José de San Martín The navy sailed from Chile on 20 August 1820. It was composed of eight warships, eleven gunboats, 247 cannons and a crew of 1,600, most of them Chileans. There were 12 frigates, and a brig with the 4,000 soldiers of the Army of the Andes. San Martín was the leader of the military expedition. They landed in Paracas, 200 km to the south of Lima, on 7 September, and occupied the nearby city of Pisco, which was abandoned by the royalists. Peruvian viceroy Joaquín de la Pezuela had instructions from Spain to negotiate with the patriots. Under an armistice the
Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara Bernardo (José Bernardo Maximiliano Gutiérrez de Lara) (August 20, 1774 – May 13, 1841) was an advocate and organizer of Mexican independence and the first constitutional governor of the state of Tamaulipas, and a native of Revilla, today Ciudad Guerrero, Mexico. Gutiérrez de Lara was obsessed with the idea of freeing Mexico from Spain, and he began by recruiting and arming twenty-one men in Texas. Then together with José Menchaca, he spoke with the Indians and convinced them to fight with him against the Spanish. After the suppression of an 1811 insurrection in Nuevo Santander, Gutiérrez