The “rights of man” could be mobilized also on behalf of colonial subjects, as the American Declaration of Independence illustrated. Some thirty-five years after the outbreak of the North American revolution, Spain’s American colonies also revolted. Among the most prominent political and military leaders of that struggle was Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), born in Caracas, Venezuela, and hailing from an old, wealthy, and aristocratic family. Although his struggles were successful in ending Spanish colonial rule, they manifestly failed to achieve his lifelong dream of a federation, like that of North America, among the various newly independent republics of Latin America. In a well-known letter, written in 1815, Bolívar made the case for the independence of his continent.

Simón Bolívar

The Jamaica Letter

1815

Success will crown our efforts because the destiny of [Latin] America is irrevocably fixed; the tie that bound her to Spain is severed. . . . The hatred we feel for the Peninsula is greater than the sea separating us from it; it would be easier to bring the two continents together than to reconcile the spirits and the minds of the two countries. The habit of obedience, a commerce of shared interests, knowledge, and religion; mutual goodwill; a tender concern for the birthland and glory of our ancestors; in brief everything that constituted our hopes came to us from Spain. . . . Today the opposite is true: death, dishonor, everything harmful threatens us and makes us fearful. That wicked stepmother is the source of all our sufferings. . . . The chains have been broken, we’ve been liberated, and now our enemies want to make us slaves. That is why America fights with such defiance. . . .

[W]e are moreover neither Indians nor Europeans, but a race halfway between the legitimate owners of the land and the Spanish usurpers—in short, being Americans by birth and endowed with rights from Europe—find ourselves forced to defend these rights against the natives while maintaining our position in the land against the intrusion of the invaders. Thus we find ourselves in the most extraordinary and complicated situation. . . .

The posture of those who dwell in the American hemisphere has been over the centuries purely passive. We are at a level even lower than servitude, and by that very reason hindered from elevating ourselves to the enjoyment of freedom. . . . From the beginning we were plagued by a practice that in addition to depriving us of the rights to which we were entitled left us in a kind of permanent infancy with respect to public affairs. . . .

The Americans . . . occupy no other place in society than that of servants suited for work or, at best, that of simple consumers, and even this is limited by appalling restrictions: for instance the prohibition against the cultivation of European crops or the sale of products monopolized by the king, the restriction against the construction of factories that don’t even exist on the peninsula, exclusive privileges for engaging in commerce even of items that are basic necessities, the barrier between American provinces, preventing them from establishing contact, or communicating, or doing business with one another. In short, would you like to know the extent of our destiny? Fields for the cultivation of indigo, grain, coffee, sugar cane, cacao, and cotton, empty prairies for raising cattle, wilderness for hunting ferocious beasts, the bowels of the earth for excavating gold that will never satisfy the lusts of that greedy nation. . . . Is this not an outrage and a violation of the rights of humanity?

We were . . . absent from the universe in all things relative to the science of government and the administration of the state. We were never viceroys, never governors, except in extraordinary circumstances; hardly ever bishops or archbishops; never diplomats; soldiers only in lower ranks; nobles, but without royal privileges. In short, we were never leaders, never financiers, hardly ever merchants. . . .

From the foregoing, we can deduce certain consequences: The American provinces are involved in a struggle for emancipation, which will eventually succeed. . . . The idea of merging the entire New World into a single nation with a single unifying principle to provide coherence to the parts and to the whole is both grandiose and impractical. Because it has a common origin, a common language, similar customs, and one religion, we might conclude that it should be possible for a single government to oversee a federation of different states eventually to emerge. However, this is not possible, because America is divided by remote climates, diverse geographies, conflicting interests, and dissimilar characteristics. . . . Such a corporation might conceivably emerge at some felicitous moment in our regeneration. . . .

When we are at last strong, under the auspices of a liberal nation that lends us its protection, then we will cultivate in harmony the virtues and talents that lead to glory; then we will follow the majestic path toward abundant prosperity marked out by destiny for South America; then the arts and sciences that were born in the Orient and that brought enlightenment to Europe will fly to a free Columbia, which will nourish and shelter them.

Source: Simon Bolívar. “The Jamaica Letter.” From El Liberator: Writings of Simon Bolívar by David Bushnell (2003): c. 880 words (pp. 13-14, 18-20, 27-28 & 30) © 2003 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.