THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY / WORLD LITERATURE / SIMON BOLIVAR

SIMON BOLIVAR, author of LETTER FROM JAMAICA

translated by Lewis Bertrand.

Reply of a South American to a Gentleman of This Island

JAMAICA

Third Edition. Volume E.

Including: ANDRES BELLO (1781-1865)

Ode to Tropical Agriculture / 388 trasnslated by Frances M.  Lopez-Morillas

***Known as ''El Libertador '' --the Liberator - Simón Bolívar (1783-12830) led the movement for Latin American independence from Spain. Born in Venezuela, he took part in a battle that achieved a fragile independence there in 1811 before turning his attention to the rest of New Granada, a huge  Spanish colony that comprised what are now Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador,, Guyana, , Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, as well as the colony of Perü, Chile, and Bolivia. In 1819 Bolivar´s army beat backSpanish forces, liberating the Republic of Colombia, and he was elected President. Six years later he achieved victory in what was then known as Upper Perú, now named Bolivia in his honor.

***Bolívar was a thinker as well as a fighter. He wrote Bolivia´s constitution an a series of influential political manifestos. He had read works of French Enlightenment philosophers in his youth, including Rousseau and Voltaire, and was inspired by the  French Revolution. After a defeat in 1815, Bolívar went into exile in Jamaica to reflect on the ideal course of action. His famous ''Letter from Jamaica''. was published with the intention  of winning Britain over to the side of South American independence. Bolívar lists the crimes of Spain and its tenuos hold on the vast territories of Latin America, and he offers a theory of colonial power that is different, he argues, from other kinds of tyranny. He makes the case that Latin America independence will serve the interests of all Europe. And he ends with a call to unity among all Latin American nations, foreseeing a great future for the continent.

***Now you will read what Bolïvar meant by another -kind of tyranny... on his own words...

Extract from LETTER FROM JAMAICA by Simón Bolívar

*** According to Baron von Humboldt, New Spain, including Guatemala, had 7, 8000,000 inhabitants in 1808. Since that time, the insurrection, which has shaken virtually all of her provinces, has appreciable reduced that apparently correct figure, for over  a million men have perished, as you can see in the report of Mr, Walton (1),  who describes  faifthfully the bloody crimes committed in tha abundant kingdom. There the struggle continues by dint of human and every other type of sacrifice, for the Spaniards spare nothing that might enable them to subdue those who have had the misfortune of being born on this soil, which asppears to be destined to flow with the blood of its offspring. In spite of everything, the Mexicans will be free . They have embraced the countriy¨s cause resolved to avenge their forefathers or follow them to the grave. Already they say with Raynal (2): The time has come at last to repay he Spaniards torture for torture and to drown that race of annihilators in his own blood or in the sea.

(1) William Walton (1784-1857) British resident of Santo Domingo, now capital of the Dominican Republic, who wrote The Present State of the Spanish colonies (1810) and An Expose of the Dissensions of Spanish America (1814),

(2) Guillaume Thomas Raynal (1713-1796), French historian and pshilosopher who condemned European colonialism.