Bello and Bolivar: Poetry and Politics in the Spanish American Revolution

As Andres Bello predicted in 1823, the glory of Simon Bolivar has continued to grow since the Spanish American Revolution. The Revolution is still viewed as an almost mythical quest, and the name of the Libertador has become synonymous with the region’s hopes for integration. In this book, the official history of the Revolution - the heroic history of Bolivar - is replaced by the account of Bello, who was first Bolivar’s teacher and later his critic. Through a detailed study of the manuscripts of Bello’s unfinished poem America, Antonio Cussen reconstructs Bello’s version of the Revolution and seeks to understand its political and cultural consequences. The author argues that Bello recorded the disintegration of the Augustan model of power and intimated the inevitable approach of liberalism with a certain longing for the classical culture of his youth.