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193 years after the death of Simón Bolívar, his image, his legacy and his thoughts are today more present than ever in a region that needs unity to preserve the dreams of independence, emancipation and justice to which he dedicated his successful career.
According to José Martí, the first Bolivarian of our America, who considered himself the son of the hero, the figure of the liberator: “Burn and snatch; Knowing it in all its facets is like feeling like your thoughts are rimmed with gold.”
Photos by the author
Alejandro Miguel López Rodríguez, president of the Simón Bolívar Study Center in the Venezuelan capital, points out that the institution, attached to the Ministry of Popular Power for the Office of the President and Supervision of Governance, is today responsible for promoting studies and Research into the work of one of the greatest men in our history.
He explains: “In 2020, our President Nicolás Maduro orders the creation of this institution and among our essential objectives is to “go on the offensive in the context of the attack on Venezuela and the figure of Bolívar as a symbol of the Bolivarian Revolution.”
According to the expert, it is about considering Bolívar as the heir of Venezuelans and promoting the study and dissemination of the work of the liberator and his current legacy, not as a man who fought 200 years ago, but as the leader of a great liberation process today very valid and had its greatest expression in the political, constitutional, revolutionary, Bolivarian movement that Hugo Chávez has promoted since the creation of the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army 200 in 1982.
And as he explains: “The center brings together different profiles from history, anthropology, art, sociology and communication to see Bolívar not only in history books and in political speeches, but also in streets, squares and schools, verifying his presence in Venezuelan .” and world society, why do we continue to study it? because not everything has been said about his work yet,” he reflected.
The Center connects many institutions, such as the National Library, the General Archives of the Nation, the National Center for Historical Studies, and also brings together a group of personalities, academics, with invaluable contributions to Bolívar and the revolutionary independence movement, its researchers and collaborators. They focus on the work of the liberator and on the study of a historical period, from the beginning of the break with the Spanish government to the creation of the independent republics of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and all American nations, which began their independence processes in the 1830s and years could be carried out later, as in the case of Cuba.
After a long illness, Simón Bolívar died on Friday, December 17, 1830, at one o'clock in the afternoon at the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, an old hacienda in the city of Santa Marta in northern Colombia. In his will, written just a few days earlier, he wrote: “My last wishes are for the happiness of the country.” If my death contributes to the consolidation of the Union, I will go peacefully to the grave.
MULTIPLY BOLÍVAR
It is this urgent and necessary Bolívar that is multiplying in Venezuela today. There is the Image of the Liberator, whose name honors one of the sister nation states, communities, schools, cities, murals or institutions in which his imprint can be found, the historic house and ingenio of Bolívar, which belonged to his family in the history of the state Aragua, his birthplace in Caracas, the National Pantheon where his remains rest, or so many places in each area, of which the one in the capital has his statue and in front of which Martí came to pay tribute without removing the dust from the street to this country.
According to Professor López Rodríguez, “Bolívar's ideas unite many people around the world, his actions inspire political, cultural and social movements, his image is reinterpreted in murals on our streets, Bolívar in sunglasses, riding a motorcycle, this speaks of his vitality.” , because it puts it in history, but in the present,” he adds.
The Simón Bolívar Study Center has several projects, including editorial projects, more than 30 publications, essays, monographs, brochures and “Memories of O'Leary” websites (Daniel Florencio O'Leary was an Irish officer and personal friend of Bolívar), supervised the American independence movement and compiled the liberator's memoirs and documents, which are now digitized).
The institution also organized the diploma “Life and Work of the Liberator Simón Bolívar”, which focuses on the critical pedagogical vision and the concept of insurgent history, which sees people in struggle and the development of collective actions as protagonists, which include women, Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples: “The story is not about a king, a general, it is about a people, and Bolívar was a leader of a people,” says the center's director.
In this course we analyze the patrimonialization and communalization of Bolívar, i.e. be it a couplet, a poem, a theater performance in a school, a public space, all these ways of remembering the liberator who mobilizes us with the intention of adding more people from a collective feeling out of militancy, which is very important for America is. ”
The Cuban national hero, our Martí, said of Bolívar: “His enthusiasm was that of our salvation, his language was that of our nature, his peak was that of our continent.”
According to this analyst, the image of Bolívar is “that of a leader who acts and thinks together with other social sectors, reflecting on men and women subjected to slavery and working for the abolition of this scourge, for the elimination of slavery, “Taxes, for the defense of indigenous peoples, for the unity of the peoples of America, with self-determination and its anti-imperialist character; But he also thinks about the world. In the Letter from Jamaica he spoke about the need for balance in the world, that was in 1815, and 200 years later it is completely valid.”
THE BOLIVAR AXIS OF THOUGHT OF OUR PEOPLE
For the researcher, Bolivarism represents the fight for equality and social justice, for the establishment of popular educational methods, for education for all, for education for work in order to change reality.
Likewise, the practice of independence and the anti-imperialist attitude, the search for our own laws that correspond to our peculiarity, culture and economic dynamism of our people, as well as the idea of the Union of the Americas, which will be realized with the creation of the Great Republic of Colombia, which several Added territories of the former Viceroyalty of Greater Granada, a great nation that existed until 1830: “Bolívar not only had a dream, but he made it a reality, a concrete reality, it was a great republic.” more than 2 million Square kilometers, with access to the Atlantic, Pacific, with important gold and silver mines, fertile lands, powerful rivers, a republic that signed treaties with Mexico and Chile, that organized the Amphitonic Congress of Panama in 1826 is the reference of the Union of the Americas.”
It is important to preserve Bolívar's imprint because it speaks to the value of one's identity, love of the land and the construction of a sense of home that transcends individual interests. Today the words of the apostle of Cuban independence resonate. “But so Bolívar stands in the sky of America (…) and still wears his campaign boots, because what he did not do remains unfinished to this day; because Bolívar still has something to do in America!”
A man of flesh and blood, “who loved to dance, who made his own salads, who loved to entertain, who was passionate about music, they were real men who were able to overcome circumstances that were not extraordinary but commonplace “We were, and who were a support.” a collective struggle to achieve an independent republic,” says the president of the study center Simón Bolívar.
In his opinion, we urgently need the Bolívar who tells us about ourselves, who questions his privileges, who goes beyond his reality of the region, as Martí, who likes to build cultural dialogues, said: “The army that Bolívar in the Battle leads.” Carabobo is the most diverse, it consists of whites, blacks, mulattoes, natives, Antilleans, British, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, there is no leader who has had such a diverse force with a common goal, and that is one Lesson for “today’s America if they try to drive wedges into our idea of integration,” he emphasizes.
As the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, America for Americans, has just been celebrated, the researcher points out that “it is more necessary than ever to pit Bolivarism against Monroeism, the Bolivarism of equality and social justice, the Union of America in the Contrast that with Monroeism, that it is an expansion, a warriorism, an intervention, an individualism, a white supremacy and a cultural expansion. Bolivarism is a force of containment for this purpose. Given Bolívar’s legacy, each city can have its collective leadership, this is one of the relevance of the liberator’s legacy.”
And finally he concludes: “We want to see it not from the perspective of death, but from the perspective of immortality. It's a legacy that walks the streets. We prefer to refer to the sowing of the liberator, the man who gave his life for the sacred endeavor of uniting Americans in a new nation for a common cause.”
This is the Bolívar that, 193 years after it was sown, is reborn every day, like a seed that germinates.
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