La Pola and the Spy Network of Bogota
Policarpa Salavarrieta ran intelligence for the patriots inside royalist Bogota until her execution at twenty-two. Camila follows the network, the sewing jobs that covered it, and her last words.
Petion's Price: Haiti Arms the Venezuelan Campaign
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Show notes
The meeting at Les Cayes
In early 1816, with his cause in ruins, Bolivar arrived in the Haitian republic and met President Alexandre Petion, who gave him ships, muskets, powder, printing presses and money. The condition was the abolition of slavery in the liberated territories. This episode weighs the promise against what followed.
- Haiti in 1816: the only free Black republic in the world and why it helped
- What Petion actually supplied, from the Haitian records
- Bolivar's decrees on slavery and the slow, partial enforcement
- The enslaved and free Black soldiers who did much of the fighting
- Why Haiti was excluded from the Congress of Panama in 1826
With guest historian Marlene Daut on the Haitian sources.
Transcript
Welcome back to Sword, Pen and Cordillera. I am Camila Restrepo. In January 1816 Simon Bolivar was a defeated man. His republic had collapsed, he had been forced out of Jamaica, and he arrived in Haiti, the only free Black republic on earth, asking for help. President Alexandre Petion gave it: ships, thousands of muskets, powder, money, even printing presses. He asked for one thing in return, that slavery be abolished in every territory Bolivar freed. This episode is about that bargain. What Haiti gave, which we can see in Haitian records, what Bolivar promised, which he decreed more than once, and what actually happened to the enslaved and free Black soldiers who did so much of the fighting. We end at the Congress of Panama in 1826, to which Haiti was not invited. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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