Local author pens book about Latin American hero Simón Bolívar
“BOLÍVAR: American Liberator”
by Marie Arana
603 pp. Simon & Schuster.
Throughout my high school career, I learned a lot about American history and the powerful men who made it. Francisco Pizarro led the invasion of the Inca Empire; George Washington and a desperate Continental Army defeated the British and started a new republic; and President Abraham Lincoln ended slavery with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. There were many acclaimed heroes throughout history. But one man was never mentioned in my classes. His name: Simón Bolívar.
To this day, he is famous throughout Latin America for liberating six South American countries from Spanish colonialism with a powerful, populist army that he created. Even before such triumphs, Bolívar had no ordinary life. He traveled through Europe and the United States as the country was developing. And he is known for creating a writing style distinct from the common celestial Spanish of his era.
Marie Arana, author of the new biography, “Bolívar: American Liberator,” captures the story of a man whose courage was limitless; a man who never wavered—even when his own men opposed him—but was known for acts of altruism, as well.
Arana, a versatile writer and the former editor of The Washington Post’s Book World section, does an outstanding job at seizing every important moment in Bolívar’s life. It reads like a novel but brims with biographical facts.
She takes the reader from France, where Napoleon was raising his own army, and to the United States, where the country’s rigid institution of slavery astonished him. When Bolívar visited the slave market in Charleston, Arana writes, “he could not have failed to note that there was little evidence of the racial mixing so common in his own America: few mulattos, almost no Indians, the differences between races extreme.”
The Latin American icon was born into a wealthy family in the city of Caracas. As a child, Bolívar was quite rambunctious. He was not one to pay attention to his studies, preferring to roam the city’s streets. His lack of attention to schoolwork did not stifle Bolívar’s intelligence. His wanderings and curious manner helped him understand what was going on in his city, as well as his country. This would aid him in the rebellion against Spanish colonial rule that he later led.
Tragedy struck Bolívar early in life. His father died before the future statesman reached the age of three. His mother followed when he was ten. Still Bolívar was a rich boy worth an equivalent of at least $40 million today, according Arana’s research.
While he grew up without parents, he had several mentors who had a lasting influence on the future liberator. Among them was Simón Rodríguez, a schoolteacher who enjoyed writings of Rousseau. Rodríguez taught young Bolívar about the works of Locke and Voltaire and accompanied him when he toured Europe. And although Bolívar displayed slight disinterest in Rodriguez’s lessons, he grew to understand Locke’s interpretation of freethinking and liberty.
As the years went by, Bolívar gained experience in warfare. On the battlefield, he also practiced his penmanship. He wrote to men in distant lands asking for aide and penned more prophet correspondences during his time in exile. Arana relates how his ability to remain calm—on the battlefield and as a statesman—is what led Bolívar and his men to victory and enabled them to consolidate Latin American independence.
Arana, who was born in Lima, Peru, has published several other books including novels, nonfiction tomes about the craft of writing, and the memoir, “American Chica,” about her bicultural childhood. That book was a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN-Memoir Award.
With this latest work, Arana provides U.S. readers with a piece of history overlooked by most Americans. The book gives a clear and vivid description of the man considered both the George Washington and Julius Caesar of South America.
—Edwin Martinez
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