The four years between the Battle of Pichincha in May 1822 and the Pan-American Congress at Panama in June 1826 are the apogee of Bolivarian South American republicanism. The republic of Colombia, having completed the liberation of its own territory, extended its military and political reach into Peru and Upper Peru (modern Bolivia) under Bolívar's personal command. The two major battles of the period — Junín in August 1824 and Ayacucho in December 1824 — completed the destruction of Spanish royalist forces on the South American continent. The Pan-American Congress at Panama of June 1826 attempted to formalise a permanent confederation of the new Spanish American republics — a project that failed in the short term but that anticipated, in its outlines, the institutional architecture of twentieth-century Latin American multilateralism.
Pichincha and Sucre
The Battle of Pichincha on the 24th of May 1822 — fought on the western slope of the Pichincha volcano overlooking Quito, between Antonio José de Sucre's republican force of approximately 3,000 and the Spanish royalist Aymerich's force of approximately 1,900 — completed the liberation of the third department of the republic. Sucre, then twenty-seven years old and Bolívar's most trusted lieutenant, conducted the battle with technical proficiency: his attack column, having marched up the volcano's slope under cover of low cloud, engaged the Spanish line above the cloud cover at approximately 10,500 feet and broke it in a four-hour engagement. Casualties: Republican 200 killed, Spanish 400 killed and 1,400 prisoners. Sucre entered Quito the next day. Bolívar arrived from the north on the 16th of June. The famous diplomatic-military meeting with the Argentine general José de San Martín — who had liberated Chile and Peru's coast in the preceding three years — took place at Guayaquil on the 26th-27th of July 1822. The substance of the Guayaquil meeting has been argued for two centuries; what is clear is that San Martín emerged from it persuaded that Bolívar would complete the Peruvian campaign and that the political differences between them were too substantial for joint command; San Martín withdrew from Peru in September 1822 and went into European exile, leaving the Peruvian liberation to Bolívar.
The Peruvian campaign
The Peruvian campaign of 1823–24 was Bolívar's most operationally extended military effort. Peru — the heartland of Spanish colonial South America, the seat of the Viceroyalty of Peru, the source of the silver from Potosí — retained substantial royalist military resources in the Andean highlands and a divided republican movement in Lima. Bolívar arrived in Lima on the 1st of September 1823 with substantial Colombian republican reinforcements; the Peruvian Congress invested him with executive dictatorial powers in February 1824; he spent the spring of 1824 reorganising the Peruvian army around the Colombian veteran core, training mountain infantry to operate in the high Andean altitudes, and coordinating logistical support across the Andean passes.
The campaign of August-December 1824 produced two decisive engagements. At Junín on the 6th of August 1824 — a cavalry battle of 1,300 republican horsemen against 1,200 Spanish, fought on the high pampa west of the Junín lake at 13,000 feet, in approximately one hour of close combat — Bolívar's army broke the Spanish field force and opened the road to Cuzco. At Ayacucho on the 9th of December 1824 — Sucre's battle, fought on the high plain at Quinua at 11,000 feet, between Sucre's 6,000 republican troops and Viceroy La Serna's 9,300 royalists — the principal Spanish army on the South American continent was destroyed: 1,800 Spanish killed, 700 wounded, the viceroy and most of his senior officers captured. The capitulation of Ayacucho on the 9th of December 1824 effectively ended Spanish colonial rule in South America. The remaining royalist garrisons — Callao until January 1826, a few isolated highland units — surrendered piecemeal across the next year.
Bolivia
Upper Peru — modern Bolivia — declared its independence on the 6th of August 1825 at Chuquisaca, taking the name "Bolivia" in Bolívar's honour. Sucre was elected its first president; Bolívar drafted its first constitution (the 1826 Bolivian constitution, which provided for a life-tenure president with the power to designate his successor — a Bolivarian constitutional innovation that would prove politically unsustainable in Bolivia itself and that anticipated Bolívar's later attempts to apply similar provisions to Gran Colombia). The Bolivian constitution lasted approximately three years before being substantially revised; the broader Bolivarian project of a federation of Spanish American republics on Bolivian-Peruvian-Colombian institutional foundations would not survive Bolívar's resignation in 1830.
The Panama Congress
The Pan-American Congress at Panama City, opening on the 22nd of June 1826, was Bolívar's most ambitious diplomatic initiative. The intended scope was a permanent federation of the newly independent Spanish American republics — Mexico, Central America, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Gran Colombia — with shared diplomatic representation, mutual defence provisions against Spanish reconquest, and coordinated commercial policy. The actual attendance was reduced: Argentina, Chile, Brazil and the United States either declined to attend or sent observers without negotiating authority; the principal substantive delegations were from Gran Colombia, Mexico, Central America, and Peru. The Congress adopted, on the 15th of July 1826, the Treaty of Perpetual Union, League, and Confederation — a defensive alliance plus the framework of a permanent secretariat. The Treaty was ratified only by Gran Colombia among the signatories; the project lapsed for lack of broader adherence.
The Panama Congress was, in retrospect, the high-water mark of the Bolivarian federation project. The political weight that had to be expended to convene it, the disappointing attendance, and the failure of ratification together demonstrated that the political nationalisms of the new Spanish American states had moved more rapidly than Bolívar's continental federation could accommodate. The republics that had emerged from the wars of independence were defining themselves against each other as much as against Spain; the federalist project of a single Spanish American confederation would not be revived seriously in the nineteenth century. Bolívar himself, returning to Lima from Bolivia in early 1826 to find Venezuela in revolt against the Bogotá government, would spend the next four years managing the dissolution of his own republic rather than the federation of a continent. The dissolution is the subject of Chapters VI through VIII.
End of Chapter V