The liberator's noble match.

• Author: Gil-Montero, Martha
• Position: Antonio Jose de Sucre - Cover Story

ANTONIO JOSE DE SUCRE, FEARLESS SOLDIER AND LOYAL AMBASSADOR OF SIMON BOLIVAR, PLAYED AN ESSENTIAL ROLE IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN WARS OF INDEPENDENCE

"HERE, GRAND MARSHAL, I have brought you these relics," Dona Josefa Linares whispered sweetly, as one of her gloved hands offered a rosary to the wounded and bedridden Sucre. "Take them," she insisted calmly, while her other hand concealed a couple of old pistols under his pillow. "They're loaded with blessings."

A day before, on April 17, 1828, a Chuquisaca regiment had revolted against Sucre, Bolivia's first president, and he had dared to ride into the central court of the barracks to talk to the mutineers. As a reward for his courage, South America's wisest and noblest warrior received a volley of musket fire that splintered his right arm, grazed his head and left him semi-conscious. Fortunately, his wounded horse bolted and carried him back to the palace stables. Sucre regained consciousness as he was being undressed on his bed. Realizing the seriousness of his predicament, he cried out: "This broken arm ended the wars of independence in Ayacucho and created Bolivia."

The news of Sucre's injuries and his imprisonment in the palace spread quickly, and many, especially women, came to offer help. Their "blessings," cheers and support worked marvels upon the injured chief executive: a week later he defeated the rebels. In the end, however, all efforts by the people of Chuquisaca to bolster Sucre's presidency would prove to be in vain. By then, different factions elsewhere in Bolivia, Lima and Buenos Aires had already begun their work of disaffection, and a few months later, after more revolts and another period of incarceration, Sucre was forced to leave his high post. It can be said that the Grand Marshal of Ayacucho, as Sucre is often called, then began a two-year-long calvary that would end in 1830 when he was cowardly assassinated.

In mid-1828, the two men who contributed most to the independence of South America--Simon Bolivar, then president of Colombia, and Antonio Sucre, then president of Bolivia--simultaneously began the last acts of their magnificent careers. It was a prolonged, painful and futile finale, because the two leaders were forced constantly to thwart the betrayal of their compatriots and the cruelty of their enemies. They both ultimately succumbed to ungratefulness and disloyalty. Bolivar died of despair and tuberculosis in December 1830, at age forty-seven, as he was leaving Colombia for an uncertain exile in Jamaica or Europe. A crash of muskets shattered Sucre's life in July 1830; he was only thirty-five years old and was returning to his home in Quito, tired of wars and in search of respite.

Bolivar and Sucre were indeed romantic heroes, obsessed with defeating the Spanish empire, and intoxicated with the glory heaped upon them. Both were born in Venezuela and were, in many ways, kindred spirits. Moreover, they maintained a father-son relationship from 1818, when Sucre's diplomatic skills secured Bolivar's absolute leadership over the Venezuelan Army of Liberation, until their death. The two leaders, however, could not avoid competing for the leadership of the campaigns to liberate Guayaquil and Quito (1821-22), and Peru and Bolivia (1823-25). But their rivalry was as tender as it was noble. Always supporting and championing each other, they earned together the ultimate distinction of ending Spanish rule in South America.

THE MAKING OF A RIVAL

Antonio Jose Francisco de Sucre was born on February 3, 1795, on the northeast coast of the Captaincy of Venezuela. Among his forebears were Spanish nobles, Christianized Jews from Flanders and perhaps a few Indians and African slaves. Wealthy creoles like the Sucres were the accepted leaders in the region. Antonio's great-grandfather had been Captain General of a province whose capital was Cumana, and it was here that the Sucres resided. His grandfather was a lieutenant colonel in the colonial militia, and his father, Vicente de Sucre, attained the rank of colonel. As a young boy, the future Grand Marshal was made to take pride in his lineage and his ancestral tradition of soldiering. His military career was thus predetermined.

Sucre's quiet childhood by the sea was profoundly altered by the death of his mother in 1802, and his father's second marriage a year later. The fact that he found himself without maternal affection and, soon thereafter, without the masculine influence of his father, might explain Sucre's life-long quest for tenderness and his later response to strong father-figures like Bolivar.

As a youngster, Sucre was educated by private tutors. Later, he attended a local mathematics school and, when not yet 13, he departed for Caracas to enter a military academy run by an antimonarchist Spanish colonel. Secular and republican schooling set him apart from most of his contemporaries, who were exposed...