>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C.
>> Catalina Gomez: Well to today's program.
I'm Catalina Gomez, a reference librarian,
in the Hispanic Reading room here at the library.
It's my pleasure to introduce today's event and to welcome you
to the Library of Congress on behalf of the Library of Congress,
Hispanic Division and we are delighted to collaborate
with the Embassy of Columbia.
We love collaborating with the embassy and today,
we are going to picture Claudia Isabel Nava a historian
from Columbia who will be talking about Francisco de Miranda.
Before we start though, I would like to just make a few announcements
and also to tell you a little bit about the Hispanic Reading Room.
So I don't know if any of you that there's a reading room
in the library devoted to Hispanic collections,
also [inaudible] Hispanic because we include Portugal and Brazil.
We are located on the second floor of this building
and basically the history of our division,
we are the primary access point to research related to the Caribbean,
Latin America, Spain and Portugal
and also Latinos in the United States.
So I hope you all visit us.
We're open from Mondays to Friday from 8:30 to 5.
And just a few announcements as well before we move onto the program.
Make sure please that you silent your phones
for the duration of the lecture.
I also wanted to let you know that this program is part
of our Hispanic Heritage Month celebration here at the library
and we have had a lot of very fun events already
and this is our last week of events in the library.
Tomorrow we have a lecture at noon in the Mary Pickford Theater
which is across the street in the other building.
It's a book talk by Professor Chrissy Arce from the University
of Miami and the title of the lecture is "Mexico's nobodies.
The culture legacy of the soldadera and Afro-Mexican Women".
Now, it's my pleasure to introduce Gladys San Miguel,
Minister Counselor of the Embassy of Counselor
who will introduce our speaker today.
Thank you.
>> Gladys San Miguel: Well, hello everyone.
On behalf of the Embassy of Columbia,
I would like to thank the Library of Congress
for this beautiful partnership to celebrate the Hispanic Month
and it is my pleasure to announce a great Columbian.
It is an honor because she has been working to leave the name
of our country, our history and our culture,
not only in the U.S., but also in Europe.
She has a master degree in Museum Studies from the Museum
of the Historia Natural in Paris, a Art History degree in [inaudible],
the School of Art and Institute of Chicago gave her a scholarship,
which allowed her to continue her art history studies
and what is beautiful about her presentation today is she began her
career 20 years ago here in Washington, D.C. She began
with an art work and with videos about art history
and how rich is Columbia in art, culture and bio-diversity.
During these 20 years, she went to Europe and she continued her studies
and she has been working with the mayors of Paris and the minister
of defense in Paris to talk about our independence,
and how these great Latin Americans, as Francisco de Miranda,
contributed to the dream of freedom.
She is talking today about a person
that not everybody knows how special he is.
He is Francisco de Miranda, the only human being to fight
in three different independent wars.
He fought with the United States along the French
and the Spanish Army against the British.
Then he fought as a general in the French Revolution.
He is the only Latin America the degree of general and then he came
to America to fight for the dream of freedom, but I won't say anymore.
I will just leave this great Columbia.
Thank you Library of Congress for opening this space for our country
and thank you, Claudia for leaving the name
of Columbia in the highest remarks.
You are a true Columbian, a great Columbian.
[ Applause ]
>> Claudia Isabel Navas: Thank you for being here.
Thank you all.
I would like to thank the Minister counselor, Gladys San Miguel,
for this kind invitation, his excellency embassy Camilo Reyes.
I would also like to thank very much Georgette Rum [phonetic]
and her staff, and especially Catalina Gomez for having carried
through this project that begun a year ago.
A year ago in 2016, we celebrated all
over the world the bicentennial 200th anniversary
of Francisco de Miranda death.
He died in prison in Spain the 14th of July.
As you all may know, the 14th of July is the Day of the Bastis,
[phonetic] which is actually right now passing.
So most biographers of Francisco de Miranda say he had the revolutionary
elegance of passing away on the 14th of July.
I have selected a series of images that would let me kind of get
into the subject as it is a very, very large subject matter.
As you will find out Francisco de Miranda had probably 10 lives
in his 66 years of life actually.
As Gladys San Miguel said, he was the only man
who fought in three revolutions.
So he was here in the U.S. in 1781.
He belonged to the Spanish Crown Army and he fought
with the Spaniards to the Port of Pensacola Fort.
That was 1781 and then he went to France and he became general
of the Army in 1792 and he made a first expedition
to South America in 1806.
So this is really early timing.
He came alone to South America with a flag and he tried
to free South America with two boats and not too many men.
Obviously, it was a very, very big defeat.
He lost that attempt, but it gave people the idea of a possible way
of freeing the South America part of America, South America.
So let me just maybe begin with who --
introduce a little bit my own background.
I am art historian.
So many people may ask why is an art historian working on military
and political men and actually I came about Francisco de Miranda
through my art history studies because Francisco de Miranda was one
of the first men as well to define what human heritage
and human legacy was.
This happened when French General Napoleon Bonaparte started taking
the art work from Italy into his museum, the Napoleon Museum,
which later became [inaudible] Louvre and the Museum of Louvre.
So at the time, Miranda in 1795, he starts writing political pamphlets
and denouncing the expatriation of cultural heritage.
So that's how, as an art historian, I came about working
with Francisco de Miranda and then it became a much larger project
when Columbian ambassador in Paris requested a project
on Francisco de Miranda because we were going
to commemorate the 200th anniversary of independence in South America.
So Francisco de Miranda was the person who represented this aspect
for France in any case and I think for the U.S.,
it's a person who was seen as a one
of the most knowledgeable people and man of his time.
John Adams wrote in his memories that if anybody knew
of American independence, U.S. independence,
the man who knew the best in history was actually Francisco de Miranda.
He was a very, very well educated and curious person.
So let me comment on these few images I have selected for you
to introduce Francisco de Miranda.
Francisco de Miranda has this portrait
in the Chateau de Versailles.
He was remembered as one of the generals of the Army
of the north [inaudible].
He has his name [inaudible] as well.
He was there in 1789 actually right before La Bastis [phonetic]
and then he came back in 1792 and the frontiers were closed in Paris
at that time and so he couldn't leave and the generals
of the French Army asked him to stay.
Here are his peers.
You can see Lafayette.
[Inaudible] was his -- [inaudible], the third name of the left column,
was the general in chief and here on down.
So if you ever go to Paris, you'll see his name.
he's the only Hispanic-American found in that.
This portrait is a portrait that was made of him in 1788
and was started a physiognomist called Lavatar
and when he saw this pencil drawing -- portrait --
he wrote a very comparing psychological description
of who Francisco de Miranda was.
And he said, "You are man that has very many men inside of you.
You have a world inside you.
All the experiences you have will carry you on through life."
Actually, it did.
This is probably Miranda here, probably he's 45.
This is 1788.
He was born in 1750, so he's 38 years old at this time,
but Miranda when he left Caracas, he was 21 years old and he started
to be very curious and the [inaudible] sort of literature log.
He read [inaudible] and he started to think about the possibility
of independence for the colony.
So when he came to Madrid, he became the king's soldier
and he left the Army in 1782, so at age 32, at 1782 or 1783
and he started to travel and this where in the United States,
this is where he gets to New Bern.
He starts traveling through the east coast.
At that time, he's going to meet all of the founding fathers
of the United States of America and he's going
to start writing a project for South America colonist,
thinking that if the British colonists have been able
to emancipate themselves and rule themselves,
so could the Spanish colony in America.
So they he moved to Europe, where he gets into the whole movement
of the French Revolution and here he thinks that if he --
I like this portrait because you could see Miranda.
This is him right here.
You can see in the background --
you can see in the background South America
and that really means he's always writing for the continent
and he's always about Columbia.
So what is Columbia to Francisco de Miranda?
This is the flag that as been attributed to Miranda.
It dates from 1810.
It represents Columbia.
Columbia was, at that time, was the figure of America,
like America the continent.
At that time, when people said "America,"
it was mostly Hispanic America.
It was not the United States.
America I mean was the largest empire at the time
and so the United States seemed very small compared
to the rest of the continent.
So a person that would be America, that wouldn't exist at that time.
It was actually Miranda who first registered --
so in 1785, he goes to Germany and he goes to the Library
of [inaudible], where he's going to -- right here.
This is 1785 and he gets this registered, right?
We see the date and then we can his name right here,
Colonel Francisco de Miranda and they had to write where they came
from and so he writes "America."
So this is pretty interesting because it dates 1785.
This means Miranda is already thinking of himself not
as a Spanish subject because people who were born in South America,
the colonists were Spanish subjects, but he thought
of himself as an American.
"I am an American."
William Smith, he writes North America.
William Smith, he is the son-in-law, the in-law of [inaudible]
and William Smith is going to be the friend of Francisco de Miranda.
They're going to travel together for four years.
They're going to visit most of the courts of Europe,
most of the collections, scientific collections, art collections.
They are going to study all the military strategies
of the greatest rulers of Europe including Yekaterina ,
Catherine the Great and they're going
to have this friendship that's going to last for a long, long time.
So we're going to see later on when I get
into the project how Miranda is related to Smith, but I wanted just
to point out in this introductory phase how it is to be able
to call oneself as something and he defines himself before the hour --
10 years before, even 12 years before that actually independence
of this continent in South America, he defines himself as an American,
which is pretty, pretty interesting as a concept of identity
like how he starts to identify this whole issue.
I put a picture of Jefferson, who he also met.
He was an ambassador of the United States in France at the time
of [inaudible] and Francisco de Miranda in the Army consulate
of the French people and he is called "General [foreign language],"
he was called at the time [foreign language] Francisco de Miranda also.
I wanted to get you a little bit into the scope of what his life was
and I imagine already have been sensing how deep
or profound his existence and how interesting for a country
like Columbia that can be because he is also the first one
who will call himself "Columbiano."
So not only would he use the name to define America Columbia
or to define himself an Americano coming from America
but he will the use the [inaudible] Columbiano to attract Columbians.
So here is the first document that he's going to post in the church --
in the Cathedral of Coro -- in his adventure of 1806 when he tried
to come and liberate by himself the continent.
He arrives.
He puts on the flag that he imagined --
so a flag for his country that he created in his mind
and he claims himself to be the comandante general del ejercito
Columbiano, the chief commander or chief general of the Columbian Army
and he's talking to the people,
los pueblos habitantes del continente Americo Columbiano.
It is really interesting because has [inaudible].
I mean these are still Spanish Empire.
These territories are part of the Spanish Empire
and nobody has claimed them to be an independent nation.
Nobody has even claimed that they can be called Columbiano
or Columbo Americano.
So it is a pure invention of Francisco de Miranda.
Francisco de Miranda is a very interesting person
because he created this imaginary land, this imaginary constitution.
He is the first person to write a constitution or constitutions
for a government of transition between the Monarchy
and whatever government is meant to follow.
Of course, the type of government
that Francisco de Miranda is thinking is very much like the ones
that he has helped put in place.
So that is the Republic of the United States
and the Republic of France.
And he -- based on his personal life experiences,
is going to start creating a constitution and some laws
for this human's territories that was America
and a continente Columbo America.
I sometimes wonder where the name Columbia came.
I think Columbia was a term that he heard here in the United States
when he came to New York.
Columbia was the image of Columbia and it was an Indian woman,
the iconography like Asia or Africa or Europe.
Each kingdom in Europe has their imagery and iconography.
So, for instance, Kings College in New York became Columbia University
and the district of Washington is Columbia.
I mean we hear about Columbia, Columbia,
so Miranda must have been very much influenced
because if we see the flag, we see that America
and Columbia are represented as a native American women
which was actually the iconography that went along with Columbia
and then maybe the U.S. changed -- -
Columbia stopped needing America and just became America.
So there has been several transitions between that word.
The fact of the matter is that we, in Columbia, are called Columbianos
and that was something that Miranda very much defended.
Miranda said in his constitution of the 1800, said, "The people living
in Columbia should be called Columbianos and not Columbinos
because Columbianos is much more elegant and it sounds prettier."
So this is how Francisco de Miranda works.
He's not -- he's a diplomat because obviously he is going to meet most
of the rulers of the late 18th century.
He's going to meet everyone.
He's going to read every book, every single book he can get.
He's going to visit every single library he can visit,
scientific collections, private collections, art collections.
He is one of the most knowledgeable persons of his time.
He knows about law and that's going to cause him a lot of problems,
but aside of that -- aside of all this knowledge he's got,
he's got the wisdom and then he has the power of creating and imagining.
All of what he imagined was then carried out by people like Bolivar
and [inaudible] and peers like St. Martin, but, above all,
he's got the power of imagining a new nation.
Back to the project, this was the project that we created in 2010.
It was shown at UNESCO in 2012 [inaudible] and we've traveled
with the exhibition throughout these cities of the world.
It was a project that had many, many partnerships, Columbian government,
Venezuela government, French government and Spanish government.
So that's very interesting because it allowed us to talk
about a singular period of our history through one person.
I just wrote a quote that I saw in the building in one
of the beautiful mosaics that are upstairs and it says,
"The history of the world is the biography of great men."
I think that's quite interesting when we're talking about Miranda
because his memories are kept in the Archive General de la Nación
in Caracas because that was his will.
Caracas was the city where he was born and although his homeland,
for him, was America, was Columbia, the big Columbia was his project
but Caracas is his homeland and in his testament, in his Will,
he lends the memories that he had.
Sixty-three volumes that were kept for 100 years away from public
because it contained so much confidential
and high-level information that none
of it could ever be seen to the public eye.
So we had access to those memories in 1927 and they're now online.
They're digital tools.
We found these memories -- a project that you can download
from the internet and you can visit, see, discover the life
of this great man, who was [inaudible].
So we've divided.
We speak in plural because this project was made
with a highly scientific committee from Germany, France, Columbia,
Mexico and Spain and Venezuela.
So all content of the internet and the content of the different panels
that we show, different exhibitions all are a collective work.
So what I what I wanted to show you is a little bit of how he came
to arrive to the United States, which is the core of our talk today,
Francisco de Miranda and the United States.
Miranda left Caracas in 1771.
You can find all of this in the internet if you want
to read carefully and learn more about his life but he arrived
to Paris, where he's going to end up living in this house, Cuatro Torres.
He's a young man.
he's 21 years old and what is interesting about his name
as well is that it is the name of the prison where he's going to die.
He's going to die in the Arsenal del los Cuatro Torres 10 km away
from Cadíz.
So he arrives in Cadíz and he comes back at age 62 to die there.
It would be nice to mention those things.
This is the army that he's going to join is the Army of Princess and so
at that time, he's looking to serve the Spanish king
and he will then be promoted at colonel.
He then went to Melilla in Morocco where he defended the fort.
I just want to show this fort.
He was a great a drawer, so he would draw perfectly the forts --
all the Spanish forts and this is why his memories were kept
for so long because he had so much confidential information
of Spanish forts, fights and military points.
These are his drawings and he would always have a map or a card
with him to know where he was.
He would always analyze the political,
the economic situation and so forth.
So this is a drawing by Francisco de Miranda at age 28 of the fort
that he helped to define in Melilla.
Then he's going to go to -- this is what gets him into problems.
That was the sort of literature I showed you before.
This is going to be the first time he is going to be imprisoned
because he was reading books that were forbidden by the inquisition.
So, at that time, he really starts developing a very radical idea
of what should be allowed and not allowed and he starts thinking
that inquisition is not something very fair.
It's a system of oppression and that it's a system that is helping people
from the American continent to develop.
I mean he believes that ignorance is the worst enemy
of a culture unless you want to keep people under control.
So this is the prison where he was first imprisoned in 1879
and then colonel from America [inaudible] is the government
who is going to take him, who becomes later the government
of Cuba, is going to enroll in the battalion, the battalion de Aragon
and that's where Miranda is going to get a lot
of attention military-wise.
He was the aide Bernando de Gálvez, who was the governor of Louisiana.
He spoke many languages.
He spoke English.
He spoke French.
He spoke Spanish.
He read Greek and Latin and he's better prepared
than any other Spanish soldier but he is a criollo.
He was born in America so that is a problematic issue
for the [inaudible] monarchy within the Army.
So the uncle of Bernando de Gálvez, who is the Jose de Gálvez,
was the president of El Consejo de Indias [phonetic], starts looking
after Miranda and getting very jealous of this person,
who is getting so much recognition and so much "power."
He's not a powerful man.
Miranda is not very powerful.
He just gets some merits and he negotiates [inaudible]
for the English and he wants to providence
and fought some great battles and brought a lot of drawings
and military strategies but he is a Caraqueño,
we were Hispano-American.
So [inaudible] begin a chase and actually when he comes to the U.S.,
he goes to Salem and kind of makes some comparisons
about the inquisition in the Spanish crown how they are chasing
as if he was sort of witch or something like that.
So that's what happens.
He gets all these accusations of which he is going only be able
to claim his name 10 years later in 1793, but by that point,
Miranda has already left the Army because he knows if he goes
to prison at that time, he knows perfectly that he will not be able
to carry on his project for independence for South America.
So he will be commissioned in the secret complicity
of the [inaudible], leaves Cuba to come to the United States
and he comes with some very elegant letters from, el gobernador de Cuba,
the Cuba government and was able to introduce himself still
as a Spanish Army colonel.
That was really the strategy that [inaudible] Miranda used was
to gain some time because they were ahead of time.
When the news came that Miranda had left the Army,
people already opened the doors to Miranda.
People had already received as a Spanish colonel.
So he was playing a little bit with the issue of time
of consuming his own destiny, which, at that time in 1783,
had already been chosen by him.
He already chose to free America from oppression yet,
he still wanted to serve the king.
So Miranda had this duality in him.
He can't make this radical -- this radical rupture with Spain.
Spain is still the mother, la madre patria
and the king is still la patria.
So there are a lot of concepts that you may see that I'm presenting
to you that are defining what the patria, the homeland,
was and who to serve and why to serve.
Miranda is always going through these dualistic, very complex,
reflection and very contradictory as well.
He is a revolutionist but he is after the French Revolution,
he becomes against revolution.
So his soldier of Spain, serving the king, but then he wants
to be a soldier of America and then for him, it's almost natural
that the king of Spain that the colonists are able to manage
and to [inaudible] themselves.
He thinks it's natural.
I mean it's natural.
We've come to a certain maturity.
We have so many wealth.
We have so much education in us, we can rule ourselves
and he thinks he is going to convince the king.
So he keeps asking [inaudible] to the king.
He sends this letter to Florida Blanca, who was his minister.
He sends letters to all of ambassadors,
the Spanish [inaudible], "please allow me to explain my plan.
Please, let me tell how this will be the greatest plan for America."
So he's always between this fine line of betraying what, for him,
was his homeland and his king and yet serving this new territory
that he sees can be so rich and so full of treasures
and beautiful things for the rest of the world.
So this is when he leaves.
Now, we see a portrait of young Miranda
and he arrives in Baltimore in 1782.
At that age is when his real mission begins, as a savior of America.
So when he comes to the U.S., this is the trip he's going to make --
this is a very nice quote.
He attends a bar-b-que.
This is a light concept, bar-b-que.
He writes it.
he writes where the word comes, "bar-b-que."
He says, "To end the party at around 1:00 p.m.,
they prepare a bar-b-que."
He defines it.
"That is grilled pork with rum,
which was shared normally among the magistrates and the well educated
and the poorest people of the country, shaking hands
and drinking from the same glass.
It is impossible to conceive without having witnessed it,
a truly democratic assembly and which comes
to complete the many reunions that were told and described
by the great poets and historians and which took place in some
of the free villages of Greece of their own time."
So here we find evidence
of Francisco de Miranda's intellectual formation
and education.
He's a classical man.
He believes that Greece is the most beautiful model of democracy.
Greece is the only place where he is going to purchase a house.
For him, democracy is the system to go for and it is the system
that could be put in place in South America.
What he witnesses here is something that he, later on,
he quotes this the same day.
He's going to say, "I will never be able to see these in South America
because they're such a colonel monarchy that it will be impossible
to see the magistrate having coffee
or drinking tea or wine with a pagan."
So he is very propelled by this society and he starts --
obviously, he visits the Congress in Philadelphia and, as I said,
he went to New York and he also admired Fort [inaudible]
where Washington led his battles.
He met George Washington.
He met him and he made a quote, which is a commentary,
which is kind of interesting.
"He complimented much.
He is continuous, he's careful, rather silent
and not very expressive, although his kind manners make him a
terrible mind."
That is the sort of comments, every single person he met,
he wrote something about.
He met everyone.
I met Washington, Hamilton, Sam Addams, John Adams, Jefferson, Knox.
He was friends with Knox, with Monroe.
He was friends with -- he traveled with Smith.
He met the king of Prussia --
William Pitt, the father of the Lee Young, all the ambassadors
and every time, he would leave something about it.
When Catherine the Great took him through him her collections
of [inaudible], she opened it just for him and before he left Russia,
she gave a dinner for him and she gave him a passport.
She said, "Here's your passport.
Go and travel through Scandinavia.
He went and traveled form embassy to embassy, Russian Embassy; otherwise,
the Spanish crown would have imprisoned
because the Spanish crown already knew
that he had this project to liberate America.
So he was very much protected.
In this photo, you will find 50 biographies of 50
of the most important he met.
It's very educational and all the libraries that he has followed.
So when he comes to England, there is an article that is published
at that time -- again, we are in 1783 when he gets to London
and this is something that says about the Spanish America.
A portrait -- It's a translation from English to the French.
It's a portrait of Miranda and it says already that there is one
of the most cultivated man in London, trying to negotiate
to liberate the America to the South American colony.
Everybody knows that is what he is trying to do
because he's not very discreet.
He is a person who arrives to the dinners
and to all these great glamourous parties
and he will start talking about politics.
He would start talking about the importance of freedom
and then he would start talking
about how people should go with him and for him.
So that's pretty much it.
as far as the life of Miranda, you can find it on this application.
I'm just going to show -- the French Revolution is very,
very dense because he obviously played a great role in France.
He represented for two years the greatest general
because he always stood for freedom
and he would always say aloud the French [inaudible],
which the [foreign language] "until death,"
and that was what people believed at that time for freedom and Miranda,
in any society whether it was the United States or the Spanish,
or some very compelling letters from his enemies like people
in the Spanish crown at the ministers or the ambassadors
who were looking after him that would also define Miranda
on the greatest and they would say, "It's too bad we lost him."
And they would say just a man like him could go and start the movement.
They knew it was like a domino effect and that's why Miranda,
in spite of the protection that he had from Catherine the Great,
that's why he joined the French Revolution because he knew
that if the French would come to barracks in the Peninsula,
that then the colonies would be left on their own
and they would have some space to start emancipating themselves,
and that's actually what happened and that's actually what he's going
to write in his journal, "El Columbiano."
He's going to tell -- this is published in 1810 and he's going
to actually say all that is going on in Spain and so, again, 1810,
his journal is called, "El Columbiano."
His journal was published thanks to the support
of a very wealthy Spanish family [inaudible]
and they financed his published --
his publication as well as his translation of the letters
to the Americanos -- of the South Americanos, [inaudible] Guzman.
He was a Peruvian Jesuit that Miranda will very much use
as a means of trying to justify his actions.
So he will always looking into writings or some authors prior
to him in order to find some intellectual basis for his actions.
This is how all the Muslims of the frontiers
and how America started switching and changing.
This is when he got back here to the Americas.
He was already 60 years old.
This is the first constitution signed
and so he was part of that too, 1811.
This is when he is captured.
He was captured -- his last writings, a complaining letter
to the king again in 1813 asking him to complying with the capitalization
that had been made -- la capitulación de San Mateo,
which was not respected and he was yet imprisoned and sent to jail
without the right to defend himself.
So that is his last letter.
His last document is in 1813.
This is the place -- this is the prison,
la prison de las Cuatro Torres and Arsenal de las Caracas.
This is where he died.
And he is now buried
in this cemetery right here in a common grave.
Arsenal de las Caracas in San Fernando,
which is like 10 km from Cadíz.
[Inaudible] But he got imprisoned there.
[ Inaudible ]
No, they haven't found -- his body hasn't been found
and they found ADN test but, no, there is no trace of his remains.
So he is still buried there and his -- yeah.
His grave is empty.
There is no grave of him anywhere.
[ Inaudible ]
It is. It is but I mean what happened was he had his own grave
in the cemetery of the arsenal but, at one point in the middle
of 19th century, they had to relocate the cemetery
and they sent a notice for the family to come and take the bodies
or [inaudible] but nobody answered for him.
So all the bodies that were not reclaimed were put
in a common grave.
Nobody --
I think they are -- actually he had two boys, Alejandro and Francisco.
Alejandro died very young as a general as well.
He is buried in la Pere Lachaise in France
and Francisco is the second one, he married a Columbian woman
and he also died in the war, the Independence War.
So I think I'm going to stop right now.
I think I've said enough about Francisco de Miranda.
I would be glad to answer to some of your questions
or to share some of your thoughts.
>> Was he ever trialed?
>> Claudia Isabel Navas: Trial -- like did he go to trial?
>> Yeah.
>> Claudia Isabel Navas: After the San Mateo rendition?
No. It was -- legally, it was a transgression of the rendition.
It was absolutely a transgression
and he was a military of very high rank.
He was treated as a criminal -- as a street criminal.
He was chained.
He was left in the prison in Caracas with other criminals
and then he was sent to Puerto Rico.
The governor of Puerto Rico admired Miranda, as I said,
even his enemies admired him.
I mean they respected him.
They knew what kind of man he was -- all the battles that he had been to,
so he really advocated for a better treatment of General Miranda.
That's why he asked the crown to send him to the arsenal
but the crown obviously the tower -- I don't know if you saw that --
At the tower, there's no possibility of escaping or -- it's right here.
It's surrounded by water, so there's no way of escaping and he writes
in 1814 when Ferdinand the VII comes back to the throne,
he liberates all political prisoners except Miranda --
except Miranda and Miranda writes a letter again to the courts of Spain
and said, "Listen, give me at least a chance to defend myself"
because he was a very good lawyer -- empirical lawyer but a good lawyer.
He had defended himself against the French Revolution
in [inaudible] and he had won.
People in France had taken out of the court and he had said
"Viva la regime de Miranda.
Viva la republique."
So Miranda was a very good spokesman, so he requested
and he knew he had the legal right to defend himself
and the courts answered to him saying
that they had lost his expedient.
Losing the expedient of Francisco de Miranda was very difficult
because it wasn't this thin.
I mean Francisco de Miranda had so many warnings to be arrested
and so many letters that they sent
that his expedient must have been one of the most thick of all.
[ Inaudible ]
It's very interesting because Miranda,
after the French Revolution -- I'm going to go back a little here --
after the French Revolution, he went to England because -- obviously --
I say obviously because Napoleon Bonaparte didn't
like to have any rivals around him.
So obviously that excluded of the French Army
and the French government, Miranda didn't see any fit for his stance
with the French government, although he had fought for France
and he believed it was his second homeland.
He decides to go back to England
because he knew William Pitt de Young.
So he gets back to London and in London, he had a very good friend,
which is Turnwell [phonetic].
Turnwell is a banker.
He's always is going to finance Miranda.
When Miranda is in this prison in the Arsenal de la Caracas,
Turnwell is the person who is going to still believe
in helping Miranda escape from the prison.
I mean he's 65 years old.
So Turnwell -- they had this plan -- I don't know.
They were going to escape through a window or whatever
and Miranda died before the plan got to fit
but Turnwell helped Miranda go back to England
and Miranda knows Ambassador Rufus King,
who is their English ambassador in France and so he goes back
with great letters again.
He always manages even after revolutions --
he always managed to get a good recommendation letter
and he goes back and sets a house with all his books.
He's got more than 5000 books and opens his house
to all his fellow Americans -- young Hispanic Americans were looking
to fight for independence of the colonies
and so there come Simon Bolivar, Palacios, [inaudible],
Pedro Fermín de Vargas, Bernando Higgins, San Martin came
when Miranda had already left with Bolivar, Andres Bello,
[inaudible] -- I mean there are all these young generation, you know,
that come from the Americas and even from Mexico that stay
with Miranda in Miranda's house.
So, yeah, the relationship with Bolivar is very close.
The father of Bolivar had called upon Miranda in 1797
and they were trying to make him work for this independence plan.
So the Bolivar family and Miranda knew each other already
and that's how they came to work together.
Bolivar and Higgins are the biggest disciples of Miranda.
[ Inaudible ]
Miranda? Okay, he was in London in 1791 first.
He met there a great man from France called Telihon [phonetic],
who was a very, very wise and very, tricky, tricky bullet politician --
he told Miranda -- he heard Miranda in one of these dinners
because Miranda had a very mundane life.
He went to theaters and he went to dinners, and he saw so many women
and had such a social life, very, very eclectic social life
and Telihon heard him talk about his plans to emancipate America
and he said, "You know what?
You should go to plans because there are some plans."
Telihon obviously knew everything that was going
in the clubs during the revolutionary area and so he goes
from London to Paris and he's trying to go to Russia
to see Catherine the Great and he arrives to Paris
with recommendation letters from Telihon to meet with the mayor, who,
at that time, [inaudible] was [foreign language].
They're going to be fascinated by the personality of Miranda,
by his experience, by his knowledge,
the fact that he won here some battles, that he was protected
by Catherine the Great, and this is spring 1792.
He spends all the summer there and the destiny made it happen
that the Duke of Brunswick threatens the French
and the French people react, and there's the famous speech
of [inaudible] who is going to say the armies [foreign language]
"Our patriot is in danger," and so it's the call of the [inaudible].
It's the moment where the king, the queen and the royal family is going
to be imprisoned, all the frontiers are closed, and Miranda is there
by chance, by an accident of life, by his revolutionary life,
destiny that he had inscribed in his.
[ Inaudible ]
Exactly. Exactly, absolutely.
This is why it's so interesting we're celebrating Columbus Day
and actually Miranda will admire very much Christopher Columbus,
although he will criticize the level of conquest,
the privilege of the right of conquest.
So this is the ambivalence of Miranda.
He will write so much based on the [foreign language].
That's his bible.
Vatel [phonetic] is his bible.
It's like he knows every single civilization to be or not
to be conquered and he will criticize of conquest
but he will admire Christopher Columbus
and he will never ever revoke him the fact
of having created this America.
It's very beautiful.
In a way, again, it's part of his imaginary of trying
to develop a new homeland.
It's also something that is in the air --
like everything that was in his life, something that he will pick
that he will pick on and then he will put onto paper and, as I said,
Columbia was already used in New York to change the name
of Kings College, so it's Columbia University,
so Miranda might have just gotten inspired.
[ Inaudible ]
What's particular about all of this is
that Christopher Columbus was also buried somewhere else and at
that time had been somewhat forgotten.
[ Inaudible ]
[ Applause ]
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