Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) was the Venezuelan general and statesman — “El Libertador” — who led the wars that freed Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia from Spanish rule, the greatest liberation campaign in the history of the Americas, before watching his dream of unity fall apart.
Across two decades he marched armies over the Andes, won the decisive battles of Boyacá (1819), Carabobo (1821) and Ayacucho (1824), and dreamed of a united Spanish America. Instead the new republics fractured into rival states, and he died disillusioned, fearing his life’s work would be remembered as failure.
