What did Bolívar write in the Jamaica Letter of 1815?

Bolívar writes the Jamaica Letter

La Carta de Jamaica

6 September 1815. In 1815 the cause of independence looked lost.

Draft: not yet checked against its sources.

Where: The Spanish Caribbean, The whole Spanish-speaking world, Venezuela, Colombia

What happened

In 1815 the cause of independence looked lost. Simón Bolívar had been forced out of Cartagena in May and taken refuge in Kingston, in British Jamaica. There, on 6 September, he dictated to his secretary a long reply to an English merchant, Henry Cullen, who had asked about the state of Spanish America. The letter surveys the whole continent, country by country, predicts that Spain cannot hold it, warns that the Americans, after three centuries without self-government, will struggle to build republics, and dreams of a united 'Colombia' of Venezuela and New Granada. Written in exile with no army, it is the most read political text of the independence era. UNESCO placed it on its Memory of the World register in 2016.

Say it

En 1815 Bolívar escribió en Jamaica una carta sobre el futuro de América.

In 1815 Bolívar wrote a letter in Jamaica about the future of America.

Why it matters

The Jamaica Letter gave the independence movement an argument and a vocabulary, 'americanos', 'nuestra América', that still shapes how Spanish-speaking countries talk about themselves. It is read in every school in the Bolivarian countries.

Read about it

Connected

Sources

  1. Reply of a South American to a Gentleman of this Island (The Jamaica Letter, Simón Bolívar, 1815) — UNESCO Memory of the World
  2. ¿Qué fue la Gran Colombia? — Señal Memoria (RTVC, Colombia)