By Luis Manuel Aguana
In Venezuela we have become accustomed to commemorate the date of the Declaration of Independence only as the moment from which we declared ourselves free as a nation independent from Spain. However, I would like to approach that Declaration of Independence of Venezuela, beyond the political justification that a privileged group of citizens wielded, to pronounce in favor of the separation of the political-territorial unit of the country from its original matrix, Spain, but of the principles that sustained to base such separation, and that necessarily must and has to be timeless, because those principles had to be examined at any future time, so they should at least be immutable in time.
After reading -again- the Solemn Declaration of Independence by the Congress of Venezuela, or Act of Independence of July 5, 1811, we first notice the political justification of its time, that is, the mention of the rights recovered on April 19, 1810 as "...consequence of the Day of Bayonne and the occupation of the Spanish Throne by the conquest and succession of another new dynasty constituted without our consent...". But this justification was still not enough.
Perhaps if these political events had not occurred in Spain and had not deepened, in the opinion of the declarants, the disorder in the Spanish colonies of America, product precisely of those events argued in the Declaration, it would have been difficult to sustain a political-territorial separation from the Mother Country.
But our Declaration had to go further in order to justify for posterity the beginning of an independent life. After giving the reasons for the politics of their own time, they had to ground the background:
"In attention to all these solid, public, and incontestable reasons of policy, which so much persuade the necessity of recovering the natural dignity, which the order of events has restored to us, in use of the imprescriptible rights which the peoples have to destroy every pact, agreement, or association which does not fill the ends for which governments were instituted, we believe that we cannot and must not retain the ties that bound us to the government of Spain, and that, like all the peoples of the world, we are free and authorized, to depend on no other authority than our own, and to take among the powers of the earth, the equal place that the Supreme Being and nature assign us and to which the succession of human events and our own good and usefulness call us." (see in Spanish Acta de la Independencia del 5 de julio de 1811, Venezuela, Congreso Constituyente 1811, https://tinyurl.com/pcuzuerj) (highlighted our).
The Declaration wielded the right of all people to "destroy every compact, covenant, or association which does not fulfill the ends for which governments were instituted" in the belief that "we are free and entitled, to depend on no authority but our own". This was the same principle wielded by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, about the reason for the existence of a government, which is none other than to guarantee the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of its people.
Indeed, the Declaration of Independence of the United States states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness" (see America’s Founding Documents, Declaration of Independence: A transcription, en https://tinyurl.com/bdhrkt3e) (highlighted our).
Is any reason for a people to break with their government at any time very different, if they consider that it does not guarantee the basic principles by which it was constituted in the first place? That principle is unalterable in time.
Declarations of Independence are not just a mere historical document that is read in a solemn act, or celebrated with military parades and lights in the sky, once a year. No. It is about citizens always remembering that they are first and foremost the fundamental reason why governments exist. That basic principle is so increasingly forgotten that in the nation of the world where these self-evident truths for independence were first written, the United States, people are being persecuted and extradited for wanting what their own Declaration of Independence says: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Venezuelan Declaration of Independence is historically a daughter of the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, although many, for ideological reasons, do not wish to accept it. Because it is not a problem of ideologies, nor of rights, nor of lefts. It is a declaration of the rights of the very existence of the human being. Of the rights of man, and why citizens are organized in society, and governments are instituted to guarantee those rights.
And being so, our own Declaration of Independence reminds us that "in use of the indefeasible rights of the people to destroy any compact, covenant or association which does not fulfill the purposes for which governments were instituted", we have the right to rebel if we consider that our "compact, covenant or association" with the government that runs the country, does not fulfill the purposes for which it was instituted. And not because it is written in any Constitution, but in the same Founding Act of the Nation.
Such is the power of independence principles on which the Founding Fathers of our nationality based their separation from Spain, and constituted the country we all know as the Republic of Venezuela, even if they have changed its official name.
So this note is not about any public manifestation of rebellion against any government or regime, but a reminder of the fundamental principles on which our country was built and which should be permanently in the minds of those who consider themselves political leaders, so as not to get lost in the path of guaranteeing us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which they once lost in this distressing ocean of errors and imbecilities.
Caracas, July 6, 2025
Blog:
TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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