Liberator

MAN OF GLORY: SIMON BOLIVAR--Thomas Rourke--Morrow ($3.50).

For millions of South Americans the greatest man who ever lived was Simon Jose Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad Bolivar y Palacio, liberator of Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Panama. Simon Bolivar (pronounced See-moan Bow-lee-var) has inspired litanies like those to the saints. His tomb at Caracas--the "Pantheon"--is almost as much a religious as a national shrine. Venezuela's President Contreras reputedly goes there to pray.

North Americans not only do not share this hero-worship, they probably know less about Bolivar than about any national hero in history. Such ignorance, thinks capable Biographer Rourke (Gomez: Tyrant of the Andes), is a gauge of "a century of misunderstandings and suspicions between the two Americas." A knowledge of Bolivar, he believes, would go far to explain South Americans' history and temperament, particularly their tendency toward dictatorship. For it was that tendency which set Bolivar's main problems, finally wrecked his great dream of a pan-American union.

From his young manhood, no prophet could have predicted Bolivar's future. Heir to one of the biggest fortunes in Venezuela (his childhood income was around $20,000 a year), this slight, hot-tempered, handsome young Creole aristocrat was the pampered darling of his family, at 17 began his conquests in the salons and boudoirs of Europe (Queen Maria Luisa of Spain was rumored one of the many). Then suddenly he left on a walking tour with his old tutor, a votary of Rousseau and the Greeks. Three months later, in Italy, Bolivar made his melodramatic vow to free the Spanish colonies in South America.

He was then 23. Within the next 19 years he fought nearly 500 battles, over an area almost the size of the U. S., twice fled to exile after complete disaster, made his comeback in some of the most spectacular forced marches and brilliant battles in military history. Simultaneously he battled his compatriots to establish a democracy which would be foolproof against dictatorship.

Wearing an old blue jacket and forage cap, affectionately nicknamed "Culo de Hierro" (Iron Arse), Bolivar would suddenly break the tedium of a march by challenging his companions to outjump him. He liked to dance with female camp followers around the campfire, would break off abruptly to dictate (in Spanish, French or English) his fast, polished sentences to a secretary. He pardoned his venal aides, refused to feather his own nest, praised his generals unstintedly. He deliberately resigned as Supreme Chief in order to discourage dictatorship.

But when he was away his generals began plotting to junk the Constitution. Five years after military victory the new republics were chasing after dictators faster than Bolivar could run. When Colombia started a counterrevolution and his beloved General Sucre was assassinated Bolivar wrote: "All who have served the Revolution have ploughed the sea."

The end came shortly afterwards, on December 17, 1830. Wasted to skin & bone, coughing blood, racked with hemorrhoids, the 47-year-old Liberator cried out in his last delirium: "Jose! Bring the luggage. They do not want us here!"

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