Geoffrey Fox | Temario

2000.08.01 - Venezuela: Bolivarian democracy

Hugo Chávez is riding the crest of an enormous wave of change in Venezuela, and in that regard he resembles his hero and Venezuela's most sacred icon, Simón Bolívar. Chávez cherishes the association; he has even seen to it that the country be renamed "The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela."

Here in the United States, we don't hear much about Bolívar, the little man usually portrayed in too-tight pants and an uncomfortably high, stiff collar. But in South America they do, especially in the northern part (where Bolívar led pro-independence armies) and most especially in Venezuela, his homeland. Every little town has a plaza dedicated to him, his portrait (usually in those tight pants) is everywhere, and his name is invoked by politicians of the most divergent views. It was not always thus. In his last years, he was so hated that he was not permitted to return to Venezuela, and news of his death in 1830 (at 47, probably of syphillis, in Santa Marta in the country now called Colombia) was cause for jubilation in Caracas.The main reason was that, in both thought and practice, Bolívar was profoundly antidemocratic -- both in today's terms and as "democracy" was beginning to be understood in the newly independent republics.

Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios was born into a wealthy family in Caracas on July 24, 1783, and 200 years later, the government of Venezuela sponsored an essay contest, the Primera Bienal Internacional de Ensayo "Simón Bolívar," which I entered., My essay, "LIBERTY AND PEOPLE: Ideological Analysis of the Political Writings of Simón Bolívar," analyzed Bolívar's thought as it evolved in his political career, I wrote a ten-page summary in Spanish to accompany the 87 pages of English. Since my essay is quite critical of the man who called himself Liberator, I had no hope of winning, and I don't know if anyone read it there -- I never heard. I had a publisher interested in the States, but I had other projects and I didn't really want to expand the essay into a book. But I have just re-read it, and am still persuaded by my own arguments. I hope to make it available through some form of web publishing. It should be of interest not only to Latin Americanists, but also to others concerned about the history of ideas, especially the ideas of "liberty" and "people" that continue to reverberate in this hemisphere. (If you can't wait, or have little faith that I will ever get around to this project, e-mail me for a copy).

In the meanwhile, you can find a very brief statement of my views (without the detailed exegesis of Bolívar's writings) in the section "Bolívar, Man and Image," in my 1991 book, The Land and People of Venezuela.

Bolívar's tragedy, I conclude there, is that "He had destroyed the world he knew -- where good breeding was honored and lesser men accepted the rule of greater men -- by destroying the colonial system, and he could not understand or accept the new world that he had helped create." Purchase The Land and People of Venezuela.

For more on Bolívar:

Resources for the Study of the Liberator of South America, by Chris Conway

Luces de Bolívar en la Red (enlaces en español)