The marchioness and the marshal.

AuthorGil-Montero, Martha
PositionMariana, Marchiness of Solanda and Villarocha; Field Marshal Antonio Jose de Sucre

Twice a widow and twice a marchioness, Dona Mariana Carcelen y Larrea died at age fifty-six, after having regretted all her betrayals. According to her death certificate, she passed away in Quito, on December 15, 1861, "with fever, having practiced all virtues, especially charity toward the poor, and lamented by almost every one." After the death of General Isidoro Barriga, the husband she fancied, Mariana, Marchioness of Solanda and Villarrocha, had more than a decade to reminisce and regret. Some say that each day she wept at the grave of Field Marshal Antonio Jose de Sucre, her first husband, the great man she had reluctantly accepted. Some pronounced the last years of Mariana's life so exemplary that God could not but grant her forgiveness.

Others among her contemporaries reacted differently. Gossip, constant reminders of her rebellious youthful behavior, and accusations of adultery--even murder--would stain her name for many years. Those who considered Sucre, the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho, a flawless man, could neither forgive the marchioness her love affair with General Barriga, nor forget her indifference to Sucre's legacy.

Even today, the marchioness continues to be compared unfavorably to the Libertadora Manuela Saenz, Simon Bolivar's steadfast lover. Their lives have an important epoch in common: Both women were in Quito in 1822, when Sucre defeated the Spaniards in the Battle of Pichincha and Bolivar entered the city in triumph, and both were loved by the two eminent liberators of their time. In every other aspect, however, their lives were different. Manuela, the illegitimate daughter of a Spaniard and a Creole, had survived a difficult childhood. As she grew up, she displayed much wit, read the classics faithfully, and possessed enough courage, loyalty, and integrity to last her through the upheavals of her life with Bolivar, to whom she remained faithful to the end. The wealthy marchioness, however, in the words of biographer Angel Grisanti, "went through life with the mark of vulgarity stamped on her person; she boasted intellectual shallowness as her main merit and folly as her stigma."

Mariana was born in July 1805 to Dona Teresa Larrea and Don Felipe Carcelen y Sanchez Orellana, the seventh Marquis of Solanda and the sixth Marquis of Villarrocha. Although the Carcelen family had always been wealthy, their claim to nobility was, at best, recent. Neither the first Marquis of Solanda nor his immediate relatives had children. During several generations, the title passed to nephews and nieces until it was inherited by Don Felipe. As the eldest surviving child, Mariana became the eighth Marchioness of Solanda and seventh Marchioness of Villarrocha.

Very little is known about Mariana's childhood. She was the eldest of five sisters and spent long sojourns to the Carcelen family haciendas near Quito. The marquis supported the patriots and participated in the wars of independence, but nothing indicates that he bothered to instill republican ideas--or any other ideal or lofty ambition--in his daughters. Their education must have been very limited, and their caprices went undisciplined.

When Bolivar visited the Carcelens at Sucre's prompting in 1826, he did not see in the twenty-one-year-old marchioness the admirable woman his putative son deserved at his side. Instead of noting the exquisite fragility that Sucre had come to idealize in her, he perceived a moral frailty; instead of remarking on her beauty and riches, Bolivar observed a lack of strength, honesty, and constancy. He gave only a reluctant blessing to the soon-to-be bride and groom, writing to Sucre after...

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