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Original Articles

A NAPOLEONIC BOLÍVAR: HISTORICAL ANALOGY, DESENGAÑO, AND THE SPANISH/CREOLE CONSCIOUSNESS

Pages 337-352 | Published online: 18 Feb 2011
 

Notes

1. I am grateful to Daniel Loarte for bringing to my attention the articles by Vi′ctor Peralta Ruiz and Rafael Rojas cited in this essay.

2. See CitationPolanco Alcántara (903, 906, 913–4) for a look at Bolívar's own reading habits, and CitationParra Pérez for more on the Napoleon–Bolívar connection.

3. CitationLynch describes these sentiments as offered “discreetly and not for publication” (236), and Perú de Lacroix indeed adds a caveat to his text: “Si el general Bolívar viera mi Diario, así como Napoleón veía el que redactaba el conde de Las Casas, cuántas cosas borraría, cuántas corregiría y cuántas añadiría” (266). Twentieth-century Bolívar supporters would also be nonplussed by the book's unauthorized nature. A 1949 Caracas edition edited by Mons. Nicolás E. Navarro would justify its existence by alluding to the need to purify the language of the original “para evitar al lector la chocante impresión de su lenguaje agabachado y de escuchar a Bolívar usando una terminología y unas frases intolerables” (7–8).

4. It is worth pointing out that CitationPradt, whom Laura CitationBornholdt classifies as “a publicist for Latin American independence” (201), was, as Bornholdt notes, already on Bolívar's payroll by 1825, and that his source materials tended to be French newspapers rather than any first-hand experience of the American continent (212).

5. Leguía memorably describes Vidaurre as “un burgués cortesano con aspiraciones revolucionarias y un republicano con nostalgias coloniales” (149).

6. For more on Bolívar's involvement of the press see CitationGargurevich Regal, especially on pages 53–6. Bushnell deals with some specific newspaper wars of the time period (159–60).

7. This under-explored dimension of the independence movement takes center stage in Emilio Ocampo's recent book, La última campaña del Emperador, which uses diplomatic and other archives to plumb the web of plots and plans for escape and participation in the wars of independence that circulated through the pro-Bonaparte exile community during the years of the emperor's incarceration at Saint Helena. Ocampo contextualizes his argument by pointing out that Bonaparte's interest in the Spanish colonies predated his decision to invade the metropolis (XV).

8. CitationStendhal's The Red and the Black makes similar use of the figure of Napoleon. The novel's protagonist, Julien Sorel, defines himself as an admirer of the recently deceased leader and deplores the stagnant France that has flourished in his wake. Portraying the corrupt order of c. 1830 as the fruit of an uneasy tension between the aristocracy and the emergent bourgeoisie, the novel makes frequent gestures to a time both more aristocratic (in terms of grand gestures) and more egalitarian (in terms of who might make them). Napoleon is remembered as “the man sent by God to help the use of France” (122) and as a leader whose reign represented the last vestige of French chivalric honor “Since the fall of Napoleon, all semblance or gallantry in speech has been sternly banished from the code of provincial behaviour” (60).

9. Xavier Mina indeed surfaces in Ocampo's account as a former guerrilla leader “whose ambition was to liberate Mexico from the tyranny of Fernando VII” (cuya ambición era liberar a México de la tiranía de Fernando VII; 67).

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