José Antonio Páez

José Antonio Páez was three times president of Venezuela and the man who took it out of Gran Colombia. He was born to a poor family on the plains, worked as a cattle herder, and raised the llaneros, the horsemen of the interior, into the most feared cavalry of the independence wars. They had originally fought for the Spanish crown; Páez brought them over to the patriot side, and their charge at Carabobo in 1821 effectively won Venezuelan independence. He was illiterate for much of his early career and learned to read as an adult. Bolívar depended on him and distrusted him, correctly: in 1826 Páez launched the movement called La Cosiata against Bogotá's authority, and in 1830 he took Venezuela out of the union Bolívar had built, weeks before Bolívar died. He then dominated the country for eighteen years, as president or through chosen successors, in a period of relative stability and conservative rule that historians call the Conservative Oligarchy. He was overthrown, exiled, recalled during the civil war of the Federal War era, ruled as dictator from 1861 to 1863, and was deposed again. He died in exile in New York in 1873. His remains were brought home fifteen years later. He was a formidable physical figure who suffered from epileptic seizures in battle, during which his men said he fought hardest. In exile he lived in New York and Buenos Aires and wrote an autobiography. He remains a genuinely divisive figure in Venezuela: the hero of Carabobo to some, and the man who broke Bolivar's union to others.

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