The South American Wars of Liberation were a series of revolutions that occurred in South America against New Spain. The wars that resulted in the independence of Spain's colonies in South America were a complex series of conflicts, primarily fought between opposing groups of colonists and only secondarily against Spanish forces. From the confusion, a few individuals stand out as exceptional military leaders.
Background[]
The movements for independence in Spanish America were precipitated by the collapse of royal authority in Spain rather than by any resentment of Spanish rule.
Revolutionary Warning[]
The ideas of liberty and equality spread by the American Revolution and the French Revolution had limited impact on Central and South America, where Spanish administrators ruled in alliance with privileged Creoles (American-born whites). The Haitian Revolution in the 1790s, which set up the first black-ruled state in the Americas, was seen by most Creoles as a warning against revolutionary upheaval, which might end their domination of the pardo (mixed race) and black majority in the Spanish colonies.
The Peninsular War[]
When Spain allied itself with France against Britain in the Napoleonic Wars, links between the colonies and Spain were disrupted by British naval control of the Atlantic. In 1806 Creole republican Francisco de Miranda tried to invade Venezuela with British support, but was repulsed by a people still loyal to Spain. Things changed after 1808, when Napoleon deposed Spain's Bourbon dynasty, sparking the Peninsular War. By 1810 Latin-American Creoles decided to take government into their own hands.
Wars[]
The colonial independence struggles in South America started in 1810, with uprisings from New Granada (present-day Colombia) and Venezuela to Chile and the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata (including what is now Argentina). Those engaged in assertions of varying degrees of autonomy from Spain were by no means united. They included many roalists, loyal to the recently deposed Spanish Bourbon king Ferdinand VII. Nor did they generally enjoy the support of the population as a whole. The poverty-stricken and the enslaved, mostly mixed race or black, hated the rich Creoles more than the Spanish authorities. In many regions civil war raged and central government collapsed as caudillos (military leaders) ran their own localities. Only in Peru did the Spanish authorities maintain control virtually unchallenged, but in other areas those people asserting independence at first achieved at best a tenuous hold on power.
Bolivar's War[]
In Venezuela a republic declared in 1811 was overwhelmed the following year in a royalist reaction led by Domingo de Monteverde. Simon Bolivar was among the republicans who fled to nearby New Granada. From there, Bolivar launched an invasion in 1813 that trounced the royalists, occupied the city of Caracas, and re-established a republic. Victory was short-lived: an army of Llaneros, the tough outlaws of the Venezuelan plains, under Jose Boves counterattacked and drove Bolivar out again. The fighting saw horrific massacres on both sides. Those among the defeated who did not escape the country established guerrilla forces in remote areas.
The end of the Peninsular War and the return of Ferdinand to the Spanish throne in 1814 heralded a determined attempt to reassert Spanish rule in the colonies. A 10,000-strong expeditionary force under General Pablo Morillo was shipped across the Atlantic to occupy Venezuela and New Granada. Morillo took control of the major settlements alonng the coasts but armed groups, with Bolivar's supporters, kept up resistance in the interior. Bolivar found an ally in Jose Antonio Paez, the new leader of the Llaneros, and attracted the support of a British Legion - British and Irish troops left unemployed by the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1819, with these hard-bitten veterans and llaneros, Bolivar advanced into New Granada and routed the Spanish at Boyaca, occupying Bogota. A victory in 1821 at Carabobo in Venezuela gave him effective control of almost all New Granada and Venezuela, which were united as Gran Colombia.
In Argentina a junta, a government of military leaders, was established in 1810. It fought the Spanish and royalists with mixed success until the arrival of Jose de San Martin, an Argentine-born officer who had fought for Spain in the Peninsular War in 1812. San Martin improved the organization of the junta's forces, securing them against a royalist reaction. In nearby Chile a civil war left the Spanish and Royalists in control in 1814, forcing their leading opponent, Bernardo O'Higgins, to escape to Argentina with the remnants of his forces. San Martin conceived a plan to ally with O'Higgins for an invasion of Chile as a prelude to an assault on Peru, the stronghold of Spanish authority. In January 1817, San Martin and O'Higgins led some 5,000 soldiers across the Andes. It cost them heavy losses - but their surprise arrival in Chile allowed them to defeat the outnumbered royalists at Chacabuco.
An end to Spanish rule[]
Battle of Junin
The Spanish sent an army to Chile from Peru under Mariano Osorio that at first had considerable success, but in April 1818, at Maipu in the Andes, Osorio was defeated by San Martin, guaranteeing Chilean independence.
Politics in Chile remained complex, but in 1820 San Martin launched an invasion of Peru, aided by a Chilean navy commanded by British Admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane. He declared Peruvian independence in the capital, Lima, in 1821. Under circumstances still not fully understood, after talks with Bolivar in 1822, San Martin withdrew to private life. It was thus Bolivar who led the final campaign against surviving royalist strongholds in Peru. He won a cavalry skirmish at Junin in August 1824 before his second-in-command Antonio Jose de Sucre conclusively defeated the Peruvians at the battle of Ayacucho in December 1824. This ended the Spanish rule in South America.
Aftermath[]
The former Spanish colonies found neither peace nor stability. The legacy of the wars included disputed frontiers and a tradition of power based on military force.
The Skirmishes Continue[]
In the wake of independence, there were border wars between Gran Colombia and Peru, and between Argentina and Brazil. The republic of Gran Colombia soon split up into Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Later, Paraguay fought Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay during the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-70), which cost around 400,000 lives. Chile fought Bolivia and Peru in the War of the Pacific (1879-83). Even more damaging for South America was the tradition of the caudillo, founded in the liberation wars. These local warlords with their armed supporters undermined the authority of governments and at times seized political control in military coups.