Cartagena Manifesto
Cartagena Manifesto
The first major political statement of Simón Bolívar, at the time a relatively obscure fugitive from the collapse of Venezuela's First Republic, was the manifesto that he published at Cartagena in neighboring New Granada (1812). In the form of a pamphlet titled Memoria dirigida a los ciudadanos de la Nueva Granada por un caraqueño, it contained Bolívar's analysis of the reasons for the recent failure of the Venezuelan patriots and anticipated many of the themes of his later writings. He placed particular emphasis on the errors of doctrinaire theorists whose infatuation with foreign ideas and with federalist forms of organization—which Bolívar considered unsuited to Spanish American conditions—had caused them to ignore the need for a strong central executive. He urged New Granadans both to avoid repetition of the same mistakes and to support a new campaign to liberate Venezuela.
See alsoBolívar, Simón .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Selected Writings of Bolívar, compiled by Vicente Lecuna, edited by Harold A. Bierck, Jr., translated by Lewis Bertrand (1951), vol. 1, pp. 18-26.
Gerhard Masur, Simón Bolívar (1948; rev. ed. 1969), chap. 9.
Additional Bibliography
Lynch, John. Simón Bolívar: A Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
Mendizábal, Francisco Javier de. Guerra de la América del Sur, 1809–1824. Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1997.