LIBERATOR, “THE MOST GLORIOUS TITLE”

On August 7, 1813 Bolivar arrived in Caracas, and the people acclaimed him liberator, confirming the title that had been conferred on him by the city of Merida.

This was the most treasured of all his honors, for in spite of the numerous acts of homage that were paid to him by the American nations, he continued to consider this, right up to the time of his death, the most precious thing he had achieved in his life. When some of his associates tried to tempt his vanity in order to force him to place a crown on his head, he recalled this homage of Caracas and merida, the prize of his educative work as a leader, and, repudiating the crown, he wrote to general Jose Antonio Paez, “I am not Napoleon, nor do I wish to be; neither do I wish to imitate Caesar, and even less iturbide. Such examples I consider unworthy of my own glory. The title of liberator is superior to all those that human pride has been the recipient of. Bolivar’s reference to Iturbide is extraordinarily significant, since Augustìn de Iturbide was an officer in the Spanish royalist army in Mexico who joined torces with the revolutionaries only to establish. In 1822, an independent royalist government in Mexico with himself as emperor. The following year he was forced into exile, but a year later returned to Mexico and was captured and shot.

Bolivar’s message to Paez was a reiteration of the message he had sent to the municipal government of Caracas on October 18, 1813 to thank them for the honor. At that time he said. “Liberator o Venezuela, for me a more glorious and satisfactory title than the scepter of all the empires of the earth”, good citizen, the only one that made all those who served the nation equal before the law, for this reason he said in his message to the congress of Angostura, “if I merit your approbation, I will have attained the sublime title of good citizen, to me preferable to that of liberator which Venezuela has given me, to that of pacifier which Colombia has given me, and to all that the entire world may be able to give”.