He’s reward within the names of Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, whose currencies are known as boliviano and bolivar, and his statues are dotted during Latin The us. However his reputation is, actually, world. At a time when Chavismo – the most recent avatar of Bolivarianism, of which he represents an overly explicit model – is faltering underneath power from Washington, Tomás Posado, a lecturer in fresh Latin American civilization on the College of Rouen-Normandy, explains on this interview who Simón Bolívar used to be.
Who used to be Simon Bolivar and what used to be his ancient function?
Tomás Posado: Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), aka El Libertador, is likely one of the central figures within the wars of independence of Hispanic The us within the early nineteenth century. He got here from the burly Creole bourgeoisie of the Viceroyalty of New Granada – an administrative entity belonging to Spain that coated the territories of the present-day states of Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela.
Spain, which had ruled those territories because the sixteenth century, used to be itself weakened via Napoleon’s invasion. Bolívar used to be impressed via the political adjustments that Europe used to be experiencing: he lived there for some time prior to returning to Nueva Granada in 1810. He then started to workout army command in what briefly was a real battle of independence. He’s going to be positioned in command of a number of increasingly more huge armies and can play a big function within the independence of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, or even Peru and Bolivia additional south.
United Provinces of New Granada. Geographical and ancient atlas of the Republic of Colombia, 1890
In what context does his motion happen? What are the political fashions that encourage him?
T. Q: The independence of the USA (1776) used to be contemporary, the French Revolution (1789) much more so. Enlightenment and republican beliefs strongly influenced Bolívar. However, to learn him as a “social” philosopher within the trendy sense could be anachronistic. Bolivar is above all a soldier and a person from the Creole elites. His considering oscillates between republican beliefs and worry for order and balance in deeply fragmented societies.
Was once his political undertaking the solidarity of Hispanic The us?
T. P.: Sure, it’s the nice undertaking – and the nice failure – of his existence. Bolívar is satisfied that the dismemberment of the newly unbiased states might be a big impediment to their building. He desires of a limiteless political entity that may unite the previous Spanish territories of the Americas. This ambition used to be in part learned with the Grand Columbia (1819–1831), however it briefly disintegrated. The Congress of Panama in 1826, which used to be intended to put the rules for an everlasting union, failed. Bolivar summed up his bitterness with the well-known word: “I plowed the sea.”
Simon Bolivar is from time to time introduced as a forerunner of anti-imperialism. Is that this justified?
TP: Bolívar is unequivocally anti-imperialist towards Spain, the colonial energy of his time. However, his alleged hostility to the USA is known as a later re-reading. A word from 1829 is regularly quoted – “The United States seem destined by Providence to spread misery in America in the name of liberty” – however it does no longer constitute the core of his considering. On the time, the USA used to be nonetheless a tender energy, without a actual imperial coverage in South The us. Bolivar, alternatively, felt the urge to interfere, particularly after the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, even though it had little concrete impact on the time.
What used to be his place on slavery and the indigenous inhabitants of the continent?
T. Q: Bolivar freed his circle of relatives’s slaves and steadily took an abolitionist place, however it used to be additionally a part of a strategic context: he sought to rally the inhabitants that his loyalist warring parties have been seeking to mobilize. Her passion within the indigenous inhabitants remains to be restricted, particularly in Venezuela the place they constitute a reasonably small share of the inhabitants. The picture of Bolívar as a defender of indigenous peoples is in large part a later development.
How is his determine used after his dying?
T. Q.: Because the nineteenth century, Bolívar has grow to be a central reference within the development of nationwide identities. In Venezuela, his local nation, this sacralization is especially sturdy. His stays – he died in Colombia of tuberculosis in 1830 and used to be at the start buried there – have been returned to Caracas within the 1840s, after which was an object of true civil faith underneath the regime of Guzmán Blanco, from 1870 to 1887, with the introduction of all the Nationwide Plaza of Colours and the Nationwide Plaza of Pan. This instrumentalization is going means prior to Chavismo.
Why is Bolivar most commonly related to Venezuela and no longer with Bolivia, which bears his title?
T. Q.: Since he used to be born in Caracas, his first nice campaigns happened there and he embodied the victory towards Spain. In Bolivia, which followed his title in 1825, Bolívar stays an venerated however outsider determine. In Venezuela, it was the root of the nationwide narrative within the younger state, which lacked a cast collective identification after independence.
How does Hugo Chávez have compatibility into this Bolivarian legacy?
T. Q.: Chávez explicitly claims that Bolivar from his political beginnings. His 1992 coup motion is known as the Innovative Bolivarian Motion. When he got here to energy (1999), he made Bolivarianism the ideological axis of the regime and renamed the rustic the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. He re-reads Bolívar via a national-popular, social and anti-imperialist prism, on the subject of Cuba and different leftist governments, particularly the ones of Kirchner in Argentina, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Like several ancient re-reading, it’s selective, emphasizing sure sides of Bolívar and erasing others.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez applauds after giving Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, additionally a large admirer of Libertadores, whose portrait may also be observed within the background, a duplicate of Simon Bolivar’s sword, all through a gathering on the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, December 21, 2006.
Was once this reread consensual from the left?
TP: No. Karl Marx, for instance, had an overly harsh judgment of Bolívar, whom he noticed as a consultant of bourgeois pursuits. The Cuban Revolution particularly helped rehabilitate Bolívar at the left, articulating a countrywide heritage and anti-imperialist battle, at the side of figures corresponding to José Martí (1853-1895), founding father of the Cuban Innovative Birthday party.
Since Simón Bolívar is so strongly related to Chavismo, how does the Venezuelan opposition understand Libertador?
T. Q.: Bolívar is omnipresent within the nationwide creativeness, some distance above Chavism. The nationwide foreign money has been known as the bolivar since 1879, Bolivar squares are the principle squares of each and every municipality within the nation, its portrait attracts many Venezuelan houses… Rejecting it outright could be politically suicidal. Alternatively, there are intellectuals who consider that the Bolivarian cult preferred militarism in Latin The us. After all, for the present Venezuelan opposition, the issue is much less Bolívar himself than his appropriation via Chávez after which Maduro.
The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our The us (ALBA) is regularly introduced as the trendy incarnation of the Bolivarian undertaking. What precisely is that?
T. Q.: ALBA used to be created in 2004 on the initiative of Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, as an immediate response to a undertaking promoted via the USA: the Loose Industry Space of the Americas, referred to as ALCA.
The place ALCA used to be in keeping with the common sense of classical unfastened business, ALBA used to be intended to be an alternate in keeping with cooperation, cohesion and complementarity between states, particularly within the fields of power, well being and schooling. ALBA introduced in combination the states maximum engaged within the anti-imperialist battle (Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and a few Caribbean islands). Venezuela, with its oil revenues, has performed a central function, specifically during the provide of oil at preferential costs.
In Chavista’s discourse, ALBA is explicitly a part of Bolívar’s legacy: the rejection of US hegemony, regional integration, and collective sovereignty. Chávez labored for regional integration via contributing to the introduction of Latin American supranational our bodies (UNASUR for South American international locations, CELAC for all of Latin The us). This can be a trendy studying of Bolivarianism, which used to be in keeping with the political convergence of left-wing governments within the area and on a positive financial state of affairs.
With the industrial cave in of Venezuela in 2014, ALBA misplaced a lot of its capability for motion and affect, illustrating the structural barriers of this integration undertaking when it is based closely on a unmarried main state financed via plentiful oil revenues.
What’s left of Bolivarianism underneath Nicolas Maduro?
T. P.: Discourse stays, however follow strikes clear of it. Below Maduro, Venezuela goes via a big financial disaster (-74% of GDP between 2014 and 2020), which limits any regional ambition. In contrast to Chávez, Maduro has neither the industrial sources nor the diplomatic affect essential to embrace the undertaking of Latin American integration. Bolivarianism turns into above all a device for legitimizing the federal government.
This monument to Simon Bolivar used to be erected in Moscow in 2023 – a choice that should no doubt be associated with the anti-colonialist symbol of the Libertadores, as Russia seeks to put itself as an best friend of former Western colonies. On Might 8, 2025, invited to Moscow to take part within the commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of the top of International Warfare II, the presidents of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, went to put vegetation there. Primicia.com.ve
Does Bolivarianism nonetheless have affect in Latin The us these days?
T. Q: As a structured political undertaking, it’s weakened. However as a logo, it stays robust. The call for for sovereignty over herbal sources and the rejection of any international keep watch over – particularly American – stay central topics within the area and extra related than ever within the generation of Donald Trump’s interventionism.
Even supposing Bolívar by no means formulated those questions in present phrases, he embodies a founding determine of Latin American anticolonialism, whose legacy is going past the case of Venezuela. That is how he’s celebrated in lots of towns at the continent, and in different places, together with in Paris the place a subway station bears his title, in New York, in London, or even in Madrid, when he fought towards Spain. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote in his Canto para Bolívar that “one wakes up every hundred years when people wake up.” As an anti-colonial reference, Bolívar won’t ever die.
Finally, subsequently we will be able to say that Bolivar will live on Chavisism?
T. P.: Certainly. His symbol could also be quickly tarnished via the cave in of Venezuela, however ultimately, historiography will take into account Bolívar as the principle determine of independence. Its forte lies in its geographical scope and ambition for continental solidarity. As such, he’s going to stay one of the crucial nice figures on this planet historical past of the nineteenth century.
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