Abstract
This article tries to describe the kind of war that experienced Venezuela and New Granada during their emancipation, arguing that it can be qualified as a "race war" by using Michel Foucault's concept of historicism. The "war to the death" that Bolivar declared to the Spaniards in 1813 confronted two races in a cruel fight that was supposed to give way to a new temporality for the patriots. This work tries to link the emergence of new historicist discourses on colonialism and freedom and the dynamics of war that characterized Tierra Firme during its independence.
Keywords:
revolution; war; ethnicity; Spanish America; Independence; political history