The Invention of Nature

At the end of May 1819, three months after his speech to the congress, Bolívar drove his entire army with single-minded determination from Angostura across the continent towards the Andes to free New Granada. His troops consisted of Páez’s horsemen, Indians, freed slaves, mestizos, creoles, women and children. There were also many British veterans who had joined Bolívar at the end of the Napoleonic Wars when hundreds of thousands of soldiers had returned home from the battlefields with no jobs or income. Bolívar’s unofficial ambassador in London had not only tried to get international support for the revolution but was also busy recruiting the unemployed veterans. Within five years more than 5,000 soldiers – the so-called British Legions – arrived in South America from Britain and Ireland together with some 50,000 rifles and muskets as well as hundreds of tons of munitions. Some were motivated by political beliefs, others by money, but whatever their reasons, Bolívar’s fortunes were turning.

Bolívar’s strange mix of troops achieved the impossible over the next weeks as they trudged west through torrential rains across the flooded plains of the Llanos towards the Andes. By the time they climbed the magnificent mountain range at the small town of Pisba, some 100 miles to the north-east of Bogotá, their shoes had long been shredded and many wore blankets instead of trousers. Barefoot, hungry and freezing, they battled on against ice and thin air, climbing to a height of 13,000 feet before descending down into the heart of enemy territory. A few days later, at the end of July, they surprised the royalist army with the bravery of the spear-wielding llaneros, the calm determination of the British soldiers and Bolívar’s almost god-like ability seemingly to appear everywhere.

If they survived the march across the Andes, they believed they would be able to crush the royalists. And so they did. On 7 August 1819, fired up by their victory a few days previously, Bolívar’s troops defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Boyacá. As Bolívar’s men charged down the slopes, the terrified royalists just ran. The road to Bogotá was open for Bolívar and he now rode to the capital like a ‘lightning bolt’, one of his officers said, his coat open to his bare chest and his long hair dancing in the wind. Bolívar took Bogotá and with that wrested New Granada from the Spanish. In December Quito, Venezuela and New Granada joined to form the new Republic of Gran Colombia with Bolívar as President.

Over the next few years Bolívar continued his battle. He won Caracas back in the summer of 1821, and a year later, in June 1822, he arrived triumphantly in Quito. He rode through the same rugged landscape that had stirred Humboldt’s imagination so profoundly two decades previously. Bolívar himself had never seen this part of South America before. In the valleys the fertile soil produced luxurious trees covered in exquisite blossoms and banana trees laden with fruit. On the higher plains herds of the small vicuñas were grazing, and above them condors were gliding effortlessly with the winds. South of Quito one volcano after another lined the valleys almost like an avenue. At no other place in South America, Bolívar thought, had nature been so ‘generous in gifts’. But as beautiful as the scenery here was, it also made him reflect on what he had given up. After all, he could have lived peacefully, working his fields surrounded by glorious nature. Bolívar was deeply touched by this monumental landscape – emotions he put into words when he wrote a rapturous prose poem called ‘My Delirium on Chimborazo’. It was his allegory for the liberation of Latin America.

In his poem Bolívar follows Humboldt’s footsteps. As he ascends the majestic Chimborazo, Bolívar uses the volcano as an image of his fight to free the Spanish colonies. As he climbs up further, he leaves behind Humboldt’s tracks and imprints his own into the snow. Then, as he battles with each step in the oxygen-deprived air, Bolívar has a vision of Time itself. Overcome by a feverish delirium, he sees the past and future emerging before him. High above him against the vaulted sky lay infinity: ‘I grasp the eternal with my hands,’ he cries, and ‘feel the infernal prisons boiling beneath my footsteps’. With the land rolled out below, Bolívar used Chimborazo to place his life within the context of South America. He was Gran Colombia, the new nation he had wrought, and Gran Colombia was in him. He was El Libertador, the saviour of the colonies and the man who held their destiny in his palms. Here on the icy slopes of Chimborazo, ‘the tremendous voice of Colombia cries out to me’, Bolívar ends his poem.