Current Events: The Bolivarian Revolution and Why It Is Important
Over on the Musings on History podcast, I’ve been doing a series called “The Lives of Three Generals” where I have been discussing the life and times of Julius Caesar, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and General Simon Bolivar. I just finished up the Tokugawa episodes and it has been a real eye opener for me. I’m discovering how “the times make the man” and how a culture in crisis can incubate the kind of transformative generals that these men were. Currently I’m writing and researching the final general of the series, Simon Bolivar, and discussing him seems even more relevant given what is going on in the world of geopolitics today.
Simon Bolivar was born into a wealthy criollo family in what is now Venezuela, and nothing about his early life and upbringing suggested that he would become a revolutionary, much less a revolutionary whose personal ethos and politic would inspire a leftist cultural and political revolution in his native country, 200 years later. Bolivar, like many men of his stature at this time, was sent abroad to Spain to be educated, later ending up in France. It was in France that young Bolivar was introduced to the ideas of the Enlightenment, which helped him form his nationalist identity as a man of the Americas, as opposed to being a Spanish criollo. (Criollo or Creole traditionally referred to Europeans born in the colonies. The term has since broadened and adopted several additional meanings.) Taking advantage of Spain’s involvement in the Peninsular War against Napoleon, Bolivar made his way back to Venezuela and seized upon nationalist feeling to start a revolution in 1808. He won several key victories in 1819 and 1821, culminating in the establishment of the Republic of Gran Colombia (present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, with smaller portions of what is now Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru).
Simon Bolivar was not the first man to attempt to oust the Spanish from South America, but he was definitely the most successful, and a large part of that stems from his ability to appeal across classes and racial groups. Spain had instituted a racial hierarchy in its colonies, similar to the Code Noir in the French Metropole, which gave social, economic, and political supremacy to those of European descent, disenfranchised the native Amerindian peoples, and enslaved Africans, leaving them with no rights. Simon Bolivar, himself the son of one of the largest slave owners in the Viceroyalty of Venezuela, was staunchly anti-slavery, which won him the undying loyalty of the slaves of Spanish America, who numbered around 11.2 million by 1819. He also ousted the Capuchin missionaries from Venezuela in 1817, whose mission had shackled some 100,000 Amerindians as indentured servants on their prosperous rubber plantations. Simon Bolivar understood that artificial class distinctions helped the Spanish maintain control over the Americas, and that only a pan-American revolution could secure independence.
Simon Bolivar himself was not a “leftist” by the modern definition (his favorite book was ironically, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations) but his legacy of pan-Americanism and militarism left an indelible mark on Central and South America that is still evidenced today. In February 1999, Hugo Chavez, who had unsuccessfully attempted a military coup in Venezuela in 1992, was elected President and promised an end to the fiscal policies that had been implemented after the Latin American debt crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Many governments in Latin America had adopted privatization policies and austerity measures in order to pay back their IMF loans, and the military dictatorships that controlled most of South America had attempted to silence dissent through disappearings and torture. Chavez and his MBR-200 movement promised to radically change Venezuelan politics, making it more transparent and responsive to the needs of all the Venezuelan people, not just the wealthy landed elites. What has followed has been a 20 year process of land redistribution, nationalization of Venezuela’s oil and gas industry, and the expansion of social welfare to reach the country’s poorest citizens.
All of this radical change has not come without criticism, some justified and some not. Chavismo, which is the interpretation of Bolivarianism by Hugo Chavez, claimed to support social welfare and and nationalization, but in the 1999 Constitution, private property was allowed in addition to social property (land maintained by the government for public use). Some private property was expropriated by the Venezuelan government in 2000, but international outcry forced the Bolivarian government to halt the land redistribution scheme in 2001. By allowing the continuation of private property, most of which is critically important agricultural land, Chavez and his government were unable to both honor the promises they made to the landowners to not expropriate their property, and honor their promises to the poor to give them land to farm. Chavez also scaled back his plans for nationalization of all major industries in Venezuela, and towards the end of his life, he authorized the sale of some Venezuelan oil and gas assets to foreign firms in an effort to continue to fund the social welfare policies many Venezuelans had come to depend on. When the global oil market crashed in 2008, Venezuela was plunged into debt along with most of the world’s economies, and the country is still trying to recover from the 2008 crash and the subsequent 2013 oil market crash. Many socialists in Latin America accused Chavez of being too willing to appease neoliberals, which his party had initially promised to resist.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Bolivarianism has been called “a corrupt, autocratic socialist model that threatens Latin American peace” (Military Review, 96, 53-67). Chavez and his movement rode in on a wave of anti-Americanism that had swept across Latin America in the 1990s, which were a result of heavy-handed US foreign policy in the region for decades. The United States via the Central Intelligence Agency, had sponsored military coups in most, if not all, of South America, and American-based multinational firms such as General Motors, Firestone Rubber, and Standard Oil had exploited South American resources and workforce, engendering a distrust for Americans that reached a fever pitch in the late 1990s. Chavez foreign policy was aimed at forming a Latin American consensus that relied on one another and excluded the United States, and foreign relations between Venezuela and the US continue to be hostile. After the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013, his successor Nicolas Maduro promised to continue the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, and with the election of US President Donald Trump in 2016, relations deteriorated to the point where the United States government has now openly funded and recognized Juan Gauido as President of Venezuela, despite Guaido choosing not to participate in the 2013 elections in Venezuela.
The Bolivarian Revolution may not resemble of the economic policies of Simon Bolivar, but its commitment to pan-Americanism, reduction of poverty, and resistance to foreign influence and rule certainly have roots in the life and legacy of El Libertador. Simon Bolivar remains an exalted figure across Central and South America, and while the “pink tide” of Chavez style leftism has faded considerably since 2009, the Bolivarian spirit of independence and self-determination remains strong.