Why Bolivia, the first country in South America in emancipating from Spain, ended up being the last to achieve its independence

That is Bolivia not only inaugurated the bicentennial celebrations in South America, but now closes them.

Although it seems weird, it turns out that it has a historical explanation: the place given by the first libertarian cry ended up being the last to achieve its independence.

Seeing the aforementioned dates of the Bicentennials in South America it would be logical to conclude that Peru became a decade later than the other countries of the region. But it was not so.

While Peru took as reference the date on which General José de San Martín proclaimed independence, many of his South American neighbors chose to commemorate the bicentennial not of their emancipation, but from the beginning of the revolutions that eventually lead them to be free nations years later.

This explains why Bolivia was the first country in the region to celebrate its Bicentennial, on May 25, 2009, although it celebrates 200 years of independence just now.

What the then President Evo Morales commemorated was the Bicentennial of the so -called Chuquisaca Revolution, which is considered by many the “first libertarian cry of America” (although others argue that it was actually in La Paz or Quito where the independence beginning was marked).

The Chuquisaca revolution was a popular uprising that occurred on May 25, 1809 in the city that today is Sucre and that in the colonial era was part of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

The Creoles dismissed the governor and formed a Governing Board, which was suffocated in 1810.

This revolution was the initial kick of a series of similar processes throughout the region.

What unleashed these revolutions was the French invasion of Spain, in 1808, which led King Carlos IV and his son, Fernando VII, to abdicate in favor of Napoleon Bonaparte, who appointed his brother José as the new Spanish king.

But in the American colonies the Creole elites did not recognize José I and took advantage of the power vacuum to create their own governments.

Although these first government boards initially swore fidelity to Fernando VII, in the end they broke with the crown, inspired by the independence of the United States (1776) and Haiti (1804), and in the French Revolution (1789).

Thus began a long and complicated independence wave that would fragment the region, resulting in the nations we know today.

It was the bicentennial of these revolutions or “libertarian screams” that commemorated between 2009 and 2011 countries such as Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Uruguay.

But why did these countries not directly celebrate the date on which they effectively achieved their liberation, which in many cases is considered its official “Independence Day”?

And why do you consider the beginning of their emancipation the installation of the first government boards when they were still faithful to the Spanish crown?

The Argentine historian Beatriz Bragoni, author of “San Martín: a political biography of the Liberator” (2019), told BBC Mundo in 2021 that it was not a “fortuitous” decision.

“Installing a date or an event responds to the interests of the states to create their own national narratives and their own national identities,” he said.

“In strict terms, in 1809-1811 there was no vocation of independence in relation to Spain,” he said.

However, he stressed that “commemorations are processes of reconstruction and selective memories that all nations do.”

In all this independence discussion, it is important to note that if we look at the last nation in declaring a sovereign state, the answer is not Bolivia, but Uruguay.

However, Uruguay – then called oriental province – was not becoming independent from Spain, of which he had already emancipated.

He was rebelling against the Portuguese crown and the Empire of Brazil, which had invaded him, to join the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, the embryo of what would later become Argentina.

It was only in 1828 that the Nation achieved its sovereignty, after a mediation of England between Brazil and the United Provinces.

Two years later, with the signing of the Constitution, he adopted the name of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, for its location east of the river that defines part of its territory.

But there is even another proviso: Peru was the last to give his “libertarian cry”, since Lima, being the center of realistic power in South America, was the one that the liberating revolution most resisted.

“The viceroy of Peru, José Fernando de Abascal, fulfilled a crucial role in the defense of the interests of the king and the monarchy through an emphatic extermination policy of what he called American insurgents or revolutionaries,” said Bragoni.

With the fall of Napoleon in Europe and the restoration of Fernando VII in Spain, in 1814, the Spaniards battle against the American separatist movements, and the capital of the viceroyalty of Peru played a key role.

“Lima was the center of the counterrevolution because there was the greatest public opinion in favor of sustaining monarchical legitimacy and, at the same time, their merchants, their elites, financed the war in South America,” said the historian.

Thus, just after making his famous crossing of the Andes and freeing Chile in 1818, San Martín arrived with his army in Lima and declared the independence of Peru on July 28, 1821.

However, this was not, strictly speaking, the last South American country to free itself from the Spanish crown.

As we have already mentioned, Bolivia declared an independent state only in 1825, four years later than Peru.

The then called Alto Peru was an autonomous region that had first been dependent on the viceroyalty of Peru and then the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, but, when the revolution broke out in Buenos Aires in 1810, the Viceroy Abascal returned to return it provisionally to the territory under his command.

He would have been – and a long guerrilla warfare – freely release the entire high -peruum territory from Spanish domain and be able to found a new homeland.

The last South American nation to become independent from Spain was baptized Republic of Bolívar, in honor of the Venezuelan Liberator Simón Bolívar, but in October 1825 he would change to Bolivia.

*This article is based on one that we originally published in 2021 and that you can read here.

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