I didn’t know much about Bolívar beforehand, the film got on my radar as it was in the huge dump of left films that used to be available in c/movies. It’s available to stream for free on Kanopy if you have a library card.
I’ve seen Édgar Ramírez (:panting:) play communist revolutionaries in Che (2008) and Carlos (2010), I was surprised to see him play a slave-owning settler-colonist bourgeois revolutionary.
The film felt much more akin to a hagiography about George Washington or something than a left film, as this bourgeois revolutionary was portrayed as an Enlightenment thinker trying to fight to establish liberal democracy in in a settler-colony in opposition to the (Spanish) crown.
I’ve done a bit of reading since but I trust Hexbears takes on history so I’m asking y’all: in the film he is portrayed as fighting with and uniting South Americans across race and national divisions, and I know his legacy is thought of fondly in present day South America as a panhispanic hero embraced by the Bolívarism of :chavez-guns:. So what’s the deal? Why did Chavez embrace the legacy of a slave-owning settler-colonist and name his band of socialism after Bolívar? Is it true that he tried to unite South Africans across races? Did this include indigenous people and black slaves? Did he try to eradicate slavery in his new Republic? Or is his name just a useful symbol and the specific fine print of his legacy is ultimately irrelevant?
Why did Chavez embrace the legacy of a slave-owning settler-colonist?
I feel like you’re ignoring the part where Bolivar was literally taken in by the president of the Republic of Haiti, Alexandre Pétion, who fought in the Haitian revolution to free its slaves from France. Pétion made Bolivar promise to free all of his slaves and try to convince the rest of Latin America to free its slaves in return for supplies and troops. Bolivar kept his promise. As soon as Bolivar reclaimed his estates in Venezuela, he immediately freed all of his slaves. (As the result of this, and of lots of charitable donations, Bolivar died penniless.) Bolivar also tried to convince the rest of Latin America to free their slaves, but their leaders refused. Bolivar was far from perfect but he was one of the best leaders of his era, for sure.
Iirc, Bolivar was from a wealthy family of Creole origin (people of Spanish descent born in the colonies and considered second-class citizens), his parents died when he was about 8 years old and his family did not care for him. Because of this he was raised by his family’s slaves, following and learning their customs.
When he got older, he decided to waste all his wealth on parties and whatever, until one day he arrived in France with some friends, where he started to learn about liberalism and was influenced by the French revolution. One day he got drunk and really got angry at Napoleon for being a traitor of the revolution, so he was kicked out of France. He vowed that he would end Spanish rule over the Americas.
Bolivar needed help and funding, so he went to Haiti, a country that was eager to help the rebels and in exchange for ending slavery in the Americas, there he got a handful of weapons, recruits and connections all over the Americas. Skipping many failures and some betrayals, Bolivar created a country called Gran Colombia, and helped Peru and Bolivia gain their independence, it is said that he was a great politician who got things done and united the people, but many people worked behind his back so that his attempts to unite the countries failed. He freed the slave as promised to Haiti and gave them rights.
In the end, he tried to bring together Imperial Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and the other countries to form an alliance called the Congress of Panama. But it failed because most countries were not interested in joining this project and the United States and European powers were happy to have destroyed any possibility of a united Latin America. Bolivar fell ill and died soon after.
His legacy is that of a man who was born in Colonial Latin America, fought for independence against the Europeans, freed the slaves, was betrayed by Gusanos, and died. He was not a socialist, but he was a very important anti-imperialist figure, which is why Venezuela likes him so much.
