The Jamaica Letter

A long letter that Bolívar wrote in Kingston in September 1815, in exile after a defeat, replying to questions from Henry Cullen, an English-born merchant on the island. Its real audience was Britain and the wider public. Bolívar defends the Spanish American struggle for independence, condemns three centuries of Spanish rule, and argues that the colonial system kept Americans out of all public affairs, leaving them without political experience. Spanish Americans, he says, are neither Indians nor Europeans but something in between. He then surveys each region, from Mexico and Central America to New Granada, Venezuela, Río de la Plata, Chile and Peru, and predicts their likely political futures. He doubts that democratic federal systems would suit peoples just leaving colonial rule and favours strong, centralised republics. He wishes America could form a single nation but judges this impossible, and imagines instead a future congress of its states meeting at Panama.

It is the clearest statement of Bolívar's political thought and of the dream of Latin American unity, and it raises lasting questions about how new nations should be governed.