Independence Consolidated
The fight for independence gained new impetus after the December 9, 1824, Battle of Ayacucho in which a combined army of 5,700 Gran Colombian and Peruvian troops under the command of Antonio José de Sucre defeated the royalist army of 6,500 and captured its leader, José de la Serna. The Colombians and Peruvians, who had already liberated Ecuador and Peru, tipped the balance of power in favor of the independence forces. After the Battle of Ayacucho, the remaining royalist troops under the command of Pedro Antonio Olañeta—who was opposed to the Constitution and had rebelled in January 1824 against Viceroy La Serna and the liberal restoration of 1820—surrendered after Olañeta died in Tumusla on April 2, 1825. Simón Bolívar, president of Gran Colombia and Peru at the time and Sucre's chief, was opposed to Upper Peruvian independence, but local leaders—both former royalists like Casimiro Olañeta, nephew of General Olañeta, and patriots—all supported it. Bolívar left the decision to Sucre, who went along with local sentiment. Sucre proclaimed Upper Peru's Declaration of Independence in the city which now bears his name on August 6. A constituent congress renamed the country "Bolívar", later changed to Bolívia, on August 11, 1825.
From then on, local elites dominated the congress and although they supported Sucre's efforts, they chafed under the idea that a Gran Colombian army remained in the nation. After an attempt on his life, Sucre resigned the presidency of Bolivia in April 1828 and returned to Venezuela. The Bolivian Congress elected La Paz native Andrés de Santa Cruz the new president. Santa Cruz had been a former royalist officer, served under José de San Martín after 1821 and then under Sucre in Ecuador, and had a short term as president of Peru from 1826 to 1827. Santa Cruz arrived in Bolivia in May 1829 and assumed office. The government was now fully in the hands of locals, opening a new, though equally troubled, era in Bolivian history.
Read more about this topic: Bolivian War Of Independence
Famous quotes containing the words independence and/or consolidated:
“... we’re not out to benefit society, to remold existence, to make industry safe for anyone except ourselves, to give any small peoples except ourselves their rights. We’re not out for submerged tenths, we’re not going to suffer over how the other half lives. We’re out for Mary’s job and Luella’s art, and Barbara’s independence and the rest of our individual careers and desires.”
—Anne O’Hagan (1869–?)
“Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)