Almost every schoolchild in Venezuela, the Bolivarian Republic, according to the late president Hugo Chavez, is schooled in the lore of the revolution in the early 19th century known as the Venezuelan War of Independence, wherein the criollos or American-born colonists of northern South America rose up in resistance to rule by the Napoleonic government in Spain.They also know the role of a Trinidad cotton planter in the foundation of the republic, while here we are largely unaware that our island played a critical role in helping Venezuela win independence.
The war led to the formation of the First and Second Republics of Venezuela (so called because they were created at different historic junctures). The First Republic was the seed of the revolution which was created by the assembly of a military junta led by Simon Bolivar and General Francisco de Miranda.This clashed violently with internal royalist factions in a bloody civil war which toppled the stillborn Republican Congress that was formed in Caracas. The increasingly dictatorial Miranda was forced to capitulate to the royalists and Bolivar went into hiding to begin a guerrilla war in what is today Colombia that was initially composed of a few poorly armed peasants in ragged clothing and without food.
Village by village the Bolivarian factions began to push back the royalists. In the northeast of the continent, an independent band commanded by a brave young man named Santiago Marino was heading towards the coast in a desperate silent assault.Marino was the son of a high-ranking militiaman and magistrate in the Spanish era in Trinidad before 1797, when the British seized control. His mother was the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants who had come to the island during the Cedula of Population in 1783.Although born on the island of Margarita in 1788, Santiago spent his childhood at his parents' cotton plantation on Chacachacare. In Trinidad he became a Freemason, being inducted at the United Brothers Lodge which still stands on Piccadilly Street in east Port-of-Spain, attaining the title of Grand Master.After being educated abroad, he returned to Margarita in 1808 after his father died. Marino joined the revolution in the era of the First Republic, but his regiment was defeated and he returned to his cotton estate on Chacachacare to reconnoitre.As mentioned in the previous instalment of this series, the British colonial authorities in Trinidad provided support under the table for the revolution and many Port-of-Spain merchants were generous in their commitment. At his house on Chacachacare, Marino assembled a patriotic group of 45 republicans and stored a quantity of arms and ammunition.
On January 11, 1813, the patriots crossed the Bocas Grande in small canoes and landed near the fortress town of Guiria.Back in Trinidad, Governor Munro made a half-hearted attempt to show Britain's neutrality by sending a body of soldiers to "apprehend" Marino and his cohorts as well as banishing the planter in principle and nominally confiscating his property.Marino's revolutionaries seized the fort in a valiant sortie and appropriated a goodly store of munitions. Their courage gave heart to others and the "Immortal 45," as they were later known, marched on the city of Maturin, where he set up an independent eastern front while Bolivar led a foray against Caracas.Clashes between Marino and Bolivar were inevitable and although they sometimes fought alongside each other, Marino eventually ousted Bolivar, who fled to Haiti. This civil abrasion would have ended the War of Independence right then and there had Bolivar not returned in 1817 and ceded military high command to Marino. Together, they campaigned in the Battle of Carabobo, which was the final confrontation that saw the Republic of Venezuela emerge in 1821.Bolivar died in 1830 but Marino soldiered on. In 1835 he led a coup against the president, who was banished, but returned with strong support in 1836 while Marino himself was forced to beat a hasty retreat to Jamaica and Colombia. He returned in 1848 as the Army Chief under his friend and former military compatriot President Jose Tadeo Monagas (whose granddaughter was married to a Guiseppi from Trinidad and is buried in the old cemetery in St Joseph) but this was to be short-lived and fraught with difficulties which seemed to set the tone for Venezuelan politics thereafter.Nevertheless, after he died in 1854 the former cotton planter was remembered as a great hero of the revolution and one of the authors of Venezuela's independence, and he is commemorated in the name of the Santiago Marino International Airport in Margarita.