This review appeared in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Volume 45-2013

CAMBRIDG UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Lat. Amer. Stud. 45 (xoi3). doi:io.1017/50011116X15001196

Michael Zeuske, Simon Bolivar: History and Myth (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, zon), pp.
146, 19.61, pb.

Michael Zeuske has attempted to situate the evolution of the official and popular Bolivar
myths within their historical contexts in this extremely readable explanation, fluently
translated by Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal, of the power and endurance of the Bolivar myth
in Venezuela and worldwide. Zeuske explains that his 'goal is to examine not only the myth's
power to produce results, but also its true history and the real origin of the protagonists
involved' (p. 5). In contrast to Evelio Rosero in his recent novel, La carroza de Bolivar
(Tusquets, 2.0 iz), with which this book might be compared, Zeuske is trying not just to put
forward the other side of Bolivar's historical actions, but to uncover a set of real and
identifiable truths which will then undermine the myth and allow us to appreciate Bolivar in
the historical settings in which he lived.
Zeuske's indignation about the historical inaccuracies that fuel the Bolivar myth is rooted in
his anger at the misrepresentation of the meeting(s) between Simon Bolivar and Alexander
von Humboldt, which, legend has it, triggered a long-standing mutual respect and friendship
between the two. The meeting with Humboldt is one of Bolivar's three famous encounters
with other giants of Great Men's History, the second being the 18zz Guayaquil interview with
Jose de San Martin, Liberator of the Andes, Chile and Peru, which occurred almost in secret
and about which historians therefore continue to conjecture. The third was with Napoleon
Bonaparte, whom Bolivar claimed to have watched crown himself emperor in Milan in 1805,
and in whose shadow Bolivar's reputation festered during his lifetime. The Bolivar-Humboldt
meeting is certainly the least interesting of the three, given that Bolivar was a young, frivolous
traveller when the two met in Paris, and indeed that any meeting was short and of little
significance for either at that time or thereafter. Most of the significance, as Zeuske archly
shows, has been implied or created by later historians and myth-builders.
Nevertheless, Zeuske argues, 'in Germany, everyone, literally everyone, who is concerned
with Simon Bolivar and the independence of Spanish America thinks first of the phrase
"Humboldt and Bolivar"' (p. 6}. He shows how many German thinkers liked the idea that
Humboldt had given Bolivar the idea for independence, and that many Venezuelan myth-
builders enjoyed the frisson of legitimacy and intellectual heavyweight status that Humboldt
lent to 'their' Bolivar. The first two chapters, 'Historical Foundations: Constructions of a
Nation' and 'Simon Boh'var: The Man and die Myth', are very sound introductions to the
subject, and I recommend them to anyone seeking a way into the massive literature on
Bolivar, or to researchers contemplating writing a biography of Bolivar (they should do a
good job of putting anyone off). 'Instead of a Conclusion: The "Chavist Bolivar"' presents a
short, insightful overview of the different ways in which Hugo Chavez's government
accommodated its policies to an interpretation of Bolivar as the father of the nation, and the
ways in which the Venezuelan opposition to Chavez sought, and failed, to counter this
narrative.

Zeuske distinguishes himself from much work on Bolivar by commenting that 'I have
deliberately not abstained from giving references for all quotations and written sources, as
well as their traces in the text archaeology, in extensive notes. Every reader can examine these
references to determine for himself or herself which paths myth constructions follow. They
show that historical research is more exciting than any detective story' (p. 9). In the third 1
chapter, 'Excursus: "Humboldt and Bolivar" - On a Conversation That May Never Have Taken
Place', the author launches a passionate attack on the foundations of one particular element of
the Bolivar myth. He does an excellent job of revealing those assumptions and gaps that
inform much of the scholarship, and shows where these come from and who invented them.
Indeed, the strength of the arguments elsewhere hangs upon the revelation, presented here,
that Humboldt's meeting with Bolivar was most likely invented by writers who so desperately
wanted the historical truth to mirror their imaginings of how history should have been.
Linguistic analysis of the careful ambiguity of the phrasing in the few letters exchanged
between Bolivar and Humboldt shows that it is indeed by no means certain that they did
physically meet, rather than coincide in a place or exchange messages (p. 87). Generally I find
this 'archaeology of the textual layers' to be convincing, and I learned a lot about Aristides
Rojas and his elaboration of the foundations of the Bolivar myths.
Zeuske conjectures that Rojas 'created his own source* (p. 91) about a meeting in 1853
between Humboldt and Daniel O'Leary, Bolivar's Irish assistant who stopped by Berlin on his
way from Italy to Ireland during a lengthy leave of absence from his post as British minister
in Bogota. Rojas' principal source was O'Leary's travel notes: Zeuske concludes that 'they
simply do not exist... Rojas invented them' (p. 91). Here, he identifies the keystone
undermining the entire Bolivar myth as he sees it: by removing the central pillar, the entire
edifice crumbles apart. There was no great, Enlightened, transatlantic Liberator inspired by
Humboldt. The truth behind the myth, the memories and the monuments, is revealed as
fabrication. And yet... Jo Ann Rayfield relied heavily on O'Leary's travel diaries for the final
chapters of her unpublished doctoral dissertation on his life and times (Vanderbilt University,
1969). Inspired by her account, on several distinct trips to Bogota I also sought out the travel
diaries in order to see what she had left out, when I was researching Adventuring through
Spanish Colonies (Liverpool University Press, 1006) and then The Struggle for Power in
Post-Independence Colombia and Venezuela (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Rayfield's citations
had the diaries in the Biblioteca Nacional, but when I looked in 1001-3, they were not there,
presumed transferred to the Archive General de la Nacion (General Archive of the Nation,
AGN). I did not follow up this lead until 101 o, when I ordered all of O'Leary's papers in the
AGN, sifted through his private correspondence, tried on his reading glasses and tried to
immerse myself in his world through the papers collected in the Fondo Enrique Ricaurte,
which had been transferred from the Biblioteca Nacional in the 1990s. The travel diaries were
not there, however, and with the help of the fabulous assistants and researchers in die AGN, I
scoured the catalogues and shelves where they might have been placed in error. We found
nothing, and my conclusion, three years ago, was that Daniel O'Leary's travel diaries had been
removed from the collection, probably by thieves, possibly linked to his descendants or
individuals looking to safeguard his memory as a patriotic, upstanding general and diplomat. I
never saw the travel diaries myself.
I persevere with this rather anecdotal review of Zeuske's book because the entire hypothesis
hangs on the invention of the Humboldt-Bolivar meeting in 1804, which itself relies upon the
non-existence of O'Leary's diaries, and Rojas' invention of the Humboldt-O'Leary meeting in
1853. In a brave though reluctant footnote, dated April zoiz (the rest of the book appears to
have been written between 2008 and 1011), Zeuske acknowledges receipt of information from
Alberto Gomez Gutierrez of the Universidad Javieriana in Bogota alerting him to a
correspondence between O'Leary and Humboldt, found in the O'Leary papers in the
Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, which indicates strongly that O'Leary was after all in Berlin in
1853. Does this completely undermine Zeuske's hypothesis? I don't think so. Even if
O'Leary's travel diaries did exist, and even if they were miraculously rediscovered, this would
not change the essential finding of Zeuske's research: that the Bolivar myth has been
grounded in and shaped by waves of Venezuelan cultural and political history, and by the
place of Venezuela and its peoples in imperial and global systems since independence until
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today. Even in the wake of the death of Hugo Chavez, and the inevitable reconfiguration of
the popular-socialist Bolivar myth that he encouraged in his later years, new sources still
emerge that are allowing historians to get a better sense of the processes of independence and
the first years of republican life in Venezuela. Historians just need to learn where and how to
look for those sources: Michael Zeuske has given us an excellent lesson in how to do this, and
why it remains important today.

University of Bristol MATTHEW BROWN