OCR Text |
Show KNOW YOUR ' js NEIGHBOR GEXER-Vt, SUCRE RIGHT-' RIGHT-' HAND MAN OF BOLIVAR Sion Bolivar's prophetic vision lins often been vindicated. After one of his first meetings with General Gen-eral Antonio Jose de Sucre he said: "Strange as it may appear, his aptitudes are not recognized nor even suspected. I am dcter- public, but the internal confusion was too great even for Sucre. He resigned in August, 1828, and returned re-turned to Quito, Ecuador. Here he tried to live a quiet domestic do-mestic life with the bride he had seldom seen. She had been Dona Mariana Carceleny Larrea, daughter daugh-ter of a nobleman, to whom Sucre had been married by proxy in April, Ap-ril, 1828. His only child, Teresita, was born in July of the following year but she lived only until November, No-vember, 1831. Fortunately, Sucre was spared this sorrow, for he preceded pre-ceded her in death. Early in 1830 Sucre went to Colombia Co-lombia to attend a congress which hoped to preserve the unity of Great Colombia. It dfd not succeed. suc-ceed. Disillusioned, he hastened back to his beloved family. While crossing the mountains of Berrue-cos Berrue-cos he was treacherously assassinated, assassi-nated, June 4, 1830, probably by a political opponent. In the relatively short space of thirty-five years Sucre crowded the activities, romance, drama, adventure ad-venture and disillusionment which seldom comes to a man of three score and ten. . . mined to bring them to light, per- sunded that some day he will rival me." Time was to prove Bolivar right, for ns we observe the anniversary of Sucre's birth, February 23, 1795, tribute is aaid to "the first general among the Liberators", to the first statesman and organizer, and to a name which does not pale In the light of Bolivar's own. Sucre was born at Cumana, Venezuela, the son of influential parents. His study of engineering had not been completed when in 1810 the revolutionary movement broke out in Caracas. The fifteen-year-old Sucre quickly joined the ranks and a year later was a lieutenant. lieu-tenant. Early campaigns under Francisco Miranda were unsuccessful unsuccess-ful and Sucre was forced to flee to the island of Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela. In 1816, when he was returning to join another uprising, his ship was wrecked and he grimly clung to a floating trunk i until he was rescued twenty hours later. He then joined Bolivar and began be-gan the rapid ascent that soon made him the righthand man of the Liberator. Directed to free Ecuadbr of the Spaniards, Sucre executed a series of skillful maneuvers maneu-vers and won a complete victory at Pichincha in May, 1822. The battle was waged at an altitude of 15,000 feet, at the edge of a volcano and within sight of the people of Quito, the capital. The hopes of the patriots ebbed and flowed with Sucre's movements, until the victory which assured in- dependence to Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela was won. Bolivar then sent Sucre to Peru, as a soldier and diplomat, to arouse the people and prepare the way for the ultimate routing of the Spaniards at Ayacucho. Against his will he was made Chief of the Army of Peru and the conduct of the campaign turned over to him. Forced to march through a country coun-try of gorges, rivers and peaks, against a numerically superior Spanish army, Sucre finally met and defeated them at Ayacucho on December 9, 1824, bringing to a successful conclusion fourteen long years of bitter strife. On April 19, 1826, Sucre was named president of Bolivia, a position posi-tion in which he demonstrated his extraordinary capacity as a statesman, states-man, ruler and administrator. He labored for more than two years to establish order and a stable government gov-ernment in the newly formed re- |