Simón Bolívar

1. Training and Early Life

Born into an aristocratic Creole family in Caracas, Simón Bolívar lost both parents before the age of ten. Educated under Simón Rodríguez, he traveled to Spain and then across Europe as a young man; in Rome, according to tradition, he vowed to devote his life to freeing his homeland from Spanish rule.

Returning to Venezuela, he joined the independence movement after the First Republic (1810–1812) and began a military career that would lead him to lead campaigns across much of the South American continent.

2. The Liberation Campaigns

After successive defeats and exiles, Bolívar reorganized his forces and launched the celebrated Admirable Campaign of 1813. In 1819, after crossing the Llanos and the Andes under extreme conditions, he secured New Granada's independence with victory at the Battle of Boyacá.

He continued liberating Venezuela (Carabobo, 1821), Ecuador (Pichincha, 1822) and, together with Antonio José de Sucre, Peru and Alto Perú, which would adopt its name as the Republic of Bolivia in 1825.

3. Gran Colombia and the Sunset

Bolívar dreamed of a great united South American nation: theGreater Colombia, which brought together present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama under his presidency since 1819. However, regional tensions, rivalries with leaders such as Francisco de Paula Santander, and internal conflicts led to the fragmentation of the project around 1830.

Sick and disillusioned, he resigned the presidency and planned to go into exile in Europe when he died of tuberculosis at the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, near Santa Marta, on December 17, 1830.

4. Numismatic Legacy

Bolívar's face is, by far, the most reproduced in the history of Colombian paper money. His portrait appears in multiple broadcasts ofThe Bank of the Republicthroughout the twentieth century, including the Silver Certificate of Five Pesos (1941) and theFifty Pesos Gold, as well as on commemorative coins of several countries that bear his name: Venezuela (bolivar), Bolivia and the historic Fort Bolivar.