| Long before a U.S. military contractor tried to "liberate" Venezuela, a French official named Henri La Fayette Ducoudray undertook a similar mission. It was 1815 when a ragtag group of men, on the heels of defeat, gathered in the steamy Caribbean city of Port-au-Prince. They leaned across the table to listen to Simón Bolívar’s plans. He was determined. No matter the cost, they would wrestle a chunk of territory from Spanish colonial rule on a vast continent just south of them. | 