Simón Bolívar's Failure

Simón Bolívar “dreamed of a land governed by reason”, and although he spent an enormous amount and resources on his dream it was still a failure (Tignor). He was born in Venezuela in 1783 and his father was wealthy and socially powerful (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica). While in Europe a former tutor told him about the writings of “European rationalist thinkers such as Locke, Hobbes, Buffon, d’Alembert, and Helvetius as well as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau” (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica). From there he returned to Venezuela and a year later a Latin American independence movement began. Bolívar quickly became a predominant figure in the movement because he was motivated by the opportunity to make his country a land
“When Napoleon named Joseph Bonaparte King of Spain and its colonies, which included Venezuela, Bolívar joined the resistance movement” (Simón Bolívar). He wanted his home country of Venezuela along with other Latin American countries to gain independence from the Spanish who had become a puppet country of France. In 1810 the resistance group he was a member of was based in the Caracas, which had recently become independent. He traveled to Britain on a diplomatic mission for the independence of Latin American countries, which ultimately failed. However, his career and heavy involvement in the Latin American military and politics had begun. Bolívar would fight for the independence of Latin American countries, for unity of Latin American countries that would be a land of
Bolivar returned to Venezuela and three years of equal victories and defeats between his military and the Spanish followed. He set up his headquarter in an area that was not impacted by the war, acquired several thousand British and Irish officers and soldiers, and united the revolutionary forces. He planned an attack on the Spanish at New Granada on the Spanish, which the Spanish believed was unlikely due to the nearly impassable routes. “The Spaniards were taken by surprise and in the crucial Battle of Boyacá on August 7, 1819, the bulk of the royalist army surrendered to Bolívar” (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica). This allowed Bolivar to take back several Venezuelan territories and the creation of the Gran