"War to the Death."

"War to the Death," the name given to a speech by Simón Bolívar during the Venezuelan War of Independence. After the fall of the First Republic, the failure of Spanish navy captain Domingo Monteverde to observe the capitulation of 25 July 1812 caused the struggle for independence to take on a progressively more violent nature. Many denunciations were made against cruelties and excesses committed by the royalist troops, as well as against provocations by the republicans. When Bolívar entered Venezuela on 15 June 1813, he delivered in Trujillo what came to be known as his "War to the Death" speech, which ended with the sentence: "Spaniards and Canarios, depend upon it, you will die, even if you are simply neutral, unless you actively espouse the liberation of America. Americans, you will be spared, even when you are culpable" (from Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, p. 203). The speech is significant in that it spared the Venezuelans who may have supported the royalists. It was Bolívar's aim then to go beyond royalist and republican categories and to make this a war between nations—Spain and America. In this sense, the speech was an affirmation of Americanism.

The war progressed, and prisoners continued to be executed on both sides until 1820. That year brought the signing of the War Regularization Treaty between Bolívar and Pablo Morillo, commander of the opposing Spanish forces, ending the period of "war to the death."

See alsoBolívar, Simón; Morillo, Pablo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

See Cristóbal Mendoza, Guerra a muerte (1951), and Lino Iribarren Celis, Glosas para una nueva interpretación de la historia militar de Venezuela durante la Guerra a Muerte, 1814 (1964). On the War of Independence in general, see John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808–1826 (1973).

Additional Bibliography

Lynch, John. Simón Bolívar: A Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

                                        InÉs Quintero