Venezuela: Bolívar no, Spain yes

Venezuela is born on an error: the early and traumatic secession of the Kingdom of Spain , of which we were an organic part and gave us being. Indeed, we did not exist as a town before the arrival of the Spaniards. Those who inhabited these lands were not us , they were simply their first settlers. In order for us to be constituted, the meeting between its two fundamental elements had to take place: the very different ones - amen of enemies - indigenous and Spanish tribes. Once the meeting began, the us began, the vertiginous forge of a new people : the descendants of very different factors combine blood and customs. The indigenous survives, but no longer in a preponderant plane. Catholicism and the Spanish language - with their particular ways and accents in each place - become the first codes of organization of each person's existence: a new town has been born whose essential coordinates refer to Spain. Bolívar admits it: "A trade of interests, of lights, of religion; a reciprocal benevolence; a tender request for the cradle and glory of our parents; in short, everything that formed our hope came to us from Spain."

But Bolívar - tireless, bold, bright and fierce - is the main actor in the pulverization of "everything that formed our hope". Inevitable, perhaps, that result, given the convergence of the political-military genius with the feeling that the Bourbon Crown affected privileges of its estate, with the wreck of Spain before Napoleon , with the null political gifts of Fernando VII , with the commitment English in fragmenting the Empire ... But it was not easy. Except for a part of the tiny mantua layer - owner of the country - practically everyone valued the Crown as beneficial and a source of the legitimacy of power. We were Spanish. Therefore, it was necessary to force a civil war of secession - propagandistically labeled as of independence between royalists and patriots - displaying ferocity and the most hyperbolic version of the anti-Spanish black legend .

To separate what was one, Bolivar had to lead a cataclysm that, according to conservative calculations, devastated a third of the population and disintegrated the social and economic fabric . The ferocity between 1813 and 1820 was maximum and endorsed by the Bolivar Death War Decree: "Spaniards and Canaries, count on death, even if you are indifferent, if you do not actively act as a gift of the freedom of America. Americans, count on life, even if you are guilty. " Only this type of war, by artificially dividing us and provoking terror, was able to separate, mobilize and confront. And what if there was terror. Bolívar writes, after the so-called Admirable Campaign, that, in its wake, "all Europeans and Canaries were almost without exception shot." Worse: hundreds of prisoners and sick people were executed - often slaughtered to save ammunition. Before the clemency petitions of the archbishop of Caracas, Bolivar responds: "One less that exists of such monsters is one less that has immolated or immolated hundreds of victims." Monsters, he also states in the Letter of Jamaica, "insatiable of blood and crimes", which must be fought "until expiring or thrown into the sea" because "... rival the first monsters that made their race disappear from America primitive with fury in the fields and in the inner villages. " Not surprisingly, this dimension: "The hatred that has inspired the peninsula is greater than the sea that separates us from it . " Armed struggle, led, of course, by the military: civil under guardianship, subordinate, in mute. I hate Spain : cut with ties to the West, those capable of allowing us to shape the notion of responsible individuals who are entitled to freedom.

So much destruction and hatred applied to the Spanish -authentic self-mutilation- can only lead to what Bolívar himself points out: destitution, loneliness . Let us read: "As for the heroic and unfortunate Venezuela, its events have been so rapid and its devastation such that they have almost reduced it to absolute destitution and frightful loneliness, even though it was one of the most beautiful countries of which they made the Pride of America: Its tyrants rule a desert and only oppress sad remains that, escaped from death, feed a precarious existence: some women, children and the elderly are the ones left. " Earlier, in 1814, he states: "A universal devastation exercised with the utmost rigor has made the work of three centuries of culture, illustration and industry disappear from the soil of Venezuela. Everything has been stunned." All. Why tear what "formed our hope", which built "one of the most beautiful countries" on the basis of "three centuries of culture, illustration and industry"? For "freedom" and for "glory," he writes to his uncle in 1825: "Where is Caracas? You will ask. Caracas does not exist, but its ashes, its monuments, the land that had it have been resplendent of freedom, and they are covered with the glory of martyrdom. This consolation repairs all losses. " Sure. Given the magnitude of the same, we must immediately proceed to erect and maintain a high-profile story where the authors of the cataclysm become forging demigods of a mythical moment of absolute glory , detachment and heroism that the being gives us, forges the legitimacy of power and Print the mission of the Venezuelan people.

Venezuela is born on the glory of martyrdom. The martyrs - all men of epaulets - and their descendants - by consanguinity or political affinity - purge the Spanish and are entitled to distribute goods and political power invoking to be the true successors of the deed of the nineteenth and Bolivar. There is always a war to the death to fight against some empire of evil and the mission of the people is to follow the successors until the final victory that never comes . Thus, the eternal mission of Venezuelans is the struggle for their sovereignty and that of other peoples before the powerful wicked on duty, accumulating more and more glory. Thus, today, before all the calamities caused by the Bolivarian revolution in everyday life, it is answered: "Yes, but we have a country . "

The story that founded Venezuela must be reviewed to underpin the primacy of civil matters and the full acceptance of our Spanish root - main root - without inferiority complexes or anachronistic subordinations. We emphasize that the best time of our republican life - and therefore the most disliked by Chavismo - was one where civilians ruled, the rights of individuals were reasonably respected, the country was inserted in the world economic circuits and there were angles multiple in the public debate: the 40 years of civil republic prior to Chavismo , where the military and its glories were as never assassinated for the benefit of a sensitive political and economic rationality. It was a time when Bolivar got off the horses, dressed as a civilian and began to be debated .

We must enter these times again, but much more thoroughly, without fear of completely relocating the father of the country. Because the military and its glories cannot rule an unmade people, of its components, soldiers. Because the freedom he longed for was that of sovereignty -independence- and it is of little value if those who inhabit the territory are not free individuals with the right to pursue their dreams . Because Spain is not a denatured stepmother, but an integral part of our being that we must understand to understand each other. Put Bolivar in his place : political-military genius that triggered a process of material and spiritual devastation that left us as a legacy the culture of permanent chimerical violent shock. Let's put Spain in its position : the nation's main root through Catholicism and the Spanish language, which connect us to the West and to values ​​where the individual, his freedom and his responsibility are central. Let's see how we can resume the way to a country outside stubborn collective automatisms that condemn it to failure. When Bolivar rests in the peace he never gave us, the republic of free and equal citizens we need can come .

Carlos Leáñez Aristimuño is a professor at the Simón Bolívar University (Caracas).

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Spain
• Venezuela
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