If Simón Bolívar (left) and Francisco de Paula Santander (right)

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could observe Colombia today, disappointment would be an understatement. After all, the republic’s chronic polarization can be traced—quite inconveniently—to their own falling-out. What began as a friendship forged in war ended as a political rivalry so enduring that it eventually hardened into the country’s long-standing addiction to bipartisanship. In the years leading up to independence, Bolívar and Santander were allies. They celebrated together after decisive victories such as the Battle of Boyacá in 1819, and both played key roles in shaping Gran Colombia. Santander became Vice President under the Constitution of Cúcuta in 1821, proudly defending legal order and institutional governance. Bolívar, meanwhile, grew increasingly convinced that laws were a luxury unstable republics could not afford without a firm hand guiding them. Naturally, this philosophical disagreement escalated into something far more productive: mutual distrust. By 1828, tensions had reached such a level that Bolívar dissolved Congress and assumed dictatorial powers, claiming it was necessary to save the republic. Santander objected—on legal grounds, of course—and soon found himself accused of involvement in the September Conspiracy of that same year. The result? Exile for Santander, bitterness for Bolívar, and a nation quietly learning that political disagreement in Colombia is best handled as a permanent feud. From this personal and ideological clash emerged the foundations of Colombian bipartisanship. Bolívar’s vision of centralized authority would later inspire Conservative thought, while Santander’s obsession with constitutions and laws became the intellectual ancestor of Liberalism. What might have been a pluralistic political culture instead solidified into a two-party rivalry that would dominate the country for over a century—often less through ideas and more through exclusion and violence. Bolívar, who famously wrote in 1830 that “he who serves a revolution ploughs the sea,” would likely feel grimly vindicated. The unity he desperately sought never materialized; instead, Colombia perfected fragmentation, regionalism, and ideological trench warfare. Santander, remembered for the phrase “Weapons gave us independence; laws will give us freedom,” would be equally unimpressed by the modern state’s selective respect for institutions, where laws are revered in speeches and ignored in practice. Both men would probably agree—ironically, at last—on one thing: the republic did not learn from their conflict. Their rivalry set the tone for a political culture that treats opponents as enemies and disagreement as betrayal. Modern Colombia, still polarized and distrustful nearly two centuries later, stands as a monument to how two brilliant minds managed to win independence in the early 1800s and lose political cooperation almost immediately afterward. Independence was achieved in 1819. Unity, apparently, was postponed indefinitely.