Simón Bolívar was born on July 24th 1783 in Venezuela and this is now the day his existence is celebrated.
You may be wondering why, or perhaps you remember the blog about the Venezuelan independence…
Simón Bolívar is known as “el libertador” and he was the most influential leader in South America and helped many nations gain independence from Spain.
He was a very well-traveled man. He even met with Napoleon and he was also heavily influenced by the United States independence movement and sought to bring that same freedom to the rest of the continent. He faced a lot of opposition from the royalists, and he was actually exiled from the country, but he gained allies and came back in full force to lead the revolutions.
His ambitions did not end there. He dreamed of uniting all of the south American nations as one single country. The closest he got to this was “La Gran Colombia”, but as we previously discussed, this project only lasted a few years and this country dissolved into the nations we know today.
Bolívar heavily influenced the independence movements of Colombia, Panama, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela. Both Bolivia and Venezuela (officially, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) are named after him for that reason and he is still regarded as the most powerful leader in the history of South America.
Have fun learning!
