Tomorrow we are celebrating our Independence Day here in Venezuela. I couldn't agree more on this critique to the values upon which our declarations of independence are based. It seems vexing that these things are supposed to safeguard people and their interest and rather they enforce another type of repression. This is the rain in the parade. The needed rain.
I wonder how Bolivar himself would respond to the modern countries that descended from Gran Columbia. Would he be ready for another revolution?
!PIZZA
I think he would just fall into the debauchery of his lifetime. Bolivar is a controversial figure. One shrouded in myth and glory. Don't think he'd ready for any of that. Around here, the word revolution makes us sick.
The US also venerates its founders to an absurd degree, with occasional backlash portraying them as devils rather than saints. They were human, plain and simple.
True. Here the took out Paez from national history because he was a key part of La Cosiata, the separatist movement that pit and end to Gran Colombia. However, there wouldn't be a history of Venezuela as a country if Paez didn't exist. I guess it's because of all the Patriots that's the one that resembles mode the imbeciles at the top of government.
Here in the US, while people rightly condemn the Confederacy for slavery, they conveniently ignore Lincoln's statement that he would preserve slavery if it meant preserving the union, and he only promoted abolishing slavery once he needed to drum up more public support for the war. There were also a few slave states that did not secede, and prior to the war, there had been free states suggesting secession to separate themselves from the US history of slavery. But the very idea of secession has now been intertwined with slavery in the public mind so much that serious discussion is impossible. And we just celebrated the colonies seceding from Great Britain's empire a few days ago, too.
Slavery is also a convoluted topic around here. Bolivar once lost a lot of followers when he decided to free the slaves. When the whole war ended black people didn't have it easy. There's this idea of colour blindness around here. However, a lot of what we see as tolerance and jokes is founded on racists thoughts. The same is true for xenophobia. Venezuelans suffer from that a lot nowadays, but back when we didn't have a diaspora, you could see how mockery and offensive behavior was keen towards foreigners. The same people who run basically everything around here.