Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Simón Bolívar

Episode Date: October 4, 2026

In the early 19th century, the Spanish Empire in the Americas began to fracture. From the chaos emerged a wealthy young aristocrat with little formal military training, enormous ambition, and a vision that extended far beyond his own country's independence. He would cross mountains, survive exile, win impossible campaigns, liberate nations, and ultimately struggle against the very political forces his victories unleashed. Learn more about Simón Bolívar, the Liberator of South America, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. ⁠Shop the store at ⁠⁠Shop.Everything-Everywhere.com⁠ Sponsors Hexclad Get 10% off your order at ⁠hexclad.com/DAILY⁠ Mint Mobile Save 50% on Unlimited premium wireless plans starting at $15/month at ⁠MintMobile.com/EED⁠ Quince Go to ⁠quince.com/daily⁠ for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! DripDrop Go to ⁠dripdrop.com⁠ and use promo code EVERYTHING for 20% off your first order! Square Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at ⁠square.com/go/daily⁠ Babbel Go to ⁠babbel.com/daily⁠ for up to 60% off Subscribe to the podcast!  ⁠https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/⁠ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere⁠ Discord Server: ⁠https://discord.gg/Ds7Rx7jvPJ⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/⁠ Facebook Group: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/everywheretrip⁠ Website: ⁠https://everything-everywhere.com/⁠  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the early 19th century, the Spanish Empire and the Americas began to fracture. From the chaos emerged a wealthy young aristocrat with little formal military training, enormous ambition, and a vision that extended far beyond his own country's independence. He would cross mountains, survive exile, win impossible campaigns, liberate nations, and ultimately struggle against the very political forces his victories unleashed. Learn more about Simone Bolivar, the Liberator of South America. on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive.

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Let your morning change you. Discover Coffee Plus on Nespresso.com. By the early 19th century, the Spanish Empire in the Americas was rotting from the inside out. Centuries of Spanish rule, enforced social and racial hierarchies, and exploitive economic policies had weakened Spain's control over its territories. By this point, Spain's colonies in the Americas were ripe for change. And as it turned out, an unlikely source set the dominoes in motion, Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808 resulted in the imprisonment of the Spanish

King Ferdinand the 7th and the placement of his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne. Without a legitimate monarch on the Spanish throne, the administrative illusion holding the empire together vanished overnight, prompting unrest in the Spanish Americas. This power vacuum opened the door for local leaders to seize power across the continent, often under the ruse of maintaining Spanish rule. Out of the ruins of imperial authority emerged a man who became both the sword and symbol of South American independence, Simone Bolivar. Boulevard was born into great wealth in modern day Caracas Venezuela. Despite his affluence, he lost both of his parents to tuberculosis

before his 10th birthday. He represented the elite aristocracy that stood to gain the most from South American independence. Boulevard was a product of the European Enlightenment, tutored in the radical philosophies of Rousseau and Voltaire, yet hardened by the staggering realities of New World Warfare. According to Boulevard, while standing on a hill in Rome in 1805, the 22-year-old pledged his life that he would never rest until he broke the chains of Spanish rule in his home country. But swearing an oath in Europe was a world away from fighting a war in the Americas. When Bolivar returned to Venezuela to join the developing revolutionary struggle, He discovered that liberating a continent required more than wit and wisdom.

It required military training. Boulevard needed to master the unique landscape of South America's Wars of Independence. Liberated regions often collapsed quickly under royalist counteroffensives and regional rivalries. Unlike Europe's military leaders, most of whom fought as royalists, Boulevard learned while serving in Caracas's militias. Although he possessed considerable skill with weapons and horsemanship, he possessed no formal military experience. Nevertheless, his affluent background secured him a senior rank in the militia. Boulevard compensated for his lack of experience by reading libraries of classical military

science, studying the strategies of Caesar, Hannibal, and Alexander the Great. His vast library included works by modern military strategists, which he devoured one after another. Boulevard's true military academy was the catastrophic collapse of Venezuela's first and second republics between 1812 and 1814. Venezuela was one of the first states to declare independence from Spain, yet its government quickly descended into chaos and fell in one calamity after another. Royalist forces seized the opportunity to unravel these early republics, even using a devastating 1812 earthquake to portray the disaster as divine retribution against the revolutionary governments. Unreliable local commanders, failed supply lines, political division,

and a lack of unity within the Patriot ranks contributed to the royalist victories. Boulevard was not yet a national figure, but his reputation was growing. After the defeat, Boulevard fled to New Granada, what is today Columbia, where he joined the revolutionary struggle and rebuilt his military career. Boulevard forged his legendary status during the 1813 military offensive called the admirable campaign. Using troops from New Granada, he launched a lightning offensive that shattered royalist defenses and recaptured the city of Caracas. As he rode through the streets, his supporters showered him with chance of El Liberator.

However, Bolivar couldn't hold the city and lost the Second Republic to royalist commander Jose Tomas Boves and his alliance with the Janeros. The Janeros were fierce horsemen of mixed Spanish, indigenous, and African descent, who played a pivotal role in South America's Wars of Independence. After the fall of the Second Republic, Bolivar was exiled to Kingston, Jamaica. There he wrote works on South American independence and refocused his military strategy. In his famous Jamaica letter, Bolivar articulated the urgent need for revolution in the Americas, writing, quote,

The role of the inhabitants of the American hemisphere has for centuries been purely passive. Politically, they were non-existent. We are still in a position lower than slavery, and therefore it is more difficult. difficult for us to rise to the enjoyment of freedom." End quote. Boulevard's time in Jamaica was busy. He spent much of it unsuccessfully lobbying the British for support against Spain and the Royalists. He also realized he could not fight conventional European wars against well-funded European adversaries on South American soil. Instead of relying

on linear European formations, he weaponized the continent's geography, waging a campaign across terrains his historical heroes could never have imagined. He was not commanding armies on Europe's battlefields. He was fighting in the jungles of the Amazon Basin and the towering peaks of the Andes Mountains. After failing to secure resources in Jamaica, Boulevard sailed to Haiti, where President Alexander Petion gave him vital military and financial support. Boulevard promised Petion that he would abolish slavery in South America, as he noted, quote, it is madness that a revolution for liberty should try to maintain slavery. After returning from his Jamaican exile, Boulevard retreated deep into the jungles of the Orinoco River Basin in 1817, turning the wilderness into a natural fortress.

From the city of Angostura, he turned the hostile jungle into a base camp free from royalist interference. In the jungles, he radically restructured his strategy for victory. A crucial development was Boulevard's alliance with the Yanaro leader Jose Antonio Paez, whose formidable cavalry bought thousands of planesmen into the Patriot Coalition. Promises of social advancement and land also helped sustain their support. Boulevard launched his next push towards New Granada during the rainy season, marching his troops through the waist-deep flooded Casinare Plains. This impassable route caught the Spanish commanders completely by surprise.

His final assault was based on climbing more than 14,000 feet, or 4,260 meters up the Andes. By crossing the freezing Paramo de Pizba during the 1819 rainy season, Bolivar achieved strategic surprise and bypassed the routes the royalist expected him to use. Boulevard proved that victory came from using and exploiting the region's geography. As Boulevard's troops stacked up victories, they made important social and political proclamations designed to build coalitions among the diverse faction of supporters. In addition to abolishing slavery, he pursued aggressive land reforms to reduce the economic hardship of the lower classes under the Spanish Costa system.

Following this victory at the Battle of Carabobo in 1821, Boulevard had liberated Venezuela and solidified control over the northern rim of South America. But securing the north was only half the battle. To truly shatter Spanish power, Bolivar had to look south, bringing him onto a collision course with South America's other great liberator, Argentine General Jose de San Martín. San Martín, also part of South America's founding history, had independently liberated Argentina and Chile before marching north to capture Lima, Peru. In July of 1822, the two met behind closed doors in Guaya-Keele, Ecuador.

While their private talks remain a mystery, their goals clashed. San Martín wanted European-style monarchies, while Boulevard demanded a centralized republic. Recognizing that Boulevard's ambitions wouldn't allow for compromise, San Martine made the astonishing decision to resign his command and walk away into European exile. With San Martin gone, Boulevard stood alone at the peak of South American power, ready to finish the final campaigns in Peru, unaware that total military control would only hasten the political collapse of his grand design. With his decisive victory at the Battle of Ayacuchu in December 1824 in Peru,

Bolivar's forces effectively ended Spanish colonial rule in South America. But for Bolivar, the true challenge now lay ahead. His goal for South America was to unite the former Spanish colonies into a vast continental federation, beginning with Grand Columbia, to create a superpower capable of standing up to great European powers. Grand Columbia, which consisted of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and parts of Panama, was short-lived, lasting only from 1819 to 1831. In Bolivar's grand plan, Grand Columbia was the first block in his vision of a unified federation

of former Spanish colonial holdings. However, Bolivar fundamentally underestimated the region's political and geographic realities. To hold together such a vast fractured space, he was forced to impose a highly centralized power structure that directly contradicted the decentralizing liberal ideas driving the original revolutions. Circumstances like the 1828 assassination attempt on his life forced his descent into autocracy. Furthermore, while he had used South America's brutal geography to win wars, he failed to account for how those same physical barriers rendered permanent, centralized government, impossible in peacetime.

Economic fundamentals also worked against Bolivar's dream. The region was utterly exhausted by decades of war, and the difficulties of economic recovery for former Spanish colonies proved insurmountable under an incapable administration. Grand Columbia perished shortly after Bolivar died in 1830 from tuberculosis. Bolivar never achieved the dream of a United States in South America. In fact, on his deathbed, he was bitter and angry about his failures, offering a famous lamentation. Quote, America is ungovernable for us.

He who serves a revolution plows the sea. After Grand Columbia's collapse, much of Central and South America drifted away from stable constitutional rule, falling instead under the sway of Caudillos, local military strongmen who ruled through force and personal loyalty. Boulevard's legacy in the Americas is complex and still debated. Some celebrate him as the visionary liberator who broke Spanish colonial rule, while others see him as a precursor to the authoritarian strong men who later dominated the region's politics. To many in South America, Bolivar is viewed through the same lens as George Washington and the United States. In fact, both men have benefited from efforts to create foundational mythologies about national heroes.

In this context, myth doesn't mean falsehood or fiction. Rather, it implies a dramatization or simplification of events designed for long-term understanding. Boulevard is enshrined in the national mythos of many South American countries as the ultimate romantic hero of Latin American independence, often elevated to a near mythic status as the Liberator. For more than a century, leaders have erected statues and plazas, bearing his name as a calculated effort, to legitimize their own rule by tethering it to his legacy. Simone Boulevard helped destroy Spanish rule across much of northern and western South America, but winning independence proved easier than building lasting political unity.

His armies helped create new nations, yet his dream of a powerful federation collapsed amid regional rivalries, economic exhaustion, and political conflict. By the end of his life, the man celebrated as the Liberator, had become deeply disillusioned with the revolution that he had helped lead. That being said, few individuals shape the political map of the Americas more profoundly. And Simone Boulevard remains one of the most influential figures in Latin American history. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer.

Research in writing for this episode was provided by Joel Hermanson. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord, as this is where everything happens outside of the podcast. As always, if you leave a review on any of the major podcast apps, you too can have it run in the show.