Letter from Jamaica

Simón Bolívar’s Jamaica Charter is a reference text in Latin America’s Bolivarian emancipation program. It is one of the most important political documents of Simón Bolívar. He wrote it in response to a British merchant living in Jamaica, Mr. Henry Cullen, on September 6, 1815.
At that time, Bolívar was taking refuge in Kingston (Jamaica) after his military defeat in New Granada. The document gathers impressions about what happened on the continent, from the arrival of the European colonizers to the events that led to the outbreak of the independence movements.
Allusions to Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Cuba and reflections on a future American federation were throughout the nineteenth century a continuous source of inspiration for the continent.
This is how Bolívar expressed it, anticipating this continental yearning, in this letter:

“I desire more than any other to see America form the greatest nation in the world, less for its size and riches, than for its freedom and glory. Although I aspire to perfection in the government of my country, I cannot persuade myself that the New World is for the present governed by a great republic; As it is impossible I dare not wish for it. It is a grandiose idea to pretend to form from the whole New World, a single nation with a single bond that binds its parts to each other and to the whole. Since it has an origin, a language, a customs, and a religion, it should therefore have a single government, confederating the different states to be formed.”