Bolívar's Afterlife in the Americas

Simón Bolívar is the preeminent symbol of Latin America and the subject of seemingly endless posthumous attention. Interpreted and reinterpreted in biographies, histories, political writings, speeches, and works of art and fiction, he has been a vehicle for public discourse for the past two centuries. Robert T. Conn follows the afterlives of Bolívar across the Americas, tracing his presence in a range of competing but interlocking national stories. How have historians, writers, statesmen, filmmakers, and institutions reworked his life and writings to make cultural and political claims? How has his legacy been interpreted in the countries whose territories he liberated, as well as in those where his importance is symbolic, such as the United States? In answering these questions, Conn illuminates the history of nation building and hemispheric globalism in the Americas.

Auteur
Robert T. Conn is Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University. He is the author of The Politics of Philology: Alfonso Reyes and the Invention of the Latin American Literary Tradition.

Contenu

1. An Introduction2. Toward a Usable Narrative3. Bolívar in Nineteenth-Century Venezuela4. José Marti and Venezuela: Redressing Bolivarian Doctrine5. From Liberalism to Positivism: Gil Fortoul and Vallenilla Lanz6. Rufino Blanco Fombona: An Exile in Spain7. The Construction of a Patrician Heritage and of Calumny: Vicente Lecuna, La Casa Natal, El Archivo del Libertador, and the Bolivarian Society8. Revising the Bolivarian Machine: A Venezuela Reclaimed by New Intellectuals9. Pan Americanism Above Ground: Bolívar in the United States10. A Rebirth11. Bolívar in the Wake of World War II: Gerhard Masur and Waldo Frank12. The Bolívar-Santander Polemic in Colombia: Germán Arciniegas and Gabriel García Márquez13. Bolívar and Sucre in Ecuador: A Case of Two Assassinations14. Vasconcelos as Screenwriter: Bolívar Remembered15. Bolívar in Bolivia: On Fathers and Creators16. Institution Building in Peru: Ricardo Palma and Víctor Andrés Belaúnde17. Bolívar in the Río de la Plata18. Epilogue