Romance relations of Bolivar, including the unknown one with the Sangilentildea Maria Concepcion Hernndez Entralgo. Text of the Liberator’s letter sent from Bucaramanga to Conchita Hernndez. Samples of letters from the Father of the Country and General Francisco de Paula Santander in San Gil. “Here passed Bolivar”, three times, but with delay.
I do not agree with those who affirm that the great men of humanity have been hedonists. Nor that they have preconized free love, but they surrendered themselves repeatedly and passionately in the arms of women. Alexander, Pericles, Mark Anthony, Napoleon, Shelegel, Goethe, Kant, Hitler, Mussolini etc. men who have produced great historical feats have been victims as someone said of the “strong” sex. I must confess that even though I am an integral and irreducible Bolivarian, I have not read all the biographies of the Liberator, the greatest man of the Western Hemisphere. So, if I write something of the loves of Bolivar it is only fragmentary and incomplete. A few days ago, I had in my hand a beautiful work (86), given by its author, which has a chapter on the “Prohibited loves of Bolivar”, based on the study of Cornelio Hispano (87) and Fernndo Gonzlez (88). According to the graceful narration which enumerates the hero’s romances, it is known that: “The Caraquentilde genius rode a horse through all the towns of the Andean backbone, influenced by his desire of liberty and glory. His heart passed through all amphoras and pleasures. When women gave him love, he returned pleasure without permitting stopping his way. For the women, it was a glory to possess him”. The great philosophical writer stated that Bolivar did not get off a horse or a woman.
Bolivar’s first love was his wife Maria Teresa Rodriguez del Toro y Alaiza in Madrid. He became a widower the first year of his marriage. Later,Josena Camacho named by the historian Jorge Ricardo Vejarano (89) had a fascination for him, as well as two cousins, Fanny Dervieu du Villars, whom he met at age twenty-one, and was married and another of his nine cousins, the Caraquentildea Teresa Aristinguieta. When Bolivar was in Italy, around the time of the Mount Aventino Oath, he fell in love in Milan with the poet Alejandro Manzoni’s girlfriend, as related by the historian Jose Maria Vergara y Vergara. This is the love called “A la Milanesa”. Later, in our country, Bolivar, a Colonel, made love with a French daughter of Gaul’s Immigrants who were in Salamina. The French girl left her parents’ home to follow him in his campaigns until the hard military life made her return to her parents. She was the only lover who was in the Liberator’s death bed in Santa Marta, and the chroniclers state that she cried bitterly at his burial. (90) Beautiful women besieged Bolivar everywhere. His existence was bounded with landmarks of women, as a Sultan. Parodying Solomon’s “Song of Songs”, any of his lovers could say about Bolivar: “Our bed is flowered, force me with wine glasses, surround me with apples, that I am love sick, his palate sweet, he is all wishes, such is my dear beloved, daughters of Jerusalem”. And King Solomon was wise despite the time he dilapidated in his polyandrous harem.
Even though Bolivar was not a Don Juan, he looked for women and they found him. He would take them with his fame and his word. Gomez Aristizbal states that: “Bolivar’s first concubine was Josena Madrid, during the time he entered Caracas victoriously in 1813. She was one of the nymphs who pulled his carriage through the streets of said Capital”. Six years of this phase of his life, until 1819, he lost them in palace intrigues and in the bedroom of this woman, afrms Decoudray who adds: “Like all Caraquentildes, General Bolivar has one, two or more lovers, plus the ones he has during his trips.They ordinarily last four to twenty hours to a week, but Miss Pepa was an exception of the Liberator’s custom”. Another lover appeared in Guiana on his way to Bogot in 1819, and her name was Isabel Soublette. The most famous lover in Bogot was Bernardina Ibantildeez who was disputed also by Colonel Ambrosio Plaza. In one of Bolivar’s letters from Cali, his condant General Francisco de Paula de Santander states: “Tell many things to Bernardina, that I am tired of writing without answer, that I am single and I like her more than the Plaza, that I have never been unfaithful to her, that she stimulates my senses and most lived wishes and that I hope happiness and pleasure, because she is who I desire”. I have not found this letter in any of the three volumes published by the historian Vicente Lecuna. In 1824, He had another eighteen year old lover called Manuelita Madrontilde, in Huailas, a little town in high Peru, according to Ricardo Parma, (91) who states: “She was the most healthy and beautiful knockout, most desired and most handsome who God created in the Ancachs Department, and Venus offered this lady to drip honey of pleasure to bitterness to the Father of the Country after the tiredness, satiety and loathing of the possessed”. Palma adds that when someone asked the old lady Madrontilde: “How is Bolivar’s little old lady?” Manuela answered with vanity and pride: “As when I were his fancy woman”.
The Peruvian Historian Benjamin Vicuntildea Mahecha states that Bolivar later went to Cuzco, city of the Incas, to celebrate with orgies the triumph, and that from the dances and banquets he would sneak out to meet with women and more women whom he dazzled with his flaring uniforms and his elegant phrases, without equal, from Cuman to Potosi. In Lima, in 1826, in this city of lusty kings and aristocrats, Bolivar resided in “La Magdalena” where the public love with Manuelita Senz was lodged. She governed some years, at his side, the same way that Madame Pompadour did with Louis XV in Versailles, whom, it is said, ordered military men like pageboys of a great hotel. (Antoinette Pompadour, Marquess de Poisson’ beauty, intelligence and ambition allowed her to govern France from 1745 to her death in 1764. Her foreign policy was responsible for the French alliance with Austria which involved France in the Seven Year War,1756-1763. In the struggle between France and Britain for control of Canada, the French and Indian War, and Austria against Prussia for supremacy in Germany, Britain emerged as the leading colonial power in North America and Prussia as the major power in Germanic countries) The historian Alfonso Rumazo Gonzlez (92) states that the Quitentildea Manuelita Senz was a beautiful and libidinous woman who left with Bolivar, but, both, frantic, broke the romance because of wearisomeness. She returned to her home where, later, she married the English physician Thorne the latter was more jealous than a Turk. Rumazo describes her thus: “Wide hips, from her chest emerged most graceful, turgescent breasts which incite to pleasure. The arms were naked as usual, because their rounded lines were perfect her extraordinary beauty dazzles and disconcerts, what big eyes, what brown hair thrown on the forehead in precious curls, what sensual lips painted with red roses’ petals..”. When Bolivar entered victorious to Ecuador, Emil Ludwyng afrms in his biography: “He was received with the solemnity and magnicence the Father of the Country deserved, and the night of the ball was when he met Manuela and started a love which for her was the only one, and for him the most important passion of his life”. Then, the facts of the September conspiracy in which Bolivar and Manuela left Bogot happened. She was left behind and Bolivar went to sleep to Facatativ, Guaduas, Honda and thus successively until his arrival to San Pedro Alejandrino, where, as Bernardo Arias Trujillo (93) tells us, “There was no caressing of a woman in those horrible instants, not even the sound of slippers in the dying man’s room to make less painful the last life shakes in that bedroom. Instead, he listened to the prayers of Bishop Estevez, and the clicks of the military boots and the hairy hands of the physician Reverend”. The French woman, I mentioned earlier, arrived late to the nal moments of her lover but on time for his funeral. In Santa Marta, the Miers did not know anything about her, not even the people from Venezuela who arrived to take care of the cadaver. About the death of the Liberator in Santa Marta, it is true that tuberculosis was the cause of the death of Bolivar, and that the Miers burnt all the belongings of the San Pedro Alejandrino House for asepsia. Are the furniture, coach, silverware, clothes and other things authentic? Fifteen years ago, Monsignor Revollo analyzing Dr.Reverend’s medical bulletins came to the conclusion that Bolivar’s death was of hepatic origin. This question was not able to be answered by my colleagues of the “Academia de Historia del Magdalena”, nor of the “Centro Bolivariano” of the same Department.. The reasons of tourism are more powerful that those of history. Once, I mentioned in a speech at the Plaza of Bolivar of Santa Marta in the name of the “Academia” and the “Centro”, on an August 7, knowing that my words would incite protests from a reporter named Padilla, grandson of Admiral Jose Prudencio Padilla, that if I mention to the Liberator the admiral of canoes, even the horse statue would rise up on the hind feet as a sign of counter protest. The act nished with the laughter of Governor Avila Quintero and the troops gathered there “ad solemnitatem costentildea!”. (The reader is recommended to peruse the 1982 Nobel Prize-winning Colombian Novelist Gabriel Garcia Mrquez’s classic novel The General in His Labyrinth , which recounts the Liberator Simon Bolivar’s last year of life.)

MARIA CONCEPCION HERNANDEZ ENTRALGO

I was leaving the theme it is already time for me to talk about the new and unknown Sangilentilde romance of Bolivar. Let us see. This was in 1828 when the Liberator lived in Bucaramanga for seventy days. Luis Peru de la Croix does not tell us (94). A beautiful lady, called Maria Concepcion Hernndez Entralgo, lived in San Gil, and deserves to be called one of the lovers of the Father of the Country, among the ones already mentioned.
Concha Hernndez, another modest woman of the province, was loved by the man blessed among the women. As testimony, I include the letter published in the Bumangues newspaper El Deber in 1952, which was a photocopy taken from the original letter, conserved in bad condition by the Sangilentilde citizen Don Carlos E. Hernndez, descendant of Maria Concepcion, which was undoubtedly written by the hand of Bolivar, as ascertained by Maestro Juan de Dios Arias, who made a commentary in the same newspaper. Bolivar’s letter dated in Bucaramanga has an illegible word which seems to be “melancholy”, and another one with the capital letter “B” which indicates the city of Barichara, which by reason of personal security was abbreviated by the hero. The presumptive dates of the Liberator and Concha, the beautiful nineteen year old Sangilentildea born in 1809, occurred in the two floor house number 14-46 of the Jose Acevedo y Gomez Avenue in front of the Ponce River, where by tradition, “There danced Bolivar”. It is possible that in such a home the Liberator danced. The ingenuous and delicious chronicler, Don Camilo Forero Reyes, relates an informal ball of Bolivar in San Gil, where he met and had for the first time in his arms Concha, as he met all the other lovers. Dancing would sprout his love.
The letter in question does not appear in Vicente Lecuna’s Epistolary of Bolivar, nor the previous ones I mentioned. These kinds of letters would not end up in archives where historians and biographers have taken them. These letters would not deal with state or war matters dictated to military amanuensis. Those letters were of the eminently private and sentimental kind, personally written and sent through special envoys to their place of destiny. Even General Don Francisco de Paula Santander was used to tell his chief’s anguish to women. These letters started appearing, opportunely, through the years, in private hands. The Maestro Juan de Dios Arias agrees with me and states: “Evidently, Hernndez can be considered as one of the women in the Liberator’s life more should be investigated about the existence, passion and death of such interesting feminine personage”. This is the text of the mentioned letter, which photocopy I gave to the “Casa de Santander” in San Gil.
“Bucaramanga June 8, 1828.

My beloved Concha:

I have just found on the desk, in my room, your kind letter which you have the goodness to send me and which I thank you much. I do not share (illegible word) your anguish. Soon, I will have the ineffable pleasure of a long hug because I am leaving shortly from this city to B. passing through San Gil and your beautiful eyes. I hope this is not the last opportunity of manifesting my feelings in absence. I do not know if the circumstances will force me to leave the land of my affections for good, and as a consequence to deprive me of your exquisite renunciation and friendship. Please say hello to your mother and the daughters. Affectionately, receive a tender so long, with love, your friend, BOLIVAR”.
It is known that the Hernandez family had a farm on the Chicamocha River bank in the Aratoca Jurisdiction where the lovers possibly met. Bolivar had two anguished absences from home and friends with the excuse to play ombre with Presbyter Eloy Valenzuela. My intuition, without malicious sin, is that Bolivar preferred the games with Conchita rather than ombre. He liked the sweet look of her green eyes, her slender gure, brown hair and snowy skin of the beautiful flower of our serranias. But I do not agree with the tradition of the chronicler Forero Reyes that Bolivar asked her to marry him, to which Maria Concha Hernndez responded: “With pleasure I will be Bolivar’s slave but not his wife, because a suitable woman that deserves to be called the wife of the Liberator does not exist”.
The Guanentino narrator Forero Reyes states that during one of those visits of the Liberator to San Gil, a homage consisting of a banquet in the home of a big lord of the town and a ball in his “girlfriend’s” home in the same city. For this banquet, a commission was named to gather the best fruit of the zone to adorn the table. Bolivar liked fruit especially granadilla or passion fruit. Don Camilo adds: Delicious watermelons, custard apples, annonas, tree strawberries, icacos, ackees, honey berries, mameys, star apples, sour sops and the aristocratic grapes, apples, quinces, limes, gs, nuts of cypress, cashews and other fruits of Tolima, Cundinamarca and Boyac with a great variety of flowers and perfumes and all the gifts of the enthusiast followers of our great Liberator, the semi-god of America, a pompous manifestation of the torrid zone to the founder of “then” a free and independent country. To such unusual obsequiousness, Bolivar felt full of admiration and enthusiasm. Joviality reanimated that venerable face tanned by the suns of the glorious campaigns giving thanks to the hosts of that singular banquet bequeathed by the polite Sangilentildea society of those barbaric years, according to the wrong beliefs of our modern youth. Going (to Barichara) the following day, after brief hours of cordiality and rest, he left with a large group of ladies and gentlemen and pleasant, unerasable memories of the ‘noble town’ and a high concept of the Sangilentildea culture. Don Chepe, a Spaniard laborer of his condence, with two mules carrying the luggage, claimed emotionally ‘Good bye San Gil’, not in vain the Spanish Monarch, may God save him, proclaimed you Noble and Crown town. Good bye San Gil and may God grant you, because of your nobility, a little bit of cooler air and less cicadas than what you have now”. At the entrance of the city, where the roads of Charal and Socorro converge, there is a curious monument consisting of a porous stone with holes, where it is afrmed the Father of the Country once rested. It has a plaque with the inscripted dates of entries and exits from the City of San Gil October 7, to 9, 1819, February 23, 1820, and later, three days, from June 12, 1828 to June 15, 1828. To nish this chapter, I bring up words of the writer Rojas Rueda from a published article from the Academy of History of Santander. (95) in 1963, ten years after my discovery of Bolivar’s Sangilentildea lover. He cites, without indicating the source, that among “The ladies who danced with the Liberator”, in Socorro, were: “Concepcion Hernndez, Balbina Gomez Santos, Francisca Pradilla y Aranda de Camacho and Zoila Rosa de Pradilla. Tradition guards the name of another lady who that night stood out for her beauty, gentility and aristocratic behavior, Miss Concepcion Hernndez, called Conchita Hernndez who had a blue dress and rich jewels looking as a supernatural being”. Bolivar who was proverbial with gallantry towards ladies, invited her to dance, and at the end the Liberator said: “Miss Conchita, the man who never became fearful of enemy bullets has shaken before the eyes of a Socorrana woman”. The texts of the dialogues of the ladies with Bolivar presume that Mr. Rojas took the tradition of a witness not cited changing the origin of Concha and the Pradillas who were from Barichara according to the illustrious physician and historian Calixto Camacho.
I end this chapter with a part of Andres Mata’s poem describing Bolivar: “He pleased his voluptuous passions, forgetting laurels for roses, and glory for waltz. And soon to the drunkenness of caressing, among the beautiful and propitious pleasures, planted his bivouac”.