José de San Martín: Argentine soldier, American hero

José de San Martín: Argentine soldier, American hero

Apr 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

IT IS only a slight exaggeration to say that José de San Martín has become the forgotten man of South American independence. In recent years the cult of Simón Bolívar, his Venezuelan collaborator and rival, has been obsessively promoted by Hugo Chávez’s petrodollars and by the more puerile left. This has overshadowed the other great military leader of the fratricidal wars by which Spain’s hegemony over the American continent was broken. Yet San Martín is still revered as the liberator in Argentina and Chile, as well as in Peru where Bolívar’s eventual triumph would have been impossible without the other man’s pioneering invasion.

Three years ago John Lynch, a British historian, published an impeccably balanced biography of Bolívar. Now, on the eve of the bicentenary of the independence movements, he sets out to rescue San Martín from his relative obscurity. This is a harder task, for San Martín was by nature reserved. Born in the Argentine interior, the son of a Spanish colonial official, he was above all a professional soldier. Having moved to Spain as a child, he served for two decades in its army, rising to lieutenant-colonel of cavalry and fighting for three years against Napoleon’s French troops. In 1812 he switched to fighting against Spain, and sailed to Buenos Aires.

San Martín’s unique talents were “an ability to think big and a genius for organisation”. He quickly concluded that the key to securing the independence of the United Provinces of the River Plate (as Argentina was then called) lay in the conquest of Peru, the bastion of Spanish power. Having sought the obscure post of governor of Cuyó, the area around Mendoza, he used this as the base to recruit and train an army. In 1817, in a supreme feat of generalship, he led his 5,000 troops over high Andean passes to Chile, gathered them together again and fell upon the Spanish forces, defeating them at Chacabuco.

Three years later he embarked his army in ships assembled by Lord Cochrane, a brilliant, if self-serving, British naval commander operating as a privateer, and landed in Peru. But Peru was a divided society, and San Martín believed his army of 4,500 was too small to defeat royalist forces roughly double its size. Declaring himself “protector” of Peru, he spent a frustrating two years trying to persuade the country to liberate itself. With his army disintegrating through inaction and disease, San Martín sought reinforcements from Bolívar, whom he met in Guayaquil in June 1822.

Much is often made of the clash between Bolívar’s republicanism and San Martín’s avowed belief that only monarchy could provide order in independent South America. Mr Lynch argues that both men were enlightened despots. Bolívar ended up favouring a president for life, with power to name his successor; monarchy in all but name. What was really at stake in Guayaquil, as San Martín accurately put it, was that “there is not enough room in Peru for Bolívar and me.” And Bolívar had more troops, the product of his political power over greater Colombia. Showing a lack of personal ambition rare among his contemporaries, San Martín promptly withdrew. He spent the rest of his long life in voluntary exile in Europe.

A decent, moderate man, San Martín believed dictatorial government was essential in South America, but shrank from imposing it. Bolívar suffered no such restraints. San Martín may have been too cautious in Peru. But his biggest weakness was that, as he admitted, “I have a poor head for politics.”

Mr Lynch is reluctant to go beyond the documentary evidence. Thus his account of the crucial Guayaquil encounter is sparse and somewhat anti-climactic. But his book will provide a valuable corrective to the more fanciful outpourings of Bolivarianism which can be expected in the bicentennial junketing. As Mr Lynch concludes, though San Martín’s achievements were different to those of Bolívar, they were “not inferior”.

Fuente: The Economist.