The relationship between Bolívar and Pétion was critical at a key moment in the independence struggles in South America. The royalist offensive of 1814 resulted in the fall of the Second Republic in Venezuela, while in 1815 New Granada succumbed to royalist forces under the command of the Spanish General Pablo Morrillo. Bolívar sought refuge and support in Jamaica, and after exhausting his appeals to the British he turned to Alexandre Pétion in republican Haiti. Pétion was a veteran of the Hatian war of independence, fought against Napoleon’s military forces between 1802 and 1804. Bolívar appealed for aid form the Haitian President in the spirit of republican struggles against European colonialism and imperialism. In his letter of 21 January 1816 Bolívar calls Pétion “the father of all the true republicans,” and shares with the Haitian President the ideals and desire for liberty, equality, and American nationhood, free form European colonial rule.

 

      From Kingston, Jamaica, Bolívar writes his first letter to Pétion on December 19, 1815. Shortly thereafter Bolívar will set sail for Haiti, arriving at Les Cayes on December 24 and reaching Port-au-Prince on December 31, in anticipation of his meeting with Pétion on January 2, 1816. Bolívar writes of that first meeting in a 2 January 1816 letter to Luis Brion, noting that he has high hopes for the military aid and moral support that Pétion is willing to offer. Part of that material aid, as John Lynch notes, came “in the form of in the form of 6000 rifles, munitions, supplies, naval transport and a sizeable sum of money” (97).

 

     The larger relevance and significance of the Bolívar-Pétion relationship is expressly evident in the correspondence that is translated here.

 

Sources:

 

Lynch, John. Simón Bolívar. A Life. New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 2006.

 

Verna, Paul. Petión y Bolívar. Cuarenta años de relaciones haitiano-venezolanas y su aporte a la emancipación de Hispanoamérica.Caracas: Oficina Central de Información, 1969.