Bolivar: American Liberator (73 page)

In time, historians, too, took up the task of glorification. Whole institutions and scholarly apparatuses were put in place to defend him. And defend him they would, for doubts about him were beginning to creep back. Peruvians, who had always resented the Venezuelan liberator, complained that Bolívar had cheated Peru of land in the course of building nations, that he had robbed the Inca of their nobility. Indeed, by 1825, Lima’s wealth and influence had shrunk; the viceregal city that had once overseen a large swath of South America had far less presence, far less power. All the same, it was an exaggeration to say that Bolívar had ruined Peru. Peru hadn’t existed before the revolution. Peru hadn’t lost land; it hadn’t owned land to begin with. As for the descendants of the Inca, Bolívar hadn’t singled them out especially. He had abolished all rank, outlawed Freemasons, secret societies, any semblance of legislated superiority. To him, indigenous nobility was just another form of oppression. In other words, Bolívar had changed all the rules in Peru. And Peru, once the most powerful nexus of the Spanish Metropolis—the most loyal of Spain’s colonies—never forgot it.

The debunkers would be many—Argentines who preferred to glorify San Martín, Spaniards who felt obliged to defend the
madre patria
, Andeans who felt crimped by their borders, mercenaries who never got
paid, even the vociferous Karl Marx, who called Bolívar
“the dastardly, most miserable and meanest of blackguards.” But all that came later, By the time of the one-hundredth anniversary of Bolívar’s birth, the myth was in place, augmented with surprising flourishes. The intervening century had made Bolívar a good Catholic, a moral exemplar, an unwavering democrat—none of which he had been during his life. The story had less to do with the man than with a romantic ideal. He was our better angel, our prince valiant. Even the imperfections (the dozens of mistresses, the take-no-prisoners bravado, the penchant for dictatorship) were seen as natural parts of the persona, what every young man should aspire to be. As the writer José Martí so famously wrote of Bolívar in those centennial years:
“Nothing is more beautiful than that craggy forehead, those cavernous eyes, that cape flapping against him on the back of a winged horse. . . . From son to son, for as long as America shall live, the echo of his name will resound in our manly hearts.”

The echo certainly resounded in the manly heart of President Antonio Guzmán Blanco, who, like Páez half a century before, was trying to keep a firm grip on the Venezuelan nation. Guzmán had come to power in 1870, ruled flamboyantly for eighteen years, and presided over great growth as well as rampant corruption. He was far from anything like Bolívar. But he, too, knew the power of the image. Taking his cue from Páez, he had Bolívar’s remains exhumed and transported from the cathedral to the newly completed National Pantheon. He purchased Bolívar’s family home in Caracas, announced the
publication of a thirty-two-volume history of the Liberator’s career, then presided bombastically over the centenary of Bolívar’s birth, memorializing no one so much as himself in the process. Bolívar, we can only imagine, would have been horrified at the spectacle of being preyed on so publicly by a man who embodied all that he despised: sycophancy, corruption, pomposity, Freemasonry, and a full-bore attack on the Church. But the scheme worked: Guzmán stayed in power for a staggering eighteen years, driving out one political opponent after another, until his anti-Catholic campaign backfired and he was cast out by an angry nation.

One hundred years later, in 1982, following those predecessors’ examples, Hugo Chávez, an ambitious young captain in the Venezuelan army, established a leftist party he called the Bolívarian Revolutionary
Movement. After a decade of secret machinations, he attempted a coup on the sitting government, was arrested and sentenced to prison. Nevertheless, he emerged to ride Bolívar’s legacy to the presidency in 1998. The following year, Chávez rewrote the constitution and renamed the country the Bolívarian Republic of Venezuela. He made televised speeches with Bolívar’s image behind him, had his followers chant, “Bolívar! Bolívar!” in the streets. Think of the irony in this: there is no George Washington party in the United States of America, no registered adherents of a founder, no declared enemies. There are no people who shout Napoleon’s name in the streets of Paris today. But in Latin America, Bolívar lives on as a galvanizing force, a lightning rod for political action.

Bolívar had been aped by many pretenders in his mercurial afterlife, but never so bizarrely as by Chávez, a radical socialist, whose goals were a far cry from Bolívar’s. Once again, in a period of national instability—
in 2010, the bicentenary year of the start of the revolution—Bolívar’s bones were exhumed. This time, President Chávez
had them taken from his sarcophagus in the National Pantheon in what can only be described as a macabre freak show. Throughout, Chávez
narrated, prayed, rhapsodized in what looked to anyone witnessing it like a highly stylized performance by
astronauts in moon gear. Behind, above, everywhere on display was the flag of Venezuela. The purpose of this outlandish ballet was the same as it had been for two hundred years: to become one with the spirit of the Liberator, to bask in
“the magic of his prestige.” But this time Chávez hoped to prove something more than brotherhood. He had Bolívar’s DNA tested in order to show that the Liberator had been poisoned by Colombian autocrats, landed gentry who couldn’t tolerate his “socialist” impulses—but the tests gave inconclusive results. In bolstering his own faded reputation, in lobbing a stiff accusation across the border, Chávez had played a very old hand. But he had also brought Bolívar full circle. Harassed to the end of his days by those who accused him of being too fond of dictatorial powers, Bolívar was now being touted by a military despot as the apotheosis of liberal thought.

Certainly, it was not the first time the legend was twisted to preposterous ends; nor were Chávez, Guzmán, and Páez the only strongmen to try it. Countless dictators who came after independence tried to manipulate
Bolívar’s image in some way in the process of burnishing their own. Bolívar purported to hate dictatorships—he claimed he had taken them on only for limited periods and as necessary expedients—but there is little doubt that he created the mythic creature that the Latin American dictator became.

In centuries to come, dictators came in a multitude of varieties. But the trajectory was always the same. Indeed,
many of the most tyrannical and barbaric started out as liberals. South American history is replete with such men. As the Argentine writer Ernesto Sábato once said:
“The most stubborn conservatism is that which is born of a triumphant revolution.” Bolívar had feared it would be so. He died convinced that a bloody-minded era would follow, and follow him it did.
In Bolivia, a famously debauched dictator, fleeing retribution, was tracked down and killed by his mistress’s brother;
in Ecuador, a deeply religious despot who had installed himself for a third term was butchered on the Cathedral steps in the full light of morning;
in Quito, a liberal caudillo who tried to seize power too many times was thrown in prison, murdered, and dragged through the cobbled streets. There is a reason why blood trickles down roads and heads roll out from under bushes in Latin American literature: this is not magical realism. It is history. It is true.

In many ways, the revolution is still afoot in Latin America. Although Bolívar’s name has been conjured by every -ism that succeeded him, his burning ideals seemed lost in the bedlam that ensued. Principles of the Enlightenment were cast aside as rich whites scrambled to appropriate the wealth and power the Spanish overlords had left behind.
Equality, which Bolívar had insisted was the linchpin of justice, was quickly replaced by a virulent racism. The rule of law—indispensable to a free people—was abandoned as one dictator after another rewrote laws according to his caprices. Democracy, equality, fraternity: these were slow to come to South America. Unity, which might have made the continent a mighty force, was never realized. And yet Bolívar’s dream never would die.

Perhaps that is because his life has always spoken so clearly to the Latin American people. Here is an all too imperfect man who, with sheer will, a keen mind, an ardent heart, and admirable disinterest carried a revolution to far corners of his continent. Here is a leader whom
fate presented with one opportunity and a glut of insuperable hurdles. A general betrayed by his officers; a strategist who had no equals on whom he could rely; a head of state who oversaw nothing that resembled a vigorous, unified team of rivals. With a stamina that is arguably unmatched in history, he prosecuted a seemingly unwinnable war over the harshest of terrains to shuck the formidable banner of Pizarro. From Haiti to Potosí, there was little that stopped him. On he rode, into the void, fighting against unimaginable odds.
Until he remade a world.