José Antonio Páez: Life of the Venezuelan Leader
On June 13, 1790, José Antonio Páez was born in a modest house on the banks of the creek near the town of Curpa, Acarigua, Araure Canton, province of Barinas, Venezuela. He was baptized in the parish church of that town. His parents were Juan Victorio Páez and María Violante Herrera. He was the last of their children and the only survivor of eight brothers. Their family fortune was very low. His father served the colonial government as an employee in the tobacco business, and later established himself in the city of Guanare, in the same province. He resided there for the performance of his duties, often away from his excellent mother, who for various reasons never had a permanent residence with her children.
Early Life and the Path to Leadership
José Antonio Páez was a leader of the independence movement and the first president of the Fourth Republic of Venezuela (Curpa, 1790 – New York, 1873). The multiplicity of interests that have wrapped the history of the Independence of Venezuela and the birth of the Republic during the 19th century finds its highest representation in the figure of José Antonio Páez. The circumstances leading this man of humble birth to become President and the great defender of Venezuela merely draw a picture of political and military alliances necessary in an environment of maximum volatility. The story reveals the many facets of a man who, moved by the chance of a civil war with separatist tinge, became a pawn, financier, stock trader, chief of the *llanero* armies, and great leader of the country.
Far from Creole Caracas and the conservative revolutionary impetus of the late 18th century, José Antonio Páez was born in Curpa, Portuguesa, on July 13, 1790. He was a descendant of Canary Islanders and the son of John Victorio Páez and Mary Violante Herrera, both of very modest means. The family was rather disjointed; the father lived in the city of Guanare and worked for the colonial government in a tobacco shop, while the mother cared for their eight children.
Formative Years in the Llanos
When he was eight years old, Páez was sent by his mother to study at a small school in Guama. Of course, letters were not part of that family’s expectations, since the colony did not allocate many rights to the dispossessed. But none of this would be an impediment to José Antonio Páez’s formation in that for which he would be distinguished. The school of this man was the Llanos de Apure, and his race was that of the Lone Ranger. Large tracts of land with very large pastures – wet, dry, or flooded, according to the season – made up the landscape of this race of men, whose business was to deal with cattle and horses on a horizon that only he understood.
Fleeing from an incident in which he killed a bandit who wanted to attack him, Páez went into the Plains and was employed as a pawn in a herd at La Calzada, owned by Manuel Pulido. Under the orders of Manuelote, a Black slave of Pulido and foreman of the ranch, he learned everything that a ranger should know: herding livestock, rodeo, branding, shoeing, and wrangling. He learned to ride so that his body merged with the beast until it seemed like a centaur. “The reader can imagine how hard it was to be learning such a life,” Páez said in his autobiography, “that could only endure the rugged man of complexion, or which was used very early. […] My body, by dint of beatings, turned to iron, and my soul procured under adversity in the early years, the temple that education could scarcely have been more careful to give.”
A Legacy Forged in Conflict
José Antonio Páez lived a life of many facets: hero, leader, president, dictator, prisoner, exile, glories, triumphs, and defeats. His name is etched in the historical fabric of 19th-century Venezuela.