Biography Of. Bernardo O'Higgins

NAME : Carlos Pavié Catrileo DATE : September 12, 2012

•  Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme (1778-1842) was a Chilean independence leader who, together with José de san martin, freed Chile  from Spanish rule in the Chilean War of Independence. Although he was the second Supreme Director of Chile (1817–1823), he is considered one of Chile's founding fathers, as he was the first holder of this title to head a fully independent Chilean state. O'Higgins was of Spanish descent.

•  Bernardo O'Higgins was a member of the O'Higgins family who was born in the Chilean city of Chillán in 1778, the illegitimate son of Ambrosio O'Higgins, 1st Marquis of Osorno, a Spanish officer born in County Sligo, Ireland, who became governor of Chile and later viceroy of Peru. His mother was Isabel Riquelme, a prominent local lady and daughter of Don Simón Riquelme y Goycolea, a member of the Chillán Cabildo, or council.

•  O'Higgins spent his early years with his mother's family in central-southern Chile, and later he lived with the Albano family, who were his father's commercial partners, in Talca. At age 15, O'Higgins was sent to Lima by his father. He had a distant relationship with Ambrosio, who supported him financially and was concerned with his education, but the two never met in person. It is unclear why Ambrosio did not marry Isabel. High-ranking Spanish government officials in The Americaswere forbidden to marry locals, but at the time of O'Higgins' birth, Ambrosio O'Higgins was only a junior military officer. It has been suggested.. That Isabel's family would not have seen the match as advantageous at the time. Two years later, she married Don Félix Rodríguez, an old friend of her father's. O'Higgins used his mother's surname until the death of his father in 1801

•  Ambrosio O'Higgins continued his professional rise and became Viceroy of Peru; at seventeen Bernardo O'Higgins was sent to London to complete his studies. There, studying history and the arts, O'Higgins became acquainted with American ideas of independence and developed a sense of nationalist pride,[coming to admire liberalism in the Georgian British model. He also met Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan idealist and believer in independence, and joined a Masonic Lodge established by Miranda, dedicated to achieving the independence of Latin America.

•  In 1798 O'Higgins went to Spain from England, his return to the Americas delayed by the wars. His father died in 1801, leaving O'Higgins a large piece of land, the Hacienda Las Canteras, near the Chilean city of Los Ángeles. O'Higgins returned to Chile in 1802, adopted his father's surname, and began life as a gentleman farmer. In 1806 O'Higgins was appointed to the cabildo as the representative of Laja . Then, in 1808, Napoleon took control of Spain, triggering a sequence of events in South America. In Chile, the commercial and political elite decided to form an autonomous government to rule in the name of the imprisoned king Ferdinand VII; this was to be one of the first in a number of steps toward national independence, in which O'Higgins would play a leading role

Role in Chilean independence movement

•  On September 18, 1810, O'Higgins

joined the revolt against the now French dominated Spanish government. The criolloleaders in Chile did not support Joseph Bonaparte's rule in Spain, and a limited self-government under the Government Junta of Chile was created, with the aim of restoring the legitimate Spanish throne.[This date is now recognized as Chile's Independence Day.

•  O'Higgins was a close friend of Juan Martínez de Rozas, an old friend of his father, and one of the more radical leaders. O'Higgins strongly recommended that a national congress be created, and was elected a deputy to the first National Congress of Chile in 1811 as a representative of the Laja district. Tensions between the royalist and increasingly pro-independence factions, to which O'Higgins remained attached as a junior member, continued to grow.

•  he anti-Royalist camp in Chile was deeply split along lines of patronage and personality, by political beliefs, and by geography (between the rival regional groupings of Santiago and Concepción). The Carrera family had already seized power several times in different coups, and supported a specifically Chilean nationalism, as opposed to the broader Latin American focus of the Lautaro Lodge grouping,which included O'Higgins and the Argentinian José de San Martín.José Miguel Carrera. the most prominent member of the Carrera family, enjoyed a power base in Santiago; that of de Rozas, and later O'Higgins, lay in Concepción.

O'Higgins as Supreme Director

•  While in exile, O'Higgins met the Argentinean

General José de San Martín, a fellow member of the Lautaro Lodge, and together the men returned to Chile in 1817 to defeat the royalists. Initially the campaign went well, with the two commanders achieving a victory at the battle of Chacabuco. San Martín sent his troops down the mountain starting at midnight of February the 11th to prepare for an attack at dawn. As the attack commenced, his troops were much closer to the Spanish than anticipated, and they fought hard and heroically. Soler's troops had to go down a tiny path that proved long and arduous, and took longer than expected. General O'Higgins, supposedly seeing his homeland and being overcome with passion, defied the plan of attack and charged along with his 1,500 troops

•  What exactly happened in this part of the battle is fiercely debated. O'Higgins claimed that the Spanish stopped their retreat and started advancing towards his troops. He said that, if he were to lead his men back up the narrow path and retreat, his men would have been massacred one by one. San Martín saw O'Higgins' early advancement, and ordered Soler to charge the Spanish flank, which took the pressure off O'Higgins and allowed his troops to stand their ground

Peruvian independence and O'Higgins' final years

•  After being deposed, O'Higgins embarked from

the port of Valparaiso in July 1823, in the British corvette Fly, never to see Chile again. Originally he had intended to return to Ireland, but whilst passing through Peru he was strongly encouraged by Simón Bolívar to join the nationalist effort there. Bolívar's government granted O'Higgins the Hacienda de Cuiva and the Hacienda Montalván in San Vicente de Cañete, near Lima. O'Higgins lived in exile for the rest of his life accompanied by his illegitimate son, Pedro Demetrio O'Higgins (1817–1868), his mother, and his half-sister Rosa Rodriguez Riquelme (1781–1850). According to a 2001 documentary, Bernardo O'Higgins also had a daughter, Petronila Riquelme O'Higgins (b. 1809-?), by Patricia Rodríguez. As his father Ambrosio had done, Bernardo O'Higgins never acknowledged any of his children.

•  O'Higgins travelled to join Bolívar's army in its final liberation of Peru, but upon arrival, he found that Bolivar did not intend to give him a command—instead appointing him a general of Gran Colombia and making him a special court-martial judge for Chilean volunteers. Making his way back to Lima, O'Higgins heard of Bolivar's victory at the Battle of Ayacucho. He returned to Bolivar for the victory celebrations, but as a civilian. "Señor," he toasted, addressing Bolívar, "America is free. From now on General O'Higgins does not exist; I am only Bernardo O'Higgins, a private citizen. After Ayacucho, my American mission is over."

•  When Andrés de Santa Cruz became head of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation in 1836, O'Higgins endorsed his integrationist policies, and wrote a letter of support to him the following year when the Confederation cae under attack from the Chilean forces of Diego Portales—ultimately offering to act as a mediator in the conflict.[ With the rise of Agustín Gamarra, O'Higgins found himself out of favour in Peru.[ Meanwhile, the Chilean government had begun to rehabilitate O'Higgins, reappointing him to his old rank of captain-general in the Chilean army. In 1842, the National Congress of Chile finally voted to allow O'Higgins to return to Chile. After travelling toCallao to embark for Chile, however, O'Higgins began to succumb to cardiac problems and was too weak to travel. His doctor ordered him to return to Lima, where on 24 October 1842, aged 64, O'Higgins died.

Legacy

•  After his death, his remains were first buried in Peru, before being repatriated to Chile in 1869. O'Higgins had wished to be buried in the city of Concepción. but this was never to be. For a long time they remained in a marble coffin in the Cementerio General de Santiago, and in 1979 his remains were transferred by Augusto Pinochet to the Altar de la Patria, in front of the Palacio de La Moneda. In 2004, his body was temporarily stored at the Chilean Military School during the building of the Plaza de la Ciudadanía, before being finally laid to rest in the new underground Crypt of the Liberator.

•  O'Higgins is widely commemorated today, both in Chile and beyond. The Chilean village ofVilla O'Higgins was named in his honor. The main thoroughfare of the Chilean capital,Santiago, is Avenida Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins. There is also the Bernado O'Higgins National Park in Chile.There is a bust of O'Higgins in O'Higgins Square inRichmond, south-west London. Each year the borough's mayor is joined by members of the Chilean Embassy for a ceremony, and a wreath is placed there. A blue plaque was erected in his honor at Clarence House in Richmond, where he lived while studying in London