Bolivarianism

format_list_bulleted Contenido keyboard_arrow_down

ImprimirCitar

The apotheosis of the Liberator, work by Tito Salas showing the history of America and Simon Bolivar.

Bolivarianism is a current of political thought embodied in various Spanish-American and Spanish national-patriotic movements. Bolivarianism takes its name from Simón Bolívar, a Venezuelan soldier who led the campaigns that gave independence to various American nations. Bolivarianism, as an ideology, has been developed and promoted by very diverse Ibero-American individuals and organizations whose only common ground is some form of Spanish-American patriotism and US anti-imperialism. Simón Bolívar's writings are often taken as the intellectual basis of this patriotism such as the Jamaica Charter, the Angostura Speech or the Cartagena Manifesto. Bolivarianism has inspired various movements such as the Movement for Socialism, the April 19 Movement, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, as well as being an inspiration for various governments such as Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega, Raúl Castro, Gustavo Petro, among others.

Some consider that Bolivarianism is something after Bolívar himself, an attempt to unite all the opinions, statements and speeches of the Caracas caudillo into something that claims to be solid, when it would not manage to be a concrete body of ideas. Bolivarianism would therefore be a later intellectual construction, taking arbitrary observations about the life and work of Bolívar, instead of being a body or system of thought formulated and proposed by Simón Bolívar, who adjusted his will to power according to the particular contexts of the time. moment, rather than be guided by universal, fixed and clear intellectual principles. That would make critics of the figure of Bolívar, such as Luis Corsi Otálora, declare that Bolívar had the characteristic of being a person of contrasts and full of contradictions between the reactionary and the revolutionary.

Origins

Collage of several works where Simon Bolivar

German historian Michael Zeuske identifies José Antonio Páez as one of the first soldiers to clearly use and worship Bolívar. Until the early 1840s, part of the Venezuelan congress had refused to worship Bolívar. Páez and his supporters finally managed in April 1842 to have the glorification of Simón Bolívar approved by decree. Páez also promoted the exhumation of Bolívar's corpse from Santa Marta and his burial with great pomp in Caracas Páez also wanted to replace the name of Caracas with that of Ciudad Bolívar, but he did not get support for that idea. The city of Angostura would be declared Ciudad Bolívar in 1846.

Historian Manuel Caballero also identifies the beginning of the cult of Bolívar with the transfer of Bolívar's remains from Santa Marta to Caracas, but sees the definitive step towards a permanent cult in 1883, when President Guzmán Blanco ordered the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Bolívar.

Bolívar came to the conclusion that in order to achieve the definitive independence of Spanish America, a great and strong republic had to be created that could challenge the claims of any imperial power and guarantee its own independence. This project was inspired by the Mirandino idea of a continental union that would cover from the territory of New Spain to the south of Chile, the idea of Colombia as a country that had to come true. In addition, work had to be done for the integration of the newly independent peoples from the Spanish Empire, in accordance with Bolívar's phrase: «one must be the homeland of all Americans». In addition, «if we unite everything in a single mass of nation, while we extinguish the promotion of disturbances, we further consolidate our forces and facilitate the mutual cooperation of the peoples to sustain their natural cause. Divided we will be weaker, less respected by enemies and neutrals. The union under a single supreme government will make our forces greater and will make us all formidable." Bolivarianism defends the position of anti-imperialism coming from the powers of Western Europe (Great Britain and France) and the United States.

The Bolivarian Society of Venezuela

By presidential decree of General Eleazar López Contreras, then president of Venezuela, on March 23, 1938, the Bolivarian Society of Venezuela was created. Since then, the institution has been characterized by the study and dissemination of the thought of Simón Bolívar and works for the formation of a collective conscience of the Bolivarian ideal.

From July 28 to August 7, 1938, the Bolivarian Congress met in Caracas under the presidency of Vicente Lecuna, issued the statutes of the newly created society and established its headquarters next to the Libertador's birthplace.

This was the second creation, since the first corresponded to the hero Rafael Urdaneta, who founded the Great Bolivarian Society of Caracas on October 28, 1842. The term Bolivarian was not yet used and was accepted by the Royal Spanish Academy in 1927.

Since the moment of its creation, the Bolivarian Society of Venezuela has been meeting and working to disseminate Bolivarian thought through important works such as the edition of Escritos del Libertador, the most complete compilation of Bolívar's work; the creation of the Institute of Bolivarian Studies and the Rafael Urdaneta Foundation, as well as the dissemination of the Bolivarian work among young people through the Bolivarian Student Societies that operate in different educational establishments in Venezuela.

Interpretations of Bolivarianism

Since socialism

Since Falangism

From conservatism

Laureano Vallenilla Lanz, a Venezuelan author of a positivist nature and right-wing thinker, came to believe that in America only a strong, caudillo-like ruler could guarantee order and justice in the spirit of the Hispanic people. Any other attempt at government (such as a liberal democracy) would be easy to sabotage by shrewd lawyers and their petty interests. Given this, the liberator would have discovered a "Bolivian law" that he put into practice after the failure of the Ocaña Convention.

From the social democracy

Indalecio Liévano Aguirre, a Colombian revisionist historian (representative of the populist left), exposed that Bolívar was a precursor of state assistance found in modern social democracies, while considering his opponents as representatives of an incipient capitalist oligarchy that opposed to his dictatorial decrees for having a social-reformist content, criticizing the dominant historiography for focusing on conservative aspects and belittling this aspect with liberal influences. Gabriel García Márquez in his historical novel about the last days of Bolívar, The general in his labyrinth, expresses this interpretation of his regime.

From liberalism

Since the first days of Latin American historiography, there has always been a desire to vindicate Bolivar's liberalism, especially in his youth and prior to his rise as dictator. However, due to the rise of socialist Bolivarians, such as Hugo Chavez, and social democratic or conservative nationalist reactions, it has been sought then to obscure this interpretation of Bolivarian thought.

In view of this, contemporary authors of the liberal school, such as Ramón Rivas Aguilar, mention that in Bolivar's ideology, an attempt to socialize the means of production through some agrarian reform to distribute property to the classes was never considered more dispossessed of the people, so it would be unreasonable to understand that the revolutionary aspects of his political doctrine have been an antecedent to utopian Socialism. For this reason, they would see Chavismo (conceiving a reformist and agrarian Bolívar) as a contradiction with the liberal spirit of the historical Bolívar, influenced to a large extent by his admiration for the English people and their constitutionalism, as well as Bolivar coming from the Mantuana upper classes. and its defense of business interests.

Then, true Bolivarianism would have opted for liberal measures where the defense of private property was an integral part of the political and economic foundation of every sovereign nation. Being glimpsed such liberalism in the essence of the doctrinal and institutional framework of the Letter of Jamaica (especially in its invitation to liberal England to be a promoter of free trade in Latin America and be the path for the prosperity of nations), the Congress of Angostura and the Constitution of Bolivia of 1825. That liberalism would also be seen even in the dictatorial stage of Bolivar, as in the Quito decree of 1829 regarding the mines, in which the state encouraged individuals to acquire of the mines by granting them as private property under the protection of the law, in order to give them greater performance. This meant that Bolivarian thought encouraged the entrepreneurial spirit of the bourgeoisie, instead of just being a conservative and regressive regime.

In addition, this group vindicates the notorious influence of liberal authors of the Enlightenment in Bolívar's thought (by his own testimony), such as Montesquieu, Barthélemy Mercier de Saint-Léger, René-Aubert Vertot, Charles Rollin, Jean-Baptiste Louis Crevier, among others. In addition, through Francisco de Miranda, he may have also had contacts with James Mill, John Jay, Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Jacques Pierre Brissot, among other liberal figures who sympathized with the cause of his bourgeois revolution.

Also, in a letter from Bolivar to Santander, from 1825, in response to attacks that accused him of not having an intellectual formation, Bolivar declares the influence he has of multiple liberal authors of modern philosophy, with these words: “Certainly I did not learn the philosophy of Aristotle, nor the codes of crime and error; but Mr. De Mollien may not have studied Locke, Condillac, Buffon, Dalambert, Helvetius, Montesquieu, Mably, Filangieri, Lalande, Rousseau, Voltaire, Rollin, Berthot (...) and all the modern classics of Spain, as much as I have. France, Italy and a large part of the English…”.Bolívar's personal secretary, Colonel Santana, even made a list of works that Bolívar wanted to take for his trip to Upper Peru, via Cuzco, being the complete list: “The Spirit of the Encyclopedia; the works of Helvetius [Helvetius]; all the works of Abbe de Pradt; the works of Madame de Stäel; Memorial of Count Las Cases; Montholon Memoirs; Italian campaign; Works of Napoleon; Bertrand works; diplomatic handbook; An Atlas: Montesquieu and his Tracy Commentary; Filangieri and his commentary; Bentham”. Where the influence of liberal philosophers in Bolivarian thought is emphasized again, in addition to the fact that this interest in re-reading the philosophers who influenced his ideology would be because in that year of 1825, he was “collecting materials” to draft a constitution “very strong and very liberal” (as stated in a letter to Santander)for the proclamation of the Republic of Bolivar.

It is also known that Bolivar had correspondence with contemporary liberals, such as the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and Archbishop Dominique Georges Dufour de Pradt (condemned by the Catholic Church for his liberalism), with whom he shared ideas, even after his dictatorial turn of 1825.

In view of this, Bolivar opted for a strong constitutional power for which, although he adopted an authoritarian style (even though his policy was intended to establish the principles of liberalism), that was because Bolivar was willing to end feudal privileges and to leave the ground free so that capitalism can develop, seeking to establish demo-liberal principles in the long term. Pablo Macera would explain it based on how, in the Peruvian situation, his republican dictatorship of Bolivar was the liberal-radical proposal, as opposed to the monarchical project of San Martin, which was a moderate-liberalism (even conservative in that context), for being coopted from a philo-traditionalist and stately conception of life to appease the Peruvian aristocracy and realistic popular sectors (such as the Iquichanos and other indigenous communities) which San Martin was not willing to subjugate politically in the short term, but Bolivar was., even if that earned him the antipathy of the Peruvian masses, who had a more reactionary socio-political tendency, being the cause of a certain Anti-Peruvianism.

Bolivar understood it better than San Martín. Bolivar’s denounced ‘anti-Peruvianism’ only expressed its relentless conviction that political independence must be completed by a revolutionary social change that replaced feudal structures by a liberal, bourgeois, capitalist model. He also thought that South American capitalist development was impossible if the disappearance of the Spanish empire dismembered its provinces and caused a new dependence on behalf of Europe or the United States. For this double reason he fought the Creole nobility and weakened the peasant communities, both pre-capitalist solidarity. And he opposed provincial nationalisms to create a large South American State in its replacement. In their geopolitical scheme there were only 5 units within the New World. USA, Mexico, La Gran Colombia (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia), Brazil and Argentina.
Pablo Macera

Criticism of the concept of Bolivarianism

Bolívar himself, in a letter to Santander, dated February 21, 1826, writes: "[...] My example can be of use to my country itself, since the moderation of the first boss will spread among the last and my life will be his rule. The people will adore me and I will be the ark of their covenant [...].

Several authors consider Bolivarianism as part of a cult of personality motivated by political ends that had little to do with Bolívar's ideas. Caballero considers that Bolivarianism has been able to develop above all due to a profound ignorance of history. In his work Why am I not a Bolivarian?, Caballero analyzes the

[...] elements of the Bolivarian cult that enthrone more easily in the fascist "political religion"...under the domination of a man who is intended the Prophet of the only God of the official religion of the country that was once called the Republic of Venezuela and today "Bolivarian Republic".

Caballero refers to how the Italian fascist movement had already used the figure of Bolívar. Thus, Minister Giuseppe Bottai writes that "fascist Italy glimpses in Simón Bolívar a temperament extremely close to our political sensitivity. Bolívar is not only a Liberator, but also and above all a man of arms, a condottiero. Fascism honors in him who has known how to keep the pernicious Jacobin and materialist influence away from the New World".

For Caballero and other historians, Bolívar is a complex character who evolved from the Congress of Angostura, where a mixture of liberalism and conservatism is still seen, until the moment he created the Bolivian Constitution and finally the moment when Bolívar he declares himself Liberator-President in 1828. By the end of his life, Bolívar would have become a deeply conservative.

Natalio Botana, faced with this way of thinking so often contradictory from the liberal to the conservative, defined Bolívar as a “frustrated architect of mixed governments imposted in the republican form”.

For critics within the old left, such as Ignacio Torres Giraldo, Bolívar was presented as someone reactionary (especially in his last years of government as dictator), who destroyed the few anti-colonial reforms that were they would have carried out. Envisioning it in a very different way than the Bolivarian ideology of the Simón Bolívar Guerrilla Coordinator imagined it.

As for the liberal school, Roberto Botero Saldarriaga and Luis Eduardo Nieto Arteta believed that the political repression associated with Bolívar's dictatorial regime had been "absolutely regressive" and unworthy of the Liberator, who had allowed himself to be influenced by some clergymen and a militaristic caste and "I furiously surrendered to destroy" the achievements obtained by Francisco de Paula Santander.

Other critics of Bolivarianism argue that the long eleven-year dictatorship of Simón Bolívar over Gran Colombia did not produce substantial or very significant changes in favor of the peoples of this republic, nor did it inherit great material progress or prosperity to the countries successors to this union that Bolívar founded.

On the other hand, since Bolívar is a member of the Venezuelan Creole upper bourgeoisie, he has been considered a champion of the interests of this social class, so he will never directly attack the interests of the big landowners (which could be contrary to the well-being of society) and his opposition to the mercantilist economy of the Spanish metropolis would not have been so much for moral reasons of social reform, but for utilitarian and Machiavellian reasons to achieve free trade with the British Empire. In addition, despite the first signs of the problem of the concentration of property, Bolívar backed down from the agrarian reform, so that the indigenous communities entered the cycle of poverty, forcing them to sell their lands to rich criollos. Which would make the Chavista discourse of a Bolívar concerned about social justice anachronistic.

Examples of this unconditional defense of the criollo economic elites in the economic sphere occur when it allowed them to pay in kind the interest of ecclesiastical censuses that tilled the land on the haciendas (receiving products that they did not need and that most of the time they could not sell), satisfying the interests of large landowners at the expense of the clergy. Therefore, the approach of the regime with the Catholic Church was not unconditional and that the landowners mattered more than the priests. Also the fact that the decrees seeking the restoration of the "minor convents" (which Bolívar previously suppressed in the Cúcuta congress in 1821 in a Confiscation policy to use said properties for state education) was not applicable to buildings that were being used as schools and hospitals, among other properties that were already being exploited by the state or the business community of Gran Colombia, in addition to not returning the income that before legitimately belonged to the convents that were restored, because that would have harmed the landowners. Bolívar, answering Daniel Florencio O'Leary for his disagreement with the restoration of the convents, declared that "it is necessary to oppose religious fanaticism to the fanaticism of demagogues", being very contemptuous of the Catholic community that he wanted to get closer to.

These anticlerical tendencies of the Bolivarian regime would also be an argument against attempts by some Catholic nationalists, such as Germán Borregales or Francisco Franco, to conceive Bolívar's thought as one that was firmly guided by the social Doctrine of the Church, based on the decree (very late) by which the government should promote and protect Catholicism as the religion of Colombians, since the Sacred Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Business of the Vatican, on August 4, 1829 (where the Roman cardinals and Pope Pius VIII participated) had set:

«In relation to the figure of Bolivar, I observe that all their assurances and protests for the Catholic religion should not be believed since the relations that exist about his religiosity and attachment to the holy headquarters are totally contrary to those which he manifested to the archbishops and bishops (...) that his conduct [of Bolivar] had sought the opinion of him liberal and atheist».

That would have been an implicit excommunication of the figure of Bolívar and condemning his regime (and consequently, its ideology). In addition to not responding to the church's request from Gran Colombia to the right of patronage. Motivated by Rome, both by the recognition of Fernando VII of Spain as the legitimate ruler of America, and by his constitutional silence of Gran Colombia regarding the state religion. For this reason, the pro-clericalism of the dictatorship (in its stage late 1827-1830) would have been mostly a political tactic rather than a sample of Bolívar's sudden conversion to the more orthodox traditionalist Catholicism. the origins of the royal patronage of the Indies in natural law. The first school, the "regalistas", who maintained that the royal patronage of the Indies was of secular origin, thus being an inherent and integral part of temporal sovereignty. The second school, the "canonists" or & # 34; ultramontanistas & # 34;, argued that the patronage originally was not secular, but spiritual, and was founded solely on the pontifical concessions that Alexander VI, Julius II and their successors granted to the Spanish monarchs. In the controversy with the republics of Spanish America, the papacy, in order to reaffirm its legitimate authority over the church in America, and based on the Doctrine of the two swords of political Augustinism, I consider the ultramontane theory correct, that is, that the Patronato de Indias was originally a concession, therefore not inherent to sovereignty, and consequently, not inheritable by the republics. Therefore, those who defended the regalist position were heretics, and among them would be Bolívar due to his authoritarian and heterodox political tendencies against the Thomistic scholastic law, incompatible with the Catholic enlightenment of which Bolívar was a supporter (this conservative and moderate current of the Enlightenment was seen by Rome as a vulgar attempt to syncretize the Catholic conception of politics with the English Freemasonic and Protestant philosophies). In the eyes of the church, Bolívar's Caesarism would not be very different from the absolutism he opposed, which is why the Papacy preferred the return of the traditional Monarchy to America. Finally, it should be remembered that the Bolivarian army on multiple occasions came to loot churches (especially during the independence of Peru) with Bolívar's total indifference to the claims of priests such as José Sebastián de Goyeneche y Barreda, who criticized the Bolivarian policies as foreign to the teaching of the Church due to its extremely secularist tendencies. Bolivarian nationalism was also accused of hypocrisy, because when Bolívar opposes slavery and insists on the "mixed" Indian, European and African origins of the Latin American nation, he came to say, in a correspondence to the British, that:

"From all countries, South America is perhaps the least suitable for republican governments, because its population is formed by Indians and blacks, more ignorant than the vile race of the Spaniards of which we have just emancipated."

In addition, regarding a Bolivarianism sympathetic to the Afro-American cause, the development of such a thesis would be controversial when his family owned about 800 slaves, whom he freed in 1816 (but he still personally owned about 2000 slaves, whom he of which he would only free 6), in addition to not fulfilling his promise to Alexandre Pétion (president of Haiti who helped him in his military campaigns) to free all the slaves, definitively and unconditionally, once he expelled the Spanish, since the Slavery was fully abolished in Venezuela only in 1856 (26 years after his death). While Carúpano's decree of June 2, 1816 proclaimed “absolute freedom for slaves”, it was only under the condition of joining the republican army, since article 1 establishes that:

"Every rugged man, from the age of 14 to the age of sixty, will be introduced... to join the flags of Venezuela."

And article 3 also establishes that:

"The new citizen I refused to take the weapons to fulfill the sacred duty to defend his freedom, subject to servitudenot only he but also his children under 14 years of age, his wife and his elder parents."

Also, 25 days later he would make ranting comments to the slaves for doubting his words, with words like:

"I have proclaimed the absolute freedom of the slaves; the tyranny of the Spaniards has put it in such a state of stupidity and printed in their souls so great of terror that they have lost until the desire to be free! Many of them have followed the Spaniards".

The German historian, Michael Zeuske, would then consider Bolivarian thought to have been "rancid and slave-owning aristocrat". Many analysts of the liberator's career conclude that Bolívar was in favor of abolitionism, not so much for moral issues about justice and freedom, but rather for the purpose of facilitating the obtaining of black and liberal recruits for his army according to the circumstances of the moment. more concerned with avoiding a slave rebellion like the Haitian revolution (by involving them in internecine wars that would reduce their population and threat) than achieving complete abolition (because it was detrimental to the interests of the landowners). Bolívar himself would say that the freedom of blacks was not a human and natural right, but rather a condition to be achieved by the black community (in addition to considering it unfair that free men die for slaves, as it is a cause that it was not his), as he says in a letter he sent to Santander on April 18, 1820:

"Is it fair that only free men die for emancipating slaves? Will it not be useful for these to acquire their rights in the battlefield, and to diminish their dangerous number by a powerful and legitimate means?"

Although one has the idea of Bolívar as the liberator of black slaves, the reality would be that his "liberation" It was always based on conditioning and particular interests. Meanwhile, the discourse of a Bolivarian thought, sympathetic to the indigenous cause, is something that is considered antithetical to Bolívar's true opinion on the Indians, influenced by the "myth of the Good Savage" of enlightened scientific racism, and by which Bolívar believed that the autonomy of the indigenous people, who had inherited from the colonial regime with the Republic of Indians, should end through their integration into the nation, under the discourse of Equality before the law to camouflage strong prejudices against indigenous people in their national project.

Examples of these prejudices against the Indians would occur with the episode of Black Christmas, in which the Bolivarian army would have carried out a genocide full of looting and barbarism against the royalist Pasto, which Bolívar considered that said population, due to its staunch defense of the Hispanic Monarchy in America, expressed the epitome of all the anti-liberal defects of the indigenous people of the countryside and their "servile mentality". Dictatorship in Peru (Bolívar had a deep anti-Peruvian aversion for reasons similar to his aversion to the Pastusos, since the Royal Army of Peru had been the counterrevolutionary bulwark of the entire South American continent), for which he imprisoned or shot indigenous guerrillas who they had helped him in the campaigns in the sierra. To the indigenous people, to whom he dedicated his worst insults (with phrases like: "Los Quito and Peruvians are the same thing: vicious to the point of infamy and base to the extreme. Whites have the character of the Indians, and the Indians are all truchimanes, all thieves, all liars, all false, without any moral principle to guide them".), he reimposed the indigenous tribute on them (which had been abolished in the viceroyalty with the constitution of Cádiz) and weakened their peasant communities with the abolition of the Cacicazgos in the young Republic of Peru, thus definitively breaking a hierarchical system of the Inca nobility that had been present, for several centuries in Peru, for the protection of the economic interests of the Indian against a nascent Gamonalism on the part of the Creoles of the Spanish Republic. Another measure that made him detested by the indigenous people were the appraisals made in the midst of the war chaos, without control and many times by officials who were members of the Creole aristocracy or bought by it, which allowed the individual division of their communal lands and their purchase by the landowners. (He would do the same in Bolivia, earning him the criticism of contemporary Indianists in that country), in addition to restoring indigenous tributes, mitas, and pongueajos to help Peruvian finances. Likewise, he restored slavery to blacks and browns (which had been abolished by San Martín) for the benefit of the sugar plantations of the hacendados and landowners of the coast.

Regarding the speeches about the figure of Simón Bolívar where the importance of independence to concretize national sovereignty is emphasized, where his fight against the Spanish monarchy was interpreted as an archetype of fight against any foreign influence. This interpretation of Bolívar's thought would be criticized, for being undermined by his documented dependence on British power, the main world power at that time. For historian James Dunkerley, "there are no serious grounds on which to base Bolívar's anti-imperialist thought, except with regard to Spain".

Contenido relacionado

Más resultados...