Arismendi, Juan Bautista (1775–1841)

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Arismendi, Juan Bautista (1775–1841)

Juan Bautista Arismendi (b. 1775; d. 23 July 1841), officer in the Venezuelan Emancipating Army. Arismendi was born in La Asunción on Margarita Island. At the commencement of the movement for emancipation from Spain, Arismendi took the pro-independence side and participated in the 1812 expedition to Guyana. He returned to Margarita Island following the expedition only to find it under the control of Coronel Pascual Martínez of the Spanish government. Arismendi's pro-independence leadership led to his arrest and imprisonment first in La Guaira and later on Margarita Island. During his imprisonment, Spanish authority was forcibly ousted and Arismendi was named governor of the island in 1813. That same year he traveled to Caracas to place himself in the service of Simón Bolívar, who put him in charge of the Barlovento campaign.

Arismendi returned to Margarita Island in 1814 and was named its commander in chief. In 1819 he served as vice president of the republic for a short time. Two years later he led his own armed contingent in the battle of Carabobo. He remained on Margarita Island and on more than one occasion during the Southern campaign resisted orders for his recruitment. In 1828 José Antonio Páez appointed him second in command of the army, and in 1830 he was an active participant in the movement that dissolved Gran Colombia. Arismendi was elected senator in the National Congress for the province of Margarita in 1835 and was reelected in 1839.

See alsoMargarita .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mariano De Briceño, Historia de la Isla de Margarita: Biografías del General Juan Bautista Arismendi y de la Señora Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi (1885).

Horacio Bianchi, Juicio histórico sobre la vida y obra del General Juan Bautista Arismendi (1941).

Francisco Javier Yánes, Historia de Margarita y observaciones del General Francisco Esteban Gómez (1948).

Additional Bibliography

Bencomo Barrios, Héctor. El general en jefe Juan Bautista Arismendi: Una vida al servicio de Venezuela Caracas: Fundación Polar, 2002.

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