argentina: Progress, Stalemate, Discord, Understanding Argentinas Dirty War Through Memoir, The Challenge of Burying the Ley de Caducidad in Uruguay, The Spanish-American Republics, Theodore Child (1891), Document #24: What is Peronism? by Juan Domingo Pern (1948) || The Twenty Truths of the Pernist Justicialism, Juan Domingo Pern (1950), Document #25: Statement by the military upon taking power (1976), Document #26: Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Adolfo Prez Esquivel (1980), Document #27: Speech at a Dinner with the Council of Americas in New York, Nstor Kirchner (2006), Chapter 10. Napoleon, whose reign as Emperor was. This speech, now known as the Angostura Address, is a prime document in the Bolivarian canon. Inspired by the revolutions of both the. Chile: Repression and Democracy, A Voyage from the United States to South America, Thomas Bennett (1821), Document #28: Final Speech, Salvador Allende (1973), Document #29: Military Decrees on Seizing Power, Augusto Pinochet (1973), Document #30: Inaugural Address, Michelle Bachelet (2006), A Romanticism of Slavery and the Plantation Economy, Casa Grande e Senzala and the Formation of a New Brazilian Identity, Amnesty, Amnesia, and Moral Reparations in Brazil, Exploracin oficial por la primera vez desde el norte de la America del SurViaje a Rio de Janeiro, Francisco Michelena y Rojas (1867), Document #31: On Slavery in Brazil, Thomas Ewbank (1856), Document #32: State Department Telegram to Ambassador Lincoln Gordon (1964), Document #33: Letter to Pope Paul VI, Marcos Sattamini Pena de Arruda (1971), Document #34: Speech of the President of the Republic in the ceremony installing the Truth Commission, Dilma Rousseff (2012), Chapter 12. Bolivar acknowledged that federal forms of government were theoretically virtuous, and that democratic systems of checks and balances were to be emulated. This question becomes even more important as it was central to the separatist movement against the Great Colombia that finally overthrew him and led to his exile and ultimate death in solitude. After he assumed full dictatorial powers in 1828, Bolivar severely limited various basic liberties, appealing to reasons of public morality. Edinburgh University Press. 2003. For, of all Enlightenment thinkers, Rousseau is typically considered to be somewhat of an outsider, even a pioneer of the Counter-Enlightenment. Yet, there were still notable Spanish Enlightenment figures (Jovellanos, Mayans, Olavide, amongst others). Lpez, J and Lopez, J. Bolivar, S. 1830. Throughout his lifetime, Bolivar was concerned with public morality, and perhaps his most quoted words by Colombian and Venezuelan schoolchildren, come from the Angostura Address: Morals and knowledge are what we most need now (Bolivar 1819). He is the head of government, but his ministers and subordinates rely more upon law than upon his authority, as they are personally responsible; and not even decrees of royal authority can exempt them from this responsibility. Chodor, T. 2014. and men of philosophical thought (Roscio, Viscardo, etc. In order to gain Catholic support, he even outlawed the teaching of Benthams philosophy (which he himself had admired for so long), as the English philosophers views were considered too immoral by conservative clergy. Reprint ed., Washington, D.C.: Press of B. S. Adams, 1919. Despite the confusing nature of some of these arguments, we must not lose sight of the fact that Bolivar was, above all, a man of revolutionary action, and he responded to particular historical circumstances that may have required some necessary measure in the mist of the chaos originated in the civil war that had been going on for almost ten years. Iberoamericana Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. That same year, Bolivar would head towards the Venezuelan plains, assemble an army of llaneros who now supported the Republican Cause- and European mercenaries. Scanned by J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. But, such celebrations should be devoid of nationalist distortions, and they should be cleansed of the typical hero-worship that has taken place in Latin America for the last 150 years, and has accelerated in Venezuela during the last 20 years. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2003.0004. (2018). And, at times, he seems to believe that, the new nations are not sufficiently mature to be wholly free: Liberty, says Rousseau, is a succulent food, but difficult to digest. Bolivar did not elaborate much on what this moral power would do exactly, but he seemed to have in mind a governing body akin to Roman censors, whose basic function was to regulate public morality (Leiva 1985). Disqus. After some military action in New Grenada (modern-day Colombia), Bolivar returned to Venezuela in 1812 and after a remarkable series of military triumphs he managed to recapture the capital Caracas (Lopez and Lopez 1999). The Congress of Angostura is considered Venezuela's second legislative congress, the first being the one that met in 1811. It met from February 15, 1819, established the new independent-from-Spain nation on December 17, was interrupted by further independentist activity, and reconvened on July 31, 1821, when . Timeline for Mexico: 1519-Present; Mexican Heads of State; Mexican Profiles and Personalities; Moments and Events in Mexico. El proceso ideolgico de la emancipacin en Colombia. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. While in Rome and inspired by his early contacts with liberal movements in the old continent (Bushnell 2003) he made an oath to free the American countries from Spanish imperialism (Castro-Klaren 2003). Once again, he was inspired by his upbringing of admiration for Classical Antiquity: I have dared to suggest a moral power, drawn from the remote ages of antiquity and those obsolete laws, which for some time maintained public virtue amongst the Greeks and Romans (Bolivar 1819). 2010. Bolivars stand on the abolition of monarchy, however, is more problematic. The first is very wisely constituted. Indeed, Bolivars stance on the moral power coheres well with his authoritarian leanings. Did not monarchy exist in France for fourteen centuries? Latin America in the World Arena, 1800s-1980s, Moments and Events in U.S.-Latin American Relations (1800s-1980s), A History of United States Policy Towards Haiti, Document #46: Human Rights in Latin America: An Interview with Paulo Srgio Pinherio, Luis Muoz Martin: Founding Father of Modern Puerto Rico, Document #37: Monroe Doctrine, James Monroe (1823), Document #38 Abraham Lincoln on the Mexican-American War (1846-48), Document #39: Roosevelt Corollary, Theodore Roosevelt (1904), Document #40: Brazil, the United States and Pan Americanism, Document #35: United Fruit Co., Pablo Neruda (1950), Document #41: Address at a White House Reception for Members of Congress and for the Diplomatic Corps of the Latin American Republics, John F. Kennedy (1961), Chapter 16. 1999. House of Angostura, a Trinidad and Tobago company manufacturing angostura bitters. ), EZLN Command (1993), Chapter 4. 2018. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16993/iberoamericana.427, 1. Download date: August 25th, 2018. Throughout the document, he is concerned about whether or not the emerging nations are truly ready for liberal forms of government. The Angostura Address, by contrast, is far more about Bolivars actual political proposals in thinking about what lies ahead for Spanish America after independence. Precisely because no form of government is so weak as the democratic, its framework must be firmer, and its institutions must be studied to determine their degree of stabilityunless this is done, we will have to reckon with an ungovernable, tumultuous, and anarchic society, not with a social order where happiness, peace, and justice prevail. from the Original Spanish by Francisco Javier Ynes). Criollos would know be second-class citizens. Europeans still perceived Spain more as an African country, as in Alexandre Dumas (himself of African descent) apocryphal observation: Africa begins at the Pyrenees (Altaschul 2012: 11), and Enlightened Spaniards tried hard to overcome that. Did not the Roman Empire conquer the world? Unlike other far more questionable Venezuelan caudillos of the latter 19th Century (such as Ezequiel Zamora), who freed their slaves only after having been financially compensated, Bolivar genuinely freed his own slaves without any compensation. The congress of the Republic of Venezuela is installed. This address is for the Congress of Angostura in which the first issue he places on the table is that the mestizos are not European, nor Indians, but a mixture of both Spaniard and native blood. El caudillismo en Amrica Latina, ayer y hoy. An Address of Bolvar at the Congress of Angostura (February 15, 1819). Again the Angostura Address of 1819 clearly shows a Bolivar who was already very concerned with the chaotic potential of an independent South America. 2018;47(1):7482. Lynch, J. We are controlled by a system which deprives us of the rights to which we are entitled, and leaves us in a sort of permanent infancy with respect to public affairs (Bolivar 1819). One common colonialist trope in the 19th Century was the concept of Oriental despotism (Wittfogel, 1953), popularized by Hegel and Hegelians especially Karl Marx himself. The Angostura Address 200 Years Later: A Critical Reading. Retrieved from: https://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Carta_de_Bol%C3%ADvar_al_general_Juan_Jos%C3%A9_Flores_(1830). On February 15, 1819, The Liberator entered the Government Palace of Angostura along with Rafael Urdaneta, Toms Montilla and Colombia: Civility and Violence, Document #20: Press Release from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Secretariat of the Central General Command of the FARC-EP (2002), Document #21: Statement by Humberto de la Calle, Head of the Government Delegation to the Conversations Table, Humberto de la Calle (2013), Chapter 8. Wittfogel, K. 1953. Login has been disabled for this journal while it is transferred to a new platform. The Lower Classes . Retrieved from: http://www.archivodellibertador.gob.ve/escritos/buscador/spip.php?article9987. He thus anticipated these objections, by trying to assure the audience that a hereditary Senate would not be aristocratic: In no manner whatever would the creation of a hereditary senate be a violation of political equality; it is not a nobility I wish to establish, because that, as has been said by a celebrated republican, would be to destroy at once equality and liberty. Andrade G, Lugo-Ocando J. By the end of his life, Bolivar was a deeply disappointed and bitter man who wrote to a friend: All who served the Revolution have plowed the sea (Bolivar 1830). Caballero, M. 2006. 2015. During the Second National Congress of Angostura on February 15, 1819 Bolivar stood and gave an address that would form its own place in history. 1965. Again, Bolivar never answers. Scanned by J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. Draper, H. 1968. The whole purpose of the Angostura Congress was precisely for Bolivar to renounce power as dictator and give it back to the constituency. Yet, astonishingly, Ferdinand abolished the 1812 Constitution, and imposed a new absolutist regime that, once again, contemplated the American territories as colonies. Orientalism. If the Senate were hereditary rather than elective, it would, in my opinion, be the basis, the tie, the very soul of our republic. Latin America in the World Arena, 1990s - Present. Bolivar was certainly the foremost figure that synthetized formal political thought, constitutional doctrine, and revolutionary action. One of the most significant transformations was his approach to the position of a President for Life. The Congress of Angostura A Great Address and Campaigning in the Plains (1819) Congress did not meet until February 15, 1819, on account of the late arrival of some representatives. Geographies of Philological Knowledge: Postcoloniality and the Trasatlantic National Epic. But, in the Angostura Address, he clearly mistrusts democracy, as it seems to cripple the strength of a nation: But what democratic government was ever able to unite power, prosperity and permanency at the same time? of History, Cal. In the Angostura Address, Bolivar engages in some confusing argumentation trying to justify the concentration of power in the executive branch of government: In a republic, the executive ought to be the strongest, because everything conspires against it; and on the other hand in a monarchy the legislative ought to be the most powerful, as everything unites in favor of the sovereign (Bolivar 1819). In political storms this body would arrest the thunderbolts of the government and would repel any violent popular reaction. State Fullerton. 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