Modern World History

General Simón Bolívar(1783-1830), called El Liberator, and sometimes the George Washington of Latin America, was the leading hero of the Latin American independence movement. His victories over Spain won independence for Bolivia, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Bolívar became Columbia's first president in 1819. In 1822, he became dictator of Peru. Upper Peru became a separate state, which was named Bolivia in Bolívar's honor, in 1825. The constitution, which he drew up for Bolivia, is one of his most important political pronouncements. Today he is remembered throughout South America, and in Venezuela and Bolivia his birthday is a national holiday.

Sixteen nations emerged from the violent and cataclysmic wars of independence in Spanish America in the early nineteenth century. In overturning Spain's control of the Americas, such great military leaders as Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin unleashed both civil wars and revolutions between 1810 and 1824. The liberators set themselves up to govern the new states they created but quickly failed as rulers. They succumbed, in part, to change resulting from independence itself - a new political order." "Clearly laid out in this book is an insightful interpretation of a pivotal era in world history. The turbulent history of the independence movements is set forth with attention to key figures and their ideologies, regional differences, and the legacy of the wars of independence.

Simón Bolívar was a revolutionary who freed six South American countries from Spanish Imperial rule, an intellectual who argued the principles of national liberation, and a statesman who led the governments of Venezuela, Gran Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. His life, passions, and battles were woven into Spanish American culture almost as soon as they happened. In the first major English-language biography of “The Liberator” in half a century, John Lynch draws on extensive research to understand Bolívar's life in the context of his society and times, and to explore his remarkable and enduring legacy.

In this volume, an array of international and interdisciplinary scholars shows how Bolívar has appeared over the last two centuries in painting, fiction, poetry, music, film, festival, dance, city planning, and even shrine adoration. They illustrate how Bolívar's body has been exalted, reimagined, or fragmented in different contexts, taking on a range of meanings to represent the politics and poetics of today's national bodies. By critically analyzing many examples of cultural Bolivarianisms or cults of Bolívar, this collection demonstrates the capacity of the arts and humanities to challenge and reinvent hegemonic icons and narratives and, therefore, to be vital to democracy. Maureen G. Shanahan is a professor of art history at James Madison University. Ana María Reyes is an assistant professor of Latin American art history at Boston University.

Slavery and Iberian colonization -- Portrait one: Estevanico and the Spanish borderlands -- Bewtiful Empyre: challenges to Iberian dominance and the transformation of New World slavery -- Portrait two: Jacqueline Lemelle and Chica da Silva : slavery, freedom, and family -- An era of emancipation : slavery and revolution in the Americas -- Portrait three: Simón Bolívar and the problem of equality -- The resurgence and destruction of slavery in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil -- Portrait four: Abolitionists of the second slavery -- Conclusion: Legacies of Latin American slavery