Abstract
In this and the following chapters, we focus on Venezuela’s Bolívarian tradition, called by some a cult. Accounting for it is challenging. To start, the story of Bolívar often reads as if it were coterminous with the Venezuelan republic from its beginning in 1830 through the present. Even the secession movement, led by Venezuelan elites and former Bolívarian general and hero of independence, José Antonio Páez, against Bolívar and his Gran Colombia (1819, 1831) can be hard to make out, remaining subordinated to larger narratives rooted in the figure of Bolívar and the independence process. Who has constructed these narratives? The nation’s diverse actors have. They have done so to have a platform for their battles over the political identity of the country.
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- 1.
John Lombardi, The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in Venezuela, 1820–1854 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Incorporation, 1971), 96–97.
- 2.
German Carrera Damas, El culto a Bolívar; esbozo para un estudio de las ideas en Venezuela (Caracas: Alfadil Ediciones, 2003), 282–285.
- 3.
See Mariano Picón Salas : Viejos y Nuevos Mundos, Ed. Guillermo Sucre (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1983), 560–562. I am citing from the essay “Regreso de tres mundos: un hombre en su generación,” originally published in 1959 as a book (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica).
- 4.
Rufino Blanco Fombona states in the prologue to his modernized edition of Larrazábal’s La vida y correspondencia general del libertador Simón Bolívar; enriquecida con la inserción de los manifiestos, mensages, exposiciones, proclamas, &. &. of 1918 (Madrid: Editorial-América), that, given the length and complexity of the two-volume history, Larrazábal must have been working on his history since the 1850s.
- 5.
Felipe Larrazábal, La vida y correspondencia general del libertador Simón Bolívar; enriquecida con la inserción de los manifiestos, mensages, exposiciones, proclamas, &. &., Vol. 1 (New York: E.O. Jenkins, 1865), 338–339.
- 6.
Felipe Larrazábal, 1987, La vida y correspondencia general del libertador Simón Bolívar; enriquecida con la inserción de los manifiestos, mensages, exposiciones, proclamas, &. &., Vols. 1 and 2 (Nueva York: D. Appleton y Compañia).
- 7.
Ibid., vii.
- 8.
Ibid., 229.
- 9.
Ibid., 490. “República … gobernada según las bases de la política moderna, cuyos principios capitales son la división y el equilibrio de los poderes.”
- 10.
Felipe Larrazábal, La vida y correspondencia general del libertador Simón Bolívar; enriquecida con la inserción de los manifiestos, mensages, exposiciones, proclamas, &. &., Vol. 2 (New York: E.O. Jenkins, 1865), 587.
- 11.
Ibid., 588.
- 12.
Idem.
- 13.
Ibid., 588.
- 14.
See José Gil Fortoul , who writes that the opposition party under Monagas and Gabante claimed to represent the values of the Gran Colombia between 1831 and 1833. José Gil Fortoul , Tomo segundo. Historia constitucional de Venezuela. La oligarquía conservadora. La oligarquía conservadora (Berlin: Carl Heymann, 1909), 177. Also see page 39.
- 15.
Bolívar’s remains were moved from Santa Marta to Caracas in 1842.
- 16.
Gil Fortoul writes that in early 1856 José Tadeo Gregorio, determined to remain in power beyond his term limit, proposed establishing a new confederation of the Gran Colombia. This would mean changing the constitution such that he would have a lifetime appointment as head of Venezuela and prevent his brother Gregorio from alternating with him. On February 27, the congress approved his proposal, authorizing the state to invite New Granada and Ecuador to confederate. José Gil Fortoul , Tomo segundo. Historia constitucional de Venezuela. La oligarquía conservadora. La oligarquía conservadora (Berlin: Carl Heymann, 1909), 309. On April 4, 1856, Venezuelans Castelli and Villafañe submitted a proposal to reintegrate the Gran Colombia to their New Granadan counterparts, a proposal that was then presented to the New Granadan senate. New Granada responded, asking that they modify their definition of the proposed Union to conform to their vision of regional or federal autonomy. José Gil Fortoul , Tomo segundo. Historia constitucional de Venezuela. La oligarquía conservadora. La oligarquía conservadora (Berlin: Carl Heymann, 1909), 454–455.
- 17.
Carlos Vidales, “Cipriano Castro y la Gran Colombia,” accessed September 23, 2018, Historia y Región, http://historiayregion.blogspot.com/2017/12/cipriano-castro-y-la-grancolombia.html.
- 18.
Felipe, Larrazábal, La vida y correspondencia general del libertador Simón Bolívar; enriquecida con la inserción de los manifiestos, mensages, exposiciones, proclamas, &. &. (New York: E.O. Jenkins, 1865), 499.
- 19.
Felipe Larrazábal, La vida y correspondencia general del libertador Simón Bolívar; enriquecida con la inserción de los manifiestos, mensages, exposiciones, proclamas, &. &., Vol. 1 (New York: E.O. Jenkins, 1865), 361.
- 20.
See in particular, Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: the technologizing of the word (London: Routledge, 1991), 151–155.
- 21.
Ibid., xix–xx. “Mis lectores hallarán en la correspondencia que se da a la estampa, un caudal copioso, inagotable, de oportunas reflexiones: de pensamientos llenos de jugo y de doctrina, de documentos preciosos de experiencia y enseñanza moral y política, com que pueden formarse hombres para la vida pública.”
- 22.
Ibid., 410–421.
- 23.
Lombardi, 1971, The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in Venezuela, 1820–1854, 141–142.
- 24.
See John Lynch, Lynch, John. The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808–1826 (N.Y.: W. W. Norton and Co., 1986), 157–158.
- 25.
Felipe Larrazábal, Asesinato del general Salazar: individual y verídica relación de este horrendo crimen, perpetrado en Tinaquillo el 17 de mayo de 1872, por el general Antonio Guzmán Blanco (Baranquilla: Imprenta de los Andes, 1873).
- 26.
Idem.
- 27.
See Rafael Sánchez, Dancing Jacobins: A Venezuelan Genealogy of Latin American Populism (N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 2016) for penetrating readings of these changes to the built environment.
- 28.
Carole Leal Curiel, “El 19 de abril de 1810: ‘La Mascarada de Fernando’ como fecha fundacional de la independencia de Venezuela,” in Mitos políticos en las sociedades andinas: orígenes, invenciones y ficciones, eds. Germán Carrera Damas et al. (Caracas: Editorial Equinoccio, 2006), 65–91.
- 29.
See Matthew Brown, The Struggle for Power in Post-Independence Colombia and Venezuela, (N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
- 30.
Hugo Chávez, blog entry, December 16, 2010, accessed July 2019, http://blog.chavez.org.ve/temas/libros/asi-murio-bolivar/#.XTz981BJn-Y (Even after exhuming Bolívar’s remains, Chávez would continue to use correspondence as proof that Bolívar had not been ill. Had he been suffering from the late stages of tuberculosis, Bolívar, according to Chávez, would not have had the strength to breathe let alone write a letter, travel, or serve a country. Looking at the letters, it would have made more sense for Chávez to focus on Bolívar’s letter to Juan José Flores dated November 9, 1830, in which Bolívar indicates a desire to run for president. He would be dead in less than a month.)
For an impressive and thorough study of Bolívar’s and Urdaneta’s correspondence in the context of Bolívar returning to power, please see: Álvaro Acevedo Tarazona and Carlos Iván Villamizar, “El último Bolívar: renuncia y retiro del ejercicio del poder (1829–1830) Entre la autoridad y la legalidad,” Historia Y Memoria, Núm. 11 (2015): 213–232.
For Chávez’s collection of Bolívar’s letters, please see: Simón Bolívar, Hugo Chávez Presents Símon Bolívar: The Bolivarian Revolution, Ed. Matthew Brown (London: Verso, 2009).
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Conn, R.T. (2020). Bolívar in Nineteenth-Century Venezuela. In: Bolívar’s Afterlife in the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26218-1_3
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