Commandos marching during a military parade commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Carabobo Battle in the Carabobo Memorial near Valencia, Carabobo state, Venezuela, June 24, 2021. Photo: X/@VillegasPollak/file photo.
By Nino Pagliccia – Jun 24, 2024
Every June 24 Venezuelans honor the memory of the Battle of Carabobo in 1821. This year the historic date marks the 203rd anniversary.
The Battle of Carabobo sealed our independence and our identity as a nation when Simón Bolívar, at the head of the rebel army, defeated the royalist (Spanish) troops under the command of Field Marshal Miguel De la Torre.
Having liberated Nueva Granada with the extraordinary Battle of Boyacá on August 7, 1819, Bolívar then set out to liberate his native land so it could be integrated in what Bolívar envisioned as the Gran Colombia. This geographical area was referred to as Colombia but it included present-day Colombia, mainland Ecuador (i.e. excluding the Galápagos Islands), Panama, and Venezuela, along with parts of northern Peru, northwestern Brazil, and claimed the Essequibo region.
The context in which the Battle of Carabobo took place is very important in its own right since it was preceded by the signing, in November 1820, of a fundamental treaty for what would be the future of the Republic and the triumph of the patriots: The Treaty of Armistice and Regularisation of War.
Better known as the Treaty of Trujillo, it was signed by Simón Bolívar and Pablo Morillo, that is, the head of the Liberation Army and the head of the Spanish Army representing. This treaty outlined the idea of making the war less cruel, less terrible as it had really been until then, and a series of commitments that, on both sides, were established in said treaty.
When the treaty expired the regularization of the war was maintained. In fact, Bolívar said to his troops that they had the “rigorous obligation to be more pious than brave… Anyone who violates any of the articles of the regularization of war will suffer capital punishment. Even when our enemies break them, we must fulfill them so that the glory of Colombia is not stained with blood.”
In the meantime Bolívar took advantage of those months of armistice to organize the largest army that he had managed to form to date, and culminated his efforts in the plains of the Venezuelan state of Carabobo near the city of Valencia with a resounding victory over the Spanish colonists.
What good is it for us to remember those achievements won with blood so long ago?
The historical Battle of Carabobo holds profound lessons for our present and a harbinger of triumph: lessons of pride, dignity, unity, strategy, integration, independence, sovereignty and solidarity.
Each one of these lessons reflects precisely the presence of a past that lives on even today like timeless values; values that are synonymous of, or embedded in freedom from colonization and exploitation.
But today we still have to win more battles for the construction of a sovereign and independent Latin American Great Homeland as promised by Simón Bolívar and as reminded by Hugo Chávez.
Much has undoubtedly been achieved so far this century. When we look at a recent political map of Latin America we see nations determinedly moving towards their own independence process based on the will of their people.
Finally, the Battle of Carabobo – not the kinetic event itself but rather the meaning, the spirit of it – is a symbol of Venezuelan identity, indeed Latin American identity. These symbols are essential to propel us to resist, to advance, to bring to fruition, in an autochthonous way, the future of the nation. Self-affirmation needs constant vindication and assertion for national identity to develop. Ultimately, these kinds of symbols are the building blocks of civilisations.
NP/OT
Nino Pagliccia
Nino Pagliccia is a Venezuelan-Canadian statistician who writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. Nino Pagliccia has managed collaborative projects with Cuban partners in the University of British Columbia’s Global Health Research Program. He is the editor of "Cuba Solidarity in Canada—Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations" (2014). He has been the vice-president of the Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association in Vancouver and founding co-chair of the Canadian Network on Cuba. He has led groups doing volunteer work in Cuba for over 12 years.
