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Updated: June 17, 2025
Spies were set to watch the daring llanero, and after some days they informed their leaders that Paez had gone out unarmed, and that there was a good opportunity to seize his weapons as a preliminary to his arrest. When Paez returned home after his outing, he was told that armed men had visited the house and taken away his sword and pistols.
Now, however, he is the famous Llanero chieftain, favorite champion of Venezuela, brother-in-arms of Bolívar, who allows him, alone of all the military leaders, the privilege of an especial body-guard. Since 1810, for five years, he has been fighting constantly in his country's service, and has won himself fame while our eyes have been turned in other directions.
These isolated clumps or groves, called matas in the provincial idiom, form the landmarks of the Venezuelan Plains; and in the neighborhood of each we shall find the hato or dwelling of a Llanero.
The Llanero immediately approaches the prostrate colt, and deliberately beats its head with a heavy bludgeon until it becomes quite senseless. He then places his saddle upon its back, adjusts a murderous bit in its clammy mouth, and seats himself firmly in the saddle at the moment when the animal recovers strength enough to rise.
The horizon began to enlarge in some part and the vault of heaven seemed no longer to rest at an equal distance on the grass-covered soil. A llanero, or inhabitant of the Llanos, is happy only when, as expressed in the simple phraseology of the country, he can see everywhere well around him.
After the first effervescence produced by the dropping of a notability into the caldron of New York, the Llanero general was permitted to enjoy his placid domesticity without molestation; and in a pleasant street, far up-town among the Twenties, he lived in the midst of us for eight quiet years. A curious serenity of evening, for a life so turbulent and incarnadined in its beginning!
After having passed several months in the thick forests of the Orinoco, in places where one is accustomed, when at any distance from the river, to see the stars only in the zenith, as through the mouth of a well, a journey in the Llanos is peculiarly agreeable and attractive. The traveller experiences new sensations; and, like the Llanero, he enjoys the happiness of seeing well around him.
At long intervals, sometimes scores of miles apart, their habitations are established; but their home is the saddle. Innumerable herds of cattle and of horses turn to account the pasturage of the rich savanna; and the true Llanero exists only as guardian or proprietor of these savage hosts. He is as much at home in this trackless expanse of rank vegetation as the mariner navigating a familiar sea.
With this territory as a base, he carried on, during the year 1817, in conjunction with the Llanero horsemen of General Paez, a desperate struggle with the Spaniards. When the rainy season of 1818 began, Bolivar's army had been cut almost to pieces, he had lost prestige as a general, and his civil authority amounted to nothing. Only the cavalry of Paez maintained the Patriot cause.
In this battle, fought on the 26th of June, 1821, Bolivar had about sixteen hundred infantry, a thousand or more of them being British, and three thousand of llanero cavalry under Paez. The Spaniards, under La Torre, had fewer men, but occupied a very strong defensive position.
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