— Abbeville Institute (@AbbevilleInst) January 15, 2026
In the tangled web of modern geopolitics, where Venezuela and the United States circle each other with increasing hostility, a forgotten chapter whispers of a time when a Venezuelan patriot walked the American South soil not as an adversary but as an admirer, a student, and ultimately a brother in revolution. His name was Francisco de Miranda, and his story represents a lost bond between two nations now seemingly worlds apart.
In the twilight of the 18th century, this young Venezuelan officer fought to secure American independence, then wandered through the southern colonies with the wide eyes of a revolutionary apprentice, absorbing lessons he would carry back across the Caribbean to ignite his own war for independence from Spain.
Miranda stands alone in the annals of history as the only person to fight in the three great upheavals of his age. He battled in the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Spanish American Wars of Independence. His name adorns the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Venezuelans call him “The Precursor,” the herald who came before the great liberator Simón Bolívar. Yet in the United States, where his journey of discovery began, he remains virtually unknown.
Born in Caracas in 1750, Miranda carried the complex heritage of the colonial world. His father had emigrated from the Canary Islands. Despite the wealth the Mirandas had accumulated in Venezuela, they faced disdain from Venezuela’s old aristocracy, the Mantuanos, who viewed Canarian blood as inferior. This social rejection planted seeds of resentment that would blossom into revolutionary fervor.
Miranda joined the Spanish army and proved himself a capable officer in North Africa and the Caribbean. Then came the opportunity that would reshape his destiny. Spain entered the American Revolutionary War against Britain, and Miranda found himself dispatched to the Siege of Pensacola in 1781. There, in the swampy borderlands of Spanish Florida, soldiers under the Spanish Crown fought alongside their allies to crush British forces threatening the southern flank of the American colonies. The victory secured the Revolution’s success from an unexpected quarter, and Miranda earned a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel for his valor.
That said, Miranda’s triumphs on the battlefield aroused suspicion from the Spanish crown. Spanish authorities, alarmed by his collection of banned Enlightenment texts and whispers of smuggling, accused him of treason. In 1783, Miranda fled northward to the very nation he had helped liberate, seeking refuge in the United States.
He did not arrive in cosmopolitan Philadelphia or bustling Boston. Instead, on June 10, 1783, Miranda’s ship delivered him to New Bern, North Carolina, plunging him directly into the raw, unpolished world of the American South. For a Venezuelan aristocrat accustomed to rigid colonial hierarchies, what he discovered there proved revolutionary in ways that transcended politics.
His diary, The New Democracy in America, chronicles observations that read like field notes from an anthropologist studying an alien civilization. The first shock came at a public barbecue celebrating war’s end. Miranda watched in astonishment as “the very first magistrates and people of note ate and drank with the common folk, passing the plate around, and drinking out of the same glass.”
Keep reading "A Venezuelan on Our Soil," Jose Nino, Abbeville Institute, January 14, 2026.
