Rafael Urdaneta

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Rafael Urdaneta

Rafael Urdaneta (born October 24, 1788 in Maracaibo , Venezuela , † August 23, 1845 in Paris ) was a commander in chief of the Greater Colombian Army, commander of the Honor Guard, President Greater Colombia and Minister of War in Greater Colombia and Venezuela.

Before the war

Rafael José Urdaneta Farías, the son of Spanish immigrants, received his basic education in Maracaibo. He then studied Latin in Caracas , before beginning his philosophy studies again in Maracaibo in 1799 . In 1804 his uncle brought the sixteen-year-old to Bogotá . As the chief auditor of the Court of Auditors, he led the young Rafael in completing his studies and then got him a job as a third official of the Court of Auditors, responsible for paying the colonial troops. He did this job so efficiently that the Royal Hacienda Assembly commended him for it.

Military career in Colombia

With the beginning of the uprising in Bogotá on July 20, 1810, he joined the separatists and in November was a lieutenant in the first (regular) battalion of the New Grenadine Union ( see: First Republic of Colombia ). When participating in the southern campaign against Pasto , he was promoted to captain on March 28, 1811 for his performance in the battle of the Lower Palacé ( Bajo Palacé ; lower reaches of the Palacé river, approx. 15 km north of Popayán , Departamento Cauca). Half a year later he was a major in the 3rd Battalion, and in November 1812 a lieutenant colonel. In May 1812 he was a signatory to the Act of Sogamoso , in which a treaty between the centralists of Bogotá under Antonio Nariño and the federalist congress of Tunja was agreed to avoid civil war. He was then active as an officer in the battles between centralists and federalists. In the final fighting for Bogotá he was captured in January 1813.

At Bolívar

Just a few months later, at the end of April, the Congress in Tunja and other federal prisoners of war placed him under Simón Bolívar , who was preparing his Campaña Admirable (see also the Wars of Independence in Venezuela ). Urdaneta served under General José Felix Ribas at Niquitao (July 2) and under Simon Bolivar at Taguanes (July 31), including the subsequent persecution. In the latter context, he distinguished himself in the encirclement of the Spaniards, which earned him Bolivar's eulogy before the Congress of the Union of New Granada. Three weeks later he stepped forward with Atanasio Giradot as part of the capture of the fortress Las Vigias with parts of Puerto Cabello and helped the Spanish frigate captain Domingo attempted to break out at Barbúla (Estado Carabobo, approx. 15 km north of Valencia) on September 30th de Monteverde, who had received reinforcements. These actions earned him the promotion to colonel.

In the following six months Urdaneta fought against General José Ceballos, who was advancing from Coro, and successfully defended Valencia for days against the 13-fold superior Spaniards until relief came. Bolívar had ordered him to defend the important city on the western edge of the central region to the death, while he himself defied the attack by José Tomás Boves in San Mateo . Previously, in March, he had to give up San Carlos after five days of siege. After the devastating defeat at the second battle of La Puerta (not far north of Calabozo ) on June 15, 1814 (which ultimately heralded the end of the Second Republic), he brought the remnants of the republican army in western Venezuela back together and brought it to the In the following months, past Sebastian de la Calzada's troops in the Mérida and through Casanare to the Colombian Eastern Cordillera, where Francisco de Paula Santander and Gregor MacGregor had defeated loyal guerrillas, including those from Venezuela. Here he met the Bolívar, who had fled from eastern Venezuela, and made his troops available to him for the final pacification of the centralists in Bogotá in December 1814. For this operation, the New Grenadine Union appointed him division general.

With the last resistance fighters in the Venezuelan-Colombian border region

In 1815 he struggled in vain against the capture of New Granada by Pablo Morillo's expeditionary army. After his defeat of Chitága against the troops of de la Calzada and Miguel de la Torre (25 November 1815, the department of Norte de Santander , 45 km east of Bucaramanga) and the case of Bogotá, he suggested to José Antonio Paez in the Llanos of Apure and Casanare to join the remnants of the patriots of New Granada and Venezuela. He was involved in actions under Paez such as in El Yagual 8-11. Involved in October 1816 and Achaguas in June and September 1816. After serious differences with Paez, to which a general and a colonel fell victim, he went with his soldiers to the Venezuelan Andes, where he suffered a defeat and made his way east.

Bolívar's most loyal employee

In the spring of 1817 Urdaneta met Juan Bautista Arismendi, who served under Santiago Mariño, in Barcelona and went to the staff. Urdaneta did his work unimpressed by the power games between Mariño and Bolívar, who had arrived from Haiti in August with a second aid expedition. He was at the Cariaco Congress in early May, but, like some others, did not take part in Mariño's undermining of Bolívar's authority. Urdaneta accompanied Bolívar on his campaigns against Cumaná, Guyana and Angostura in the second half of 1817. He was the presiding judge of the military tribunal against General Manuel Piar, whom Bolívar had executed because of continued insubordination in his own ranks. Urdaneta spoke the verdict on behalf of Bolívar, but, like other parties involved in the process, unsuccessfully pressed for Piar to be allowed to live as a civilian.

It was only used again in the final phase of Bolívar's center campaign in 1818 and sustained a gunshot wound on the Semen (stream in the La Puerta Gorge on March 16, 1818). As part of the planning of the New Granada Campaign in 1819, he not only tied important Spanish forces in eastern Venezuela with his operations from the island of Margarita, he also conquered the hill of Barcelona on July 17, 1819 with his army reinforced by European mercenaries. The city fell on the same day (see biography of Johann von Uslar ). On August 5th he took an artillery position near Cumaná, but without being able to reach his goal of conquering the city.

Bolívar, who was simultaneously successful in New Granada (see the Battle of Boyacá ), made him Commander General of the Honor Guard in Bogotá after incumbent José Antonio Anzoátegui died of a stroke. As a deputy in the Constituent Congress of Angostura in December 1819 and January 1820, he gained political experience. Later he was busy preparing for the conquest of his hometown Maracaibo in northwest Colombia. In addition, he negotiated the Treaty of Santa Ana, which Bolívar and Pablo Morillo signed on November 26, 1820, in the separatist delegation with the Spanish.

In January 1821 Urdaneta broke the armistice with the help of local patriots and occupied Maracaibo, which Bolívar left unpunished or even defended against General Miguel de la Torre at the Cúcuta negotiation site . Then Urdaneta marched through the Merída Andes to San Carlos to provide his troops there Bolívar for the 2nd Battle of Carabobo on June 24th. Although he himself remained in Carota due to illness, Bolívar appointed him commanding general of the Greater Colombian Army in July and gave him command of the western Venezuelan provinces.

After the war

In 1822, in Bogotá, he took command of the Greater Colombian Army, sat as Senator Maracaibos in the Greater Colombia Congress and presided over the Commission for the Return of Expropriated Goods. At the end of 1823 he was elected President of the Greater Colombian Congress for one year. He then went to Maracaibo as governor of his home province of Zulia . At the Cosiata , a separatist uprising in Valencia in January 1826, Urdaneta opposed the secession efforts of José Antonio Paez and loyal to Bolívar and Greater Colombia.

After resigning from the post of governor in Zulia in 1827, he was reappointed Commander in Chief of the Greater Colombian Army. After his death sentence as judge of the Bolívar assassins on September 25, 1828 (whose guilt could not be proven in every case), he was appointed Minister of War. In 1830, after Bolívar's abdication and the uprising against President Joaquín Mosquera, Urdaneta took over the provisional presidency for six months to bring Bolívar back into office. Like Bolívar before, he too failed because of his use of dictatorial means and had to resign.

After Bolívar died

Urdaneta withdrew to Curaçao for over a year until he turned to farming in one of his haciendas in the province of Coro in late 1832 . During an uprising in Maracaibo in 1834, the provincial government of Urdanetas remembered and he restored the constitutional order militarily on their behalf. When he had to deal with uprisings again in the following year, he did so in the role of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Republic.

The successes brought him the popularity he needed to be elected Senator von Coro for the Venezuelan National Congress in 1837. From 1838 Urdaneta was minister of war, but he was released again in 1839. It was only as governor of Guyana in 1842 that he succeeded in gaining a foothold at the national level. The burial of the libertador in Caracas, which he had obtained in his capacity as president of the Bolivarian Society he founded the previous year, was also beneficial to his reputation. In 1843 Urdaneta returned to the cabinet and was again responsible for the war and navy department.

In 1845 a treaty of recognition, peace and friendship with Spain had been concluded, the version of which, ratified by the Venezuelan Congress, was to be sealed by the 56-year-old Urdaneta in a ceremony in Madrid. He was given special powers to renegotiate and had a corresponding mandate. Upon his arrival in London, doctors diagnosed kidney stones and pressed for an immediate operation. Urdaneta died on his onward journey in Paris without being able to fulfill his mission.

His remains, which were buried in the San Francisco Monastery in Caracas in 1845, have been in the Pantéon Nacional in Caracas since 1876 . The bridge over Lake Maracaibo, completed in 1962, bears his name. The eldest son Rafael Guillermo Urdaneta also succeeded in the military and in politics, but fell as a candidate for the presidency in 1862 in a battle of the "guerra federal".

swell

  • Héctor Bencomo Barrios: Los heroes de Carabobo . Ed. de la Presidencia de la Republica, Caracas 2004, ISBN 980-03-0338-3 , ( online (PDF file; 1.32 MB)).
  • Gerhard Masur: Simon Bolivar and the liberation of South America . Südverlag, Constance 1949.
  • Michael Zeuske : Small History of Venezuela . Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-54772-0 , ( Beck'sche series 1745).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Urdaneta, Rafael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Venezuelan general, president and minister of war
DATE OF BIRTH October 24, 1788
PLACE OF BIRTH Maracaibo , Venezuela
DATE OF DEATH August 23, 1845
Place of death Paris