Abstract
If Bolívar has been the subject of relatively few books and essays in Argentina and the greater River Plate area that is also Uruguay, this is hardly indicative of his importance in the region, particularly in Argentina, where in the long process that has seen the buildup of the figure of San Martín, Bolívar has always been close at hand, serving as the authorizing “Other” of San Martín in the same manner that Santander has Bolívar in Venezuela, while, though less frequently, appearing positively as one who acted in unison with the Argentine leader to liberate the continent. My interest in this subject takes as its point of departure an essay by the historian Tulio Halperín Donghi, La imagen argentina de Bolívar, de Funes a Mitre (The Argentine Image of Bolívar, from Funes a Mitre). Written for the 1983 centenary of Bolívar’s birth in Venezuela, it appeared in his 1987 book El espejo de la historia: problemas argentinos y perspectivas latinoamericanas (History’s Mirror: Argentine Issues and Latin American Perspectives), a book that seeks to reconstruct Argentina’s liberal tradition in the wake of the Dirty War (1976–1983).
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Notes
- 1.
Tulio Halperín Donghi, “La imagen argentina de Bolívar, de Funes a Mitre,” in El espejo de la historia: problemas argentinos y perspectivas latinoamericanas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1998).
- 2.
Ibid., 127–128.
- 3.
Ibid., 121.
- 4.
Idem.
- 5.
See Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 176. “Like Ranke, Michelet was a historian of the Restoration, though he experiences that period of history in which he wrote in a way precisely opposed to Ranke’s experience of it. What Michelet suffered as a fall away from the ideal, a postcoital depression, as it were, Ranke enjoyed as a consummation, but a consummation in the literal sense of the term. It was not, as in Michelet’s conception of the revolutionary moment, a point at which unity was achieved by the elimination of the barriers which had been artificially erected to prohibit the people’s union with itself, but was rather a genuine integration of elements formerly at odds with themselves and with one another within a higher form of community, the nation-state and the international system in which each nation-state had its place and functioned as necessary part of the whole.”
- 6.
Bartolomé Mitre, Historia de San Martín y de la emancipación sudamericana, Tomo I (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Bueno Aires, 1968), 35–38.
- 7.
Ibid., 80.
- 8.
Ibid., 36–37.
- 9.
John Lynch, San Martín: Argentine Soldier, American Hero (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 48.
- 10.
Bartolomé Mitre, Historia de San Martín y de la emancipación sudamericana, Tomo III (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Bueno Aires, 1968), 371.
- 11.
Ibid., 296.
- 12.
Ibid., 310.
- 13.
Ibid., 264–267. See in particular “The question was resolved de facto by force but historical-legal documents support de jure the perspective of the Gran Colombia, a vision that finally prevailed and became theoretically and practically an international rule among the Hispanic American republics.” “La fuerza la resolvió de hecho; pero los documentos historicolegales dan a Colombia la razón de derecho, que al fin ha prevalecido teorica y practicamente como regla internacional entre las republicas hispanoamericanas.” 266.
- 14.
Romualdo de la Fuente, Biografía del ilustre general americano don José de San Martín, resumida de documentos auténticos (Paris: Rosa y Bouret, 1868).
- 15.
José Enrique Rodó, “Bolívar” in Ariel, Liberalismo y Jacobinismo, Ensayos, Ed. Raimundo Lazo (México: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1991), 173–197. The essay appeared in 1913 as a prologue to an edition of Bolívar letters prepared by Blanco Fombona in Paris [Cartas de Bolívar, 1799 á 1822, Prol. José Enrique Rodó, Ed. R. Blanco Fombona (Paris: Sociedad de ediciones Louis-Michaud)]; and in the same year in El mirador de Próspero, 1913 José María Serrano, Ed. (Montevideo: Imp. y Litografía Oriental).
- 16.
Ibid., 182. “En los extensos llanos del Apure, el Libertador convive y conmilita con aquella soldadesca primitiva y genial, que luego ha de darle soldados que le sigan en la travesía de los Andes y formen la vanguardia que vencerá en Carabobo.” “In the extensive plains of the Apure, the Liberator lives and fights with that primitive and brilliant army rabble which will then give him soldiers who will follow him in his crossing of the Andes and will form the vanguard troops that will vanquish at Carabobo.”
- 17.
Ibid., 182.
- 18.
Rodó, 1991, “Bolívar.”
- 19.
Ricardo Rojas, La argentinidad (Buenos Aires: La Florida, 1916), 368.
- 20.
Ricardo Rojas, La Guerra de las naciones (Buenos Aires: Librería “La Facultad,” 1924), 82: “Pero creo, en cambio, que hemos sufrido ya en nuestro prestigio nacional; y cuando los argentinos, orgullosos de nuestra gesta originaria, salgamos a decir como otras veces: ‘Nosotros condujimos en 1810, la epopeya de la libertad americana.’ Una voz nos responderá; ‘Sí, pero en 1917, nada hicisteis por la libertad humana. Entre el kaiser sangriento y la humanidad deseosa de ser libre; entre el imperio agressor y vuestra bandera hundida en el océano, optásteis por la neutralidad.’”
“But I believe, in contrast, that we have already seen our national prestige suffer; and when the Argentines, proud of their originary heroic deeds, come out and say as we have at other times: ‘We led in 1810 the epic battles that was American Liberty.’ A voice will respond to us: ‘Yes, but in 1917, you did nothing for human liberty. Between the blood-thirsty Kaiser and humanity desirous of being free; between the aggressive empire and your banner plunged in the ocean, you chose neutrality.’” (Translation mine)
- 21.
See page 281 in La Guerra de las naciones, where Rojas writes: “La concencia de los Estados Unidos se funda en la Biblia. Hay allí la pasta de los pueblos mesiánicos. Emerson, Whitman y Wilson hablan como los antiguos profetas. Nuestro pueblos carecen de un ‘libro’, lo cual quiere decir de un ideal. Debemos los argentinos crear ese ideal, bajo la inspiración de aquel magnífico ejemplo.”
“The conscience of the United States is founded on the Bible. Here is the meat of the messianic peoples. Emerson, Whitman and Wilson speak like ancient prophets. Our peoples are lacking a ‘book,’ which means an ideal. We Argentines should create that ideal, under the inspiration of that magnificent example.” (Translation mine)
- 22.
See Earl T. Glauert, Ricardo Rojas and the Emergence of Argentine Cultural Nationalism (The Hispanic American Historical Review, Feb., 1963, Vol. 43, No. 1), 1–13.
- 23.
Ricardo Rojas, San Martín, knight of the Andes, Trans. Herschel Brickell and Carlos Videla (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and company, Inc., 1945). We will be citing from this edition.
- 24.
Ricardo Rojas, El santo de la espada: vida de San Martín (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires), 156. “Se ha dicho con justicia que él americanizó la revolución argentina, y sería igualmente cierto que su patriotismo fue americano. …La visión americana de Bolívar fue además de tipo imperialista, mientras la realización sanmartiana respetó la modalidad autonómica de cada pueblo.”
- 25.
Ricardo Rojas, El santo de la espada: vida de San Martín, 243.
- 26.
Ibid., 288.
- 27.
Ibid., 232–233.
- 28.
Ricardo Rojas. La entrevista de Guayaquil (Buenos Aires: Edit. Losada, 1947), 286. “Con este libro en la mano, respaldado por sus citas documentales, yo afirmo una vez más que San Martín no fue monarquista. Por eso fué revolucionario; un republicano que quería conciliar la autoridad y la libertad, mediante la ley. Deseaba que el regimen de la América independiente se asentara en la conciencia cívica de los ciudadanos, de lo cual, según él, carecían las colonias hispanoamericanas. Detestó las muchedumbres ignorantes, las soldadescas desmandadas, las oligarquías sensuales, pasto de politicos aventureros. En dos palabras: un militar que no quiso ser caudillo, un estadista que no quiso ser demagogo.”
- 29.
Ricardo Rojas. La entrevista de Guayaquil (Buenos Aires: Edit. Losada, 1947).
- 30.
Lafond de Lurcy, Gabriel, Voyages Autour Du Monde Et Naufrages Célèbres (Paris: Administration de librarie, 1844).
- 31.
Jorge Luis Borges, El informe de Brodie, Ed. B. Suárez Lynch (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1970).
- 32.
For a reading of the story that underlines the ways in which Borges plays with referentiality and silence and that also speaks of the character’s Jewish identity and of Schopenhauer, see Daniel Balderston, “Behind Closed Doors: The Guayaquil Meeting and the Silences of History” in Out of Context: Historical Reference and the Representation of Reality (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 115–131.
- 33.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The wisdom of life and other essays by Arthur Schopenhauer. Trans. Bailey Saunders and Ernest Belfort Bax (Washington, DC: M.W. Dunne, 1901), 47.
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Conn, R.T. (2020). Bolívar in the Río de la Plata. In: Bolívar’s Afterlife in the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26218-1_17
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