But the interior of Venezuela was home to mixed-race cowboys called llaneros who supported the king. They kept the Caracas revolutionaries from extending their power inland, and that is where Simone Bolivar, el libertador, enters the picture. Bolivar realized that the only way to overcome the various class divisions, like the one between the Caracas Creoles and the llaneros, was to appeal to a common sense of South American-ness. I mean, after all, the one thing that almost all South Americans had in common? They were born in South America, not Spain. So then, partly through shows of toughness that included, like, crossing flooded plains and going without sleep, Bolivar convinced the llaneros to give up fighting for Spain and start fighting against them. He quickly captured the vice-regal capital at Bogota, and by 1822 his forces had taken Caracas and Quito.