Bolivar

“(…) With regard to a longer article on Bolivar (1), Dana has second thoughts because it is written in a “partisan style”, and he demands my sources. Naturally I can give him those sources, even though it is a curious request. As for the “partisan style”, I must admit that I relinquished the encyclopedic tone a little. To see the most cowardly, ordinary, wretched rascal descried as though he were Napoleon I was really too absurd. Bolivar is the true Soulouque (2)” [From a letter of Marx to Engels (3), (in) Luis E. Aguilar, a cura, Marxism in Latin America, 1978] [(1) Marx is referring to the article “Bolivar y Ponte” excerpted above; (2) Faustin Elie Soulouque (1785-1867) was a Haitian general and politician who was elected president of Haiti in 1847 and proclaimed himself emperor in 1849. He was deposed in 1858 and exiled; (3) Translated from a letter of Marx to Engels, February 14, 1858, in Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, ‘Werke’, Berlin, Dietz Verlag, 1963, XXIX, 280]