With great solemnity and in the presence of several cabinet ministers, the tomb of Simon Bolivar (1783–1830), Latin America’s equivalent of George Washington, was opened in Caracas this past week.
“Bolivar is alive. Let us not see him as a dead man and let us not see him as a skeleton. He is like lightning, like a sacred fire,” Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez proclaimed.
The first question to ask is why this zeal for a new forensic investigation? It is a situation akin to President Obama ordering President Lincoln’s remains exhumed to see if he was actually assassinated by John Wilkes Booth or France’s Nicholas Sarkozy opening Napoleon’s tomb to prove the Emperor was poisoned by the English. It is an action that does little to help the Venezuelan people as they battle economic stagnation, mounting insecurity, and loss of liberty.
For Chávez, Bolivar is a secular saint, a living symbol of Latin American nationalism and independence, and the embodiment of anti-Americanism. For the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution or Socialism of the 21st Century, Bolivar is to be revered in the same way Bolshevism’s chief architect Vladimir Lenin was venerated by the Soviets or Castro is exalted by Cuban communists. Chávez’s misuse of Bolivar’s historical personage has been previously documented and his fascination with combative historical myths appears boundless and not entirely rational.
Chávez theorizes Bolivar, died not a result of tuberculosis, but as victim of foul play, perhaps arsenic poisoning. Attention focuses on Bolivar’s chief political rival, Francisco de Paula Santander. But looking at Bolivar’s last days one also discovers that a U.S. naval surgeon George MacNight was among the last physicians to attend the dying Liberator. Others point to a certain Captain Issac Mayo who was believed to have been on secret mission for the U.S. in Colombian waters. Hence the improbable but conspiratorial possibility that Chávez will soon assert President Andrew Jackson and the U.S. are to be implicated in Bolivar’s death.
In his last public message, Bolivar lashed out at his enemies. “My enemies,” he proclaimed, “exploited your credulity and destroyed what is most sacred to me—my reputation and my love of liberty.”
It is the fate of leaders who betray the Liberator’s principles and make an assault on liberty that should most worry Chávez—not some historical whodunit.
Chavez is a funny little fart, isn’t he? When does he come to offer his opinions on how we should govern our borders? I’ll bet his advice is as good as Calderon’s.
Chavez is grasping at anything that can keep him in office by diverting attention and keeping people in wonderment and confusion.
His cabinet uses him in a maner that is entertaining to them and keeps their jobs.
Chavez Thinks he is getting first class worldly advice.
The prblem is he is so gullible he has become unpredictable and dangerous to everyone around him and the world.
He see himself as a Hitler , Castro, a Lenin, and a living god.
A more apt comparison would be the 1991 Exhumation of President Zachary Taylor. Author Clara Rising was convinced that the 12th president had been poisoned. They did not find a toxic level of arsenic in his remains as Ms. Rising had hoped. Still, many people speculate that "Old Rough & Ready" was assassinated for his opposition to secession and his pledge to lead the army from the front as commander-in-chief of the United States if any of the Southern States tried to leave.
As a Colombian, I am angry–enraged even–that Chavez would desecrate Bolivar's remains to add to his circus act and detract from the real problems in his country: The Venezuelan economy is expected to have a negative 3 percent growth next year. I know many Latin Americans who associate Bolivar as a type of Jesus; we are lethargic people but how much of this can we stand?
http://talkingaboutcolombia.com/2010/07/20/we-sho…
You people exaggerate too much… how you possible can believe that he is a treat to this world…. What he really is a treat to American domination you like it or not that’s how things are and will be. I do not like or dislike Chavez politicians are the same in every part of the world. NOW I do not find nothing wrong for Chavez to look at Bolivar’s body because if we need to know really how Bolivar died, there are books that says that he died one way and there are others who said he died in a different way… so stop being so exaggerated please.
Very misleading title. The author only ASSUMES that Chavez will blame Andrew Jackson for murdering Simon Bolivar, but Chavez never did.