THE LIBERATOR AND THE BEASTS FROM WITHIN.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Review

Bolivar: Liberator of a Continent, by Bill Boyd. New York: S.P.I Books, 1998.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth initiated a reevaluation of Bolivar that Panamanian-born author Bill Boyd continues in this new, novelized biography of the Liberator. Boyd's book starts in 1830, at the moment when Bolivar, only forty-seven years old but already frail and beaten, rides into exile. Although the army supports him and is willing to fight to keep him in power, Bolivar is loath to impose himself on a nation that no longer accepts him as leader.

The author skips from this somber scene to a lush ranch near Caracas to which, in 1793, Bolivar was sent to be raised by his uncle, Don Carlos Palacios, after the death of his parents. Reputedly the wealthiest nobleman in Venezuela, Palacios is a tough, down-to-earth, plain-talking administrator who knows one can't run a rural estate "from a drawing room." Under the guidance of Palacios and Simon Rodriguez, his tutor, Bolivar develops from the spoiled heir of an enormous fortune into an idealistic young man willing to relinquish wealth and titles to fight for the cause of Latin American independence.

Boyd paints a fascinating picture of Bolivar, a fighter devoted to the highest principles, yet given to temper tantrums and pettiness, a Don Juan who reputedly slept with a different woman every night, yet remained devoted to his one true love, Manuela Saenz. Far ahead of his time, Bolivar freed the slaves decades before the U.S. Civil War and proposed education for the children of the poor long before public schools became commonplace elsewhere. A brave general and a clever strategist, he led his men into battle time and again, yet toward the end of his life fell into disfavor with the masses and was vilified by his enemies.

Boyd develops Bolivar's affair with Manuela with particular sensitivity and insight. The illegitimate daughter of an eighteen-year-old "spinster" and a man with a wife and four children, Manuela weds the Englishman James Thorne because her father feels compelled to procure a suitable husband for a girl in her position. However, Manuela never learns to love Thorne and soon becomes involved in adulterous liaisons. Unlike other colonial women of her class, she does not feel bound by the laws of society and doesn't care a whit about what people say. To Bolivar, Manuela's insouciance is as attractive as her sensuality. She flirts with him unabashedly at a party, and the two of...