María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaysa

María Teresa met Simón Bolívar in Madrid in 1800. Bolívar had been sent to Spain at the age of 17 to continue his studies. Bolívar was living at the time at the residence of the Marquess de Ustariz, Jerónimo de Ustáriz y Tovar, whom Bolívar called his "tutor". There he met María Teresa, who was two years his elder, and with whom he was related throughout various family lines.[5][6] In August 1800, María Teresa accepted Bolívar's courtship, who described her as "a jewel without defects, valuable without calculation." María Teresa's father takes his daughter to Bilbao and a short while later, in March 1801, Bolívar also moves to that city, and then to Paris.

On 5 April 1802, upon returning to Spain, Bolívar proposed formally to María Teresa. It is speculated that María Teresa's father, appeased by the formal engagement, and added to the value of Bolívars estate at 200,000 duros, gave his permission and blessing to the couple.[5] Bolívar proposes to María Teresa that they would marry that same year at the Port of A Coruña. Shortly after, on 30 March 1802, Bolívar granted to Pedro Rodríguez del Toro the power of attorney to subscribe in his name the marriage contract. In consideration of "her distinguished birth, her virginity, her personal qualities" and her disposition to leave Spain to accompany Bolívar, his lawyers placed a value on María Teresa of 100,000 reales, approximately a tenth of Bolívar's fortune.[5]

After having obtained permission from the king and the habitual ecclesiastical admonitions to do so, they married on Wednesday, 26 May 1802, in the now-demolished church of San José on the corner of the Libertad and Gravina streets, and which is often confused with the church of the same name located on Alcalá street, where the parish of San José was transferred to in 1838.[7][lower-alpha 2] The marriage certificate reads as follows:

In the town of Madrid on the twenty-sixth day of the month of May of one thousand eight hundred and two, in the Parish Church of San Jose, I, Mr. Isidro Bonifacio Romano, Senior Lieutenant of the Cure of the same, having proceeded with the dispatch of Mr. Dr. Juan Bautista of Expeleta, Pro. Vicario Ecco. Of this referred town and its party. Given in the twentieth of the same month and year, countersigned by Diego Alonso Martín, his notary, which shows that the three reprimands from the Sto. Council of Trent, for the just causes that concurred for it; received the just consents; After asking the other questions and necessary requirements and not having resulted in any impediment, I married in Ecclesial Facie, by words of the present that make Don Simón Bolívar, a native of the city and Bishopric of Caracas in America, son of Don Juan Vicente Bolívar and her legitimated wife Doña María de la Concepción Palacios (now deceased) with Doña María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro, a native of this aforementioned town, daughter of Don Bernardo Rodríguez del Toro y Ascanio and Doña Benita Alaiza Medrano (now deceased) preceded the necessary requirements, Don Pedro Rodríguez del Toro, Mr. Marqués de Inicio and others were present as witnesses, together I watched them and gave the nuptial blessings according to the ritual and signed it. Don Isidro Bonifacio Romano.

Twenty days later, the couple moved to La Coruña. On 15 June 1802, the recently-married couple left to Caracas, where they arrived the 12 July at La Guaira. There María Teresa was welcomed not only by Bolívar's family, but by her own Rodríguez del Toro relatives. After a short stay in Caracas, at the Casa del Vínculo y del Retorno, located on a corner of the Caracas Plaza Mayor, today named Bolívar Square, they moved to Bolívar's estate in San Mateo. A few months later, María Teresa fell sick to "malign fevers," identified indistinctly in the present day as yellow fever or paludism. The couple then returned to the Casa del Vínculo in Caracas, where she died on 22 January 1803, after eight months of marriage and two years of engagement.[8]

After having lost his parents as a child, and having lived a lonely childhood, María Teresa represented for Bolívar a last and definitive attempt to lay down emotional roots, an attempt marked by tragedy. The pain caused by this unexpected and premature death would lead Bolívar to avoid any close emotional bonds in the future.

Bolívar, in 1828, described with these words the emotional and affective situation in which he found himself when in 1802 he returned to Venezuela:«Then my head was full of the fumes of the most violent love and not of political ideas ». The same he affirms in other testimonies. For example, in a letter to his friend Pedro Joseph Dehollain he mentioned that when he married, he became a "happy entity who joyfully sang the height of his happiness with the possession of his Teresa." Teresa was the affective center of her husband's life. He had gone through the death of his father and then his mother and his grandfather. Teresa was the fundamental human bond with whom he hoped to share life, dreams, projects. That is why he explained to Perú de la Croix: "I loved my wife very much." Teresa's disappearance had to cause a deep crisis: "I have lost her and with it her sweet life." "Pain for a single moment leaves me no consolation to seek", "deplorable and sad fate to which I am condemned." The state he was in was pathetic. He was submerged in a deep sadness and his character changed.

— Tomás Polanco Alcántara, Simón Bolívar, Essay of Biographical Interpretation Through his Documents [9]

The oath of not remarrying again that Bolívar pronounced at that time is considered by his biographers as a rebellious act against the pain derived from the unconditional surrender of his emotional defenses. Even though he would have many lovers in the future, he faithfully fulfilled his promise.

The unexpected death of María Teresa is a hard and decisive blow in Bolívar's life that plunges him into the deepest pain ... Again he runs into misfortune and knows how to appeal to his deep energy to face it and move on. In the future, though, he will not give pure and permanent love to any woman, neither will any of his lovers bind him permanently.

— Luis José Silva Luongo, Bolívar, Everyone's Inheritance, [10]

Bolívar's desesparation leads to fear that he would take his life. Bolívar, however, makes a second trip to Europe to mitigate his immense grief. In Madrid he had a moving reunion with his father-in-law, Bernardo, which Bolívar would always remember. In company of María Teresa's first cousin Fernando Rodríguez del Toro,[11], Bolívar travelled to Paris, where he came into contact with his old teacher Simón Rodríguez. This encounter would result of vital importance to Bolívar's life since Rodríguez, grasping the desesperation of his former disciple, guided him into political interests as a way to overcome the void left by María Teresa's death.[12] Per his own words, this would lead him to follow "Mars' chariot" instead of "Ceres' plow." In 1828, analyzing the influence his wife's death had on him, Bolívar confesses:

If I had not been a widower, perhaps my life would have been different; I would not be General Bolívar or the Liberator, although I agree that my genius was not to be mayor of San Mateo.

— Simón Bolívar, [13]

In relation to María Teresa's death the eminent Spanish biographer Salvador de Madariaga wrote:

This sudden end of the retired and personal life of a twenty-one-year-old girl has perhaps been one of the key events in the history of the New World.

— Salvador de Madariaga, Bolívar, [14]

Upon her death, María Teresa's remains were buried in the Bolívar family pantheon at the Caracas Cathedral with Bolívar's parents and forebearers. When Bolívar's remains were repatriated from Santa Marta, Colombia, in December 1842, they were buried right next to his wife's. There they remained for 34 years until 28 October 1876, until when Bolivar's body was transferred to the National Pantheon. Simultaneously, a series of sculptures were started for María Teresa and Bolívar's parents, which would be located in the Holy Trinity Chapel in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Caracas. These were entrusted to Italian sculpturist Pietro Tenerani. In 1930 an allegorical sculpture by Victorio Macho showing Bolívar protecting his wife and parents was added to the monument.[15][16]