“It would be called Colombia”: Rereading the Letter from Jamaica, 1815

Abstract

The Letter from Jamaica, written in 1815 by Simón Bolívar, is commonly referred to and celebrated as the document in which the Liberator enshrined his dream for Latin American unity. That interpretation, however, comes from readings made in subsequent political contexts, not from the text itself or the document’s original intent. The present article undertakes to reread the Letter taking into consideration the time of breakup and uncertainty when it was written, viewed not only from the standpoint of Bolívar himself but also from the standpoint of the peoples who, in the following years, were incorporated into the republic that “would be called Colombia,” especially those from the southern provinces that became the Ecuadorian state. It is argued that the Letter’s historical novelty and importance does not lie in the proposal for Spanish-American unity. On the contrary, it is the limitation of the territorial scope of the Colombian project to build a centralized republican state that led to a radical break from the imperial order.