Hero

"In his veins ran the purest blood of our forefathers, surcharged with the bracing airs of the new world. His courage was that of the American jaguar and of the dauntless globe-circling conquistadors. For integrity he was another Gibraltar, for vision a sun-regarding eagle, for aspiration a Napoleon, a Caesar. . . . Generous, high-minded, inflexible of will and purpose. . . . The century's, yes, all the centuries' hero! . . ."

Despatches failed to reproduce the phrases--but doubtless they rang on this note--of Jose Munoz-Cota, 19, of the National Preparatory School of Mexico (Mexico City) who last week vanquished representatives of five other districts of Mexico in an oratorical contest with a ten-minute oration on "Bolivar and Latin-American heroes." Other things that Jose must have referred to about Bolivar--things that made him not merely Bolivia's but Colombia's and Peru's and indeed all Latin-America's George Washington-Napoleon-Mussolini--are:

That Simon Bolivar, long-legged, unruly young Venezuelan aristocrat, after dismaying his provincial tutors, went to study in Madrid, married at 18, returned to Venezuela where his bride died of yellow fever. He foreswore domestic life and plunged--after another visit to Napoleon-dominated Europe and a trip through the U. S.--into the serious business of liberating Central America from the tyranny of its Spanish monarch.

For two furious decades his impetuous voice and heron-like countenance were heard and seen in the thickest of thick fighting, plot and counterplot, through jungles, over the lofty Peruvian sierras, among the Caribbean Islands; until Venezuela and New Granada were liberated as the republic of Colombia; until upper Peru became Bolivia (1825) and the rest of that country was a free republic.

Long president of Colombia, Bolivar wrote the first Bolivian constitution, giving its president a life term and the right of appointing his own successor. Often accused, even by his friend and colleague Santander, of desiring absolute power for himself, he was sustained in perpetual office until his death (1830, aged 47) by the votes of his countrymen. He lavished nine-tenths of a fortune enormous for its day upon Latin American liberty, encouraged nationalism, arts, science. Few cities from Chile to Mexico are without his statue.