Venezuela’s famous (or, perhaps, infamous) “Bolivarian Revolution” has been in the spotlight lately as the country’s political crisis threatens to spiral into counterrevolution and civil war. Named for the great Liberator of northern South America, Simón Bolívar, the Bolivarian Revolution (or alternately Bolivarismo) is the name given to the the socialist reorganization of Venezuelan society begun by deceased President Hugo Chávez and continued by his successor, Nicolas Maduro, both of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela. This political process/ideology is also called simply “Chavismo”, in honor of its founder. In the two decades since the PSUV took power in Venezuela, the country’s economy has all but collapsed and Venezuela has been brought to point of extreme social and political upheaval. Whether you believe that the underlying causes of this crisis were US sanctions and interference from the CIA, or fatal flaws inherent in the socialist/Bolívarian ideology largely seems to depend on which conclusion confirms your priors the most. However, a discussion of the merits and demerits of the Venezuelan political economy is a subject for another time. Under discussion here something far more serious: branding. Or rather; why on earth is this socialist ideology named after the rather conservative Simón Bolívar of all people?
On the surface, dragging Bolívar’s name into this might seem to make a lot of logical sense. The man is, after all, called El Libertador, The Liberator. He fought and won the wars of independence that made New Granada (of which modern Venezuela was a part) free from Spanish imperial rule. The Bolívarian Revolution claims to, despite its close ties to Russia, associate itself strongly with anti-imperialism. And in a more general sense, it makes sense for a party that claims to give political and economic power to the disenfranchised poor to idolize someone with such a title.
But would Hugo Chávez and Simón Bolívar really be comrades? Would Bolívar be the great general of this 21st century revolution? Based on what we know about the man’s politics and background, this seems unlikely. Bolívar came from the upper rungs of elite Caracas society. In Spanish American society defined by a rigid racial caste system, the Bolívars belonged to a group called the criollos, or the creoles. These were people of European descent who were born in the Americas, and were second in the caste system only to the peninsulares (European colonists born in Spain). However, the creole and peninsular inhabitants of New Granada did not necessarily get along despite their shared European ancestry and elite status. Creole subjects of New Granada and the other Spanish American colonies were routinely passed over by the authorities in Spain for positions in the local administration in favor of people born in Europe, and creoles routinely felt slighted and misused by the far off government in Spain. This is the basic genesis of Bolívar’s desire to seek independence from Spain. Bolívar and his fellow creoles sought a political revolution, not a social revolution. They sought independence from Spain, but with creoles presiding over the existing social hierarchy.
In this respect, Bolívar could be compared to the leaders of the American Revolution, who won political independence from Great Britain but kept the social and economic order of the thirteen colonies intact. And in fact, Bolívar was a great admirer of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. However, he was in practice even more conservative than America’s founding fathers. Like many other independence-seekers in Spanish America, Bolívar considered Latin America to not yet be ready for American-style representative democracy. Indeed, in the post-independence constitution Bolívar wrote for Bolivia, Bolívar set out a system modeled on that of Great Britain: limited voting rights, a President who served for life, and a hereditary legislature (similar to the House of Lords). After independence was achieved, the modern states of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama were combined in a state called Gran Colombia. Bolívar had a hand in creating this system of government, which was highly centralist and featured a strong executive. And although he did not live to see the independence of Venezuela from Gran Colombia, he would have doubtlessly sought a similar system for that vast and diverse country. As we can see, Bolívar was not exactly a bringer of liberty to the oppressed of the Americas. Despite his wide reading and study of Enlightenment era political philosophy, and (or perhaps because of) the example of the political and social revolution which had occurred in France at the turn of the century, Bolívar remained throughout his life an advocate of an ideology which would eventually evolve into what we today would recognize as the right wing in Latin America: an ideology which emphasizes the need for order over political rights. Karl Marx said it best when he wrote of Bolívar that he was a “false liberator who merely sought to preserve the power of the old Creole nobility to which he belonged”.
So far I’ve intentionally left out any mention of the complicating factor of Bolívar’s position on the institution of slavery. To Bolívar’s everlasting credit, he was an abolitionist in a country which, pre-independence, was very much reliant on black slave labor. This is in stark contrast to the American Revolution, which maintained the legality of slavery in its post-independence constitution despite its rhetoric of liberty and equality. The abolition of slavery in post-independence Gran Colombia could, on its own, be considered enough of an achievement to give some truth to Bolívar’s claim to the title of Liberator. However, this achievement needs to come with a major asterix. It is a great deal easier to abolish slavery when your economy has been destroyed by years of war and your human and real property have been confiscated by the Spanish imperial authorities than it would be have been otherwise. There was simply less of a cost to be paid to abolish slavery in revolutionary New Granada than there would have been in the new United States.
The Chavistas invoke Bolívar’s name to lend legitimacy and prestige to their own movement. By linking their party to a beloved historical figure (of whom many Venezuelans know little of apart from general knowledge of his role in the wars of independence, his resplendent title of Liberator and his abolition of slavery), Chávez could give the impression that his party was fulfilling a vision laid out by Venezuela’s founding fathers. Bolívar is, of course, long since deceased, and has been for almost two hundred years merely a patriotic symbol of the nation of Venezuela. But symbols matter, and the deliberate misinterpretation by Chávez and his successors of the legacy of Bolívar is yet another example of the way in which dictators around the world seek to muddy the waters of political debate to further their own ends.
