European concerns of the writer distort the hero, removing his poncho in order to present him from day one in tails, exactly as the lithographers of Buenos Aires have painted Facundo in a frock coat, believing his jacket, which he never took off, inappropriate. Well: they have made a general, but Facundo disappears. They can study Bolívar’s war in France in that of the Chouans: Bolívar is a Charette10 of broader dimensions. Had the
[print edition page 57]
Spaniards penetrated into the Argentine Republic in 1811, our Bolívar would perhaps have been Artigas,11 had this caudillo been so lavishly endowed by nature and education.
The treatment of the history of Bolívar by the European and American writers is more suitable for San Martín12 and others of his kind. San Martín was not a popular caudillo; he was really a general. He had been educated in Europe and came to America, where the government was a revolutionary one, and he could easily form the European army, discipline it, and wage regular battles according to the rules of science. His expedition on Chile is truly a conquest, like that of Italy by Napoleon. But had San Martín been obliged to be at the head of Montoneras,13 to be defeated here, to go then and muster a group of plainsmen from somewhere, they would have hanged him at his second try.
Bolívar’s drama consists, then, of other elements besides those we know about today: it is necessary to place the American scenery and costumes first in order to subsequently show the character. Bolívar is, still today, a tale wrought on true information: Bolívar, the real Bolívar, is not yet known to the world, and it is very likely that, when they translate him into his native language, he shall appear more surprising and greater still.
Reasons of this sort have moved me to divide this hastily written work into two parts: one in which I map out the terrain, the landscape, the theater on which the scene is to be performed; the other in which the character appears, with his costume, his ideas, his system of action; in such a way that the former will be already revealing the latter, without need for comment or explanation.
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