Strength and Sovereignty
VEN106a, 2018, 100 VES

Slot Comment:

Bolivares Soberanos (Sovereign Bolivar)

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Note Details

  

Set Details
Note Description: 100 Bolívares 2018 - Printer: CMV
Grade: 67 EPQ
Country: Venezuela
Note Number: VEN106a
Signatures/
Vignettes: 		- Wmk: S. Bolívar & BCV
Certification #: 8072677-062
Owner: Revenant
Set Category: World
Set Name: Strength and Sovereignty
Slot Name: VEN106a, 2018, 100 VES
Research: Currently not available

Owner's Description

The front of this image features a portrait of Ezequiel Zamora. Consistent with many of the other men on notes in this series he was a soldier but not a hero of the war for independence like many of the others on this series of notes. He was born in 1817 and grew up in the midst of the wars for independence from Spain in South America. Rather, he’s a hero of the “Federal War” from 1859-1863. The Federal War, or Great War in Venezuela, was a Venezuelan Civil War. - which was going on right around the time the US was fighting the US Civil War, far to the north. It was between Conservatives and Liberals over Conservative control of the government and land and their refusal to engage in reforms. This led Liberalist to want greater autonomy for provinces - a federalist system, similar to what the US uses. Zamora was a Federalist and a Liberal.

Unlike many others in this series, he was born to landowning parents of only modest means and received only a primary level formal education in Caracas. His education in politics, philosophy, and law came later with the help of his brother-in-law John Caspers and a friendship with the lawyer Jose Manuel Garcia.

Before the Federal War he ran for office but was blocked by means he and his supporters called fruduent and illegal. He was then a part of the “1846 Peasant Insurrection” - which broke out in the aftermath of the “fraudulent” election. The people who started calling him "General of the Sovereign People" used essential slogans like "land and free men," "respect the peasant" and "disappearance of the Goths." Zamora was sentenced to death by the courts of Villa de Cura on 27 July of the same year, but José Tadeo Monagas cut the sentence down to 10 years in prison. He escaped from the Ottawa Prison on the way to Maracaibo Prison, and worked farm laborer. The following year, he was pardoned. Since this was also a result of strife between the liberals and conservatives this peasant insurrection sounds like precursor to the Federal War in much the same way that “Bleeding Kansas” (1854-1859) was a precursor to the US Civil War.

The Federal War cost 100,000 lives through violence, hunger, and disease - in a country that at the time only had about 1 million people at the outset. Zamora was one of those lives. After several victories in 1859, he was shot in the head in January 1860, trying to take the town square in San Carlos on his way to Caracas. Some have claimed he was shot by his own side. His death is thought to have reversed the direction of the war and lead to a Federalist defeat.

The back of this note has a Brown spider monkey (Ateles hybridus) with the Guatopo National Park in the background. The Brown spider monkey is a critically endangered new world monkey native to Northern Colombia and Northwest Venezuela. They weigh about 7.5 to 9 kg (up to 20 lbs) and have prehensile tails that can be 75 cm long and act like a 5th limb. They mostly stay up in trees and forage in high canopies of primary forests. Their population has declined by at least 80% with estimated habitat loss at 98% and few of the remaining populations are thought to have the size for long term viability.

Guatopo National Park is another park near the North-Central coastline of Venezuela, not far from Caracas. The land was declared a national park in 1958 and expropriated by the Venezuelan government.

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