Santiago Mariño

Santiago Mariño
Portrait of Santiago Mariño by painter Martín Tovar y Tovar, oil on canvas, 1874
Born	25 July 1788 Island of Margarita, Venezuela
Died	4 September 1854 La Victoria, Aragua state, Venezuela
Allegiance	Venezuelan republicans
Rank	Chief of the General Staff
Battles/wars	Battle of Bocachica Battle of Carabobo
Other work	Ministry of War and Navy (1830s)

Santiago Mariño Carige Fitzgerald (25 July 1788 in Valle Espíritu Santo, Margarita – 4 September 1854 in La Victoria, Aragua), was a nineteenth-century Venezuelan revolutionary leader and hero in the Venezuelan War of Independence (1811–1823). He became an important leader of eastern Venezuela and for a short while in 1835 seized power over the new state of Venezuela.

His father was the captain of the "Santiago Mariño de Acuña" militias and "Lieutenant Greater Justice of the Gulf of Paria". His mother, Atanasia Carige Fitzgerald, of Creole and Irish descent, was from Chaguaramas in the island of Trinidad, where his parents resided while he was a boy. He had a sister, Concepción Mariño. Due to his parents' wealth he was well educated. After his father's death in 1808, he moved to the island of Margarita (about 250 km west of Trinidad, off the Venezuelan coast), to take possession of his inheritance.

Mariño was also one of the greatest figures in the history of Freemasonry in Venezuela, although he was apparently initiated in Trinidad. He was awarded the title of "Serenismo Gran Maestro del Gran Oriente Nacional" ('The Most Serene Grand Master of the Great National East", a title equivalent to the modern Grand Master).

The rise of the revolutionary movement in Venezuela was strongly influenced by the confusing and rapidly changing situation in Spain. Spain was initially against France in the Napoleonic Wars, but in 1795 France declared war on Spain which concluded an alliance with France and declared war on Great Britain. The British responded by blockading Spain, whose colonies were, for the first time cut off from their colonial rulers, and began to trade independently with Britain.