This compelling biography offers a unique perspective on the life and career of one of Latin America's most famous—and most adulated—historical figures. Departing from the conventional, narrow treatment of Bolívar's role in the Spanish-American wars of independence (1810–1825), leading historian Lester D. Langley frames this remarkable figure as the quintessential Venezuelan rebel, who by circumstance and sheer will rose to be the continent's most noted revolutionary and liberator. In the process, he became both a unifying and a divisive presence whose symbolic influence remains powerful even today. Twice Bolívar gained power, twice he confronted a formidable counterrevolution, twice he was compelled to flee. His ultimate tactic of using slave and mixed-race troops aroused both the admiration and fear of U.S. leaders and became a topic of heated discussion in the critical debates of 1817 and 1818 over U.S. policy toward the Spanish-American wars as well as the arguments over the admission of Missouri as a state in 1820–1821 and the U.S. decision to participate in the ill-fated Congress of Panama. Although he earned the sobriquet of the "George Washington" of South America, Bolívar in victory became more conservative and critical of the democratic tide of the era. Unlike Washington, Bolívar was forced into exile, the victim of his own ambitions and the fears of others. In his tragic end, he symbolized the glorious warrior so consumed by his own ambition and hatreds that he was destroyed. In death, he became a cult figure whose life and meaning casts a long shadow over modern Venezuelan history. As the author convincingly explains, he remains the most relevant figure of the revolutionary age in the Americas.

An authoritative portrait of the Latin-American warrior-statesman examines his life against a backdrop of the tensions of nineteenth-century South America, covering his achievements as a strategist, abolitionist, and diplomat.

This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.

One of Latin America's most famous historical figures, Simón Bolívar has become a mythic symbol for many nations, empires, and revolutions, used to support wildly diverse--sometimes opposite--ideas. From colonial Cuba to Nazi-occupied France to Soviet Slovenia, the image of "El Libertador" has served a range of political and cultural purposes. Here, an array of international and interdisciplinary scholars shows how Bolívar has appeared over the last two centuries in paintings, fiction, poetry, music, film, festivals, dance traditions, city planning, and even reliquary adoration. Whether exalted, reimagined, or fragmented, Bolívar's body has taken on a range of different meanings to represent the politics and poetics of today's national bodies. Through critical approaches to diverse cultural Bolivarianisms, this collection demonstrates the capacity of the arts and humanities to challenge and reinvent hegemonic narratives and thus vital dimensions of democracy.

Provides a through background for Bolívar's "contradictory" life, from his birth into colonial aristocracy to his leadership of a revolution to his tactical alliance with the Roman Catholic Church; addresses many of the principles for which Bolívar fought, such as abolition of slavery and legal equality for all races and social classes; reviews his efforts to obtain a British protectorate over his alliance; places events in the context of the Enlightenment "world," showing the norms and conditions that spurred change; and details the influence Bolívar had on radical movements and events during the course of the revolutions in Latin America and documents the challenges he faced in leading a revolution.

Chronicles the life of Simón Bolívar, exploring his political career, leadership dynamics, rule over the people of Spanish America, and impact on world history.

This volume of essays on the life and legacy of Simón Bolívar looks at the impact of "the Liberator" as warrior, political thinker and leader, internationalist, continentalist, reformer, and revolutionary. An appraisal of Bolívar's role in the Spanish American wars of independence, this offers an explanation of why the Bolívarian legend and cult has persisted.