This post is part of the Kluge Center’s 25 for 25, in honor of the Kluge Center’s 25th anniversary, celebrating 25 books that were written thanks to the Kluge Center’s support. Read the introductory post to the series here.
Simón Bolívar achieved the impossible. He led the successful liberations of six Latin American countries, navigating terrain ranging from crocodile-infested jungles to the frozen peaks of the Andes. He narrowly avoided two assassination attempts, thanks to the help of a mistress, endured great personal loss when his wife died at a young age, and suffered frequent defeats in battle. Despite never being a soldier or having any military training, Bolívar managed to defeat Spain, then one of the world’s great powers.
In Bolívar: An American Liberator (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2013), Marie Arana chronicles the extraordinary life and lasting legacy of the man known as “The Great Liberator” and often likened to the Latin American George Washington. At first, Arana questioned whether another Bolívar biography was necessary; after all, the Library of Congress alone holds more than 2,600 volumes about him. But as she examined the existing literature, she found that many accounts were in Spanish and either overly idealized or fiercely critical.
Bolívar was, as Arana puts it, a “controversial man” with a complicated legacy. While a champion of Enlightenment ideals, he also acted as a dictator on at least three occasions and has been invoked by modern strongmen like Hugo Chávez to justify authoritarian rule. He freed slaves a half century before the Emancipation Proclamation and was a dreamer who envisioned united sovereign nations across Latin America. Yet, he was violent as well: he executed a general of his own army and at one time ordered the massacre of 800 prisoners when he feared a prison uprising.
Determined to create a more balanced and human portrait, Arana grounded her biography in Bolívar’s own words, as well as on testimonies of witnesses from his time. As a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Kluge Center in 2009, she found a wealth of primary sources. In the Hispanic Division, she uncovered 32 volumes of Bolivar’s letters, chronicles from generals and soldiers who fought alongside him, accounts from travelers who witnessed his campaigns, and court documents detailing his difficult childhood as an orphan. In the Geography and Map Division, she discovered a fold-out graphic charting every kilometer Bolívar ever traveled, along with maps of his hometown. These sources allowed Arana to cut through myth and legend, offering vivid details about Bolívar’s character, as well as his dress, charisma, humor, and brash language.
Since his death, both the extreme left and the extreme right have sought to instrumentalize Bolivar’s legacy. As Arana explains, “we ensure his immortality by recreating him again and again.”
Bolívar: An American Liberator won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography in 2014 and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.
You can read Arana’s blog about Bolívar and his papers at the Library here and listen to her discuss her research here.
This post, and others in this series, does not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the views of the individual scholar or an endorsement of the publisher.