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President Fernando Garcia Alvarez[/size]
Hero of the Revolution, Father of the Republic
Early Life
Fernando Rodrigo Garcia de Alvarez y Arroyo was born into a wealthy Spanish family in the Viceroyalty of New Granada. Alvarez's great-grandfather had served as a royal administrator in Cuba, before emigrating to the colony of New Granada and establishing a large plantation in the region of Caracas. Alvarez's grandfather has greatly increased the family's wealth by entering into various business partnerships in the fields of mining and shipping. As a boy, Fernando Alvarez benefitted from his family's wealth, growing up on the great estate, living a comfortable life, and being taught by the best tutors and instructors available. From an early age, Alvarez took to reading the works of European thinkers, as well as works of history detailing the accomplishments of great leaders. Alvarez also showed an early talent for riding and an aptitude for both engineering and leadership.
In Europe
These talents, in addition to his considerable wealth, earned him a place at the royal military academy in Spain, where he developed his talents into great military skill. Fernando Alvarez quickly proved himself an adroit strategist, bold tactician, and masterful artillerist; his mastery of horsemanship was almost unmatched at the academy, as was his intellectual curiosity. After graduating from the academy, Alvarez went on to tour Spain, Portugal, and France, studying contemporary political philosophy and military theory.
Colonial Military Career
Upon his return to New Granada, Alvarez was commissioned as an officer in a Spanish colonial regiment at Maracaibo. Alvarez proved a competent and popular unit commander, and was promoted to a divisional command. Alvarez earned the trust and respect of his men by spending time with them rather than his fellow officers; Alvarez preferred to eat with the soldiers, and was often a party to their impromptu football games. When his unit joined combat against a band of rebellious natives, Alvarez led from the front, fighting from horseback in the very thick of combat with his men. This closeness to his troops made Alvarez unpopular with his superiors in the Spanish military establishment, and he was soon made to relinquish his command and return to his home outside Caracas.
On the Road to Revolution
Alvarez did not remain at his estate long. The fear and resentment Alvarez had experienced from his superiors in the military was becoming increasingly common in New Granada, and all of Spanish America, at that time.
Criollos -- ethnic Spaniards born in America -- were becoming increasingly numerous, prosperous, and educated, and the
peninsulare aristocracy were beginning to see these "upstarts" as a threat to their power. Bias and discrimination was forcing
criollo officers and soldiers out of the Spanish colonial regiments, and increasingly heavy and unjust taxation and restrictive legislation were burderning the
criollo population. At the same time, the ideas of the European Enlightenment were flowing into New Granada, where the increasingly-affluent and -educated
criollo class took them to heart. The country was ripe for revolution.
The Early Revolution - Continentalism in New Granada
That revolution came in 1744. Even as the power elite tore itself apart fighting for control of the Spanish throne, the
peninsulare aristocracy in America tightened its grip on the colonies. It was no wonder, then, that when the
peninsulares turned to fighting amongst themselves, the
criollos rose up to liberate their countries. The first wave of revolution in New Granada was an arm of the wider Continentalist movement, which had also risen in New Spain. It was this movement which Alvarez joined as the
coronel of a volunteer regiment established in Caracas. Alvarez's unit saw combat on several occasions during the Continentalist phase of the Granadine Revolution, skirmishing with Spanish colonial forces twice at Caracas, once at Aragua, and several times again in the hill country. Each time, Alvarez led his men from the front. Fernando Alvarez became a celebrated name throughout New Granada following the Second Battle of Caracas when Alvarez, astride his white horse Babieca, led his men in a charge up the slope of the Caracas Valley, routing the Spanish garrison from the city. It was later said by one of the soldiers who followed Alvarez on that charge that "bullets refused to touch him... he rode straight up the hill and straight through the fire, and it was the Spanish shot that curved to avoid him." Despite Alvarez's victories, the Continentalist uprising in New Granada was suppressed by the Spanish colonial authorities. Alvarez was fortunate; whereas many Continentalist political leaders were captured and hanged, he was able to escape to Guiana, where he could safely await another opportunity to free his country from Spain.
Alvarez leading the charge at Caracas: "...bullets refused to touch him..."
Declaration at Caracas - 5 May, 1746
That opportunity came one year later, with the opening of hostilities between France and Spain. With Spanish forces occupied elsewhere, Alvarez returned to New Granada to gather support and stage a second revolt against Spanish authority. After gathering followers and several thousand volunteers, Alvarez entered Caracas and there, on May 5, issued the Declaration of Independence that had been drafted by a fellow revolutionary only a few days earlier. With that declaration, Alvarez inaugurated both the second, or Republican, wave of the Granadine Revolution, and the new Republic of New Granada. The provisional Constituent Assembly which gathered in Caracas in the weeks following the Declaration appointed Alvarez as General in command of all revolutionary forces in New Granada, and assigned to him the task of liberating the country from the Spanish. Taking up the new tricolor banner, sewn by the ladies of Caracas for his use, Alvarez led an army of twenty thousand men --
criollo patriots, foreign volunteers,
mestizos,
mulattoes, escaped slaves, and even indigenous tribesmen -- out of Caracas and into the countryside to push out the Spanish. Unlike the Continentalist Revolution, which had had to contend with a large Spanish presence, Alvarez's Army of the Republic faced relatively little organized opposition. Spanish forces in the west and east were already overrun by invading Mexican and Portuguese armies, and the garrisons Alvarez met were small. Only at Bogota did Alvarez encounter serious resistance from the Spanish army. Imperial forces were dug in deep in the city, protected by strong stone emplacements and heavy cannon. Recognizing that a direct assault would be disastrous, Alvarez decided to strike the Spaniards from the rear. Alvarez arrayed his guns along a broad, shallow front, concentrating all his firepower on the Spanish breastworks; he marshalled the largest part of his army in front of the Spanish forces, as though in preparation for a frontal assault. The much smaller portion of the army he sent down and around the city, out of sight of the Spanish garrison, and to the opposite end of the town. As the artillery began a great bombardment of the Spanish positions, the smaller force approached from the rear, and the larger force made a great show of preparing for the assault. With Spanish attention concentrated fully on repelling on the suspected main attack, the smaller force -- numbering no more than four hundred men -- assaulted the Spanish positions from behind, causing the garrison the crumble, and capturing cannons, officers, and hundreds of Spanish soldiers. With this route complete, the main body of the Army of the Republic entered Bogota and liberated the city. Within months of marshalling the army at Caracas, New Granada was free from the grip of the Spanish throne.
The Republic's First President
Alvarez returned to Caracas, now established as the permanent capital of the Republic, where he was greeted as a hero. He was soon called to the meeting hall of the Constituent Assembly, who he expected would bestow upon him some decoration for his victories over the Spanish. Instead, he was informed that he had been elected as the Republic's first president by a vote of the Assembly; and, upon accepting the office, was inaugurated as such.
Fernando Garcia Alvarez remains the defining character of the Granadine Revolution -- a brilliant scholar, an enlightened political thinker, a talented military commander, a beloved leader --
hero of the Revolution, father of the Republic.
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