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?
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.