Racine’s Miranda brings to mind the life of another Gran Colombian who figured on the margins of the South American struggle for independence—nineteenth-century caudillo-president Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera. Both were military men with a passionate interest in politics. Both has tremendous egos, kept virtually every scrap of paper they ever received, accumulated large and varied personal libraries, and loved to “figurar.” Both traveled widely and were consummate ladies’ men. Perhaps the main difference between the two is that Mosquera arrived late on the stage of Gran Colombian independence, a circumstance that he deeply regretted in the early years of his life, while Miranda, who spent the final years of his life in a Spanish prison and died in 1816, was born too early to take part in the final liberation of his native Venezuela.
Nevertheless, Racine’s comprehensive, thoroughly researched and well-written biography of the Venezuelan Prócer leaves no...
