Libertadores del Sur is a two-player military simulation wargame of the Southern Theater of the Latin American Wars for Independence. The Patriot player controls the Argentine Ruling Directory forces and various federated and allied forces, while the Royalist player controls Spanish Regular Army, trained Loyalist South American forces and militia units. Several other historical armed factions contend for each player's attention when formulating strategy, from a land grabbing Portuguese-Brazilian Imperialist army, to local guerrilla units, breakaway Federal Republics, and a native Incan Rebellion in the Andes Highlands. Each player will face similar daunting logistical and political challenges as they attempt to impose their military will on their opponents over a vast theater of operations spanning Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and parts Bolivia & Brazil.

Libertadores del Sur is an operational level simulation with a point to point card driven game system. Each turn represents one year's campaigning season. The players have a chance to raise and reorganize new forces prior to beginning operations, and reset their sides' morale, depending on how many provinces they control. During the Operations phase, players take turns playing cards causing historical events and/or activate forces to move and attack. Operations continue until the player's run out of cards, or run out of morale. When operations end, the players have a chance to consolidate political control over provinces where they drove out enemy forces, and combat units fall back to controlled areas. There are three scenarios allowing the players to start at different points of the campaign. The 1810 scenario starts with the first of the local juntas establishing themselves in response to Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. The 1814 scenario begins with Argentine General San Martin superseding Argentine General Belgrano, and the Patriots attempting to recover from various strategic set-backs. The 1817 scenario is a mini-game covering only the liberation of Chile.



It is common to view Latin America’s Wars for independence within the historical milieu of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, of which they were a direct political extension. But Spanish military pacification efforts during the early nineteenth century bear a striking resemblance to later colonial “wars for national liberation” that European armies fought in Africa and Asia during the twentieth century. From 1808-1824, Spain found itself in the strategically unenviable situation of having to wage war simultaneously in three separate overseas theaters (Peru-Argentina, Venezuela-Colombia, and Mexico) with extremely limited military and economic means, all the while facing the ideological backing for free trade in her colonies from the superpower of the day, Great Britain. The Peninsula War forced the Spanish Empire into a Faustian bargain of needing British military power against Napoleon in Europe, at the price of undermining its own imperial political and economic legitimacy through British free trade with its Latin American colonies. Ultimately, Spain faced an impossible strategic predicament of needing the economic resources of her rebellious colonies in order to fund the military means with which to restore the political legitimacy of Royalist Absolutism in the Americas.



The military campaigns of Latin America’s Wars for Independence (1808-1829) remain a relatively obscure historical topic outside of South America, however their political impact endures to the present day. As Napoleon’s forces invaded Spain deposing the monarchy in 1808, Spain’s rule over her American colonies devolved into a continental wide paralysis of political infighting. Argentina quickly became the Patriot movement’s strategic center of gravity and the military catalyst for independence in much of South America. In 1816 the United Provinces declared independence under the political leadership of Buenos Aires. The existence of such a vast political sanctuary for sustained military action directed against Spain proved fatal for Royalist ambitions to reconquer the empire. From 1810-1818, Argentina repeatedly acted as a military spring board for strategic attacks against Spanish power in Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, and ultimately the fulcrum of Royalist Absolutism in South America, Peru. Much like Great Britain’s failure to pacify her North American colonies a generation earlier, Spain’s incapacity to reconquer or pacify any part of the United Provinces throughout the entire course of the war, demonstrated the strategic limits of her ability to reestablish imperial power in South America through force.



No discussion of Latin America’s Wars for Independence would be complete without special mention of Argentine General Jose de San Martin’s 1817 campaign of crossing the Andes Mountains to liberate Chile. San Martin’s formation, training, and leadership of the legendary Army of the Andes across the second highest mountain chain in the world, stands out as one of the greatest logistical feats of military history, fully equivalent to Hannibal crossing the Alps. San Martin's movement of a combined Argentine-Chilean Army over the Andes Mountains, arriving with his forces intact and ready for battle, strategically surprised the Spanish culminating in victory in one of the seminal battles of Latin American history at Chacabuco on February 12, 1817. General San Martin’s strategic vision and meticulous attention to logistical detail was single-mindedly directed towards a decisive military thrust to seize control of Chile for use as a springboard to launch an amphibious assault against the heart of Spanish royalist power in the Americas, the Viceroyalty of Peru.



Battles fought during the Latin America Wars for Independence were minuscule skirmishes by contemporary Napoleonic standards of the day, as an example less than 7000 men fought on both sides at the Battle of Chacabuco in Chile in 1817, however their true importance is evident in the light of history. The British victory at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec in 1759, in which less than 10,000 men fought on both sides, serves as an appropriate military analogy for the student of Latin American military history. Both of these small colonial victories permanently altered history by helping to end Bourbon imperial ambitions in the Americas. Libertadores will put you in the seat of each of these contending forces facing the same challenges and logistical constraints facing each side fighting for military predominance over a vast and wild theater of operations.