Manuela & Simon.

• Author: Gil-Montero, Martha
• Position: Simon Bolivar, Manuela Saenz

I confess that I am not a tolerant woman; yet, at the same time, let me add that I have endured far too much. You can call my zeal a crime; you can revile me as you will. You may satisfy your thirst for malice but you have not discouraged me. For my serenity derives from a clear conscience and is unaffected by the evil intentions of my enemies, the enemies of His Excellency the Liberator.

--Manuela Saenz, June 1830

Open letter to the People of Bogota

ON JUNE 9, 1830, the city of Bogota was preparing to celebrate the Festival of Corpus Christi with fireworks and a big bonfire. The people planned to burn, to the accompaniment of flying sparks and public jeers, what appeared to be a castle topped by two grotesque figures depicting "Despotism" and "Tyranny." The gaunt likeness of the Liberator Simon Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad Bolivar y Palacios, symbolized the former. The latter was personified by the sensual silhouette of Dona Manuela Saenz de Thorne, a "brazen hussy" who in 1828 had dared to order the execution, in effigy, of Francisco de Paula Santander, then the nemesis of Simon Bolivar, but now victorious in his political struggle with the Liberator.

A month earlier, the Liberator and his bold Manuela--intimate companions in love and war--had bid their last farewell. Besieged by enemies, worn and desperately ill, he was to die months later on his way into voluntary exile. She had only the first half of her life behind her; 26 years of poverty and persecution still lay ahead.

In that June of 1830, Manuela Saenz at 32 was both an intimidating character and a ripe beauty with tremendous drive and passion. She had never allowed an insult to her lover to go unpunished. Anticipating a possible violent reaction on her part, the authorities placed armed guards around the castle they had raised in the main plaza, but nothing could stop the renowned rage of "that Saenz woman." Accompanied by her two black female servants, Jonatas y Nathan, Manuela attacked the soldiers and demolished the offensive symbols. The three women, dressed in military uniform, fought as if they were still waging the Liberator's holy war. The following Sunday the newspaper "La Aurora" described what it called an "outrage," noting that Manuela "brandished a pistol, railing against the government, against freedom and against the people." The article aimed harsh criticism at her: "A shameless woman, a camp follower trailing after General Bolivar, who dresses daily in clothing unsuited to her sex ... flouting propriety and boasting of her contempt for laws and morality." On the 20th of that month, Manuela responded to the journalist's censure with an appeal to the people of Bogota. One paragraph read:

If even the withdrawal of this hero from public

life has failed to calm your rage and you have

chosen me as your target, I can say to you: you

can do whatever you want to me, you can

threaten my very existence, cowards that you

are, but you cannot make me betray my respect

and friendship for General Bolivar and

my gratitude to him. Those of you who consider

this to be a crime reveal only the pettiness

of your own minds, while I demonstrate the

constancy of my spirit by vowing that you shall

never make me vacillate or fear ...

As she had done on many other occasions when faced with accusations, prejudice or intolerance, Manuela reaffirmed her faithfulness to the Liberator, her "creole" courage and her pride as a patriot and a lover. Some historians appreciated all of these virtues, as well as her beauty, magnetism, and exuberant nature. Others, however, considered her to be no more than a lascivious, superficial and frivolous woman. Most of her biographies contain intimate details drawn from gossip and campaign chronicles. Yet, Salvador de Madariaga and other biographers of Bolivar, and the memoirs of General O'Leary, depict an enormously complex person. The works of fiction she has inspired have made her into a legend. Manuela Saenz has been the main character in at least twenty books.

Her hair was black and curly, her flashing eyes

bold and black, her skin alabaster white and

her teeth perfection. She was of medium height

with a very fine figure. She knew how to handle

a sword and a pistol and was a skilled

horseback rider--dressed as a man in red

pants and a black velvet ruana (poncho), with

her loose curls under a plumed hat and falling

over her shoulders.

--Juan Bautista Ortiz

in a contemporary account

Two centuries ago, Quito sheltered sixty thousand residents, most of them remarkably uninhibited. The city described by the traveler Alexander von Humboldt as "the finest in South America" reverberated with the euphoria of European ideas. Morals were permissive, the culture was sophisticated and, although the members of each social class knew their rightful places, they all responded to the influence of the French revolution and its passion for freedom. In the Quito of the Spanish viceroys, mistresses were socially acceptable, as were illegitimate children. The clergy gave genteel sanction to this scandalous state of affairs. Yet along with selective luxury and tolerance, Quito was also undergoing an economic crisis, and the first political rumblings produced by republican ideas had begun to stir. War and resistance to Spanish rule, revolution and anarchy, conspiracy, rapes and executions were to dominate the following decades. This was the city that welcomed Don Simon Saenz de Vergara in 1790.

Simon Saenz, a well-born Spanish adventurer of vaulting ambition, took a house on the main street and became involved in politics and trade. He soon obtained high positions, including political and administrative posts. Don Simon was a royalist who despised creoles and years later was to become an implacable enemy of all those who sought independence from Spain. He died during a revolutionary uprising in 1823.

His wife, Dona Juana, gave him four children: Pedro, Jose Maria, Ignacio y Eulalia. But neither his family, his ambitions and political intrigues, nor his hatred for creoles, prevented him from pursuing an extramarital affair. The passion shared by the attractive, mature Simon Saenz and a Quito beauty from a Spanish family, Maria Joaquina de Aispuro, produced a daughter named Manuela Saenz. This "illegitimate child," as described in her baptism certificate, came into the world on December 27, 1797.

The proud and courageous Maria Joaquina had from the start accepted her status as concubine yet had never concealed her maternal pride. The Aispuro family and the proud father spared no expense in providing for the...