In calmness you cannot speak about someone who has never lived in it: about Bolivar you can speak with a mountain for a tribune or between lightning and thunders, or with a bunch of free peoples in your fist, and tyranny with its head cut off at your feet”; this is how the hero of the Cuban Independence, José Martí defined Simón Bolivar, Venezuelan military, strategist, statesman and politician known as The Liberator of America, who was born on July 24, 1783.
As a young man he frequented theaters, gatherings and salons, where he met and became friends with scholars such as Alexander von Humboldt and Amado Bonpland, and attended conferences and free study courses where the latest knowledge and theories were disseminated. In Rome, one day in August 1805, on Monte Sacro, he swore in the presence of his teacher, guide and advisor, Simon Rodriguez, to give neither rest to his arm nor rest to his soul until he had succeeded in liberating the Spanish American world from Spanish domination.
Eventually, Simón Bolívar stood out among his contemporaries for his talent, intelligence, will and abnegation, qualities that he placed entirely at the service of a great and noble enterprise: liberating and organizing many nations for civilian life, and at the head of a powerful army he liberated the captaincies of Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia, countries where he is venerated as a father.
In the emancipating vision of the Liberator, the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico were always present; in his famous Letter of Jamaica, written in 1815, he left a record of it, and he tried to achieve it years later through the Congreso Anfitriónico de Panamá, an objective that was overcome by the expansionist desires of the government of the United States.
Simón Bolívar, the precursor of anti-imperialism and Latin American unity, to his highly military and governmental valuation, we must add his gifts as an excellent orator and writer of remarkable essays, among which we find “ Mi delirio sobre el Chimborazo” (My Delirium on Chimborazo).