Read Bolivar: American Liberator for Free Online Page A
Authors: Marie Arana
tuberculosis on July 6, 1792, leaving her four children in her elderly father’s care. Not entirely well himself, Don Feliciano Palacios took up his pen and wrote to Esteban in Madrid, delivering the news with admirable equanimity:“Concepción decided to lay her illness to rest and she expelled a great deal of blood through her mouth, continuing her deterioration until this morning at eleven thirty, at which point God took it upon Himself to claim her.” It had been a long and grueling death:she had bled for seven days.
Once his daughter was interred in the Bolívar family chapel, Don Feliciano dedicated himself to arranging the marriages of his orphaned granddaughters.Within two months, he married fifteen-year-old María Antonia to her distant cousin Pablo Clemente Francia. Three months after that, he wed Juana, who was only thirteen, toher uncle Dionisio Palacios. As for his grandsons, Don Feliciano decided to leave Simón and Juan Vicente—then nine and eleven, respectively—in the house on San Jacinto Street, under the supervision of the Bolívar family servants. He hada connecting passageway built from that house to his own, so that the boys could spend days with him and then retire to their old, familiar beds at night. It seemed a rational enough solution, comfortingthe children with an illusion of permanence and stability. That flimsy solace did not last long, however. Don Feliciano Palacios died the following year, leaving his grandsons to face yet another loss in their waning family universe.
The boys were immensely wealthy, with anet worth equivalent today to at least $40 million, and because of it, they would never go ignored. But money had bought them little happiness. Within the first decade of life, Simón had lost his father, mother, grandparents, a sister, and most of his aunts and uncles on the Bolívar side. That so few Bolívars had survived to lay claim to the family fortune convinced the Palacios it was theirs to take. So confident was Don Feliciano Palacios of this rightful heritage that he took care before his death to make sure that all the wealth eventually flowed to his own children. He drew up a will, making his sons legal guardians of the Bolívar boys. Twelve-year-oldJuan Vicente was put in the custody of his uncle Juan Félix Palacios and transferred to a hacienda fifty miles away. Ten-year-old Simón was entrusted to his uncle Carlos, an ill-humored, lazy, and grasping bachelor who lived with his sisters in Don Feliciano’s house—at the other end of the passageway.
So busy did Carlos become in the venture of squandering Bolívar profits that he had little time for his impressionable young charge. He relegated the boy’s welfare to his sisters and servants. Ever headstrong, Simón began to spendtime in the company of street boys, neglecting everything his tutors had tried to teach him, learning the vulgar language of the time. Whenever he could, he headed for the back alleys of Caracas, or took a horse from the family corral and rode out into the surrounding countryside. He avoided his studies and turned his attention instead to the highly imperfect world around him, a world that Spain had made. He would not understand much of what he saw until later, until he had crisscrossed the continent as a full-grown man. But it was an education that would serve him for the rest of his life.
FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS, FROM the mid-1500s through the mid-1700s, the world that Spain had made had struggled against fiscal failure. The empire whose motto had once been a rousing Plus Ultra! had glutted world markets with silver, thwarted the economic growth of its colonies,and brought itself more than once to the brink of financial ruin. Nowhere was Spain’s misguided fiscal strategy more evident than in the streets of Caracas in the late 1700s, where a deep rage against the madre patria was on the rise.
The case of the Spanish American colonies had no precedent in modern history: a vital colonial
Once his daughter was interred in the Bolívar family chapel, Don Feliciano dedicated himself to arranging the marriages of his orphaned granddaughters.Within two months, he married fifteen-year-old María Antonia to her distant cousin Pablo Clemente Francia. Three months after that, he wed Juana, who was only thirteen, toher uncle Dionisio Palacios. As for his grandsons, Don Feliciano decided to leave Simón and Juan Vicente—then nine and eleven, respectively—in the house on San Jacinto Street, under the supervision of the Bolívar family servants. He hada connecting passageway built from that house to his own, so that the boys could spend days with him and then retire to their old, familiar beds at night. It seemed a rational enough solution, comfortingthe children with an illusion of permanence and stability. That flimsy solace did not last long, however. Don Feliciano Palacios died the following year, leaving his grandsons to face yet another loss in their waning family universe.
The boys were immensely wealthy, with anet worth equivalent today to at least $40 million, and because of it, they would never go ignored. But money had bought them little happiness. Within the first decade of life, Simón had lost his father, mother, grandparents, a sister, and most of his aunts and uncles on the Bolívar side. That so few Bolívars had survived to lay claim to the family fortune convinced the Palacios it was theirs to take. So confident was Don Feliciano Palacios of this rightful heritage that he took care before his death to make sure that all the wealth eventually flowed to his own children. He drew up a will, making his sons legal guardians of the Bolívar boys. Twelve-year-oldJuan Vicente was put in the custody of his uncle Juan Félix Palacios and transferred to a hacienda fifty miles away. Ten-year-old Simón was entrusted to his uncle Carlos, an ill-humored, lazy, and grasping bachelor who lived with his sisters in Don Feliciano’s house—at the other end of the passageway.
So busy did Carlos become in the venture of squandering Bolívar profits that he had little time for his impressionable young charge. He relegated the boy’s welfare to his sisters and servants. Ever headstrong, Simón began to spendtime in the company of street boys, neglecting everything his tutors had tried to teach him, learning the vulgar language of the time. Whenever he could, he headed for the back alleys of Caracas, or took a horse from the family corral and rode out into the surrounding countryside. He avoided his studies and turned his attention instead to the highly imperfect world around him, a world that Spain had made. He would not understand much of what he saw until later, until he had crisscrossed the continent as a full-grown man. But it was an education that would serve him for the rest of his life.
FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS, FROM the mid-1500s through the mid-1700s, the world that Spain had made had struggled against fiscal failure. The empire whose motto had once been a rousing Plus Ultra! had glutted world markets with silver, thwarted the economic growth of its colonies,and brought itself more than once to the brink of financial ruin. Nowhere was Spain’s misguided fiscal strategy more evident than in the streets of Caracas in the late 1700s, where a deep rage against the madre patria was on the rise.
The case of the Spanish American colonies had no precedent in modern history: a vital colonial