Patriotic Society of Caracas

The Patriotic Society of Caracas was a Venezuelan pro-independence organization. After the cabildo of Caracas ousted the Spanish governor on 19 April 1810 and later formed the Junta Conservadora de los Derechos de Fernando VII, the Patriotic Society was formed in Caracas the following August with the purpose of propagandizing on behalf of the emancipation process. The society was inspired by similar clubs in revolutionary France. Francisco de Miranda and Simón Bolívar took the lead in organizing and promoting it. Antonio Muñoz Tebar, Vicente Salias, Francisco Espejo, Miguel Peña, and others also participated. Its fundamental objective was to achieve independence and the establishment of a democratic republic in Venezuela. Its voice was the periodical El Patriota Venezolano.

The society attained a high degree of popularity in the first half of 1811 due to the radical positions its members expressed in favor of declaring independence once and for all in Venezuela. Branches were formed in Valencia, Puerto Cabello, Barcelona, and Barinas. With the fall of the First Republic in 1812, the society dissolved and was never re-formed.

See alsoBolívar, Simón; Miranda, Francisco de; Venezuela: The Colonial Era.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrés F. Ponte, La Revolución de Caracas y sus próceres (1960).

P. Michael Mc Kinley, Pre-Revolutionary Caracas: Politics, Economy, and Society, 1777–1811 (1985).

Additional Bibliography

Armas Chitty, José Antonio de. La independencia de Venezuela. Madrid, Spain: Editorial MAPFRE, 1992.

Racine, Karen. Francisco de Miranda, A Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003.

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