A man named Simon Bolivar.

     Simon Jose Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad Bolivar y Ponte Palacios y Blanco born in Caracas July 24^th of 1.783, this General and Venezuelan statesman, commander of the American emancipation, fruit of the love between Juan Vicente of Bolivar y Ponte and Maria de la Concepcion Palacios y Blanco, lived the first years of his life with his parents under the special care of a slave of the family nicknamed by affection La Negra Matea.

     Toward the year of 1.790 dies the father of Simon, for that then, he was a sapling of 7 years dressed of green satin and fittings, and he looked at icily, tiredly perhaps; to the ladies and gentlemen that went and came between the big curtains of silk, by the cabinets of mahogany or under the trees of the patio. Between that noisy envrioment from time to time the eyes of the boy settled in his mother, dressed of black silk, pale, pretty and always a little sick. It was that year when Simon conquered his first horse and those that around him were marveled seeing like he was had in the seat. During forty years, almost until his death the horses accompanied the life of Bolivar.

     Suddenly the fate, for senior time, undid a garment of happiness in the hands of a boy: that hardly had nine years when he lost his mother, who had just completed the 30, and at fifteen had gotten married to a man 15 years older, thereby Maria left orphan to her four children . It was then when the uncle Palacios brought the Simon boy to the city and trusted his manners to the clergymen. Caracas, although similar to a garden and located in a beautiful valley, looked like tothe boy only dirty and noisy; his brother and his two sisters lived with other relative. Toward 1.793 Simón Rodríguez, admiring fervent of Rosseau, decided to search for an "Emilio" who could be the natural man of Rosseau.

     One could not explain, exactly like it would happen in a novel, that they had given the boy in his hands for error or for his uncle's indifference. The sure, it is that, starting from that day began a new life, very solitary for the boy thanks to the natural state where he had been placed by his new teacher and friend. During those four years that are lacking precise datas, the young boy learned to doubt everything that he had been taught of and to aspire to all the ideas that, in that then were spread all over the the world. Much time later, Bolívar wrote to Simón Rodríguez "I could not erase never at least a comma of the big sentences that you have given to me, always present to my intellectual eyes, I have followed them like certain guides."

     Between his fourteen and fifteen years old the new Emilio was like the ideal confidant of things that would have horrified to his family. Overnight, the teacher didn't appear more; it was said that he was prisoner. Then the young man underwent to lend his services to the militia, in the one which he had entered for advice of his family; he carried the uniform of the King, the same that once upon a time had carried his grandparents and he got the grade of sub-lieutenant.

     The successor of Rodríguez like teacher of Bolivar, Andres Bello (later a great poet), hardly was a little older than his pupil, but he never had on him the influence that reached the first teacher and his lessons lasted just a year. Bolivar was 15 years old when, with a lot of money and many letters of recommendation, he abandoned for first time his country, in order to become a man of world, further of the seas.

      So to the time "El Libertador" knew a woma named Maria Teresa del Toro with who at 17 years old fell madly in love Bolívar although that she was a little older than he was. With passion Bolivar welcomed this happiness the first that he could reach, and yearned to part immediately to live with that girl, a romantic idyl in the earth of his senior. Maria Teresa was without a doubt, delicate, pale and beautiful, with the repression of those precocious souls whose melancholy looking seems to denounce the brief time that they are supposed to live. Few times the history introduces so fantastic going in their heroes, of so fabulous realizations, like the one of Bolivar, a soul that follows so continuous the happiness and the depression, a soul so sceptical among all the conquests, with so much doubts concerning to his own inclinations and however, so rash always in an incessant design of defeating to the destination.

     When he had returned from his living in Paris, he requested permission like official of the King in order to get married. He lived during some months the ethereal feelings, the juvenile love that coarse to itself. In the valleys of Aragua, in the country residence of his parents, they allowed the days to pass by.

     Suddenly Teresa died in Caracas, victim of a violent fever and shortly Bolivar saw collapse the heaven and it seems that in the paroxism of the pain only his brother could rescue him, it was then when Bolívar at 20 years trusted his brother the administration of his goods and went aboard again to Europe, this time without company; he was shaken by the feelings of disillusion and hope. In Europe he assistedto the crowning of Napoleon, he observed Spain's weakening soon after the French invasion and he swore in the Sacred Mount in Rome (1805) that he was going to dedicate the remainder of his life to liberate his country of the Spanish yoke.

     He participated actively in the movement of 1810, he formed the meeting of April 19 contrary to the Cadiz's Council of Regency of 1810, he in company of Andres Bello parted to London to get some Britanian aid in order to impede the landing of the Frenchmen. Fallen Venezuela again under the Spanish dominance, Bolivar was seen himself obliged to flee to Curazao. There he organized a landing in Nueva Granada, and after several encounters with the Spaniards he entered in Caracas in October of 1813, and from that the pn he was called "El Libertador". Subsequently because of new inconvenients he was proclaimed to take refuge with his government in Jamaica, where he wrote a celebrated letter in which one he justified the reasons of the American emancipation. Then when he camer back to the continent he summoned the Congress of Angostura in front of whose Assembly he introduced a project of the Constitution and proposed the union of Nueva Granada (actual Colombia) and Venezuela.

     Inmediately he gathered his army and went toward Colombian territory in whose march he had to cross the mountain range of Los Andes. His resonant victory over the Realistic troops of Boyacá (1819) opened him the doors of Bogota where he was received with joy and thus he proclaimed the Republic of Colombia, that included Nueva Granada and Venezuela. He was elected as the first president, however newer warring situations reclaimed his presence. The Peru at the same time struggled to get his freedom from the Spanish crown, it was then when the Quito county incorporated to the Great Colombia after Bolívar's interview with San Martin in Guayaquil (1822). The argentine commander gave up his political powers in favor of "El Libertador" who entered Lima in 1823. HIs lieutenant Sucre got the victory of Ayacucho and he himself put term to the Spanish dominance in the Battle of Junín (1824).

     El AltoPeru remained constituted in Republic that took in honor of the Liberator, the name from Bolivia. Then he came back to Colombia (1827). Bolívar was supposed to assist to the civil war which result was Venezuela's separation from Colombia (1829). On the other hand, the Peru abolished the Bolivarian Constitution and the Quito county and constituted it self in an independent Republic. Full of bitterness upon seeing like all his work came undone so he gave up the power in 1830 and he moved back to Santa Marta where the news of Sucre's murder accelerated his own death, that happened on December 17 of 1.830. Excellent speaker and writer, we owe to his pen some rehearsals, like "Mi delirio sobre el Chimborazo" ("My delirium on the Chimborazo") and a big selection of letters like "La carta de Jamaica" ("The Jamaica's letter").

---