The three years between Bolívar's return to Venezuela in 1826 and his resignation in early 1830 are the political catastrophe of the republic. The structural tensions between the centralist Bolívar and the federalist tradition of the New Granadan and Venezuelan provinces — papered over during the military campaigns of the early 1820s — re-emerged as soon as the external Spanish threat had been eliminated. The Cosiata revolt of April 1826 in Venezuela was the first major secessionist crisis; the Ocaña Convention of April-June 1828 was the failed constitutional reform that would have addressed the federalist grievances; Bolívar's dictatorial decree of August 1828 was the centralist response to the convention's failure; the September 1828 assassination attempt was the response of his Bogotá political opponents; and the slow disintegration of central authority across 1829 was the cumulative result. By the end of the year, Venezuela was preparing to secede.
The Cosiata
The Cosiata revolt — la Cosiata, "the thing" in colloquial Caracas Spanish, the term Páez's supporters used dismissively for the Bogotá government's complaint — began in April 1826 when the Bogotá Council of State suspended Páez from his position as Venezuelan military commander and ordered his appearance in Bogotá to answer charges of arbitrary recruitment practices. Páez, with the active support of the Caracas municipal authorities and the Venezuelan commercial elite, refused to travel to Bogotá. The revolt was political rather than military — Páez did not formally secede or fight the Bogotá government — but it demonstrated that the Bogotá administration's authority over Venezuela was substantially dependent on Páez's voluntary acquiescence, which could no longer be assumed. Bolívar, returning from Peru via the Caribbean coast, reached Caracas in January 1827 and substantially endorsed Páez's position, restoring him to his command and granting Venezuela substantial administrative autonomy under a special Bolivarian decree of January 1827. The decree functionally reversed the Cúcuta unitary-republic settlement for Venezuela; the New Granadan federalists at Bogotá, particularly the substantial Santander faction, were outraged.
The political consequence of the Cosiata resolution was that Bolívar was now positioned as a friend of the federalist Venezuelan position against the centralist New Granadan one — a reversal of his usual constitutional position, taken on the personal-political grounds that he could not afford to lose Páez's loyalty. The price was the Santander faction's progressive alienation; Santander would lead the constitutional opposition to Bolívar across the next two years.
The Ocaña Convention
The Ocaña Convention — meeting at the small Andean town of Ocaña between the 9th of April and the 11th of June 1828 — was the constitutional reform mechanism authorised by the 1827 Bolivarian decree to revise the 1821 Cúcuta constitution. The Convention was bitterly divided between Bolivarian centralists (favouring stronger executive authority, longer presidential terms, and an appointed senate on the Bolivian model) and the Santanderista federalists (favouring departmental autonomy on the United States model, shorter presidential terms, and an elected bicameral congress). The two factions deadlocked after eight weeks of inconclusive debate. The Bolivarian delegates withdrew on the 11th of June, leaving the Convention without a quorum; the Santanderista delegates dissolved the Convention without producing a revised constitution. The constitutional question was now political: in the absence of a successful reform, what would replace the Cúcuta arrangement, and on whose authority?
The dictatorship
The political answer came from Bolívar at Bogotá on the 27th of August 1828. The Decree of Organisation, issued under Bolívar's emergency authority as "Liberator-President", suspended the 1821 constitution, abolished the vice-presidency, concentrated all executive authority in the president personally, and substantially centralised administrative authority. The decree was a unilateral act of constitutional revision; it was supported by the Venezuelan military faction under Páez (who had received the regional autonomy concessions of 1827 and was willing to support centralism elsewhere) and by the Bolivarian provinces of southern New Granada; it was opposed by the Santanderista faction in Bogotá itself, the New Granadan central highlands, and the Cauca valley. The constitutional rupture was now open.
The September assassination attempt
On the night of the 25th-26th of September 1828, an armed group of approximately twenty conspirators — predominantly Santanderista military officers and law students, led by Pedro Carujo — broke into the presidential residence of San Carlos in Bogotá with the intention of assassinating Bolívar. Bolívar's mistress Manuela Sáenz — a Quiteña of fiercely independent character whose political role in the late-republican period substantially exceeded the bedroom-companion stereotype — delayed the conspirators at the door long enough for Bolívar to escape through a window. The attempt failed; the conspirators were captured over the following days; fourteen were tried by military commission and executed in October 1828. Santander, who had been aware of the conspiracy but whose direct involvement was never clearly established, was tried for complicity, convicted, sentenced to death by Bolívar's military tribunal, and (on Bolívar's personal commutation) exiled instead of executed. He would return to New Granada in 1832, after the Republic of Colombia's dissolution, as the founding president of the successor state of New Granada.
The political consequence of the September attempt was an immediate intensification of the dictatorship's authoritarian tendencies and a parallel acceleration of provincial alienation. The cumulative effect across 1829 was the cumulative loss of political authority by the Bogotá government — Quito and the Ecuadorian department effectively functioning autonomously, Venezuela openly preparing for secession under Páez's leadership, the New Granadan central provinces administratively disaffected. By late 1829 the political dissolution was substantively underway. Bolívar's resignation, in April 1830, would formalise the dissolution that was already taking place. The resignation is the next chapter.
End of Chapter VI