so i'm not from spanish america, i'm from brazil so let me tell you a little story.

a few years after the divorce between portugal and brazil the central brazilian province of mato grosso went through a political kerfuffle of sorts. it's political center had been vila bela - a gold mining town way out in the western border. as the gold ran out the hardpower flew back to the center of the province, the city of cuiabá. the two cities were rivals for the longest time.

the distances involved are insane as the province of mato grosso at the time was more than twice the size of france with only a fraction of the population. it was also extremely distant from the imperial capital - the quickest way to reach mato grosso was not inland towards the west, it was to leave brazil entirely and go up the paraguay river.

meanwhile at the other side of the border with modern bolivia the governor of chiquitos, sebastian ramos, had supported the spanish crown and believed that the independence cause was gonna win, and that they wouldn't offer him amnesty for his treason (actually they were about to but he didn't know). so he played a double game, writing letters to bolívar promising submission once his army arrived, but also writing letters to his neighbors...

so the vila bela people and spanish governor made a little plan amongst themselves. a few hundred brazilians crossed the border, raided the locals and annexed chiquitos into mato grosso, just so vila bela was closer to the center once again. brazil was a monarchy at the time and ramos felt more comfortable with it. it took months for a letter to arrive from the brazilian emperor NOT TO DO THIS, which the vila bela grandees happily interpreted as consent.

the entire episode was deemed stupid by both the brazilian government and the spanish speaking partisans but of course both wanted to save face. so they traded letters basically saying 'yeah ok this isn't right but if you do SOMETHIN' i'm gonna cross the mountains and kill you all and SALT THE EARTH'. it was ridiculous of course. the liberating army wasn't about to go down the andes to invade brazilian wasteland and the brazilian army was about to fight the cisplatine war to try and keep uruguay. and of course the empire didn't want an alliance between bolívar and buenos aires. so territory was handed back and reparations were paid, etc.

point is, the centers of power that led to the dialogue were bolívar's army and the brazilian emperor, pedro i. there were many local power centers in between of course. the spanish empire didn't just fall, it faced a sudden apocalypse and there's a reason the colonial possessions could never unite. but at the end of the day bolívar is the one guy whose ambitions were of uniting the spanish speakers. whose common identity in arts and media only became more and more talked about as the region fragmented, declined, and was eventually attacked by the USA.

so yeah bolívar's anti slavery stemmed from his liberalism. he wasn't a socialist sure but marx was 7 years old and this is the era of the holy alliance of 'let's make sure monarchy never dies'.

Why did Chavez embrace the legacy of a slave-owning settler-colonist?

I feel like you're ignoring the part where Bolivar was literally taken in by the president of the Republic of Haiti, Alexandre Pétion, who fought in the Haitian revolution to free its slaves from France. Pétion made Bolivar promise to free all of his slaves and try to convince the rest of Latin America to free its slaves in return for supplies and troops. Bolivar kept his promise. As soon as Bolivar reclaimed his estates in Venezuela, he immediately freed all of his slaves. (As the result of this, and of lots of charitable donations, Bolivar died penniless.) Bolivar also tried to convince the rest of Latin America to free their slaves, but their leaders refused. Bolivar was far from perfect but he was one of the best leaders of his era, for sure.

OK..I know a bit about this one. Bolivar wanted to be the George Washington of South America, like to a tee. He wanted a slave owning landholder class to run the continent, instead of the Monarchy. The original plan WAS to be white land owning Slaveholders just like the North American Colonists.

The Critical diversion point was that he failed multiple times, and was lucky enough to escape death each time. South America had a very high percentage of African and Indigenous inhabitants, and Bolivar couldn't get enough Criollos and Mestizos to back him in a winning campaign against Spain. After his second failure, he hid out in the Caribbean. The Haitian Leaders promised him ships and troops for the revolution if he promised to abandon Slavery and emancipate all African descended peoples.

After the Haitian help, we was able to win support from the Black, Indigenous, and mixed residents. That allowed him to turn the corner in his Gran Colombia campaign...

So yes, he did eventually use a multi-racial, multi-ethnic campaign, but I would say only out of necessity. If he had won the first or second times, his initial vision of a Spanish speaking version of Slave holding Colonial USA would have been what prevailed.

i thought he was an (unsuccessful) abolitionist?

okay he inherited slaves at age 10 & i can't tell when he freed them, but he petitioned? decreed? an end to slavery for members of the army & generally during his career. i don't quite understand his position in the government or why these initiatives didn't pass---but his close coworker Monagas actually? followed through on it so its probably false to claim the guy was pro-slavery.

but you're correct, a very important component of modern bolivarianism is the pan-americanism that Bolivar did historically work toward.

as for upholding a liberal: i direct you to Maximilien Robespierre :meow-shining: liberals were cool back then. and there's a current in socialist rhetoric to "following through" on the promises of liberal democracy. its not hard to go from 'there should be democracy' to 'there should be democracy in the economy' and a revolutionary liberal can well be held up as an icon for that. when your specific liberal was also a pan-american who fought off the Empire from overseas, and is already the 'Father of the Nation' well you can see why socialists'd choose to boost Bolivar

Iirc, Bolivar was from a wealthy family of Creole origin (people of Spanish descent born in the colonies and considered second-class citizens), his parents died when he was about 8 years old and his family did not care for him. Because of this he was raised by his family's slaves, following and learning their customs.

When he got older, he decided to waste all his wealth on parties and whatever, until one day he arrived in France with some friends, where he started to learn about liberalism and was influenced by the French revolution. One day he got drunk and really got angry at Napoleon for being a traitor of the revolution, so he was kicked out of France. He vowed that he would end Spanish rule over the Americas.

Bolivar needed help and funding, so he went to Haiti, a country that was eager to help the rebels and in exchange for ending slavery in the Americas, there he got a handful of weapons, recruits and connections all over the Americas. Skipping many failures and some betrayals, Bolivar created a country called Gran Colombia, and helped Peru and Bolivia gain their independence, it is said that he was a great politician who got things done and united the people, but many people worked behind his back so that his attempts to unite the countries failed. He freed the slave as promised to Haiti and gave them rights.

In the end, he tried to bring together Imperial Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and the other countries to form an alliance called the Congress of Panama. But it failed because most countries were not interested in joining this project and the United States and European powers were happy to have destroyed any possibility of a united Latin America. Bolivar fell ill and died soon after.

His legacy is that of a man who was born in Colonial Latin America, fought for independence against the Europeans, freed the slaves, was betrayed by Gusanos, and died. He was not a socialist, but he was a very important anti-imperialist figure, which is why Venezuela likes him so much.

I'm (shamefully) not that well versed on Bolivar's legacy on race and slavery, but what little I know was that he was one of the few allies of the former-slave Haitian government, before it got crushed by Napoleon, and later in his life he would go on record to say that any victories he ever achieved were only because of the support of the Haitians.

On the specific nature of his pan-americanism, and as a starter on why he is an important part of "21st century socialism" as :chavez-salute: called it, the letter from Jamaica is a good starting point. Unfortunately, most of the material on a more revolutionary reading of his positions is in Spanish-only sources.

That being said, Bolivar is hated in certain parts of south America, for being needlessly cruel in taking over monarchist provinces. But how much of this is just anti-revolutionary rhetoric, I don't know.

Thank you @CarmineCatboy , @Dolores and @TraschcanOfIdeology for your contributions, these are all helpful perspectives to use as I continue to read more

Why did Chavez embrace the legacy of a slave-owning settler-colonist?

I feel like you're ignoring the part where Bolivar was literally taken in by the president of the Republic of Haiti, Alexandre Pétion, who fought in the Haitian revolution to free its slaves from France. Pétion made Bolivar promise to free all of his slaves and try to convince the rest of Latin America to free its slaves in return for supplies and troops. Bolivar kept his promise. As soon as Bolivar reclaimed his estates in Venezuela, he immediately freed all of his slaves. (As the result of this, and of lots of charitable donations, Bolivar died penniless.) Bolivar also tried to convince the rest of Latin America to free their slaves, but their leaders refused. Bolivar was far from perfect but he was one of the best leaders of his era, for sure.