Anita Arnon

But Bolivar believed it is necessary if you want a nationalist movement, if you want to scare your enemies, if you want to force Americans to choose sides and make collaboration with Spain impossible, that is what you're going to have to do.

Let's crystallize them in the figure of one person who actually haunts Bolivar's nightmares.

And his name is José Tomás Boves.

If you sort of saw Miranda as a sort of luminous kind of character, Boves is not that, okay?

It's not great, is it?

No, I mean, describe.

Yeah, and really sort of snarly-frowny.

He had been a Spanish sailor, had been arrested for smuggling, and he'd been sent to the dungeons of Puerto Cabello.

And then he was exiled to Venezuela, where he fell in with this marauding bunch of cowboys.

He's described as being strong-shouldered, with an enormous head and piercing blue eyes and a pronounced sadistic streak.

No, really not.

And he ends up leading the legions of hell.

Now, these are hordes of wild plainsmen and mostly actual mixed race indigenous people.

They are because, you know, he's Creole, man.

He's been driving us into the dirt for ages.

So they hate him.

So they join Bovis and they use the weaponry of the indigenous people.

So they have these sort of long lances carved out of palm, hardened to, you know, sharp points.

You heat them in the fire, so the sap hardens and they're really very dangerous.

They fight while they ride, a gallop.