In the viceroyalties of La Plata and New Granada the Creoles displaced the Spanish authorities with relative ease, as Caracas had done at first. The autonomous movement swept through New Granada, but the country remained politically disunited. Bogotá inherited the role of capital from Spain, but the royalists were entrenched in southern Colombia (Popayán and Pasto). Cali was a bastion of the independence movement just north of royalist territory. Cartagena declared independence not only from Spain but also from Bogotá. Bolívar arrived in Cartagena and was well received, as he was later in Bogotá, where he joined the army of the United Provinces of New Granada. He recruited a force and invaded Venezuela from the southwest, by crossing the Andes (1813). His chief lieutenant was the headstrong José Félix Ribas. In Trujillo, an Andean province, Bolívar emitted his infamous Decree of War to the Death with which he hoped to get the "pardos" and any "mantuano" who was having second thoughts on his side. At the time that Bolívar was victorious in the west, Santiago Mariño and Manuel Piar, a "pardo" from the Dutch island of Curaçao, were successfully fighting royalists in eastern Venezuela. Quickly losing ground (much as Miranda had a year earlier) Monteverde took refuge in Puerto Cabello, and Bolívar occupied Caracas, re-establishing the Republic, with two "states", one in the west headed by Bolívar and one in the east headed by Mariño.