Antonio José de Sucre (1795-1830), South American military leader and statesman. He was born on February 3, 1795, in Cumaná (in present-day Venezuela), and educated as an engineer in Caracas. He served with Simón Bolívar, the liberator of Spanish America, in Quito Presidency (now Ecuador) and was the general in command of the South American troops that defeated the Spanish forces at Pichincha in 1822, freeing Quito from Spanish rule. From 1823 to 1825, Sucre served with Bolívar in Peru; in 1824 he won the Battle of Ayacucho, capturing the Spanish viceroy of Peru and securing Peruvian independence from Spain. He became the first president of Bolivia (formerly Upper Peru) in 1826, but, because of strong opposition to his policies by the people of Bolivia, he resigned in 1828. He lived in retirement in the city of Quito until 1830, when he was made president of a congress that met in Bogotá (in present-day Colombia) for the purpose of preserving the unity of the Republic of Colombia, or Gran Colombia (present-day Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, and Colombia). The congress failed, and on his way back to Quito Sucre was assassinated, probably by political rivals, on June 4, 1830. In 1840 the official capital of Bolivia was named Sucre in his honor.
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