Simón Bolívar now quickly marches his troops across the llanos and into the Andes, where a surprise attack on the Spanish garrison at Boyaca, near Bogota, routs the royalist forces and liberates New Granada.

Nearly two years later, in June 1821, Bolivar's troops fought the decisive Battle of Carabobo that liberates Caracas from Spanish rule.

In August delegates from Venezuela and Colombia meet at the border town of Cucuta to formally sign the Constitution of the Republic of Gran Colombia, with its capital in Bogota.

Bolivar is named president, and Francisco de Paula Santander, a Colombian, is named vice president.

Bolivar, however, continues the fight for the liberation of Spanish America, leading his forces against the royalist troops remaining in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.

In the meantime, the Bolivarian dream of Gran Colombia is proving to be politically unworkable.

Bolivar's fellow Venezuelans become his enemies.

King Ferdinand, after an 1820 revolt by liberals in Spain, has lost the political will to recover the rebellious American colonies, but the Venezuelans themselves express resentment at being governed once again from far-off Bogota.

Venezuelan nationalism, politically and economically centered in Caracas, has been an ever-increasing force for over a century.

During the 1820s, Venezuelan nationalism is embodied in the figure of José Antonio Páez.

Even the tremendous prestige of Bolivar cannot overcome the historical reality of nationalism, and in 1829 Páez will lead Venezuela in its separation from Gran Colombia, and order the ailing and friendless Bolivar into exile.

Shortly before his death in December 1830, the liberator of northern South America will liken his efforts at Latin American unity to having "plowed the sea."

A number of local caudillos keep the independence movement alive in Venezuela.

One, Jose Antonio Paez, a mestizo, is able to convince his fellow llaneros along the Rio Apure that Boves (who had been killed in battle in late 1814) had been mistaken: that the Spanish, not the criollo patriots, are the true enemies of social equality.

The alliance of his fierce cavalrymen with Bolivar proves indispensable during the critical 1816-20 stage of the independence struggle.

Another caudillo chief named Manuel Piar, after outspokenly encouraging his black and pardo troops to assert their claims for social change, however, is promptly captured, tried, and executed under Bolivar's direction.

This ruthless disposition of Piar as an enemy of the cause of independence enhances Bolivar's stature and military leadership as the "maximum caudillo."

Based near the mouth of the Rio Orinoco, Bolivar defeats the royalist forces in the east with the help of several thousand volunteer European recruits, veterans of the Napoleonic Wars.

Although Caracas remains in royalist hands, the 1819 Congress at Angostura (present-day Ciudad Bolivar) establishes the Third Republic and names Bolivar as its first president.

The Republic of Colombia, in addition to acquiring a fine new constitution, is the first Spanish American nation to obtain diplomatic recognition from the United States, in 1822; British recognition follows three years later.

In 1824 Colombia even raises a foreign loan on the London market for the extraordinary sum of thirty million pesos (at this time equivalent to dollars).

This consists in part of mere refinancing of earlier obligations incurred during the independence struggle.

It will prove impossible to maintain debt service, but the fact that the loan is even granted, on what for the time are quite favorable terms, attests to the prestige of Bolivar's creation.

Another sign of the Republic of Colombia's international prestige is the fact that it plays host to Bolivar's Congress of Panama of 1826, which in the end accomplishes little but is the first in a long line of Pan-American gatherings.

Yet even before this meeting begins, the fragility of the republic's unity is becoming apparent.

The first serious crack comes in Venezuela, where many people have been unhappy from the start with formal subjection to authorities in Bogota, particularly when the head of government turns out to be the New Granadan, Vice President Santander, who becomes acting chief executive when Bolivar continues personally leading his armies against Spain.

Indeed, Bolivar carries the struggle into Peru and stays there even after the Battle of Ayacucho, won by Sucre in December 1824, puts an end to serious royalist resistance.

Venezuelans do have some real grievances, but equally important is the feeling that their present status is a step down from that of the colonial captaincy general, which for most purposes took orders (not necessarily obeyed) directly from Madrid.

Thus, when General José Antonio Páez, the leading military figure in Venezuela, is summoned to Bogota early in 1826 to answer charges against him in the Congress of the Republic (Congreso de la Republica), he refuses to go, and most of Venezuela joins him in defiance.

Both Páez and Santander look for support to Bolivar, still absent in Peru, but he proves less interested in the immediate dispute than in the opportunity that the crisis seems to offer to revamp Colombian institutions in a form more to his liking.

Bolivar knows that Venezuelan regionalism is not the only problem to be faced.

There is similar, if less critical, unrest in Ecuador.

The creation of Simón Bolívar's Republic of Colombia is the only instance in which an entire Spanish viceroyalty remains united, even briefly, after independence.

This unity results in large measure from the particular way in which independence is achieved in northern South America—by forces moving back and forth without regard to former colonial boundaries, under the supreme leadership of a single commander, Bolivar.

It also reflects the conviction of Bolívar himself that the union brings together peoples whose sense of common destiny has been heightened in the recent struggle, plus a wealth of resources—the gold of New Granada, the agricultural economy of Venezuela, and the textile workshops of highland Ecuador—that are basically complementary.

He likewise feels that only a large nation can gain respect on the world stage.

However, he does not adequately weigh certain problems, of which perhaps most obvious is the lack of an integrated transportation and communication network: it is easier to travel from Caracas to Philadelphia or from Quito to Lima than from either one to Bogota, which, by its central location, is the inevitable capital of the new nation.

Although economies may have been complementary to some extent, interests are not necessarily compatible; the insistent demand of Ecuadorian textile makers for high protective tariffs is not what suits Venezuelan agricultural exporters.

Neither does the common experience of Spanish rule and the fight against it offset the stark social and cultural differences between, for example, the lawyers of Bogota, the Quechua-speaking natives of highland Ecuador, the pardo and mestizo vaqueros of the Orinoco basin, and the planters of Andean Venezuela.

Nevertheless, in 1821 the young republic holds a constituent assembly, known as the Congress of Cúcuta, which duly reaffirms the union and goes on to adopt a highly centralized system of government, under which the entire country is divided into provinces and departments whose heads are named from Bogotá.

There are elected provincial assemblies, but with no meaningful power in local affairs.

Gran Colombia's constitution of 1821, while eschewing federalism, in some other respects reveals the clear influence of the U.S. model and is for the most part a conventionally republican document.

It provides for strict separation of powers—too strict, in Bolívar's view, despite the fact that, like other early Latin American constitutions, it authorizes sweeping "extraordinary" prerogatives for the executive to use in cases of emergency.

Socioeconomic restrictions limit the right to vote to at most ten percent of free adult males, but this is fairly standard procedure at this time.

Citizens are guaranteed a list of basic rights that do not include freedom of worship, but neither are non-Roman Catholic faiths expressly forbidden, so that the question of religious toleration is left open to be dealt with later.

At the same time, the Congress of Cúcuta itself equips the new nation with a number of enlightened reforms: slavery is not immediately abolished, but provision is made for its gradual extinction by adopting nationwide the free-birth principle enacted earlier in Antioquia; likewise, natives are relieved of the obligation to pay tribute or perform any kind of involuntary labor.

Finally, the same Congress of Cúcuta elects Bolívar president and, because he is Venezuelan, provides regional balance by making the New Granadan Santander vice president.

The efforts of liberal-minded congressional representatives to subject the military more fully to civilian courts are seen by the latter as an affront,and much of the clergy resents legislation designed to curb church influence, such as measures closing small convents and promoting secular education.

Bolivar, as a committed freethinker, does not oppose the objectives of these first anticlerical measures, and as one who supports total abolition of slavery, he definitely opposes the campaign of slaveholders to water down the free-birth law passed by the Congress of Cucuta in 1821, but he feels that many of the reforms adopted are premature, thus needlessly promoting unrest, and he assigns part of the blame to Vice President Santander, a man who had dropped out of law study to fight for independence but as chief executive surrounds himself with ardent young lawyers as helpers and advisers.

What the country needs, in Bolivar's view, is a stronger executive, a less assertive legislature, and a partial rollback of overhasty reforms.

He also hopes to see some form of a new constitution that he has drafted for Bolivia adopted in the Republic of Colombia.

Its central feature is a president serving for life and appointing his successor.

Some other features are highly liberal, but what attracts attention is the call for a life-term president, who in the Colombian case will obviously be himself.

Bolivar journeys back from Peru to Colombia in September-November 1826.

He finds little real support for introducing his constitutional panacea, but he solves the Venezuelan rebellion by meeting with General Paéz in Venezuela in January 1827 and pardoning him, as well as by promising to call a convention to reform the existing constitution in some way.

This September Bolivar returns to Bogota and resumes the presidency of Colombia.

The definitive liberation of New Granada comes from the direction of Venezuela under the leadership of Bolivar, who, by October 1817, has returned from the West Indies and occupied most of the Orinoco basin, an area encompassing one-fourth of Colombia and four- fifths of Venezuela.

However, Bolivar has little success against Spanish units entrenched in Caracas and the Venezuelan Andes.

In mid-1819, he therefore turns west toward New Granada, joins forces with Santander and other New Granadans who have taken refuge on the plains, and invades the central highlands over one of the most difficult of Andean paths.

On August 7, he defeats the Spanish in the Battle of Boyacá, which frees central New Granada, and three days later he enters Santa Fe, soon renamed Santa Fe de Bogotá.

The battle had involved little more than two thousand men on either side and was of short duration, but it had destroyed the main Spanish force in New Granada and sorely damaged royalist morale.

By the end of the year, patriot columns fan out and occupy most of the rest of New Granada except the Caribbean coast and far southwest.

Bolivar organizes a provisional patriot government at Bogota, naming Santander to head it.

Then, in December 1819, he is in Angostura (present-day Ciudad Bolivar), temporary capital of patriot Venezuela, where at his behest the Venezuelan Congress (with the addition of a few New Granadan members) proclaims the creation of the Republic of Great Colombia, comprising all the former Viceroyalty of New Granada.

The Republic of Colombia founded by Bolívar is referred to retrospectively as "Gran Colombia," or "Great Colombia," to distinguish it from the smaller present-day Republic of Colombia, and it takes almost four years for all the far-flung lands theoretically included to come under the Colombian flag.

Bolívar's victory at the Battle of Carabobo, on June 24, 1821, delivers Caracas and virtually all the rest of Venezuela into his hands, except for the coastal fortress of Puerto Cabello, which will hold out another two years.

The liberation of New Granada's Caribbean coast is completed when Cartagena falls to General Mariano Montilla's army in October 1821.

In the following month, the Isthmus of Panama overthrows Spanish authority in a bloodless coup, then joins Colombia, ostensibly of its own volition, although Bolivar is prepared to take it by force if necessary.

Bolívar assigns the task of extending Colombian rule to the Presidency of Quito (present-day Ecuador) to his lieutenant, Antonio José de Sucre, who goes initially to the port of Guayaquil, where another local uprising has already deposed the Spanish authorities, and eventually wins a decisive victory in the Battle of Pichincha, on the outskirts of Quito itself, in May 1822.

The defeated royalist commander quickly surrenders the rest of the presidency to Colombia.

The royalist army holding out at Pasto is now in an untenable position and surrenders, too.

Guayaquil still poses a problem, for it had been operating as an autonomous city-state since its own rebellion against Spain, but Bolivar has no intention of allowing Quito's principal outlet to the sea to remain outside Colombia.

In July, just days before he meets in Guayaquil with the Argentine liberator Jose de San Martin, who is at this time serving as protector of Peru, which also has designs on Guayaquil, Bolívar's followers take control of the port city.

A vote on joining Colombia is held, but the result is predetermined.

Peru's transition from more than three centuries of colonial rule to nominal independence in 1824 under President Bolivar (1824-26) proves tortuous and politically destablizing.

Independence does little to alter the fundamental structures of inequality and underdevelopment based on colonialism and Andean neo-feudalism.

Essentially, independence represents the transfer of power from Spanish-born whites (peninsulares) to sectors of the elite Creole class, whose aim is to preserve and enhance their privileged socioeconomic status.

However, the new Creole elite is unable to create a stable, new constitutional order to replace the crown monolith of church and state.

Nor is it willing to restructure the social order in a way conducive to building a viable democratic, republican government.

Ultimately, the problem is one of replacing the legitimacy of the old order with an entirely new one, something that many post-colonial regimes have difficulty accomplishing.

A particularly virulent form of Andean caudillismo surges into the political vacuum left by the collapse of Spanish rule.

Caudillo strongmen, often officers from the liberation armies, manage to seize power through force of arms and the elaboration of extensive and intricate clientelistic alliances.

Personalistic, arbitrary rule replaces the rule of law, and a prolonged and often byzantine struggle for power is waged at all levels of society.

The upshot is internal political fragmentation and chronic political instability during the first two decades of the post-independence era.