Yet, the Bolivarian legend grows, changing in various ways to match the needs of the times, but durable, substantial, and resistant to the ravages of debunking and muckraking. Bolívar the legend lives on, stronger than almost any other heroic figure of his time. Bolívar outpaces San Martín, George Washington, or Miguel Hidalgo; remaining current and rhetorically relevant well beyond the reach of a European hero like Napoleon or such Latin American contemporaries as José Antonio Páez or Juan Manual de Rosas (figures with longer chronological trajectories and perhaps greater significance for the formation of their respective nations).

Discovering Bolívar as an outside observer, and engaging his legend through the process of more or less disciplined historical research, I too have wandered, amazed, through the extraordinarily extensive literature on Simón Bolívar and his times. What drives this intellectual obsession? What nurtures the Venezuelan national fixation on El Libertador? What informs the multinational Latin American engagement with this person? To be sure, Venezuelans have evolved the cultivation of the legend to a fine art, far surpassing any of their colleagues in the Bolivarian republics of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, or Peru. But even there, Bolívar lives in their histories, a current and future presence all out of proportion to the length of his engagement with their past. Nonetheless, the national commitment to the invention and reinvention of Bolívar sets Venezuela apart from its neighbors. Indeed, as German Carrera Damas demonstrated a generation ago, the Venezuelan obsession with the official heroic cult reflects an ideological pathology of unusual depth.

Like all such legends, Bolívar’s rises from an exceptional life in an exceptional time. When we scoff, as we moderns often do at the patriotic and enthusiastic exaggerations about Bolívar that run rampant through the Bolivarian bibliography, we can also fall into the overreaction of denying Bolívar’s moment its historical significance. Bolívar was real, his life and times occupied an important moment in the history of the Americas, and his trajectory deserves the attention of historians. The cults and mythmaking tell more about the history of Venezuela and its intellectual and political leaders than they do about object of their veneration. The result of generations of worship, weak in analytical depth but strong in documentary preservation and publication, provides us the optics to see through the swirling fog of self-interested politically inspired demagoguery to identify the historically interesting elements of Bolívar’s moment in world history.

Some explanations for the Bolivarian legends appear so obvious that we often skip past them, but perhaps should not. Hagiography requires, at a minimum, some lifetime of accomplishment to glorify. Bolívar survived the many vicissitudes of the independence movement and, unlike so many of his counterparts such as the great llanero caudillo Boves, or the exceptional Sucre, survived the battles and assassination attempts. Bolívar not only survived battles and assassinations, he also survived his defeats. Where others of his generation fought, failed, and slipped off the main stage, Bolívar fought, failed, and returned to fight: time and time again. Survival and persistence, while not sufficient for building the legends born of heroism, constitute fundamental requirements. A hero must survive and engage the game long enough to achieve a record that can drive the mythology that comes later.

Timing in history as well as in romance is crucial. A hero requires a heroic moment. A Simón Bolívar in the time of Miranda would likely not find the opportunities for heroic deeds, or like Miranda, his heroism would not provoke a sympathetic echo in the people. A Bolívar coming of age in 1840 would find the new republican stage of Venezuela far too limited for heroic behavior. An adult Bolívar in 1720 would not have been the legend we know, but instead might have suffered the fate of the precursors Pedro Gual and José María España and disappear into history’s footnotes.

For a hero, this timing is everything. If talent, vision, creativity and genius matter so, too, do the opportunities that history provides for their action. Today’s merchant prince could have been yesterday’s revolutionary leader had the opportunity and necessity appeared. Absent the opportunity, the merchant prince retires rich, leaving a legacy of accomplishment and other signs of intellectual and personal creativity, but not legendary behavior. For that we need an opportunity.

In history, accidents matter as well, although perhaps not on the large scale, for the independence of Spanish America was not an option but a process. Absent Simón Bolívar, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, along with the rest of continental Spanish America would eventually have left the Spanish empire, but not following exactly the same pattern. The process that we now study in its detail and in its character, owes much to the personal characteristics, the dreams and ambitions, and the abilities of the independence generation including Bolívar. They made the history we know, although others in their absence might also have made a similar history.

The critical accident for our story recognizes that a Bolívar married and fulfilling a family destiny would likely not have been the persistent compulsive risk taker whose charismatic successes and failures give his legend its power and effectiveness. Some heroes live too long, permitting the corrosive power of time and fate to diminish their moment. Heroism is the stuff not of generations but of moments. Bolívar's death in 1830, left his legacy of unfulfilled promise available for inspiration and imitation, unsullied by decades of pedestrian administrative institution building. History is unkind to those like José Antonio Páez who labor long. With time in the limelight, the chances of failure accelerate rapidly. Bolívar's brilliant decade of rise and fall gave us the romantic, the triumphant, and the tragic elements essential to an effective legend.

None of this takes anything away from the heroic nature of the Bolivarian experience, but it helps us recognize the fragility of this historical moment. In our hearts, we accept this truth. Indeed, this universal recognition of the delicate balance of opportunity, chance, risk, and human creativity adds intensity and focus to our image of Bolívar.

Historians, publicists, adventurers, demagogs and opportunists use many techniques to help us imagine that Bolívar and his achievement represent something permanent in the destiny of the Venezuelan people. We exaggerate the length of his historical moment by seeking in his early life signs of future greatness, in hopes, we think of identifying a solid, human predictability to the creation of a hero. We mark his emergence on the scene much earlier than our facts justify extending the time of his influence. We want to believe that the Simón Bolívar who participates as a marginal actor in the events of the First Republic in 1812 has already achieved the status of a major national figure.

We avoid the question, "Would a Bolívar struck down by a bullet in 1818 before the critical developments in Angostura in 1819 be our national hero?" No, of course not. He would have been one of the many important players of the time, significant as a representative of a class of actors but not identifiable as a transcendent leader. Not satisfied with our extension of the Bolivarian influence backward in time even into his childhood, we also extend his role forward in time well beyond the point of his influence. By projecting his impact timelessly and imaginatively into the future, we can imagine Bolívar driving the American agenda well beyond his death in 1830.

Many historians, and their readers, accept this extension of Bolívar’s real life forward and backward in time because they want to believe that heroism comes from the personal qualities and circumstances of the hero. We invent our heroes because we want to believe that we too can make history. We resist the notion that history, as the combined phenomenon of many interrelated but often independently driven series of events, defies simple individualistic explanations. If we see history as an inexorable flow of events, their directions and character determined not by what any one of us does but what we all do and by the accidents that occur along the way, then the promise of our own lives becomes less significant.

If, however, we can believe that those among us who become heroes do so by virtue of special qualities, identifiable in their early years, and played out almost inevitably in their lifetimes, we can achieve two contradictory, but satisfying explanations. On one side, that we see the world changed by individual action gives us reason to hope that within our own sphere we too can make an individual difference. On the other side, that the great heroes have unique characteristics identifiable at birth and played out inexorably over their lifetimes, explains why we ourselves do not become heroes. Our failure as heroes is not for lack of will but for lack of the opportunities and special genius that comes only to a few at rare moments in human history.

We do not mind the contradictions of our approach; for one of the human mind’s greatest talents is the capacity to sustain contradictory notions with great conviction. We want to believe that history responds to the actions of each of us as individuals and that our heroes arrive predestined to become what they are. The constructed Bolivarian legend nurtures both of these contradictory beliefs.

Simón Bolívar himself did much to help us with this process. Certain Bolivarian talents, trivial in some ways, nonetheless assist in creating the legend that is Bolívar. The man loved his words. He wrote everyone, all the time, about everything. Dictating to three scribes at the same time, three different letters on three different subjects, Bolívar’s verbal creativity produced a torrent of documents in a short time that even today, with technology that opens the floodgates of words, amazes us with its volume and variety. Recognizing this unique characteristic, generations of literary prospectors captured a substantial portion of this Bolivarian productivity, and in one way or another, they made most of it available to scholars, or in the hands of clever image makers, grist for the legend mill. Absent these materials, the work of studying the Bolívar legend would prove much more difficult. José Antonio Páez, in contrast, whose long public life produced only a fragment of materials compared to the avalanche of words and paper generated by Bolívar’s short career, left us little to work with were we interested in creating a Paecista legend.

More even than the volume of these materials, however, it is the content that gives us an opportunity to create the legend. Whatever else we want to say about Simón Bolívar, the man had a flexible, creative, and interesting mind. He cared and wrote about everything, from the mundane and essential issue of recruitment and management of foot soldiers to the cosmic discussion of global politics. Unusual among heroic figures of action, Bolívar’s writings reveal a man enthralled with the possibilities of his time and captivated by the opportunity history presented him. Self conscious of his own historical presence, as aware of how he would look from afar as he was of how he looked to his troops and contemporaries, Bolívar’s sense of himself in history nourished his messianic style. He is a man driven by a personal recognition of his own special place in human events. In other times, such drive and self-awareness can produce saints and martyrs, eccentrics and explorers. In the moment of Spanish American independence, it produced the charismatic héroe máximo.

All of these things create for us the context of heroic legend, but they do not create the hero. In the end, after we have accounted for all the variables, after we have dealt with the time, the place, the opportunities, and the accidents out of which our heroes appear, we must engage the individual. Simón Bolívar’s heroic image, exaggerated, distorted over the years in many different ways to serve many different contemporary political purposes, rests on an achievement we must capture. Many historians have sought this core truth of the heroic Bolívar and to greater or lesser degree, they all succeed and fail.

Charismatic heroes speak to their followers directly. The key characteristic of the charismatic caudillo is the personal touch, the sense that each of us knows this leader personally, that the leader, however far away, appears close to us and accessible, and speaks directly to us. We believe in the charismatic leader, not because intellectually we think he is right, although we may, and not because we expect him to succeed, although we may believe it true, but because his talent, charm, drive, intensity, success, and inspiration capture us. We expect him to deliver miracles for us, and we believe in him, with an intensity that carries us beyond failure and past disillusionment or defeat.

Bolívar like many other improvised leaders of the period had this charismatic talent. It rises from the same source as his own self-absorbed conviction that he stood at the center of world events, an idea he projected to his followers and through his writings even to us, skeptical moderns that we are. Unlike other charismatic contemporaries, however, Bolívar rested his vision on a shrewd and deep understanding of the structure of Atlantic commerce, trade, and power and on the political, diplomatic, and economic opportunities of an independent Latin America. His education and European experience, far superior to most of his contemporaries and surely exceed by practically none of the militarily successful caudillos of independence, allowed his messianic self-awareness to develop within a context of Atlantic real politics. As a result, he proved effective, capable of learning from his mistakes, and adept at taking advantage of his broader vision of world affairs. Skillful at speaking to his followers he proved masterful at providing appropriate if different and inconsistent messages to constituencies as diverse as the Haitian revolutionary leadership and the conservative British political elite.

Bolívar also had endurance and stamina, another characteristic of the successful charismatic caudillo. The harsh physical world of South America offered a stage for a heroic pace of constant travel by horseback, multiple military campaigns over difficult terrain, and incessant engagement in the politics and logistics of large-scale military and diplomatic efforts. As historians charted the Bolivarian itinerary, which when plotted on any map and viewed in terms of the primitive conditions and roads, overwhelms our modern imagination, the basis of the indestructible Bolivarian legends appears clearly. Success as a charismatic caudillo requires presence. Bolívar traveled endlessly on this large scale South American stage, appearing everywhere to reconnect his followers to the charismatic presence and confound his enemies, substituting his personal charismatic credibility for the structure of government and control he hoped would emerge in time.

Finally, Bolívar, unlike many charismatic leaders, had a purpose, a plan, and a goal. Not entirely clear at first, it appeared in the process of liberating Venezuela. This vision emerged from the understanding that he could not liberate Venezuela from Spanish imperial control except from a base in Colombia. It built on an understanding of the strategic importance of the Caribbean as a staging area for successive forays into the mainland. With Colombia and the Caribbean as context, Bolívar’s vision for independence expanded rapidly to recognize the organic nature of the Spanish imperial structure and the necessity of extending the process of independence to encompass Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and then in a flight of quijotesque romanticism, all of the Iberian colonial empire in America.

In many ways, of course, this extraordinary vision destroyed Bolívar’s historical moment. Charismatic caudillos, because they must stay in touch with their people, often succeed best in smaller geographic space where the leader can maintain the sense of personal identification that their followers demand. Bolívar’s vision, as it grew in scope, required his involvement in domains well beyond his ability to touch and therefore control. His correspondence, voluminous as it was, helped, but could not sustain the presence. His loyal lieutenants could carry the message but charisma itself is not transferable. In the later years, we find a Bolívar rushing from place to place, desperately attempting to maintain the charismatic linkages that supported his ambitions. Struggling to find a balance between the immediate realities of life in America and the meta-concept of his united American empire, he relied more and more on the power of his presence, hoping to buy the time required to build the base for his imperial creation. His charisma succeeded for the moments his followers and enemies could see and feel his presence, but as other crises pulled him hither and yon, the effect dissipated leaving the field to his enemies.

Bolívar wrote his vision into the physical record of letters, proclamations and other documents, giving us a much clearer perspective on his ambitions and goals than we usually expect from a caudillo. The grander his vision and the more international its reach, the less relevance it had to his charisma-inspired followers. They followed the man; he spoke to history. In the end, he lost the link that binds the charismatic and his followers. His enemies, with plans of their own that spanned not the continent but their immediate region, replaced Bolívar because their plans matched their resources and addressed the immediate issues of their people while Bolívar’s perspective transcended his own time and place. As his health failed and his plans proved far more ambitious than his contemporaries could sustain, Bolívar survived yet another opportunity to die at the hand of his enemies, slipped off the active historical stage, and took the road to Santa Marta to die of natural causes along the way.

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