The Cartagena Manifesto, written on December 15, 1812, by Simón Bolívar, was a key document in the Spanish American wars of independence that took place in Mexico and South America from 1808 to 1829. Bolívar, who was to become one of the chief liberators of the nations of South America from Spanish rule, was Venezuelan, but after the collapse of his nation’s First Republic, formed at the beginning of the Venezuelan War of Independence (1811–1823), he departed to live in exile in modern-day Colombia. In the city of Cartagena de Indias (Cartagena of the Indies), he wrote a manifesto outlining what he perceived to be the causes for the First Republic’s collapse. In doing so, he implicitly outlined what he believed should be the shape of a future Venezuelan republic or of any South American republic. More explicitly, his goal in the Cartagena Manifesto was to seek support for an invasion of Venezuela to oust the Spanish.