Before departing home to see new countries, we spend time trying to learn about the culture and history of the places we will visit. We soon learned that Latin American culture is not a favorite subject in North America. Finally, we found a highly praised biography of Simon Bolivar written by a Peruvian woman, Marie Arana. Insights from this book contributed immensely to our understanding —and conversations —about the current culture in Latin America. Most of what follows are excerpts or direct quotes from that book.

Simon Bolivar was born a wealthy “Creole”, a descendent of Spanish aristocracy. Only native born Spaniards could govern Latin America on behalf of Spain, ensuring both that Spanish colonial officials would always be loyal to the Spanish king and that no Latin born aristocrat could learn governing skills. Creoles could and did accumulate great wealth as plantation owners and organized a second class aristocracy.

Bolivar was orphaned as a child and inherited a $12 million fortune from his family’s holdings. Raised by “pardo” mixed race servants while being shuttled between relatives, he grew up understanding the language and culture of Latin America’s rapidly expanding mixed race population. Today mixed race individuals comprise more than half of the Latin American population.

Tutored by a radical thinker in France as an adolescent, he witnessed the rise of the Napoleonic Empire. Bolivar was disgusted by Napoleon: “He made himself emperor, and from that day on, I looked upon him as a hypocritical tyrant, an insult to liberty and an obstacle to the progress of civilization. . . . What terrible feelings of indignation this sad spectacle produced in my soul, possessed as it was by a fanatical love of liberty and glory! From then on I could not abide Napoleon.”

Bolivar also studied the success of the US in establishing democracy. In her book, Arana compared Simon Bolivar with George Washington: “Bolívar’s military action lasted twice as long as Washington’s. The territory he covered was seven times as large and spanned an astonishing geographic diversity: from crocodile-infested jungles to the snowcapped reaches of the Andes. Moreover, unlike Washington’s war, Bolívar’s could not have been won without the aid of black and Indian troops; his success in rallying all races to the patriot cause became a turning point in the war for independence. It is fair to say that he led both a revolution and a civil war.”

Married at 18 and almost immediately widowed, he buried his wife with his christening gown as a testament that he would never marry again or have children. His grief was profound and transformative. By age 20, he had resolved to liberate Latin America from Spain.

There were three major barriers to Latin American independence from Spain:
1) The ruthlessly observed system of racial dominance put in place by the Spaniards. At the top were the Spanish-born, crown-appointed overseers; below them, the Creoles—whites, born in the colonies—such as Simon Bolívar. After that came the pardos, an ever burgeoning mixed-race population that was either mestizo, part-white, part-Indian; or mulatto, a mixture of white and black; or sambo, a combination of black and Indian. As in most slave societies, labels were fashioned for every possible skin color: quadroons, quintroons, octoroons, moriscos, coyotes, chamisos, gíbaros, and so on. For each birth, a church registry would meticulously record the race.
Ironically, black slaves were imported after Spanish priests expressed concern about the mistreatment of the indigenous population. In the course of a little more than two hundred years, an estimated one million slaves were sold into South America by the Portuguese, Spanish, and English, to be disdained as the lowest rung in the human hierarchy.
2) Spain’s absolute control of its colonies over 300 years of authoritarian reign had left the natives of Latin America “hungry for liberties, yet unaccustomed to freedom; resourceful, yet unacquainted with self-rule; racially mixed, yet mistrustful of whatever race they were not…. “Divide and subjugate” had been the rule. Education had been discouraged, in many cases outlawed, and so ignorance was endemic. Colonies were forbidden from communicating with each other, and so—like spokes of a wheel—they were capable only of reporting directly to a king. There was no collaborative spirit, no model for organization, no notion of hierarchy.”
3) The power struggles in Europe took priority over support for Latin American revolution, and the Eurocentric United States just couldn’t identify with the complexities of a combined civil and liberation war. In discussing Bolivar’s request for support, John Adams wrote “You might as well talk about establishing democracies among the birds, beasts, and fishes as among the Spanish American people.”

Bolivar led four separate successful military revolutions—but none could be sustained by the subsequent Latin American leadership. By the time of his death, Bolivar had “come to believe that Latin Americans were not ready for a truly democratic government: abject, ignorant, suspicious, they did not understand how to govern themselves, having been systematically deprived of that experience by their Spanish oppressors. What they needed, in his eyes, was a strong hand, a strict executive.” Destroying his legend and popularity was essential to those wishing to become that strict executive.

Bolivar died in December 1830 “penniless, powerless, and dispossessed” leaving a continent soon to be free of Spain’s control. His revolution stood to inherit all the abandoned riches of a waning empire. It would also inherit a whirlwind of political and social chaos, much of which continues today in the complexity that is Latin America.