Karl Marx referred to Simón Bolívar as the "most cowardly, brutal and miserable scoundrel. Bolívar is the true Soulouque", (Marx's letter to Engels dated 2-14-1858). On that same occasion, he affirmed that Bolívar was a myth of popular fantasy: "The creative force of myths, characteristic of popular fantasy, has proven its effectiveness in all ages by inventing great men. The most notable example of this type is, without a doubt, that of Simón Bolívar". In recent days, by mere chance we came across a small booklet entitled Simón Bolívar, whose author is Karl Marx, published by Ediciones Sequitur, Madrid, 2001. I confess the impression we got when verifying the existence of this work which I was unaware of, as I think that is the case of many Venezuelans. The truth is that with their geographical distances and their age difference (Bolívar born in Caracas in 1783 and Marx in Trier in 1818), nothing could make us suppose that one of them would be the object of attention by the other. But the coincidence occurred when, in 1857, Charles Dana, editor of the New York Daily Tribune, asked Marx and Engels for a group of biographies to be included in the New American Cyclopaedia. It is Marx himself who, in the aforementioned letter to Engels, gave us news of Dana's objections against his article on Bolívar, because it was written in a prejudiced tone and, moreover, he had demanded more sources. Dana was not without reason to reject Marx's article, because as even the latter recognized, he was certainly out of the encyclopedic tone. Marx begins his article by referring to Bolívar as a descendant of Mantuan families, which at the time of Spanish domination constituted the Creole nobility in Venezuela. Then, Marx continues his story by issuing a series of assertions and concepts that are certainly prejudiced, inaccurate or distorted about the life of the Liberator. In this sense, he affirms that the Liberator refused to adhere to the revolution that broke out in Caracas on April 19, 1810, despite the urgings of his cousin José Félix Ribas. Regarding Bolívar's mission to London in 1811 (along with Bello and López Méndez), Marx affirms that it was reduced to the authorization to export weapons, having to pay them in cash and pay heavy duties. The loss of the plaza of Puerto Cabello in the First Republic, Marx describes as a cowardly and secret escape from Bolívar to hide in San Mateo and later participate, personally, in the assault and arrest of Miranda in La Guaira, betraying him in this way. way by handing him over in shackles to the Spanish general Monteverde -who sent him to Cadiz where he would later die-. This betrayal is described by Marx as duly rewarded with the issuance of a Spanish passport to Bolívar, in recognition of his 'service rendered to the King of Spain with the delivery of Miranda'.
SIMON BOLÍVAR Marx describes the victory in the taking of Santa Marta in 1814 as a feat in which, despite the fact that the city had already capitulated, Bolívar allowed his soldiers to plunder it for forty-eight hours. The retreat to Jamaica in 1815 is described as a flight from Bolívar for eight long months, while the patriot generals offered their tenacious resistance in Venezuela; and the Letter from Jamaica is a defense of Bolívar in the face of his escape from the Spanish, in which he pretended to present his resignation from command supposedly for the sake of public peace. Marx describes another cowardly escape by Bolívar in 1816 in the face of a tiny force of General Morales in Valencia, which led him to retreat at full speed to Ocumare (de la Costa) to jump and board the Diana for Bonaire, 'leaving all his companions deprived of the least help'. Hence, the author relates, Piar has threatened Bolívar with submitting him to a court-martial for desertion and cowardice. Piar is for Marx the unique hero of the conquest of Guayana that gives a favorable turn to the War of Independence. Bolívar is the treacherous and cowardly dictator who (again) abandons Arismendi in 1817 in Margarita in the hands of the Spanish, and then Freites in the Casa de la Misericordia in Barcelona, where he dies in battle. Faced with this, Piar spared no sarcasm against Bolívar as the 'Napoleon of withdrawals'. But under "false accusations" of having conspired against the whites, an attempt on Bolívar's life and aspiring to supreme power, Piar is shot in Angostura. The conquest of New Granada is not due to Bolívar and the patriotic troops, but to 'foreign troops, composed mainly of Englishmen'. That is why -Marx notes- after leaving the Granada Congress and General Santander as commander in office, Bolívar went to Pamplona, 'where he spent more than two months in festivities and saraos'. Bolívar's cowardice in Calabozo in 1819, for not having decided to advance on Morillo's inferior troops, caused the prolongation of the war for five more years; and the truce of the Agreement of Trujillo in 1820 with Morillo was made "behind the back of the Congress of Colombia." Regarding the Battle of Carabobo (1821), Marx relates that Bolívar found the enemy's position so imposing, 'that he proposed to his council of war the conclusion of a new truce, an idea that, however, was rejected by the subalterns of the'. The successes of the Quito campaign (1822) 'were due to British officers'. And in Bolivia, 'subjected to the bayonets of Sucre', Bolívar 'gave free course to his tendencies of despotism'. The Congress of Panama (1826)
It was summoned by Bolívar with the real intention of unifying South America into a federal republic, whose dictator he wanted to be himself. Bolívar's various mandates at the head of Gran Colombia were planned by him to satisfy the desires of his dictatorial powers. Finally, in 1830, Bolívar intended to invade Venezuela from Colombia to subdue it, but he was frightened by Páez's army, and was then forced to resign from him, on the condition that he retire abroad favored with an annual pension. In the personal description of Bolívar that Marx quotes from Docoudary-Holstein, one can read, among other pearls, the following:"He has frequent and sudden outbursts of anger, and then he goes mad, throws himself in the hammock and unleashes himself in insults and curses against those around him. He likes to utter sarcasm against the absent, he only reads French literature of a light character... He likes to hear himself speak, and pronouncing toasts delights him".
This text by Marx, a kind of 'black legend' of our Liberator Simón Bolívar, was discovered in 1935 by Aníbal Ponce in the archives of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Moscow, and after being translated, it was published for the first time in Spanish in Dialectical magazine of Buenos Aires in 1936. We cannot help but express that a historical text as prejudiced as the one written by Marx on Bolívar is unusual. Possibly in this Marx was influenced by the Hegelian notion of 'peoples without history'. But even so, it highlights the errors of mixing ideology with history. The curious thing is that this vision of the revolutionary process of Latin American independence has been shared by uncritical Marxists with a Soviet historiographical tendency, practically until 1959, when in the second Russian edition of the works of Marx and Engels a severe criticism was included for the first time. of the positions held in Marx's article on Bolívar. Then, let us learn the history of the historians and vice versa, so as not to make their own mistakes.