Sometimes Fate brings people together in such a way that they can no longer imagine life without each other. That’s exactly the way it happened with Simon Bolivar and Manuela Sainz.

In the 1820s when the Latin Americans rose up in arms against their Spanish colonial oppressors, the name of their courageous leader Simon Bolivar became the talk of the whole world. A native of Venezuela, a political and strategic genius, Bolivar easily won people over to his side. 

In 1822, with his native Venezuela and Colombia already liberated, Simon Bolivar and his victorious army entered the Ecuadorian capital Quito whose residents streamed out into the streets with flowers in hand, to greet their liberators.  Bolivar, by then dubbed as the Liberator, was riding on a white horse resplendent in a gleaming uniform.  Suddenly a laurel wreath fell right into his hands from one of the balconies. Bolivar raised his head and was stunned by the fiery gaze of a black-haired beauty. Manuela Sainz, that was the young woman’s name, was the scion of a respectable local family.  Independent and adventurous, Manuela was bored by living with her kind but uninspiring husband, Doctor Thorn. Manuela was 25 when she met Bolivar. 

Simon and Manuela never dreamed of someday being able to openly love each other, one bound by an oath of faithfulness to his late wife and the other by marriage. Never tying the knot with her loved one, Manuela forever remained Bolivar’s lover, secretary and a devoted friend. 

When The Liberator left Quito at the start of a new campaign, Manuela met her first challenge. There was a plot brewing behind Bolivar’s back and Manuela’s female sensitivity helped her find out what was really going on.  In a display of unwomanly courage, she alerted Bolivar’s friends who nipped the conspiracy in the bud.  The local society eyed Manuela with surprise bordering on indignation as the young woman made no secret of her relationship with Bolivar and occasionally galloped around decked out in a Hussar’s uniform. 

Two years later Bolivar’s army was successfully fighting the Spanish while Manuela tended to the wounded in her new capacity of an army nurse. Soon after the freedom fighters won a decisive victory over the enemy only to start bickering between themselves. Onetime comrades in arms were enemies now.  Shortly after Columbia was proclaimed an independent state, Simon Bolivar was elected President.  Before long a new plot started brewing. One night the plotters made their way into the presidential palace of San Carlos. Just as they started pounding at the door leading the way to where Bolivar and Manuela were spending the night, Bolivar, awakened by the noise, prepared for a fight. Realizing that they were too outnumbered by the enemy, Manuela implored him to jump out the window and run away.  Meanwhile, to win time, she entered into lengthy negotiations with the attackers. When the plotters finally broke in, Bolivar was far away… From that night on Manuela was proclaimed the Liberator’s Liberator.  And still, Simon Bolivar’s career was on a low ebb now. Ultimately defeated by his enemies, he was forced to give up his presidency and retire from politics. Brokenhearted and ailing, the Liberator set out on his last journey to the Columbian border.  He left Manuela behind to spare her the agony of seeing her loved one’s pitiful end…

Simon Bolivar died in December of 1830. Getting the terrible news, Manuela tried to kill herself with the help of a poisonous snake, just like Cleopatra once did. She survived the bite though and spent the next 25 years in painful separation from her loved one and viciously harassed by her enemies.  Hating to stay on in Columbia, she finally found refuge in a small fishing hamlet on the Peruvian coast of the Pacific Ocean where people did not care much about politics and did not ask many questions. Penniless and living in a squalid hut, Manuela refused the help offered her by her ex-husband who was asking her to return to him. There the aging and ailing Manuela bound to a wheelchair lived on, her waning forces boosted by her undying love for The Liberator. One day she was visited by Giuseppe Garibaldi, the legendary Italian liberation fighter.  Needless to say how endlessly respectful and admiring he was of the legendary spouse of his onetime idol… And how happy she was to tell Garibaldi about Simon Bolivar and herself!

In 1856 a passing sailor brought in a virus of diphtheria, which back in those days was a deadly disease. The village was gripped by panic with people working frantically to bury their dead. Manuela’s body was dumped into a mass grave. Fearing contamination, the survivors were burning up all the personal effects of the victims. Including the little chest where Manuela held Bolivar’s letters... 

When, a century after, the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda came to the Oceanside village, he couldn’t find Manuela’s grave. Neruda later wrote a poetic dedication to Manuela whom he called the Juliet of the Hurricanes. The name very aptly reflected the love and the hurricane of the liberation movement – two things that determined the wonderful and, at the same time, bitter fate of a legendary woman who died in obscurity… 

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Illustration: I.Lavretsky, “Bolivar”, Molodaya Gvardiya, Moscow, 1966