Chávez's "Simón Bolívar"

Episode 16  |  What was actually “Bolivarian” about Hugo Chávez’s revolution? 

This episode examines the Liberator Chávez worshipped, the historical Bolívar hidden beneath Venezuela’s national mythology, and the political ideas the two men truly shared. Bolívar was no socialist—but he may have had much more in common with Chávez than either man's admirers understood. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

There's one name that appeared again and again in almost every speech Hugo Chavez ever gave. A name he transformed into the name of his revolution. The name of a man inseparable from Venezuela itself. A man every Venezuelan knows, but perhaps very few truly understand. Simón Bolívar.

unknown 0:41

Bolívar.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

From the beginning, Chavez was obsessed with Bolívar. The clandestine movement he helped create from within the Venezuelan Armed Forces was called the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement. Bolívar was more than an inspiration. He was the guiding light, the historical anchor of Chávez's movement. On the day he took power in 1999, Chavez opened his inaugural speech with a quote Dichoso el ciudadano. Blessed is the citizen who, protected by the arms under his command, convoca la Sovereign summons the nation to exercise absoluta. Its absolute sovereign will. It was Bolívar, and it was a revealing choice, the military leader standing beneath the protection of his weapons, calling the nation forward. By then, Bolívar had already been present throughout Chavez's 1998 presidential campaign, and he would remain present for the rest of his life. In Chavez's speeches, at his rallies, and in the future, he promised to build. Remember that Chavez was an avid reader. He had spent years studying hundreds of pages written by and about Bolívar, along with the lives of other military heroes from throughout Venezuelan history. He could quote paragraphs written by Bolívar from memory. Even when he was still an unknown officer conspiring from within the military, Chavez believed that the movement he was building was not merely inspired by Bolívar, it was a continuation of his legacy, a continuation of the struggle for Venezuelan independence itself. In Venezuela, Bolívar has long been more than a historical figure. His portrait hangs in schools, government buildings, and military installations. He was the liberator, the father of the nation. And all that was true long before Chávez. Chávez seized the national symbol and fused it with his own political project. He appropriated Bolívar's legacy so completely that eventually it became almost impossible to separate his name from Chávez and Chavismo. It was, after all, called the Bolivarian Revolution. But what was actually Bolivarian about it? That's a question we fail to answer in our study of Chávez. Because Chávez undoubtedly fashioned a new version of Bolivar that had never existed, but the version of Bolivar Venezuelans knew before Chávez was also an invention. A mythical hero, a man stripped of his contradictions, his immense ambition, and his dictatorial impulses. So who was Simon Bolivar? What did he actually believe? And when we strip away both versions of the myth, what, if anything, was truly Bolivarian about the so-called Bolivarian Revolution? Simón Bolívar was born on July 24, 1783, into an unimaginably wealthy family. His family had been established in Venezuela for more than two centuries, and the Bolívares were not merely aristocrats. They were among the wealthiest families in the entire colony. Bolívar's father died when he was only two years old. His mother died when he was nine. Bolívar and his siblings inherited plantations, mansions, mines, lands, and the enslaved people whose labor sustained that fortune. In other words, the Bolívares were the elite among the elite of colonial Venezuela. And it's impossible to understand Bolívar without understanding the society into which he was born. By the late 18th century, Venezuela was governed according to an elaborate racial hierarchy. At the top were white Spaniards born in Spain. Beneath them were the criollos, white descendants of Spaniards born in the Americas. The wealthiest criollos were known as Manduanos. They owned the largest estates, dominated local politics, and considered themselves Venezuela's natural ruling class. Simón Bolívar was born into the highest ranks of this mantuano elite. But the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans were not white griollos. About half the population belonged to a broad social-racial category known as Barros, people with varying combinations of European, African, and Indigenous ancestry. They occupied very different economic positions, but they shared a legal status beneath that of white griollos. Barados were excluded from universities, professions, public offices, and social honors. Colonial law told them what positions they could occupy, what titles they could use, and how far they could rise. But that hierarchy was beginning to come under pressure. Beginning in the late 18th century, some wealthy Bardos were allowed to pay the Spanish crown for legal privileges previously reserved for whites, to become, in remarkably literal terms, legally whiter. The Manduanos were furious. They openly opposed the policy because they understood what it threatened. Bardos constituted much of the population, and some were gaining wealth, education, and military experience. Now the Spanish crown was allowing a small number of them to challenge privileges the white elite regarded as exclusively their own. The Mantuanos wanted to preserve the socio-racial order on which their position depended. Then, in 1810, the Spanish Empire was thrown into crisis. Napoleon had invaded Spain, the Spanish king had been removed, and across the Americas, local elites began asking who possessed the authority to rule in his absence. So in April 1810, the criollo leadership of Caracas forced the Spanish governor from power. This was the beginning of the Venezuelan independence movement. But it did not begin as a mass uprising of the oppressed against colonial rule. It began as a rebellion led by the white criollo elites. And this created an enormous problem, because many Pardos, enslaved people, and rural Venezuelans, feared the Manduanos. For Manipardos, the Spanish crown, distant and self-interested as it was, appeared to offer greater protection against the local white elite than independence under Manduanos would. The independence movement began as a project led by white elites that had no intention of surrendering its racial and economic dominance. And I know what you might be thinking. Simón Bolívar, the celebrated liberator of South America, surely entered this conflict as the champion of the Pardos, the enslaved and the oppressed. But that's not what happened. Bolívar entered the revolution as a mantuano. The first republic promised independence from Spain, not a social revolution inside Venezuela. Bolívar was a member of the ruling elite, fighting in a revolution launched by that elite and rejected by much of the population it claimed to liberate. That first republic fell to Royalist forces in 1812, only a year after Venezuela formally declared independence. A year later, Bolívar returned at the head of a new army. His admirable campaign established the Second Republic, which also collapsed barely a year later, in 1814. Bolívar fled Venezuela, first to Cartagena, then Jamaica, and eventually Haiti. And Haiti changed him. Bolívar found himself in a country governed by black men, a republic created by enslaved people who had defeated their masters. Haiti's president, Alexandre Pétion, gave Bolívar weapons, money, ships, and soldiers to return to Venezuela. But Pétion demanded something in return. Bolívar had to abolish slavery in every territory he liberated. Bolívar agreed. But even as he moved towards abolition, he feared political rule by Venezuela's non-white majority. When Bolívar returned in 1816, the revolution began to change. He could no longer win a war led only by white criollos. Three years later, at the Congress of Angotura, he laid out his vision for a new republic. Bolívar defended a republican system divided into the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. But he wanted the executive branch to be extremely powerful. He also proposed a fourth branch of government, the moral power. Its job would be to supervise education, protect public virtue, and shape Venezuelans into responsible citizens. Bolívara spoke forcefully about equality. He called for the abolition of slavery and the end of legal distinctions based on race. But his understanding of equality was not the same as ours today. Bolívar believed that all men should be equal before the law, but he did not believe that all men were equally capable of governing. He believed some people were more educated, more virtuous, and more prepared to rule than others, and that the responsibility of those men was to guide the rest of society. The people would be sovereign, but they needed to be educated, disciplined, and led by an elite. Bolívar believed in liberation, but liberation directed from above. But if you ever heard Hugo Chavez talk about Bolívar, you would have no idea that this was the man he was talking about. Chavez fused Bolívar with almost every modern social justice cause. Bolívar was no longer simply a man who lived in the 19th century. He became an anti-imperialist, and eventually a socialist visionary. Here's Chavez speaking in front of Simón Bolívar's sarcophagus in the National Pantheon in 2010. There's no doubt about it. Except that there's plenty of doubt. In fact, the concept of socialism had barely existed when Bolívar's life was ending. But Chávez could take almost any sentence Bolívar had written or said and make it sound socialist. In my opinion, legislators. Is that the cornerstone of our new system?

SPEAKER_01 11:40

The very solidity of our new system depends immediately and exclusively on the equality established and practiced in Venezuela.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Socialism. Marx later wrote a scathing biographical article that portrayed Bolivar as vain, cowardly, and consumed by his desire for power. Not a revolutionary hero, but an authoritarian military leader trying to imitate Napoleon. Which directly contradicts Chavez's version of him. Bolívar didn't come here to be a new Napoleon.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Yes!

SPEAKER_00 13:01

He said it himself. I'm not Napoleon, and I do not wish to be him. Chavez did not discover the socialist Bolívar. He created him. But Chavez was not merely inspired by Bolívar. It went much deeper than that. One of his biographers reported that Chavez sometimes left an empty chair at meetings for the spirit of Bolívar. That story captures how Chavez understood his movement. Because Bolívar was not just a historical reference. His spirit was present, his struggle unfinished, and Chavez had been chosen to continue it. You could hear that devotion whenever Chavez spoke about him, reciting entire passages of Bolívar's writing from memory. In 2010, standing beside Bolívar's grave, Chavez became emotional. What a giant. What a giant you were, father. What a giant you are, our father Bolívar. You will forever be a giant. And sometimes it became difficult to tell whether Chavez was talking about Bolívar or himself. Between 1810, 1820, 1830, it was impossible to create a social revolution in these lands. The conditions didn't exist. But then he came, ahead of his time, as if he came from another planet. To try to do the impossible. Not Bolívar the man. Bolívar the symbol. Venezuela reduced him into an embodiment of national greatness. Ojustice, independence, and everything righteous about the nation. And once Bolívar represented everything good, any leader could claim his legacy and use it to legitimize their own rule. Chávez was not the first Venezuelan leader to do this. An endless succession of presidents, generals, and dictators had already claimed Bolívar's mantle way before him. But Chavez took it further than anyone else. And perhaps that's also where Chávez and Bolívar were more similar than either man's admirers would like to admit. Chavez had very little in common with Bolívar's economic ideas. But the two men shared a particular understanding of political power. Bolívar believed in republican institutions, but he imagined a republic guided by a powerful executive and supervised by men who were supposedly more educated and virtuous than the population beneath them. And as the republic he created began to collapse, Bolivar became convinced that only he could save it. In 1828, he suspended the constitutional order and assumed dictatorial powers. Chavez followed a remarkably similar path. His 1999 constitution promised a new constitutional republic, governed by institutions and a separation of powers. But once those institutions began to stand in the way of his revolution, Chavez took control of them. Both men came to believe that their exceptional leadership was necessary, that their revolutions were too important to be left at the mercy of ordinary politics. In both cases, preserving the revolution became indistinguishable from preserving their own power. So what made Chavez's revolution Bolivarian? Not socialism, not class struggle. What was genuinely Bolivarian was the idea of an unfinished struggle for national liberation, the belief that the republic had failed and needed to be founded again, and that only an exceptional leader, standing above the institutions he created, could guide the nation toward its promised future. In that sense, Ugorchaus may have been much more Bolivarian than even he understood. Thanks again for listening, and if you want to support the show and my work, you can find a link to my Patreon in the description. See you next week.