Chavez seeks legitimisation

On July 16, shortly after midnight, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reached back in time. He presided at the exhumation of the remains of Simon Bolivar — Latin America's greatest independence hero, who helped liberate the region from Spain in the 19th century, and the object of Chavez's personal and political obsession. The skeleton was pulled apart. Pieces were removed, such as teeth and bone fragments, for "testing". The rest was put in a new coffin with the Chavez government's seal.

By presidential decree, every television station in Venezuela showed images of Bolivar in historic paintings, then images of the skeleton, and then images of Chavez, with the national anthem blaring. The message of this parody was unmistakable: Chavez is not a follower of Bolivar — Chavez is Bolivar. And anyone who opposes or criticises him is a traitor not just to Chavez but to history.

If you can imagine Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln rolled into one, you can appreciate Bolivar's historical power in much of Latin America, and why a "Bolivarian" revolution is infinitely more legitimising than a "Chavez" revolution.

Chavez's aggressive appropriation of Bolivar — first politically and now physically — is especially meaningful because it is an attempt to wipe away the most important opposition leader and philosophical nemesis Chavez could ever face: Bolivar himself.

After his failed 1992 coup attempt against Venezuela's democratically elected government, Chavez, who had named his rebel movement for Bolivar, was imprisoned for two years and eventually received a presidential pardon. Upon running for office in 1998, Chavez dubbed his party the Bolivarian Movement, and as president he changed the name of Venezuela to include "Bolivarian Republic". He has often left an empty chair at Cabinet meetings, for Bolivar's spirit, and even ordered the central bank to deliver Bolivar's sword for his personal use.

Bolivar would be outraged by the notion of Chavez, a socialist, as his intellectual or political heir. In his correspondence, Bolivar revealed himself as someone in the company of Thomas Jefferson much more than Karl Marx (who documented his hatred for Bolivar in great detail).

He described the American form of government — so disparaged by Chavez — as "the best on Earth". The small library that accompanied him on his military campaigns included Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, several biographies of George Washington, and dozens of works on the rights of man and the tyranny of illegitimate government.

Few similarities

In language and thought, Bolivar was a student of the Enlightenment, and his struggle against Spain's domination of South America reflected that inspiration. He was an admirer of the American Revolution, and his worldview was shaped by travels in Europe and by the works of Hume, Montesquieu and Voltaire. Bolivar understood that great nations are governed by laws, not men; liberalism, separation of powers, civil liberties, free trade and freedom of thought are recurring themes of his speeches and writings. Chavez, in his personalisation of power, does not embrace Bolivar's legacy. He represents its antithesis.

The idea to open Bolivar's sarcophagus first surfaced in a 2007 speech by Chavez in which he suggested that the remains in the coffin were not those of Bolivar. At the time, a popular outcry against opening the coffin nixed Chavez's curiosity, though not for long.

As Chavez rattled sabres against neighbouring Colombia, he publicly hypothesised that Bolivar had been killed by the Colombian "oligarchy". Enter Paul Auwaerter, Johns Hopkins medical school's clinical director for infectious diseases. This year, Auwaerter, who enjoys diagnostic puzzles, presented findings at an annual conference analysing the deaths of historical figures. He concluded that tuberculosis did not kill Bolivar in 1830; chronic arsenicosis did.

A popular tonic at the time, arsenic was used frequently by Bolivar to treat fever spells. The Chavez government seized on the news and began preparations to exhume the body. Auwaerter, who told me that his work was misconstrued, believes the available medical information supports chronic ingestion, not foul play. But Chavez says Auwaerter has provided proof of Bolivar's murder.

For Chavez, this is not just an existential obsession, but possibly an electoral one. His main political opponent for the presidency is Leopoldo Lopez Mendoza, former municipal leader in Caracas whose approval in the polls exceeded 70 per cent before the government arbitrarily disqualified him from running for elected office. The state-run media machinery frequently caricatures him as an unlikely relative of the Liberator, though Lopez has not made a public issue of his bloodline.

Chavez has announced that he will exhume corpses of Bolivar's family members and has promised to establish a new Bolivar mausoleum. How sad that, at the same time that Chavez shows Venezuela Bolivar's remains, Bolivar must endure what remains of his beloved Venezuela.