Simón Bolívar Trivia
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50 free Simón Bolívar trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Simón Bolívar freed six modern countries from Spain and died convinced he had 'plowed the sea'. This quiz follows the whole arc: the orphaned heir in Caracas raised by the enslaved Hipólita, the tutor Simón Rodríguez, marriage in Madrid and a wife lost to yellow fever, Napoleon's coronation and the oath on Rome's Monte Sacro, the failed first republics, the arrest of Miranda, the Cartagena Manifesto and the Decree of War to the Death, exile in Jamaica and Haiti, and the crossing of the Andes that ended at Boyacá. It then covers the empire he built and lost: Carabobo and Páez, the creation of Gran Colombia at Angostura, Sucre at Pichincha and Ayacucho, the Guayaquil meeting with San Martín, the dictatorship of Peru, the country that took his name, Manuela Sáenz and the night she saved his life, the break with Santander, and his death of tuberculosis at Santa Marta aged 47, in a borrowed shirt. Legacy questions ask about currencies, Bolivarian Venezuela, the exhumation and the stolen sword. Easy questions ask where he was born and which nation is named for him; the expert tier asks for dates, battles and generals. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Bolívar, Gran Colombia, Manuela Sáenz, Sucre and Bolivia, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Latin American history, Venezuela and Colombia.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Simón Bolívar born in 1783?
Caracas
Caracas gave him wealth but little family: both parents died before he was ten, and as a teenager he was sent to Spain to finish his education.
Q 02By what title is Bolívar known colloquially across Latin America?
El Libertador
El Libertador was first bestowed by the town of Mérida in 1813. He prized it for life, insisting it stood above any other title and that he would not trade it for a crown.
Q 03What was Bolivia called before it took Bolívar's name in 1825?
Upper Peru
Upper Peru was one of the last corners of the continent still held by royalists. Once it was freed, the new country chose a name built on Bolívar's, and he wrote its first constitution.
Q 04Who was Hipólita, the woman the orphaned Bolívar came to regard as both mother and father?
An enslaved wet nurse
An enslaved wet nurse on the family's estate, Hipólita nursed him from his first weeks. As a general he wrote home ordering that she be paid an allowance for as long as she lived.
Q 05Bolívar's boyhood tutor Simón Rodríguez was a devoted follower of which Enlightenment philosopher?
Rousseau
Rousseau's disciple opened the boy's mind to liberal thought, and years later Rodríguez was standing beside him when he swore to free his country.
Q 06In which city did the young Bolívar marry María Teresa del Toro?
Madrid
Madrid was where he had been sent to finish his education. He met María Teresa there, married her at eighteen, and within weeks the couple sailed for Venezuela.
Q 07Of what did Bolívar's wife die less than a year after the wedding?
Yellow fever
Yellow fever killed her within months of their arrival in Venezuela. Bolívar swore never to remarry, and later said her death was what turned him towards politics.
Q 08Which event did Bolívar see unfold in Paris in May 1804?
Napoleon proclaimed Emperor of the French
Napoleon proclaimed Emperor of the French: Bolívar was in Paris to see it, and the spectacle fed his own hunger for glory, though he never took a crown himself.
Q 09Which naturalist did Bolívar meet in Paris in 1804?
Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt, just back from five years exploring Spanish America, is said to have told him the colonies were ripe for independence, an idea that took root in the young man's mind.
Q 10In which city did Bolívar swear in 1805 to end Spanish rule in the Americas?
Rome
Rome's Monte Sacro was the chosen spot, the hill where the common people of the ancient city once walked out on their rulers. His old tutor stood beside him as he swore.
Q 11To which capital did Venezuela's new junta send Bolívar in 1810 to seek recognition and arms?
London
London gave him a hearing but no recognition. The trip still paid off: he talked a veteran exiled revolutionary into coming home to lead the fight.
Q 12What natural disaster devastated republican Venezuela on 26 March 1812?
An earthquake
An earthquake all but destroyed the capital on Holy Thursday. Royalists preached that it was God's punishment for rebellion, and the first republic fell within months.
Q 13Which Venezuelan revolutionary did Bolívar help arrest for treason in July 1812?
Francisco de Miranda
Francisco de Miranda had just signed an armistice with Spain. Bolívar and others stopped him leaving, he died in a Spanish prison, and Bolívar was rewarded with a passport out.
Q 21In which Orinoco river town did Bolívar's congress meet in February 1819?
Angostura
Angostura was renamed Ciudad Bolívar in 1846, but the old name lives on in the cocktail bitters first mixed there by a surgeon in Bolívar's army.
Q 22Which battle on 7 August 1819 routed the Royalists and opened the way to Bogotá?
Boyacá
At Boyacá the bulk of the royalist army surrendered. Three days later Bolívar rode into Bogotá, and Spanish power in the north of the continent never recovered.
Q 23Which llanero chieftain fought beside Bolívar at Carabobo in June 1821?
José Antonio Páez
José Antonio Páez and his plainsmen cavalry helped win the day at Carabobo. Within a decade he had led Venezuela out of Bolívar's union and become its first president.
Q 14Which document did Bolívar write in exile in New Granada in 1812, explaining why Venezuela's first republic fell?
The Cartagena Manifesto
The Cartagena Manifesto blamed the collapse on weak, divided government and called on New Granada to help win Venezuela back, which within a year it did.
Q 15Whom did Bolívar's notorious decree of June 1813 condemn to die?
Any Spaniard not aiding his forces
Any Spaniard not aiding his forces was to die, while Americans were promised their lives even if guilty: a bid to turn a civil war into a war between nations.
Q 16What was Bolívar's 1813 offensive from Cúcuta to the Venezuelan capital called?
The Admirable Campaign
The Admirable Campaign earned its name: he won six pitched battles and marched into the capital less than three months after setting out.
Q 17What did Bolívar's army cross in 1819, by a route the Spanish thought impossible, to surprise them in New Granada?
The Andes
The Andes: after wading for a week through flooded plains, the thinly clad troops climbed an icy pass where many died of cold, then fell on an enemy who never expected them.
Q 18On which island did Bolívar go into exile in May 1815?
Jamaica
Jamaica is where he wrote his most famous letter, declaring that the bonds with Spain were cut for good and sketching the free republics he expected to follow.
Q 19What did Haiti's president Alexandre Pétion ask of Bolívar in return for money and arms in 1816?
Freedom for the enslaved
Freedom for the enslaved in every land he liberated was Pétion's one condition. Bolívar gave his word, and proclaimed emancipation soon after landing back in Venezuela.
Q 20Which Nobel-winning novelist retold Bolívar's last river journey in The General in His Labyrinth?
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez followed the dying general down the Magdalena River in his 1989 novel, showing a sick, exhausted man in place of the hero of the statues.
Q 24Who was elected vice president of Gran Colombia under Bolívar at Cúcuta in 1821?
Francisco de Paula Santander
Francisco de Paula Santander ran the government while Bolívar campaigned in the south. The partners became bitter rivals, and Santander was exiled after the 1828 plot on Bolívar's life.
Q 25Which Argentine general met Bolívar at Guayaquil in July 1822, then went into exile?
José de San Martín
José de San Martín talked with Bolívar behind closed doors, and what they said was never recorded. He then gave up his command in Peru and left the rest of the war to Bolívar.
Q 26Which battle of 24 May 1822 secured Quito for the patriots?
Pichincha
It was fought on the slopes of the volcano overlooking the city.
Q 27Which title did the Peruvian congress give Bolívar on 10 February 1824?
Dictator of Peru
Dictator of Peru gave him the power to finish the war, which he did within the year. Peruvians soon tired of him, and by 1827 they had deposed him and torn up his constitution.
Q 28Which battle of December 1824 ended Royalist power in Peru?
Ayacucho
Ayacucho freed Peru: the viceroy himself was beaten in the field and surrendered with his entire army.
Q 29Which Venezuelan general, Bolívar's chosen successor, was murdered near Pasto in 1830?
Antonio José de Sucre
Antonio José de Sucre was shot from ambush on a mountain road at Berruecos. Bolívar, hearing the news, cried that the blood of the innocent Abel had been spilled.
Q 30What did the constitution Bolívar wrote for Bolivia in 1826 give its president?
Office for life
Office for life: Bolívar was convinced that only a strong, permanent executive could hold the new states together, and he clung to the idea for the rest of his career.