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.