He had warring generals who were being feisty and pesky beneath them. He didn’t have this wonderful team of rivals that Lincoln had - that existed in North American history. I think he got to the point where, as he was liberating countries, moving south, the operative word which used to be liberty became triumph. He seemed the quintessential Latin American personality.ĭoes that personality include an authoritarian streak? There’s no question in my mind that Bolívar was that figure. ![]() So I was looking for a figure that would actually embrace as much of the Latin American personality as I could find. I don’t think Americans know enough about Latin American history, and if you don’t know the history, you don’t know the people, and the characters, and their fears and their hopes. I have a kind of mission in mind with every one of my books to put a brick in the edifice of explaining Latin America to American readers. ![]() What spurred you to write a book about him now? ( LIST: Simón Bolívar - Top 25 Political Icons)īolívar is obviously well known in Latin America. It took time for people to realize what he accomplished. He feared he was leaving behind terrible chaos, and in fact he did. By the end of his life, it was very incoherent. When you’re operating like that - everything impromptu - it’s difficult to build anything coherent. He was uneven and trying to make it up as he went along. He would execute one person for treason and then let a very treasonous general get away with the same thing. And he did it republic after republic, until six emerged.īolívar had enormous flaws, he made terrible mistakes. He inspired the masses to throw over the colonial structure. The public regard for Bolívar wherever he went was incredible. Just in terms of a military feat it was quite extraordinary what he did. an area of land that was seven times larger than the American colonies and over terrain - the Andes, the jungles - that was far more difficult than the rolling hills of New England. It’s like living on different planets, in a way. How do you compare him with George Washington? The book’s subtitle is American Liberator, a phrase that might conjure a different figure in American minds than Bolívar. Arana spoke to TIME about this titan of the western hemisphere and how more people in the U.S. ![]() Bolívar’s many-chambered life is the subject of a recent critically acclaimed biography, Bolívar: American Liberator, by the Peruvian-American writer Marie Arana. ![]() He is lionized now across the continent as the courageous general who won Latin America‘s wars of independence, but he died in 1830, at the age of 47, humbled by failures and derided by numerous critics. He was born into one of the highest rungs of the Spanish colonial elite - a plantation-owning family in Caracas - but would be the man who would go on to liberate Spanish America’s slaves. He wooed myriad women while remaining utterly devoted to the principles of the Enlightenment. The Latin American independence hero swanned around the salons of revolutionary-era Paris, skulked in the Guyanese jungle and enlisted the aid of roughriding cowboys and mercenary privateers, among others, in his campaigns. Follow Bolívar lived a sweeping, epic life.
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