On the resuscitation of Bolivar's reputation and legacy So it was very hard for him to get that notion of unity going, even though he knew - and he was very, very advanced for his time - if these countries could unify, they could be far more powerful in the world." But what happened, of course, whenever he left one country to go to the next, people who were left in place to rule, they wanted to have their own little fiefdom. "Bolivar was very good at making war and moving through liberating the countries. On why Bolivar's vision of a Gran Colombia - a state covering much of modern Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, northern Peru and northwest Brazil - didn't materialize Simon & Schuster Marie Arana lives in Washington, D.C., and her hometown of Lima, Peru. And though he loved George Washington - and by the way, George Washington loved him - he couldn't do things the same way." And this irked Bolivar and he understood at that time when he went back that that was something that made his country and his continent very, very different from the United States. But when he traveled to the United States, he landed in Charleston, which was the largest slave market going in the United States. "Bolivar really admired the American Revolution, the American will to independence. On the biggest difference between Bolivar and the American Founding Fathers: his belief that you couldn't fight a revolution for freedom if you kept slavery to manage to really strike fear into the heart of the Spanish military machine was quite an accomplishment at the time." And so, with a battalion of hundreds to go up against thousands. So he came in and the moment he entered with his liberating forces - which were largely Colombian soldiers - he was proclaimed 'The Liberator.' And he routed all the Spaniards before him, all the way to Caracas. He decided, 'OK, I can't free my own country, but I'll go and try to free Colombia and then come back into Venezuela,' which is exactly what he did. "It happened almost exactly 200 years ago. On how Bolivar came to be known as El Libertador, or "The Liberator" She joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss Bolivar's legacy. Arana is also a columnist for The Washington Post, as well as a novelist and author of her own memoir. Marie Arana has written a biography of the warrior statesman whose name is often invoked, but whose history is often little understood. The latter was also considered an artful military strategist with a vision of history and a passion for freedom. Washington threw colonialists out of one country Bolivar liberated six from Spanish rule. Simon Bolivar is often called the George Washington of Venezuela - and of Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador and Peru.
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