Daniel Florence O’Leary joined the forces of the Venezuelan patriots with the rank of cornet in 1818, and gradually advanced to the position of brigadier general and diplomatic envoy of Simón Bolívar. He enjoyed the full confidence of the Liberator and went into exile after Bolívar’s death in 1830. In Jamaica, where he took refuge for two years, he began to sort out the vast amount of material he had gathered during the epic struggle of the independence movement. He also undertook the writing of a narración which is in part history and in part recollections of the great events that he had been privileged to observe at close quarters.
This enterprise of O’Leary’s developed into one of the principal informational sources of the independence movement in northern South America, and was published between 1879 and 1888, long after his death, by his son, Simón O’Leary. The work consists of 32 volumes, 29 of them filled with letters and documents and three with the memories of Daniel O’Leary.
The volume under consideration offers the English-speaking public a condensed version of the Memorias. In view of the paucity of source material in translation, the book will be welcomed by both teachers and students of Latin America. The translation by Robert F. McNemey, Jr., is competent; it is accompanied by explanatory footnotes by the editor himself and by such notable Venezuelan historians as Vicente Lecuna and Pedro Grasses, who have endeavored to correct some of the more obvious errors to be found in O’Leary’s Memorias.
In rereading the narration, one is struck by the accuracy of O’Leary’s reporting, even though his description of Bolívar and the independence movement does suffer from a certain one-dimensional quality. Since he gathered his collection, so much new material has been unearthed, so many of Bolívar’s more intimate letters have come to light, that O’Leary’s text seems somewhat dry and unduly sober. Nevertheless it succeeds in giving an accurate picture of Bolívar and of the gigantic obstacles which blocked his path. The volume closes with the year 1826, when Bolívar’s heroic dream had begun to fade and his political structure to crumble. O’Leary had gathered material for a final volume, but the editor thought it should not be included in this abridged edition. I, for one, regret his decision. A portrait of Bolívar in 1826 is necessarily incomplete, but in addition, the last four years of the Liberator’s life, marred as they were by betrayal and tragedy, portray him in his true human greatness.
The government of Venezuela, which has sponsored the present volume, might perhaps consider a sequel wherein some of the many moving letters which Bolívar wrote in these years might be included: to Manuela Saenz (material which O’Leary does not even mention in his memoirs), to José Antonio Sucre, to Rafael Urdaneta, to Belford Hinton Wilson, to mention but a few. Such a volume would make a most informative addition to the translation we are now offered. Together with the selections which David Bushnell has recently published, it would present a solid base for the study of the Liberator in our country’s colleges and universities.
