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The Many Legacies of Simón Bolívar

By Oliver Balch

A new book chronicles the regional hero's complicated life – and the many efforts to understand it.

This article is adapted from AQ's special report on Latin America's armed forces.

It is impossible to visit South America without encountering Simón Bolívar. The “great liberator” is everywhere: gazing down from statues, declaring his name from road signs, taking to the pitch on soccer players’ shirts.

Such ubiquity is historically curious and, given its great-man-of-history feel, politically problematic. As the first president of Gran Colombia, Bolívar...

Read this article on the Americas Quarterly website. | Subscribe to AQ.

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