Bolívar’s Afterlife in the Americas:

Biography, Ideology, and the Public

Sphere Robert T. Conn
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 ROBERT T. CONN

BOLÍVAR’S
AFTERLIFE IN
THE

AMERICAS
Biography, Ideology,
and the Public Sphere
Bolívar’s Afterlife in the Americas
 Robert T. Conn

Bolívar’s Afterlife
in the Americas
Biography, Ideology, and the Public Sphere
Robert T. Conn
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-26217-4    ISBN 978-3-030-26218-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26218-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

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 Acknowledgments

I owe deep gratitude to Megan Laddusaw, acquisitions editor for History

at Palgrave Macmillan, for her interest in my project and her support as I
brought it to its final point. I thank the two peer reviewers, who, in their
careful assessment of the manuscript, offered clear and precise recommen-
dations for improvement. Christine Pardue, assistant editor, expertly
shepherded the book through the design and marketing phase.
Independent editor Victoria Stahl assisted in important ways with final
editing and preparation of the manuscript for delivery, and I am most
grateful to her.
This project took many years to complete, and support has come from
many quarters. I owe Chap. 14 to Mary Long of University of Colorado,
Boulder. It was first a paper for a conference organized by Mary and then
expanded into a longer essay for a book co-edited by her and Linda Egan
(University of California, Davis), entitled Mexican Intellectuals Reading
the United States [Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009]. I thank
Vanderbilt University Press for allowing me to adapt the essay for this
book. Fernando Degiovanni (CUNY Graduate Center), my former
Wesleyan colleague, organized a panel at a meeting of the Latin American
Studies Association at which I presented a paper on Waldo Frank’s 1951
Bolívar biography, now the second part of Chap. 11. José del Pino of
Dartmouth College invited me to give a lecture, which became the blue-
print for my discussion of Bolívar in Colombia in Chap. 12. Diana Sorensen
of Harvard University also invited me to speak on the project. I thank all
these scholars for giving me the opportunity to share my work and develop
it in dialogue with other researchers.

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have received other forms of assistance as well. Jeff Rider and Krishna
Winston, in their roles as chair of the Romance Languages and Literatures
Department and dean of the Arts and Humanities at Wesleyan University,
helped me secure a project grant for a trip I made to Venezuela, Colombia,
Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia in the summer of 2007. Significant funding for
this research trip also came from the Catherine and Thomas McMahon
Fund. In Caracas, historian Carole Leal Curiel welcomed me at the
Universidad Simón Bolívar Social Sciences Center, of which she was direc-
tor, as did her team of scholars. Several were kind enough to take me to
visit the Archivo de Bolívar, the Central University of Venezuela, and
Venezuela’s National Pantheon. I also thank Wesleyan for its generous
sabbatical policy.
Teaching has been an important part of this project. Over the years, I
have given four courses on Bolívar at Wesleyan University. I thank the
students for their dedication to and passion for the texts examined. I also
had the opportunity to explore the book topic in a graduate seminar I
taught at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in the summer of 2008 entitled
“Bolívar in the Américas.” Scholars and writers Cristina Iglesia and Noé
Jitrik made that teaching experience possible.
I thank Katherine Wolfe and Lisa Pinette of Wesleyan University’s
Interlibrary Loan Office, who assisted me in obtaining a great many of the
books I cite. Similarly, I thank Stella Villagrán of the Columbus Memorial
Library at the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C., who
helped me acquire documents related to the foundational moments of the
OAS of which I speak in Chap. 9.
Historian Ann Wightman, with whom I collaborated for many years in
our roles as members of Wesleyan’s Latin American Studies Program, was
a constant source of inspiration. US historian Patricia Hill, with whom I
similarly had the pleasure of working, inspired me through her commit-
ment to the scholars in the Center for the Americas’ Mellon postdoctoral
program and her intellectual generosity.
James McGuire, Melanie Khamis, María Ospina, Paula Park, and Valeria
López Fadul—colleagues in Wesleyan’s Latin American Studies Program—
have offered insights and encouragement. Carlos Dimas of the University
of Nevada at Las Vegas has given me food for thought about Latin
American Independence and the scholars and intellectuals who have
reflected on it.
Andrew Curran, my colleague in Romance Languages and Literatures,
has shared with me his knowledge of the French Enlightenment and has
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii

been an important interlocutor. Ellen Nerenberg and Antonio González,

also colleagues in Romance Languages and Literatures at Wesleyan, have
been supportive throughout the writing of the manuscript. Khachig
Tololyan, of Wesleyan’s College of Letters and founder and editor of the
journal Diaspora, has generously conversed with me over the years about
my project, while sending me books and articles on Bolívar and Latin
American independence.
My colleague in Spanish, Michael Armstrong Roche, made himself
available to speak about topics related to the history of both Spain and
Latin America, including the Habsburgs and Bourbons. I particularly
appreciate our conversations about the Spanish Cortes and Spanish liberal-
ism. Susanne Fusso, professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian
Studies and Joseph M. Siry, professor of Art History, also of Wesleyan
University, have stuck by my side, kindly asking me over the years for
updates on my progress, their words communicating their belief that what
I was doing was valuable. I thank Susanne for reading an early draft of the
Introduction and her thoughts about the order of the chapters and Joe for
pointing me to books on Paul Cret’s design for the OAS building and Pan
American architecture.
I also thank José M. del Pino, who invited me for a second time to
Dartmouth College in the winter of 2017 to speak about Bolívar’s Jamaica
Letter; Dr. John Gruendel and Dr. Jordan Kassalow for their interest in my
work; Tony Emerson, former managing editor of Newsweek International,
also for his interest in the project and questions about its narrative form;
Elizabeth Conn for her encouragement; Fernando Degiovanni for our
conversations about our field and his inspiration; my dissertation advisor at
Princeton University, Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, for his brilliant courses in
the late 1980s examining literature, historiography, and politics; and James
D. Fernández of New York University for encouraging me many years ago
to undertake the study and for his moral support along the way.
I cannot conclude these acknowledgments without stating my debt of
gratitude to Mary Long who over the years has taken time to talk with me
about this project. With her impeccable judgment, Mary has shared with
me her always sage and incisive thoughts. She has also been kind enough
to read individual chapters.
I am indebted to Cristina Iglesia for the extraordinary support she has
lent me over the long duration of my work on this book: from her stead-
fast belief that this project was worthwhile to her thoughts and comments
on moments and issues touched upon, and her wise counsel at an editorial
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

level. Cristina’s generosity is known to many and I am fortunate to count

myself among those who have benefited from it.
I thank my parents, Nancy Tobin and the late Richard A. Conn, for all
they have given me.
Finally, I would never have been able to do the work of this project
were it not for my wife Fen Yao, who brings joy to my life through the
warmth of her company, the depth of her understanding, the inspiration
of her goodwill and commitment to others, and the intensity and sophis-
tication of her inquisitive mind.
 Contents

1 An Introduction  1

2 Toward a Usable Narrative 53

3 Bolívar in Nineteenth-Century Venezuela 77

4 José Martí and Venezuela: Redressing Bolivarian Doctrine 99

5 From Liberalism to Positivism: Gil Fortoul and Vallenilla

Lanz119

6 Rufino Blanco Fombona: An Exile in Spain155

7 The Construction of a Patrician Heritage and of

Calumny: Vicente Lecuna, La Casa Natal, El Archivo del
Libertador, and the Bolivarian Society171

8 Revising the Bolivarian Machine: A Venezuela Reclaimed

by New Intellectuals201

9 Pan Americanism Above Ground: Bolívar in the United

States227

ix
x CONTENTS

10 A Rebirth255

11 Bolívar in the Wake of World War II: Gerhard Masur and

Waldo Frank281

12 The Bolívar-Santander Polemic in Colombia: Germán

Arciniegas and Gabriel García Márquez303

13 Bolívar and Sucre in Ecuador: A Case of Two

Assassinations349

14 Vasconcelos as Screenwriter: Bolívar Remembered371

15 Bolívar in Bolivia: On Fathers and Creators397

16 Institution Building in Peru: Ricardo Palma and Víctor

Andrés Belaúnde423

17 Bolívar in the Río de la Plata443

18 Epilogue469

Bibliography487

Index503
 CHAPTER 1

An Introduction

On December 17, 1830, just 47 years of age, Simón Bolívar, the most
important leader of Latin American independence, died on the northern
coast of New Granada (today Colombia), the cause long thought to be
tuberculosis. En route to Europe, he was leaving the hemispheric and
international stage he had dominated for almost 20 years. Escorting him
were 100 soldiers and members of his personal and military staff, includ-
ing servant/squire José Palacios who had been a slave of Bolívar’s family;
Belford Hilton Wilson who in 1822 had come from London at the recom-
mendation of his prominent father to join Bolívar’s inner circle following
in the footsteps of the near 7000 private British and Irish citizens that
beginning in 1816 had crossed the Atlantic to fight under Bolívar; and
Agustín Jerónimo de Iturbide who had arrived in 1827 and was a son of
the leader of Mexican independence who had crowned himself emperor in
1822 only to be deposed, then executed.1 But entourage notwithstanding,
Bolívar was not on a state mission. The world-famous figure was going to
Europe as an exile, cast out by the elites of Bogotá and declared persona
non grata in his homeland of Venezuela.
These, the final moments in the life of Bolívar are a good place to start
for our study of Bolívar’s afterlife in the Americas, especially when drawn
from the brilliant and informed imagination of Colombian author Gabriel
García Márquez whose novel of 1989 we are using as one source. Bolívar
is exiting, richly accompanied. The figures escorting him provide García
Márquez’s readers, and now us, with threads linking to individuals,

© The Author(s) 2020 1

R. T. Conn, Bolívar’s Afterlife in the Americas,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26218-1_1
2 R. T. CONN

­ rocesses, and contexts. As García Márquez knew well, these interests

p
have their own history in the story of how Bolívar has been represented.
Explored over 300 pages, the ending of Bolívar’s life that García Márquez
is newly defining and that has been the subject of so much attention with
interpreters beginning their narration at different moments acquires depth
and texture. It becomes much more than a finale.
Bolívar is the preeminent symbol of Latin America and the focus of
what could seem almost unrivaled posthumous attention, seen from his
own times forward as a force now for liberalism or other forms of moder-
nity, now for old regime values and authoritarianism, now for a mix of the
two, with the debate over the meaning of his figure having no end in sight.
He comes to us in biographies, histories, bulletins, political essays,
addresses, and numerous artistic renderings by painters, poets, fiction
writers, architects, and sculptors; in the built environment there are stat-
ues and public buildings that construct for him a legacy. Comparing the
different iterations of his figure in the facets of his afterlife is difficult to
do, as information is never constituted in the same way and the contexts
for engagement with his figure are inherently different.
We see Bolívar in the independence period 1810–1825, including his
battles and his major public texts. We hear of his relationships to his lieuten-
ants, those who were loyal to him and those who were not. We move quickly
from one point in his life to the next, lapping up a smattering of scenes: his
1815 Jamaica Letter; his controversial 1817 execution of a star rival,
African- and European-descended general Manuel Píar; the multiracial state
he advocated in his 1819 Angostura Address; his miraculous crossing of the
Andes in 1819; his dictatorship from August 27, 1828 to January 20, 1830;
his exile in May 1830; and his death that became prominent in the minds of
the publics of the Americas in 1930 at the moment of the centenary of his
passing celebrated throughout the hemisphere. It was the second major
hemispheric centenary of his figure, the first that of his birth in 1883.
Digging further, we learn more of the figure he cut for himself in the
period 1825–1830, after independence from Spain and in the context of
the political instability that prevailed throughout the new republics of
Spanish America. From his personal letters we find out about his views
on the old colonial town councils (cabildos) that resist the centralization
he wants for his region; his recourse to racist formulations to explain
social fragmentation and to dismiss from his perch in Bogotá a Mexican
hero of independence, none other than Vicente Guerrero, who was briefly
president of the new republic in 1829; and his continuing deployment
 1 AN INTRODUCTION 3

of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concepts of civic virtue and the general will.

These concepts carried importance for him from the start of his career as
military man and leader—virtuous citizens now more than ever the sal-
vation of the state. On April 12, 1828, in the context of the constituent
assembly he called (the Convención de Ocaña/the Ocaña Convention),
he states in a letter to his long-time comrade-in-arms and now in effect
governing partner, José Antonio Páez: “I will make many sacrifices in
submitting to the general will but I will never accept even the title of
­citizen in a country badly constituted and for that reason discordant
and weak.”2
We also learn about revolt and resistance in the decades previous to
independence: actors who were indigenous and mestizo (Indian and
Spanish descended) who rose up against the colonial state; and creoles like
Bolívar (Spanish born in Latin America) who embraced Enlightenment
thought, particularly the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen, and as Bolívar would later, the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
as they sought to rally support for separation from Spain but who were
imprisoned or executed when apprehended.
How and why do we know Bolívar? Why do the different locations that
his interpreters occupy matter? Why do we know of some acts, battles,
texts, and moments and not others? These questions provide the founda-
tion for our study of the uses of Bolívar in the republics of the Americas,
and our inquiry will help us see why that story—his afterlife—must con-
cern us as an object of investigation. No figure, it can be argued, has been
more integrated into the cultural and political discourse of a region than
Bolívar has in the Americas. Another biography is not vital; rather we are
looking to illuminate the conditions that make Bolívar’s life felicitous for
postmortem symbolism and exploitation.
In this book we examine that integration as we reconstruct the pro-
cesses and actors that create Bolívar’s afterlife. We aim to recover not
Bolívar but those who have been concerned with him, some well known,
others not, all intervening in their national traditions and/or the Americas
in important ways using his figure and those who were connected to him.
What will unfold is a vast network of transmission that, for the most part,
has not been visible or that has been visible only in parts, parts mistaken
for wholes. If surrealism, existentialism, Marxism, Freudianism, post-­
structuralism, and deconstruction have provided common languages for
actors in the world to engage with in different settings, so has the figure
of Bolívar. Yet there is a fundamental difference. The discursive world of
4 R. T. CONN

Bolívar offers no methodology, nothing to study (though some have tried

to), only an historically significant and complex life that those who have
come after him have for different reasons used as a platform, some seeing
Bolívar as the paradigmatic humanistic model or hero who provides les-
sons for the present, others either critiquing that vision or seeing him in
entirely different ways. Bolívar—the Bolívar of his afterlives—is meaning-
ful for the present, for us, on account of what he can tell us about the past.
That past, which is multiple, is the cultural and political history of the
nations of the Americas.
The history of the uses of Bolívar and of those of figures related to him
that we tell in this book passes through two narrative frames, worked and
reworked by interpreters. For them it is a question of literacy, just as it
must be for us.
The first is that of independence, a process triggered by Napoleon who
was a contemporary of Bolívar and with whom Bolívar is often paired.
Napoleon’s occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808 spurred the cre-
ation of juntas (provisional governments) across the domains of Spain in
the Americas, juntas that initially declared loyalty to Fernando VII, placed
by Napoleon under house arrest in Bayonne, France. In Spain there was
immediate military resistance to the invasion. Juntas also formed there,
and a military alliance was established with the United Kingdom. In south-
western Spain “the Cortes” was refounded. This was Spain’s parliament,
which declared in 1812 a constitutional monarchy with the absent
Fernando VII to uphold that constitution upon his return and that
included representatives from colonies still controlled by Spain.
In Latin America the wars and political processes that began in 1809 with
the first junta in La Paz, Bolivia (its members soon executed) unfolded in
three major theaters—the viceroyalty of New Spain centered in what is
today Mexico; northern South America; and southern South America. They
were defined to different degrees by division from within, with allegiances
split between royalist and independentist, centralist and regionalist. The
context they shared was that of a global order upended by Napoleon, fol-
lowed by the new conservative European regime in the form of the Holy
Alliance that came into being after his defeat in 1814, which for Spaniards
and colonials meant the return of a Fernando VII who surprisingly for many
reestablished absolute monarchy subsequent to the four-year tenure of the
Cortes. In the northern South American theater, Bolívar and his lieutenants
won great victories, but also suffered terrible and consequential losses, tra-
versing vast swaths of unimaginably difficult terrain.
 1 AN INTRODUCTION 5

Looking at the period of independence (1809–1825), we come upon

scenes told and retold, each one acquiring autonomy: Bolívar writing his
December 15, 1812 Manifiesto de Cartagena (Cartagena Manifesto) after
the defeat of Venezuela’s First Republic by the Spanish and royalist
Venezuelans (1811–1812); Bolívar crossing the Andes from New Granada
to establish the Second Republic in Caracas (1813–1814)—the Admirable
Campaign—and issuing his controversial Decree of War to the Death to
turn royalist Venezuelans to his side; Bolívar devastatingly defeated little
more than a year later at the hands of the crown-defending populist leader
José Tomás Boves who abhorred upper-class, white Venezuelans of which
Bolívar was one (mantuanos), with thousands of the city’s residents aban-
doning their homes in flight from the caudillo Boves and his impressive
force of mixed-­race plainsmen; Bolívar in exile in 1815 penning what would
become known as the Carta de Jamaica (the Jamaica Letter)—Spain having
retaken not only Venezuela, but also New Granada (today Colombia) as
well as important areas of Mexico; Bolívar, subsequent to his return to the
mainland after receiving assistance from the first president of the Republic
of Haiti, Alexandre Pétion, bringing under his command the patriot caudi-
llo figures of the eastern provinces of Venezuela and making his way up the
Orinoco River to set up camp in Angostura, Venezuela (today Ciudad
Bolívar), the site of the Third Republic (1817–1819); and Bolívar enticing
7000 English and Irish fighters who came to serve under him.
Further, we see Bolívar delivering his Discurso de Angostura (Angostura
Address) on the topic of founding a state on February 15, 1819, in which,
in addition to the multiracialism of which we spoke, he vowed to end
slavery—a commitment he had made to Pétion; Bolívar several months
later, instead of continuing to confront the battalions of Spanish com-
mander Pablo Morillo in Venezuela, leading his soldiers over the Andes to
take the town of Boyacá on August 7, 1819, and liberate New Granada;
Bolívar, subsequently, returning across the southern plains into Venezuela
to join caudillo leader José Antonio Páez to win independence for
Venezuela in 1821 at the Battle of Carabobo; Bolívar, after achieving the
liberation of the north, going south with Antonio José de Sucre as his
lieutenant to free in 1822 the presidency of Quito (today Ecuador), in
1824 the viceroyalty of Peru (with the Battle of Ayacucho on December 9),
and in 1825 Alto Peru (Upper Peru), today the country named for him,
Bolivia; and finally, in the context of the narrative of independence, Bolívar
calling his Congreso de Panamá in 1826 in an attempt to build a hemi-
spheric diplomatic and military alliance for the new and future republics.
6 R. T. CONN

But along with this narrative, there is another that shaped his life and
career, as well as the Americas, intersecting with that of independence but
extending beyond it and having great significance for the future: that of
the multiregional state that Bolívar conceived, saw established as a state on
December 17, 1819, and a republic in 1821, with himself as president,
with the battle over it and its possible alternatives, including the Federation
of the Andes that Bolívar dreamed of, defining the politics of 1826–1830
(this the year it unraveled and Bolívar ended up in exile). This multire-
gional state is Colombia, the third Latin American state to come into
existence after Haiti and the Río de la Plata, though convention refers to
it as the Gran Colombia to distinguish the polity from the modern state
that splintered off and that, eventually, 55 years later, in 1886, under the
leadership of Conservatives, took its name. The territorial limits of the
Gran Colombia mostly corresponded to those of today’s Colombia,
Venezuela, and Ecuador. Its capital was Bogotá.
Over the decades, writers, intellectuals, historians, and politicians
have engaged Bolívar’s figure by reworking moments and scenes from
both the narrative of independence and that of the Gran Colombia and
his project for the Federation of the Andes (also known as the Bolivian
Federation) as they have molded his figure for their distinct political proj-
ects and publics.
The scenes in the second narrative include once again February 15,
1819, when Bolívar sketched out the Gran Colombia in his Angostura
Address, proposing that its constitution should be a variation on the
British Constitution with the monarch replaced by a president and with the
addition of a fourth branch of government, a Greek- and Roman-inspired
body of censors dealing with matters of civil and public conduct, including
education; December 17 of that year when the Congress of Angostura
declared the state; 1821 when the continuation of that congress, now the
Congress of Cúcuta, named for its location in the New Granadan city,
furnished the state with a constitution inspired by the model of that of the
United States, making the Gran Colombia a republic; 1825, when Bolívar
reached his full glory, the liberator of almost half a continent and head of
state not only of the Gran Colombia, but also of Peru and Bolivia; 1826, when
Bolívar wrote his Bolivian Constitution at the request of the new republic
named for him, a constitution in which he called for a mixed government
defined by elements of monarchy (as seen in his lifetime president), of
­republicanism (as seen in his electoral, legislative, and judicial branches), and
of moralism (as seen in his body of censors, now placed in the legislative
 1 AN INTRODUCTION 7

branch); 1826–1828, the years he promoted the idea of a new, even larger
state that would aggregate the regions of the Gran Colombia and the
newly liberated territories of Peru and Alto Peru into the new union of
which we have spoken—the Federation of the Andes—with a modified
version of the 1826 Bolivian Constitution providing it with its legal
foundation.
In addition, there is, as we have said, the period of 1828–1830, when
Bolívar turned the Gran Colombia into a dictatorship—he and Francisco
de Paula Santander—the vice president of the Gran Colombia who had
served under him in military campaigns and who had been acting presi-
dent of the Gran Colombia during the time of the Colombian armies’
offensives in Quito, Guayaquil, Peru, and Alto Peru—having been unable
to agree at the Ocaña Convention in the spring of 1828 on the form that
the state should take; within that period, September 25, a month into his
dictatorship, when he was the target of an assassination attempt by liberal
opponents, Santander presumed to be the inspiration behind it; and
January, 1830, the moment Bolívar, holding to his commitment, both
ended his dictatorship and convened the Congress of Bogotá or Admirable
Congress (January 20–May 11)—the latter name riffing on that given to
his first crossing of the Andes—with instructions for delegates to write a
new constitution, using the 1821 Cúcuta Constitution as their model,
and vote a president.
Throughout his military campaigns and political career Bolívar con-
vened civilian bodies, be they assemblies or constituent congresses, ceding
his authority to them: in 1813 to a body of notables which then appointed
him military dictator; in 1819 to the Angostura Congress which then
elected him president; in 1828 to the Ocaña Convention; and of course,
in 1830 to the Admirable Congress. That congress elected a president, not
Bolívar but New Granadan Joaquín Mosquera.
This was the beginning of the last chapter of the Gran Colombia, which
for some time had been fractured, reduced to a structure with power only
over the territorial limits of present-day Colombia in addition to Panama.
Still a part of the Gran Colombia, the region of Venezuela had functioned
with autonomy from mid-1826 forward, having declared independence
from Bolívar’ state that year and achieved a new political arrangement. As
for the territory that would become Ecuador and that in the Gran
Colombia was referred to as the southern district, in 1828 Juan José
Flores, the leader of one of the three departments of that district, wrote
to Santander about his desire for the region to secede, but soon found
himself embroiled in a war that broke out on June 20, 1828, between the
8 R. T. CONN

Gran Colombia and Peru. The war ended with Flores’s and Antonio José
de Sucre’s victory for the Gran Colombia at Tarqui on February 27, 1829.
A year and a half later, subsequent to the decision of the Admirable
Congress not to elect Bolívar, Ecuador seceded. Weakening the prospects
for the Gran Colombia in this was not only the fact of regions desirous of
being autonomous, but also the assassination of Sucre on June 4, 1830,
less than a month after the close of the congress. Sucre had served as its
president, with the bishop of Santa Marta, José María Esteves, serving
alongside him as vice-president. He had been anointed by Bolívar to be
his successor, but he had declined to lead the Gran Colombia. Earlier
Bolívar had appointed him president of Bolivia, passing the office to him.
With Sucre’s death, the Gran Colombia was not only without Bolívar, but
also without the person most capable of preserving it were he to change
his mind and assume the mantle he had refused. Sucre’s assassination did
not go unanswered. Bolívar’s other main general, Rafael Urdaneta,
revolted on September 4, 1830, taking control of the state from Mosquera.
Bolívar, who was on the northern coast with the intention of leaving for
Europe, was slowly dying. Urdaneta was defeated in 1831, several months
after Bolívar’s death.
Among those who have deployed the two narratives of which we speak
to their advantage in recent years, two stand out: Colombian writer Gabriel
García Márquez whose novel we will continue to discuss (as we will in
Chap. 12) and former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.
In The General in His Labyrinth, his only biographical novel, García
Márquez focuses on Bolívar in the final six to seven months of his life—his
corporal decomposition from tuberculosis running parallel to the political
disintegration of the Gran Colombia. Taking his readers from May of 1830
when Bolívar is forced into exile from Bogotá through his trip to the
northern coast, García Márquez brings his fictionalization of this life to a
close with the moment of Bolívar’s passing, December 17, the same day
11 years earlier the Gran Colombia was declared a state. Multiple time-
frames are given, including not only the trip itself with its beginning and
end, but also that of the anticipation and postponement of Bolívar’s death.
The final demise of his tubercular body is mistakenly reported from the
outset of the novel, notably by his many enemies, eager to see him gone for
good. There is, still, a third timeframe: a life story. García Márquez fash-
ions Bolívar’s trip to the coast as a platform from which to narrate through
the filter of bathos—the literary technique that gives voice to the ridiculous
and the trivial—the epic story he believes Bolívar’s life to be, as well as to
 1 AN INTRODUCTION 9

provide biographical sketches of military leaders and soldiers, of civilian

elites, and of members of the popular classes in what is a tightly woven
tapestry designed to recognize and explore subjectivities in addition to that
of Bolívar.
As for Hugo Chávez, who famously assumed the persona of the
Liberator (a moniker famously associated with Bolívar since 1813) to
shore up his political credentials and authority in both his campaign for
president of Venezuela and during his long tenure in that position—head
of state from 1999 to the year of his death in 2013—he also found ideo-
logical grist in Bolívar’s final year. In an assertion dating from 2007 and
typifying his relationship to the Bolivarian legacy, the public sphere, and
the historical record, the ever-theatrical Chávez who nationalized indus-
tries, created innovative social programs for the poor, and enacted partici-
patory councils, turned the circumstances surrounding Bolívar’s exile and
death into a stage. Bolívar did not die of tuberculosis but was assassinated
in his prime by the elites who saw their local capitalist interests threatened
by him and the state that was the Gran Colombia, Chávez claimed.
Determined to secure proof of this, in 2010 Chávez had Bolívar’s remains
disinterred and examined by scientists who, while finding no traces of TB
and no evidence of trauma, did identify traces of arsenic. The absence of
TB did not necessarily mean that Bolívar could not have suffered from the
disease, since it commonly does not spread beyond the lungs and soft tis-
sue. A group of doctors in the United States also looked at the evidence,
concluding that arsenic could very well have been the cause of death not
only because Bolívar perhaps was exposed to it through the water he was
drinking, but also because he may have been using it for years to combat
his ailments, including arthritis. Arsenic was the best treatment available at
the time for unexplained health problems and the VIP medicine of choice.
As for Venezuela’s scientists, they reached the decision that a cause of
death could not be determined definitively. Still, Chávez came to two con-
clusions: the first that Bolívar died of arsenic; the second that the manner
in which the substance entered his body was not through long-term inci-
dental or purposeful consumption but by foul play. Indeed, foul play was
the ending to Bolívar’s life adopted by Venezuelan filmmaker Alberto
Arvelo in his 2013 Libertador that culminates with a band of men training
their rifles on a distinctly healthy Bolívar who in a scene just before has
directed his closest lieutenants—General Rafael Urdaneta and a still alive
General Antonio José de Sucre—to reclaim Venezuela and the south.3
10 R. T. CONN

Our purpose in speaking of two distinct constructions of Bolívar’s

much discussed ending in the context of what we are identifying as the
narrative of independence and that of Bolívar’s state projects, first and
foremost the Gran Colombia, is to begin to articulate the complex and
shifting ground on which Bolívar’s interpreters have positioned them-
selves in their myriad accounts. A diverse collection of individuals, institu-
tions, and political groups spanning nations and continents, they as such
have largely been invisible, usually known in isolation from one another
even though they are related.
From the nineteenth century forward, these actors, which have
included military leaders, historians, sociologists, philosophers, writers,
artists, diplomats, political leaders, and heads of state, have gone, so to
speak, to Bolívar—central figure that he was in the process of the region’s
liberation, and prolific author that he was of texts detailing his own
actions, projects, and dreams—in order to articulate and promote their
visions, initiatives, and schemes. They have done so in the context of
modernization enterprises, social unrest, civil war, military insurrections,
dictatorship and democracy, liberation movements, and world war, as
well as in the context of the political and social debates that have accom-
panied all of this and of which they have been protagonists, using Bolívar
to elaborate and promote their positions on matters of social order, gov-
ernment, the economy, race relations, and leadership among others.
Cultural paradigms based on the idea of the nation state in addition to
related ones defined by race theory, all generated in France and other
European countries in the nineteenth century, became important in these
debates. They were used both to consolidate the authority of white elites
before peoples who were multiracial, black, and indigenous and in some
cases, in just the opposite way, to contain and marginalize individual
countries’ traditional elites. In Venezuela and Peru we will see examples
of the latter.
A time period of particular importance in the story we tell is that of the
first half of the twentieth century when political and cultural discourse
saw Bolívar’s figure used across the Americas. The forces driving this phe-
nomenon were the Venezuelan state and the corps of intellectuals sur-
rounding it; the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898, which saw the
United States seize Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spain;
and the US hemispheric movement that came into being just a few years
before the fateful year of 1898 and that is known as Pan Americanism
(1889–1950s).
 1 AN INTRODUCTION 11

But relatively little is known about all these actors and processes.
Forged representations of Bolívar have slipped unnoticed into the archives,
become assimilated as factual or objective accounts, been locked away in
individual national or academic bodies, and have been dismissed as mere
patriot writing. We are left not only without a sense of the broad political
and ideological interest that Bolívar’s figure has generated, but also, then,
without an understanding of the fact that the work produced about him
is a part—in fact a central part—of the story of nation building and hemi-
spheric globalism in the Americas.
For reasons having to do with how Bolívar has come down to us, we
organize our narrative around the nation state using the actors who have
claimed and debated the meaning of his figure to tell nine different, inter-
related national stories. The nation states of which we will speak are the
so-called Bolivarian countries—Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and
Bolivia, countries whose territories Bolívar liberated—as well as others
where his figure has also been important discursively—the United States,
Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina. In our discussion of the integral actors, we
will be particularly interested in the parameters they lay out for discussion
of Bolívar’s figure, whether disciplinary or other, and the historical condi-
tions under which they do so; how the parameters they conceive articulate
with previous and existing frameworks both inside and outside the coun-
tries in which they are located; and how they can be seen as originating or
continuing a discursive criterion or tradition. The meaning of Bolívar, we
can be sure, is never exactly the same. The stages of his life; his military
and political career; the state he was central in creating: the Gran Colombia,
and the one he imagined, the Federation of the Andes; his major public
texts (the Cartagena Manifesto, the Jamaica Letter, the Angostura
Address, and the Bolivian Constitution); the leaders and thinkers with
whom he is compared and brought into dialogue; the actors who have
written about him—writers, historians, and so on—are represented and
interpreted in accordance with the geopolitical concerns of each nation
and the specific projects of the cohort of expositors in question. Leaders
with whom he is paired, depending on the national tradition, include the
Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, the Venezuelan Antonio José de Sucre,
the Venezuelan José Antonio Páez, the Colombian Francisco de Paula
Santander, the Argentine José de San Martín, the Mexican Agustín de
Iturbide, George Washington, and Napoleon.
To make sense of how Bolívar has circulated, we also pay close attention
to what he has represented as text. If discourse is a wordily affair made
12 R. T. CONN

possible by paper and electronic materials, Bolívar provides a wealth of the

former. He authored reams of letters, tenacious and prodigious corre-
spondent that he was, in addition to the major public documents of which
we have spoken—texts produced by him alone and with the assistance of
his scribes that engage with cultural and political identity and the complex
imperial politics of the times, replete with formulations that are weighty
and profound, and some pithy enough to be packaged and disseminated
through citation. Bolívar furnishes us with a written record, but that
record should not be taken at face value. At the end of his life he issued
instructions for his correspondence to be destroyed. It was not. Instead, it
became the subject of numerous projects of collecting, projects that have
been constitutive of Bolívar’s afterlives. A short story by the famous
Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges has a main character, an academic, go
to take possession of a recently found Bolívar letter.4
So many texts to engage with! Depending on which are examined and
interpreted, Bolívar comes to us in any number of ways in the representa-
tions we will examine, locked, it would seem, in a series of polarities. He
is seen now as the beginning of a new era; now as the continuation of an
old; now as a visionary; now as a figure grandiose and unrealistic; now as
a leader who created the conditions for the modern liberal republic; now
as just the opposite, one who in the end set the stage for overreaching
centralized government, dictatorship, and even civil war; now as a leader
who defended white hegemony; now as one who stood for racial equality
or for mestizaje (mixing of the races).
In the complex racial politics of Venezuela Hugo Chávez defined Bolívar
as racially mestizo, telling the nation that he was taking Bolívar back from the
white oligarchy. Bolívar was not white. Why was Chávez able to use Bolívar
for his state project? Could an Argentine president or a US American presi-
dent instrumentalize José de San Martín or George Washington in this way?
As Venezuelan historian Germán Carrera Damas tells in his 1969 El
culto a Bolívar (The Cult of Bolívar), institutions and initiatives were
established in Venezuela in the late nineteenth century and early to mid-­
twentieth century that identified Bolívar with the state and placed him at
the center of the intellectual community, this in addition to the previous
work of writers, intellectuals, politicians, and state leaders. Most impor-
tant are the National Academy of History, founded in 1888;5 the
Bolivarian Society of Venezuela, established in 1937;6 and the field of
study at the Central University of Caracas called Pensamiento Social del
Libertador (Social Thought of the Liberator), put in place by José Luis
 1 AN INTRODUCTION 13

Salcedo-­Bastardo between 1953 and 1956. Carrera Damas also speaks of

other instruments and forms of promotion, including Bolívar monu-
ments, in particular statues commissioned by regional city governments
and Caracas from a relatively early moment in the republic, and of diplo-
matic efforts to promote the study of Bolívar at foreign universities.
Venezuelan-donated statues now occupy important places in the major
cities of the world and are taken as natural parts of the built environment,
for example, in Paris, Buenos Aires, New York, and Washington, D.C.
One diplomatic effort Carrera Damas recounts is that of a Venezuelan
ambassador to Great Britain who in 1967 sought to have Cambridge
University create a Bolívar chair at its Centre of Latin American Studies
with a grant from his government. The ambassador told of his efforts in
the Venezuelan press, using the apparent interest on the part of one of the
most important universities in the world to shame the Venezuelan people.
Appreciation for Bolívar was greater abroad than at home, he proudly
asserts, the spiritual values of the new middle class out of synch with those
of the state.7 Here was an ambassador administering civic lessons to
Venezuelans. He was hardly the first to do so and would, as we have
pointed to, not be the last, but was part of a long tradition.
To follow the integral actors, themselves in debate with one another, is
to see that they have not only intervened in their respective traditions
across multiple contexts, responding both to one another and members of
national contingents elsewhere; it is also to see that they have frequently
crossed borders propelled by the realities of exile, emigration, and other
forms of displacement at the same time that they have been augmented
from without. Émigrés and temporary residents join their ranks to reflect
upon, construct, and use a Bolívar tradition.
For those who have engaged with Bolívar beyond their own borders,
several countries, including the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, and
Spain, have functioned as both an inside and an outside, either receiving
or expelling them, and sometimes doing both. Two stories are particularly
important: that of the Cuban intellectual José Martí to whom we dedicate
a chapter, and that of the Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda. Both
figures are icons in the hemisphere constituting discursive sites, and their
connections to the political and institutional processes in the countries
through which they passed must be understood.
Martí, who uses the figure of Bolívar in important ways in his intellec-
tual production, came upon him right at the beginning of his storied exile
in New York City from 1880 to 1895. The context was his friendship with
14 R. T. CONN

other exiles, those from Venezuela. In 1881 he traveled to Caracas, where

he was first embraced by the country’s head of state, Antonio Guzmán
Blanco, then forced to leave after he refused Guzmán Blanco’s request
that he produce an article about him, having published one paying tribute
to a recently deceased and highly distinguished Venezuelan intellectual.
The person he had written about was Cecilio Acosta, portrayed by Martí
as representing the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century liberalism—
committed to reading in different traditions and to critical thought as well
as to the building of institutions—a depiction that irked the Venezuelan
leader who had been in power already for 11 years and who was leading a
vast modernization project.8
Pablo Neruda, to whom we do not dedicate a chapter but on whom we
will focus our attention now, similarly alighted upon Bolívar outside his
country of origin, in Neruda’s case not as an exile, but as an itinerant intel-
lectual. Neruda had been appointed special consul by the Chilean govern-
ment to help Republican exiles fleeing Spain’s Francisco Franco to relocate
in Mexico. The state initiative had been put in motion by Lázaro Cárdenas,
president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940 and who in 1938 nationalized the
country’s oil industry. Bolívar could hardly have been on Neruda’s mind,
but as the world would learn with his 1948 publication, Heights of Machu
Picchu, the sites to which his travels took him provided content for
his poems.
The place of interest to us in Mexico and at which Neruda would find
himself was the Simón Bolívar Amphitheater, an important venue in the
moment. Here, in 1941, the world in turmoil, Neruda recited before an
overflowing audience “Un canto para Bolívar” (“An Ode to Bolívar”) on
the occasion of Bolívar’s birthday, July 24. Through his figure Neruda
connected the anti-fascist cause in Spain—where he had been in residence
as a Chilean diplomat and a close friend of such major intellectuals as
Federico García Lorca and a courageous defender of refugees, arranging
for the escape of hundreds sheltered in southern France to Chile—to the
amphitheater bearing Bolívar’s name.9 The poem portrays Bolívar as a
Christ-like father who is the spiritual embodiment of Latin America’s
prized natural resources. Bolívar’s name modifies tin, for example, in what
is a vision of resource-nationalization, inspired by Cárdenas’s nationaliza-
tion of oil. Neruda’s poem goes on to celebrate a Spanish Republican
captain of the Fifth Regiment which defends Madrid in 1936. The captain
at the end of the sequence is revealed to be a reincarnation of the
Venezuelan leader: “I awake every hundred years when the people awake,”
 1 AN INTRODUCTION 15

says the captain in response to the question in the final stanza, “Are you or
are you not Bolívar?”10
Neruda had walked into a place of Bolívar’s afterlife, the amphitheater.
Eleven years earlier it had served as one of the Mexican locations of the
hemispheric-wide centenary of Bolívar’s death and later named for him.
Throughout the book we shall have occasion to touch on the different
locations of the 1930 centenary and the political functions the celebra-
tions were made to perform.
The Mexican centenary is not well known but it was significant. The
force behind it was the new president of the republic, Pascual Ortiz Rubio,
who had been ushered into office by Plutarco Elías Calles through rigged
elections to defeat the famous intellectual José Vasconcelos—a fierce
opponent of Calles’s anticlerical politics. With the Mexican celebration,
which was synchronized with that of the United States, Ortiz Rubio was
turning the hemispheric event to his advantage, launching a yearlong
spectacle at locations across Mexico to produce civic c­ ulture.11 Coming
after Emilio Portes Gil, Ortiz Rubio was the second puppet president to
serve Calles and the first to be elected through the machinations of the
Partido Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Party, PNR),
the political party founded by Calles in 1929 with the aim of providing an
institutional basis for the new role he assumed as jefe máximo after his
predecessor and agreed-on successor, Álvaro Obregón, was assassinated
subsequent to his presidential victory in the 1928 elections. (The party in
1946 renamed itself the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI.) The
vision of Bolívar Ortiz Rubio supported stood opposed to the iteration of
Bolívar that was already circulating in Mexico, the work of the individual
Ortiz Rubio had just defeated, José Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos, in his roles
as head of the powerful Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) between
1921 and 1924—the Obregón period—and as patron of the artists of the
new public art, muralism—all this in the heady days immediately following
Mexican Revolution (1910–1920)—had made Bolívar a familiar icon in
connection to the anti-imperialist vision he was articulating through the
large-scale cultural practices he spearheaded. One mural produced under
his direction stands out: Roberto Montenegro’s 1922 Hidalgo, San
Martín, Sucre y Tiradentes—the first hero Mexican, the second Argentine,
the third Venezuelan, and the fourth Brazilian—leaders and martyrs of
American independence that included George Washington to the far left
and Bolívar—the pillar of his hemisphere-projecting canon—in the center.12
16 R. T. CONN

The amphitheater was built between 1902 and 1910 as an addition to the
centuries-old Colegio de San Ildefonso that had been repurposed in 1868
under orders from Liberal president Benito Juárez to house the famous
National Preparatory School led by Gabino Barreda. In the 1920s, with
Vasconcelos as head of the SEP, the school became a home for muralism, with
none other than Diego Rivera making his muralist debut there with La cre-
ación (Creation), a multiracial story of the beginning of Latin America. Rivera
set the mural over the entire back wall of the amphitheater’s stage. Subsequent
to the 1930 Simón Bolívar Centenary festivities and the decision to bestow
Bolívar’s name on the amphitheater, new work was produced to harmonize a
name with a space. In the arcade leading to the amphitheater, Fernando Leal,
under contract by the SEP, created a nine-panel exposé of Bolívar and other
leaders of independence denouncing imperialism.13 The irony that was
Mexican muralism’s renewed claim on the amphitheater is apparent. What
had begun as an attempt to use Bolívar to produce civic virtue to whitewash
the controversial 1929 elections in the context of the all-important hemi-
spheric year that was the centenary celebration of his death, and that saw the
establishment of a new political party to authorize Calles, had morphed into
something else, indeed something familiar—a reassurtion of the figure of the
1920s—by the time Neruda made his appearance on the stage, with Rivera’s
mural behind him, Leal’s murals in the arcade, and the 1920s murals of José
Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros on the walls of the National
Preparatory School. The idea of the politicized nation dominated the site.14
The stories involving other countries go on. To the names of Martí and
Neruda, the latter who would use Bolívar for the Latin American histories
in verse he produced in the 1940s, can be added those of other significant
figures though far less known at a hemispheric level. They are the Peruvian
exile Víctor Andrés Belaúnde, the German émigré Gerhard Masur, and the
Colombian intellectual Germán Arciniegas. All three joined the ranks of
Bolívar interpreters in the United States, where historians and writers were
already producing works about his figure in the long moment that was the
US-led movement, Pan Americanism. Belaúnde and Masur crafted the major
pieces of their times—Belaúnde in the 1920s and 1930s with his book on
Bolívar, independence, and political philosophy; Masur in the 1940s with
his historical narrative, inspired by German historian Leopold von Ranke.
They are works that are still highly regarded within the Anglo-American
world and often used as sources for new renderings of Bolívar and indepen-
dence. The Colombian intellectual and historian Germán Arciniegas also
produced important essays and books on Bolívar in this context with his
intermittent stints as a visiting professor and as an exile from the 1930s
 1 AN INTRODUCTION 17

through the 1950s. He brought with him the critical terms of the national
debate in Colombia where Bolívar and Francisco de Paula Santander were
emblems of the country’s Conservative and Liberal Parties, respectively.
Uruguayan critic Ángel Rama—now something of a cultural icon in
Latin American academic circles across the world for his groundbreaking
1983 The Lettered City, a work that draws fascinating connections between
writing, elites, and power in Latin America—is another individual we can
add to our list of exilic actors who find Bolívar outside their countries, in
his case not Mexico or the United States but Venezuela.
Bolívar was important for Rama. In The Lettered City, he borrows from
Bolívar’s 1812 Cartagena Manifesto, a text in which the young military
man explains to his new hosts in Cartagena, New Granada why Venezuela’s
First Republic failed and why they should assist him in joint military action
to liberate Caracas. The failure was easy enough to understand, Bolívar
insisted, the result simply of Venezuelan leaders’ constitution of 1811—
the framework of the constitutions in Venezuela to follow. Nothing but
the scaffolding of an “airy republic” based on the US Constitution though
having as its executive a triumvirate, it foolishly empowered provinces at
the expense of the central government, provinces that became the site for
royalist reaction. Adopt a different constitution more in tune with the
needs of the country and the path toward independence in Venezuela
would be clear. Threats from outside Latin America had to be considered
as well. Perhaps more hyperbole than anything else, Bolívar warned of the
possibility of massive emigration from Spain, the occupied country’s eccle-
siastics, military leaders, and conservative social classes fleeing to the New
World, just as the Portuguese crown had to Brazil in 1808, escaping
Napoleon’s continental system. Latin America would be inundated with
individuals of a conservative and military mindset, so was the warning
from the young exile. As for Rama, how he adapts the Cartagena Manifesto
to his own purposes is important. Using Bolívar’s critique of the 1811
constitution, he characterizes the leaders of the First Republic in his own
terms as a lettered class that operates at a distance from reality. Rama, who
does not speak of the manifesto other than to highlight Bolívar’s
­denunciation of the constitution’s authors and supporters, or for that mat-
ter of other texts of Bolívar’s or moments from his career, had in the 1811
constitution, as filtered through Bolívar, an historical moment that could
stand for the entire period of Latin American independence, 1809–1825,
to anchor the centuries-long story he tells of elites who use their privileged
access to writing in order to preside over the wider social body.15
18 R. T. CONN

Rama came to Bolívar during the time of his residence in Venezuela in

the 1970s. He had been lecturing in Caracas when on June 27, 1973, a
military dictatorship overthrew the government in Uruguay. Rama, who
like many eminent scholars and writers was part of Latin America’s pro-
gressive Left, made the decision to remain. In the context of the Cold
War, military dictatorships had once again been taking hold in Latin
America, supported by an anti-communist United States in battle with the
Soviet Union and with Cuba, which became communist after its 1959
revolution. There was the military dictatorship in Brazil in 1964(−1985),
the one in Bolivia in 1971(−1978), and Chile’s in 1973(−1989); the
Argentine dictatorship followed in 1976, extending to 1983. Like other
progressives, Rama still had high hopes for a Cuba that would be open and
democratic within its socialist framework.
In the new context in which Rama found himself, now no longer just
an eminent visiting scholar, but also an exile, he soon founded in Caracas
the prestigious Fundación Biblioteca Ayacucho (Ayacucho Library
Foundation) series on Latin American classics. He borrowed the word
“Ayacucho” from the battle of December 9, 1824—the Sucre-Bolívar vic-
tory at Ayacucho signifying the completion of independence from Spain—
whose 150th anniversary was celebrated in Venezuela in 1974. He was
moving quickly, securing funding for the series from the Venezuelan presi-
dent Carlos Andrés Pérez in 197516 and inviting to Caracas eminent writ-
ers and scholars from 15 different countries at the end of that same year
for a four-day planning meeting, November 17–21.17
In a document entitled “Guide to General Themes” that he circulated
at that meeting of the steering committee, he explained the project, which
was to produce tomes on different areas of Latin American culture. He
proposed 40 per year over the course of 10 years to be executed by teams
of scholars. Rama gave importance to Brazil as he spoke of both
Portuguese- and Spanish-language cultural production. He also embraced
the Caribbean, to which he had recently traveled, desirous of covering
cultural expressions in the different languages that had arrived there
through colonialism, Spanish as well as French and English. Recognizing
the limits of the term Latin American, he also included indigenous litera-
ture and literature of and about the African diaspora. Indeed, he was inno-
vating, seeking to be inclusive in a new way. Covered would be both
sovereign and non-sovereign countries, in the second category Puerto
Rico and Martinique. He asked: how could one not include Aimé Césaire?
The areas of knowledge to be represented were literature, but also the vast
 1 AN INTRODUCTION 19

number of works that could not be categorized easily by discipline: for

example, chronicles of conquerors, explorers, and travelers; and works in
the social sciences, including sociology, which became a field in the late
nineteenth century but that in Latin America like philosophy, he explains,
was not exactly a discipline, connected as it was to state formation. He
included writers caught between national borders such as Guillermo
Hudson, the Argentine who moved to England at age 46 and whose writ-
ings were published there.18
Rama aimed to create a vision of the diverse parts of Latin America and
of its rich and varied culture so that the educated classes of the continent
could know of “their world” beyond the limits of their own countries,
limits that were inevitable but that needed to be overcome. The transna-
tional shared knowledge obtained through figures like the Argentine intel-
lectual and statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento or the Mexican writer
and scholar Alfonso Reyes—examples of the few who were read across the
continent—was hardly enough, he insists. As for the word “library” that
Rama incorporates into the title, it is a term that had long been used in
Latin American letters to mean collection.
Beginning in Mexico in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Alfonso Reyes
and the Dominican scholar Pedro Henríquez Ureña, who during his long
career both in Mexico and Buenos Aires had sought to establish the
humanities as a field of study, also used the word “library” as they imag-
ined publishing projects to make the Latin American classics they con-
ceived of available.19 In the years just before his death in 1946, Henríquez
Ureña established the Biblioteca Americana (American Library) for the
new Mexican press, the Fondo de Cultura Económica. His comprehensive
master list of texts to be published, which featured minor works intended
to awaken the interest of the common reader, not only that of the erudite,
included works from Latin America’s colonial period, from its republics,
from the region’s indigenous cultures, as well as works from Brazil.20
Jump forward 30 years. At the November 1975 planning meeting,
Rama submitted to the steering committee not only his “Guide to General
Themes,” but also what had inspired that guide: Henríquez Ureña’s ­master
list for his never realized Biblioteca Americana.21 The series moved ahead
without delay, as one year later a team of scholars brought out the first
volume of the Fundación Biblioteca Ayacucho, Simón Bolívar: Doctrina
del Libertador (Simón Bolívar: Doctrine of the Liberator).22 As might say
Carrera Damas, the institutional forces among which Rama found himself
encouraged if not mandated that selection.
Another random document with
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 III.
Royaume de Kiev.

Kiev, situé sur une hauteur, qui domine le Dniéper, un peu en

aval de son confluent avec la Desna, avait une situation très
favorable au commerce dans un temps où les rivières étaient les
principales voies de communication. Son importance en tant que
centre commercial, politique et militaire devait dater de très loin,
puisque lorsque ses chroniqueurs se mirent à y rassembler des
renseignements sur les débuts de sa vie politique et de sa dynastie,
ils ne purent guère recueillir que de simples légendes. Ils racontent
que Kiev tirerait son origine d’un bac établi à cet endroit sur le
Dniéper et dont le passeur aurait porté le nom de Kyï ; d’autres récits
prétendent que Kyï était un prince de la tribu des Polianes établis
dans cette contrée, qui y aurait bâti le premier un château fort.
Les premiers princes de la dynastie de Kiev, sur lesquels des
informations certaines nous soient parvenues, vivaient dans la
première moitié du Xe siècle : c’étaient le prince Igor et son épouse
Olga, qui avait reçu le baptême au milieu du IXe siècle. De leur
mariage naquit le prince Sviatoslav, dont le fils Vladimir christianisa
le pays, organisa l’église et donna l’élan à la vie intellectuelle et par
conséquent à la littérature. Il y avait eu avant Igor un prince Oleg, qui
a gardé dans la littérature un renom de prince sage et tant soit peu
magicien (dans les « bylines » il est appelé « Volga », nom analogue
à celui de la princesse Olga « princesse sage »). Mais on ne sait
quels étaient ses liens avec la dynastie. Probablement nous nous
trouvons là en face d’une pure conjecture émise par l’un des
rédacteurs de la chronique de Kiev, qui prétend que le prince Igor
était fils du Varègue Rurik, prince de Novogorod : Igor avec son
oncle Oleg seraient venus à Kiev avec des Varègues-Russes et
auraient conquis le pays. Des traités passés par Oleg et Igor avec
Byzance, en 907, 911 et 944, qui sont tombés sous les yeux d’un
des rédacteurs postérieurs de la chronique de Kiev, confirment en
effet que ces princes étaient bien souverains à Kiev, qu’ils se
faisaient appeler « princes russes » et que dans leur entourage on
trouvait beaucoup de noms scandinaves. C’est évidemment ce qui a
donné au chroniqueur l’idée d’attribuer aux Russes et à la dynastie
de Kiev une origine scandinave, et comme le nom de Russe n’était
connu ni en Suède, ni en Scandinavie en général, le chroniqueur
s’est vu obligé d’affirmer que Rurik, en se rendant chez les Slaves,
avait emmené avec lui « tous les Russes ».
Quelle que soit l’origine de cette appellation, elle désignait aux
IXe et Xe siècles cette caste militaire en même temps que
commerçante, qui dominait à Kiev, qui assujettissait peu à peu les
pays slaves voisins, trafiquait des esclaves et des produits qu’elle
percevait en qualité de tributs sur les contrées qui lui étaient
soumises. C’est à Kiev et à ses environs, le pays des Polianes, que
l’on donnait le nom de Russie. C’est là un fait bien établi, qu’on
explique cette dénomination comme on voudra, qu’elle ait été
importée par des étrangers appelés russes ou qu’elle fût une
appellation locale adoptée par les troupes des Varègues.
Naturellement à mesure que les princes de Kiev étendaient leurs
conquêtes sur les Slaves méridionaux — que nous considérons
aujourd’hui comme Ukrainiens — et sur les Slaves septentrionaux —
Ruthènes blancs et Moscovites — le nom de Russie était adopté par
les pays conquis, qui le considéraient comme une appellation
politique et jusqu’à un certain point nationale. Mais au sens restreint
elle s’appliquait exclusivement, entre le XIe et le XIIIe siècles, à la
contrée de Kiev [3] .
 [3] Une remarque caractéristique c’est que le
chroniqueur nous présente le pays de Novogorod comme
la première base de l’expansion des Russes scandinaves
dans le monde slave. Mais pour les gens du pays de
Novogorod la « Russie » c’était Kiev et l’Ukraine, par
opposition à leur propre contrée. Ceci rend l’hypothèse
du chroniqueur bien chancelante.

Les Russes sont mentionnés pour la première fois dans les

documents grecs du commencement du IXe siècle, à l’occasion des
expéditions militaires qu’ils entreprirent, soit pour se procurer du
butin, soit pour entamer des relations commerciales, vers les cités
byzantines du littoral de la Mer Noire. Il est probable que c’est à
cause de ces expéditions que l’empereur grec se vit forcé dans les
environs de 835 d’entamer des négociations avec les princes
russes. Les annales carolingiennes nous disent en passant qu’en
l’année 839 l’empereur de Byzance envoya des ambassadeurs
russes à Louis le Débonnaire, afin qu’ils pussent retourner chez eux
en faisant ce détour, parce que la route directe leur était barrée par
quelque horde hostile. Mais peu de temps après, les expéditions
russes se renouvellent et, en 860, Constantinople elle-même faillit
tomber entre leurs mains. Le gouvernement grec dut se mettre en
frais pour établir des relations amicales avec les Russes : on leur
envoya des ambassadeurs munis de riches présents et des
missionnaires, conduits par un évêque, qui en baptisèrent un grand
nombre.
L’expédition de 860 est le premier fait historique, touchant la
Russie, que les compilateurs de Kiev du XIe siècle aient trouvé dans
les sources byzantines. Ils notèrent que c’était à partir de ce moment
que « les pays russes » furent connus et sans hésiter donnèrent pour
chef à cette expédition les princes de Kiev, Ascold et Dir, dont les
tombeaux gardaient encore vivant le souvenir. Il est curieux que le
chroniqueur n’eût pas la moindre idée d’un autre centre russe. De
même il faut noter qu’Ascold s’étant fait connaître par ses vertus
chrétiennes, on éleva une église sur son tombeau. Ceci évoque à la
mémoire le succès des missionnaires byzantins de 860, auquel on
rattache la mission chez les Khozares de Constantin-Cyrille, l’apôtre
des Slaves [4] .
[4] Un détail curieux permet de situer avec certitude
l’état « russe » du IXe siècle en Ukraine : le prince des
russes en 839 s’attribue le titre de Khakan (autre forme
de Kahan) qui est le titre des souverains Khozares.
Hilarion, dans le panégyrique qu’il a fait de Vladimir le
Grand, lui donnera plus tard cette qualification, que
porteront dans les documents postérieurs les divers
princes de l’Ukraine. C’est là un témoignage de
l’influence des Khozares sur l’Ukraine et sur le pouvoir
des princes russes qui se développait dans un pays où
leur action se faisait sentir.

Les sources étrangères — grecques, latines, arabes,

arméniennes, hébraïques — font surtout mention de ces Russes à
propos des expéditions qu’ils entreprirent en Crimée, en Asie
mineure, sur le littoral de la Caspienne, en quête de butin. Les
chroniqueurs de Kiev prêtent particulièrement leur attention à
l’expansion du pouvoir et de l’influence de leurs princes sur les
Slaves et autres tribus voisines. Mais les débuts de ce mouvement
dataient déjà de trop loin pour qu’ils pussent nous en donner des
renseignements précis dans son stade primitif.
Il est hors de doute que, déjà au IXe siècle, les princes de Kiev
étaient maîtres du Dniéper et de ses ramifications vers le nord, qu’ils
appelaient « route de chez les Varègues jusque chez les Grecs ». Et
cette dénomination était exacte, en fait, depuis la fin du Xe siècle et
le fut surtout au XIe siècle, alors que les troupes Varègues prenaient
habituellement ce chemin, pour se rendre à Byzance, où elles
s’engageaient dans la garde impériale, dont elles formaient le plus
fort contingent. D’après les chroniqueurs, c’est le prince légendaire
Oleg, qui se serait rendu maître de la voie du Dniéper, ce qui prouve
qu’ils n’en savaient rien de certain. De son temps les princes de Kiev
commandaient les voies terrestres et fluviales, qui menaient à l’est à
travers les contrées habitées par les Slaves et les Finnois jusqu’à la
Volga ; là se trouvaient dans les villes du pays les gens d’Oleg. Les
traités que ce dernier conclut avec Byzance font mention des « très
hauts et sérénissimes princes » et des « puissants boïards » qui sont
soumis à sa domination. Un traité d’Igor en énumère une vingtaine.
C’était donc une organisation politique assez importante, assez
lâche, peu centralisée, dont l’union était maintenue par les garnisons
« russes » et par les visites périodiques des princes, mais qui, traitée
avec énergie, pouvait fournir au pouvoir central des armées et des
moyens matériels considérables.
Le traité byzantin sur l’administration de l’empire, qui porte le
nom de Constantin Porphyrogénète, nous donne des informations
sur la pratique administrative du royaume de Kiev, aux environs de
940, l’époque d’Igor. Au mois de novembre, les princes à la tête de
tous les russes, sortent de Kiev et se rendent « en poludie » pour
percevoir les tributs annuels, que doivent leur payer les contrées
slaves de Novogorod, les Derevlianes, les Dregovitches, les
Krivitches (les Ruthènes blancs d’aujourd’hui), les Siverianes et
autres peuplades, qui leur sont soumises. Ils y établissent leurs
quartiers d’hiver, et au mois d’avril, quand le Dniéper dégèle, ils
rentrent à Kiev. De là ils expédient en bateaux par le fleuve et la Mer
Noire sur le marché de Constantinople les marchandises et esclaves
recueillis. Les Russes de Kiev, leur boïards et leurs princes sont en
même temps des guerriers et des commerçants. Ce sont les intérêts
de leur commerce qui gouvernent leur politique : les voies fluviales
de l’Europe orientale, gardées par leurs garnisons, constituent la
charpente de leur domination, dont les résultats se traduisent en un
substantiel profit commercial.
 IV.
Le Christianisme.

L’histoire du royaume de Kiev au Xe siècle n’est qu’une série de

changements périodiques vers la consolidation ou l’affaiblissement
de l’état. Réunies par le système des garnisons, les tribus
ancestrales de ceux que nous appelons aujourd’hui les Ukrainiens,
les Ruthènes blancs, les Grands Russes, les Finnois et
probablement aussi les Lithuaniens, ne pouvaient être maintenues
dans cet état de sujétion que par les armes. Or les Russes de Kiev
n’étaient pas assez nombreux pour contrôler efficacement la vie
locale de toutes ces contrées ; leurs tendances visaient surtout à
s’étendre, à s’emparer de riches territoires et de centres
commerciaux importants.
Le règne de Sviatoslav, fils d’Igor (de 960 à 970) marque une
période d’expansion énergique. Ce fut l’époque de nombreuses
expéditions vers la Volga et sur le littoral de la Caspienne, de vastes
aspirations sur la Bulgarie et même sur Constantinople. Sviatoslav
reprenait à son compte le projet d’un empire gréco-slave, qui avait
déjà tenté le roi bulgare Siméon. L’habile politique de Byzance fit
échouer ses desseins. L’un de ses fils, Vladimir, après avoir réuni de
nouveau sous sa domination les contrées soumises à son père,
suivit une autre politique, qui marque le commencement d’une ère
nouvelle pour les nations slaves et l’Europe orientale en général. Il
chercha à établir un système de gouvernement plus solide dans le
royaume de Kiev, il s’efforça de consolider le pouvoir du prince, de
lui donner un fondement moral en relevant son prestige, au lieu de
ne lui laisser que la force comme unique soutien. Et de même que
beaucoup d’illustres souverains du moyen-âge s’étaient servis dans
ce but des traditions laissées en Europe par l’empire romain, il
s’adressa à Byzance.
D’abord il fait la paix avec elle, lui prête son assistance dans les
luttes intestines qui la déchiraient et en obtient en revanche des
titres, des insignes et l’appui de son église et de sa civilisation. Il ne
rêve plus comme son père de conquérir Constantinople, mais il tient
à devenir le beau-frère de l’empereur grec, à rentrer de quelque
façon dans la famille impériale, qui lui prêtera quelque chose de son
éclat. Ce n’était d’ailleurs pas une nouveauté : dans le traité
d’administration mentionné plus haut, nous lisons, que les princes
« khozares, magyares, russes et autres » en échange de services
rendus, demandaient à recevoir des mains de l’empereur la
couronne et les insignes impériaux. Ils avaient à cœur d’obtenir la
main d’une princesse byzantine, ou de donner en mariage une de
leurs princesses à un membre de la famille impériale pour relever
par là le prestige de leurs dynasties. Les efforts de Vladimir furent
couronnés de succès, et cette fois les conséquences en furent
considérables, parce qu’elles faisaient partie d’un plan habilement
conçu et poursuivi avec beaucoup d’énergie.
Pour lui avoir prêté secours, Vladimir demanda à l’empereur de
lui accorder sa sœur en mariage et, probablement aussi, de lui
envoyer la couronne et les insignes. C’est là, vraisemblablement,
l’origine des récits qui coururent plus tard au sujet des insignes
royaux apportés en Russie et dans lesquels un des souverains
postérieurs du même nom, Vladimir Monomaque, joue le principal
rôle. Une fois sauvé du péril, il fallut que Vladimir le frappât à
l’endroit sensible : il marcha vers la Crimée, s’empara de la
Chersonèse, de sorte que l’empereur dut céder. La princesse Anna
fut envoyée en Russie, Vladimir reçut le baptême et, comme il avait
pris avec lui de la Chersonèse le clergé ainsi que divers objets du
culte chrétien et de l’art grec, il se mit à implanter chez lui, à Kiev et
à propager dans les autres parties de son royaume la civilisation
slavo-byzantine.
Ni le christianisme, ni la civilisation byzantine n’étaient chose
nouvelle pour le pays : nous avons déjà mentionné le succès des
missionnaires de Byzance en 860 et le baptême d’Olga. De plus,
des fouilles récentes entreprises à Kiev, aux environs de l’ancienne
demeure des princes, ont mis à jour un cimetière chrétien, qui date
sûrement d’une époque plus ancienne que celle de Vladimir. Dans
les vieilles sépultures, tant à Kiev, que dans tout le bassin du
Dniéper, nous trouvons un amalgame caractéristique d’influences
byzantines et orientales — irano-arabes venant du Turkestan et du
Califat — que l’on remarque non seulement dans les objets
importés, comme tissus, pièces de céramique ou d’orfèvrerie, mais
encore dans les produits de l’industrie locale. (L’art de Byzance lui-
même était à cette époque fortement imprégné de goût oriental par
l’influence de la Syrie, de l’Arménie et de la Perse.) L’importance de
l’œuvre de Vladimir consista surtout à donner la prédominance à
l’influence byzantine sur celle de l’orient, en lui ouvrant plus
largement la voie qu’on ne l’avait fait jusque-là. Par dessus tout,
l’organisation d’une église chrétienne sur le modèle de celle de
Constantinople était grosse de conséquences : devenue, dès
l’époque de Vladimir, religion d’état, l’église se répand par les
canaux de l’appareil administratif et fait sentir partout son action
civilisatrice.
Les historiens de Kiev nous disent ouvertement, que
l’acceptation du christianisme avait été tout aussi forcée que
spontanée. Vladimir avait ordonné non seulement de détruire les
objets du culte païen, mais de baptiser de force les gens de Kiev et
des autres grandes villes. D’un autre côté, le paganisme chez les
Slaves orientaux n’avait pas de formes bien arrêtées, point de caste
sacerdotale, point de temples ou de sanctuaires nationaux ; c’était
plutôt un état d’esprit qu’un culte. C’est pourquoi il céda sans
résistance devant le christianisme, s’amalgamant en partie avec lui
pour former ce qui est resté dans la littérature chrétienne sous le
nom de « religion à double tradition ». Le petit nombre des
missionnaires empêcha la nouvelle religion de se répandre
facilement dans le fond des provinces, mais parmi les classes
dirigeantes, concentrées dans les villes, elle gagna rapidement du
terrain, grâce au soutien que lui accordait le pouvoir, grâce à son
excellente organisation, à sa hiérarchie, aux formes éclatantes de
ses cérémonies et enfin grâce aux arts et aux lettres, qu’elle avait
pris à son service.
Les églises et les monastères de bois ou de pierre s’élèvent de
toutes parts. De la Bulgarie et des villes grecques accourent avec le
clergé des architectes, des maçons, des artisans, des mosaïstes,
des joailliers, puis des peintres, des maîtres de chant, des scribes.
Les élèves se recrutent dans la population locale ; on les initie dans
le secret des arts. Vladimir enlève les jeunes gens aux familles les
plus distinguées et les donne aux prêtres étrangers « pour être
instruits dans les lettres ». A l’instar de Byzance, il bat monnaie ;
nous y voyons son effigie parée des insignes d’un basileus byzantin.
Modes, vêtements, parures viennent de Byzance, les classes
supérieures s’en emparent, puis les font pénétrer dans les couches
plus profondes de la population. Les clichés décoratifs, les sujets
littéraires byzantins viennent se combiner avec les dessins et les
fables slaves et orientales. Le royaume de Kiev, et avant tout le
triangle ukrainien, formé par les trois grosses villes de Kiev,
Tchernyhiv et Pereïaslav, devient le foyer, d’où la civilisation gréco-
romaine, sous son enveloppe slavo-byzantine, va se répandre dans
toute l’Europe orientale.
 V.
Développement de la vie sociale et
nationale sur de nouveaux principes.

Le long règne de Vladimir (979–1015), suivi d’une courte

contestation entre ses fils, qui un moment se partagèrent son
royaume, puis le règne non moins long de son fils Iaroslav (1019–
1054) remplissent la période, où la réorganisation de l’état de Kiev
se poursuit, sur les bases jetées par Vladimir. Le chroniqueur de
Kiev caractérise cette époque de développement du christianisme
de la manière suivante : « Vladimir avait préparé le sol en éclairant le
pays par le baptême ; Iaroslav a semé la bonne parole au milieu des
fidèles, et nous (la troisième génération), nous en recueillons les
fruits en tirant profit des sciences. » Nous pourrions appliquer aussi
bien cette caractéristique aux autres domaines de l’édification
sociale. De même que les événements politiques de cette époque
nous rappellent, tantôt les grands rois barbares de l’occident, tantôt
l’âge de Charlemagne.
Les anciens écrivains de Kiev notent le changement brusque qui
survint dans la façon d’agir de Vladimir dès qu’il eut reçu le baptême.
Rude, sanguinaire, despote auparavant, il s’adoucit, devient
compatissant envers le peuple et se soucie beaucoup plus de faire
régner la paix dans le pays que d’agrandir ses domaines. Il s’entoure
non seulement de chefs militaires, mais aussi d’évêques ; il appelle à
sa cour les « anciens », les citoyens distingués à qui il « demande
conseil en tout ce qui touche l’ordre et l’organisation de l’état ». Par
exemple le chroniqueur cite les lois sur le meurtre, que Vladimir
modifia et promulgua après en avoir délibéré en conseil. Tous les
jours des tables somptueuses étaient dressées à la cour, que le
prince fût présent à Kiev ou qu’il n’y fût pas, pour les antrustions, les
fonctionnaires du palais et les citoyens de qualité. Les fêtes étaient
l’occasion de fastueux banquets publics, qui duraient plusieurs jours.
On préparait des centaines de jarres d’hydromel, on distribuait de
l’argent aux pauvres et l’on portait à domicile une part du festin aux
malades et aux infirmes.
Les anciens auteurs citent tous ces faits pour montrer l’influence
exercée sur Vladimir par le christianisme, qui avait transformé un
guerrier rude et sauvage en un prince plein de vertus et canonisé
plus tard par l’église. Mais on ne peut douter que ce ne fût là un
programme politique soigneusement suivi, qui atteignit
complètement son but : rapprocher la classe guerrière du reste de la
population, donner au pouvoir un solide fondement moral et en
général unifier l’état. Nous en trouvons la preuve dans la tradition,
qui a survécu à toutes les catastrophes politiques, passant dans la
poésie populaire, inspirant même les chansons épiques de l’extrême
nord, d’Archangel, et d’Olonets, nous parlant encore du « gracieux
prince Vladimir, beau comme le soleil » et de ses festins journaliers.
Le principe d’un état patrimonial, introduit par Vladimir et qui
s’affermit sous Iaroslav et ses descendants, apporta un autre appui
moral à l’organisation de l’état. Avant Vladimir, les membres de la
famille régnante étaient peu nombreux et l’on n’attachait pas grande
importance au principe dynastique. Vladimir, que la légende nous
représente comme très adonné aux femmes, eut un grand nombre
de fils, entre lesquels il distribua ses domaines, déjà de son vivant,
pour qu’ils les gouvernassent, remplaçant ainsi l’ancien système de
la vice-royauté par le régime patrimonial. Les débuts n’en furent pas
bien encourageants : à sa mort, ses fils commencèrent aussitôt à
s’entretuer pour s’emparer de l’héritage, tout comme l’avaient fait les
fils de Sviatoslav, y compris Vladimir lui-même. Mais le clergé,
soutenu par la nouvelle littérature ecclésiastique, tenait beaucoup à
ce système, qui imposait aux princes le devoir de se laisser guider
dans leurs relations mutuelles par l’amour fraternel et l’esprit de
famille. Le peuple aussi se rangeait à cette façon de voir, qui
semblait lui donner des garanties contre les discordes des princes,
dont il avait tant à souffrir. Ainsi au cours des temps, parallèlement
avec l’expansion de la morale chrétienne dans les classes
supérieures, l’idée finit par s’établir que le royaume de Kiev était le
patrimoine de la dynastie du « vieux Vladimir », une propriété dans
laquelle chaque membre de la famille princière avait droit à son
domaine particulier, à charge de veiller, tous ensemble, à ce
qu’aucune partie de ce territoire ne tombât entre des mains
étrangères. Le trône de Kiev devait appartenir à l’aîné, qui, dans ses
rapports avec ses frères puînés, avait le devoir de les traiter
« véritablement en frères », tandis que ces derniers étaient obligés
de le « considérer comme un père » et d’obéir à ses volontés. Cela
va sans dire, cette constitution patriarcale ne fut pas toujours
strictement observée en pratique, mais elle donnait en tous cas une
idée directrice et nous en verrons les conséquences importantes
dans la suite.
Cet ensemble de principautés était régi par les lois et décisions
prises par le prince aîné de Kiev « dans la douma » ou conseil
comprenant, outre les autres princes du sang et boïards, les
évêques et les anciens de la population. Nous en avons déjà
rencontré un exemple. Le plus ancien recueil d’arrêts et décisions
est connu sous le nom de « Droit russe de Iaroslav ». C’est un
compendium analogue aux leges barbarorum de l’Europe
occidentale ; il s’agit surtout de lois pénales, de mesures protectrices
en faveur du prince et de ses gens. La première partie porte un tel
caractère d’ancienneté qu’il faut l’attribuer à l’époque de Iaroslav ou
de Vladimir. C’est aussi à Iaroslav qu’appartient la fixation du taux
d’une contribution, que l’agent du prince ou ses aides ont le droit de
lever sur la population au cours de leurs tournées périodiques. Il
fallait défendre les sujets contre les agents du fisc dont la rapacité
était déjà un thème favori de la littérature de l’époque. A cette partie
primitive ont été faites de nouvelles additions provenant évidemment
des fils et petit-fils de Iaroslav et de la pratique judiciaire postérieure.
Ces lois et arrêtés de Kiev furent considérés comme les règles
de la procédure judiciaire dans les autres parties du royaume : les
historiens du droit reconnaissent aussi dans les monuments
législatifs et les arrêtés judiciaires des contrées de la Russie blanche
et de la Moscovie les mêmes principes, qui se trouvaient déjà dans
les compilateurs anonymes de la législation de Kiev des XIIe et XIIIe
siècles, qui conserve toujours le nom de « Droit russe ». Ainsi Kiev
donna des lois à toute l’Europe orientale, et cela pendant une longue
suite de siècles.
Mais ce fut surtout l’église qui constitua le plus ferme pilier de la
domination de Kiev et dont l’action contribua le plus à cimenter les
diverses parties du royaume. Iaroslav s’était appliqué à doter le
mieux possible l’archevêché de Kiev : il bâtit dans sa capitale la
cathédrale de Sainte Sophie (vers 1035), un monument de l’art
byzantin des plus précieux, qui, avec ses mosaïques, ses fresques
et ses sculptures, nous a été conservé jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Le
métropolite restera pendant trois siècles le chef spirituel du royaume,
c’est-à-dire de toute l’Europe orientale, ne dépendant de
Constantinople qu’au point de vue strictement canonique.
Indépendamment du clergé séculier, se fonde à Kiev, vers le milieu
du XIe siècle, le monastère devenu célèbre plus tard sous le nom de
monastère des cavernes (Petcherska Lavra), qui sera une pépinière
pour le clergé régulier et où se recrutera la hiérarchie de toute
l’Europe orientale. Après s’être concerté avec le métropolite, le
prince nommait aux évêchés vacants dans les provinces et les
« hégoumènes » (abbés) de Kiev conservaient ainsi dans la
hiérarchie l’influence du clergé de la capitale, de même que l’unité
de la dynastie et de l’aristocratie boïarde maintenait l’unité dans
l’administration civile. Ayant importé de Byzance le principe d’une
étroite union entre l’église et l’état, dans laquelle, en échange de son
patronat, l’église offrait au souverain ses services, le clergé
s’évertuait à relever le prestige de son patron immédiat, le prince
local et celui du souverain de Kiev, travaillant ainsi à
l’affermissement du système et à la consolidation de l’unité
nationale.
Pendant ce temps l’élément scandinave avait cessé de jouer un
rôle dans la formation de l’état. Au XIe siècle nous ne rencontrons
plus que quelques émigrants du nord isolés, qui se fondent bientôt
dans l’élément slave. En général il est difficile de savoir quelle a été
l’influence exacte de l’élément scandinave sur la civilisation de Kiev.
Les savants qui se sont occupés de cette question sont portés à
croire qu’elle n’a été ni profonde, ni persistante. En tous cas, à
l’époque de Vladimir et de Iaroslav, c’était bien l’élément slave qui
créait la civilisation de Kiev et organisait le royaume d’après la
tradition politique, venue de Byzance.
Et il s’agissait bien là avant tout de ces populations que nous
appelons aujourd’hui ukrainiennes. Le peuple ukrainien moderne est
sorti, sans aucun doute, par une évolution continue, des unités
ethnographiques, qui peuplaient aussi le triangle formé par les trois
capitales d’alors : Kiev — Pereïaslav — Tchernihiv. L’hypothèse
émise par quelques savants que l’ancienne population de ce
territoire aurait émigré vers le nord aux XIIIe et XIVe siècle, par suite
de revers subis dans la steppe et que le bassin du Dniéper aurait été
à nouveau colonisé par des émigrés venant de l’Ukraine occidentale
(Galicie actuelle), ne repose sur aucun fondement. L’élément
indigène, s’appuyant sur la zone boisée, y est resté fermement
implanté et la frontière septentrionale actuelle des dialectes
ukrainiens nous démontre clairement cette stabilité et cette
perpétuité de la colonisation ukrainienne. L’organisation de l’état de
Kiev et sa civilisation furent donc avant tout l’œuvre des tribus
ukrainiennes. Mais elles s’étendaient bien au delà du territoire de
ces tribus.
En fait, sous Vladimir, le royaume de Kiev était très étendu. Un
document de la chancellerie pontificale en trace les frontières ainsi
qu’il suit : au nord-ouest elles sont voisines de la Prusse, au sud-
ouest elles passent « près de Cracovie ». Au nord Novogorod,
Rostov et Mourome sont les capitales des apanages des fils de
Vladimir ; au sud-est elles embrassent Tmoutorokhan ou
Tamatarque, l’ancienne Phanagorie. Les tribus des slaves orientaux
ne s’étant pas encore beaucoup différenciées entre elles, toutes
s’accommodent aisément aux usages de Kiev et participent à
l’expansion de sa civilisation. Elles se considèrent comme faisant
partie de la Russie au sens large, elles en adoptent non seulement
les lois mais la langue et la littérature. Cela leur fait une conscience
commune, tout ainsi bien aux Ukrainiens, qu’aux Ruthènes blancs et
qu’aux Grands Russes. Mais les gens de Kiev exercent une
influence souveraine sur tout le système, ce sont eux les promoteurs
de la civilisation et ils seraient bien étonnés, s’ils pouvaient prévoir
qu’un jour les colons slaves de Novogorod et de Rostov
contesteraient à leurs descendants le droit de se considérer comme
les héritiers de la tradition kiévienne.
 VI.
La vie intellectuelle.

Ces trois facteurs principaux : la dynastie de Kiev, la classe

militaire dirigeante russe, et la hiérarchie ecclésiastique et
administrative de la nouvelle métropole de la « Russie » [5] , avaient
puissamment contribué à étouffer l’ancien particularisme ethnique et
local des peuplades slaves et des tribus affiliées, d’où sont sorties
les trois grandes branches des slaves orientaux : les Ukrainiens, les
Ruthènes blancs et les Grands Russes.
[5] La forme slave de ce mot est Russǐ (nom collectif ;
Russin désigne l’individu ; l’adjectif est russǐski ou rusǐki).
La forme grecque était Rhos pour le peuple, Rhosia pour
le pays. La capitale du royaume de Kiev était désignée
dans les documents grecs sous le nom de métropole de
la Russie (Rhosias). Plus tard cette forme a été
également adoptée par la terminologie slave.

Les princes puînés, tout autant que les boïards Kiéviens, qui
allaient assumer des fonctions dans les provinces, avaient tout
intérêt à ne point être regardés comme des étrangers, mais à se
trouver partout comme chez eux. Il en était de même du clergé
métropolitain qui recueillait les prébendes provinciales, avec l’espoir
d’être rappelé à Kiev pour y remplir de plus hautes fonctions.
 Aussi la nouvelle littérature, qui naît dans les monastères de la
métropole, se met-elle au service de ces tendances. Elle s’attache à
des thèmes d’un intérêt général, elle met en avant la notion du
« bien des pays russes », entendant par là les intérêts et les
aspirations du royaume entier, écartant toute manifestation du
particularisme.
La littérature laïque, cultivée à la cour du prince et chez les plus
puissants boïards, soutenait évidemment les mêmes principes. Nous
en trouvons la preuve un siècle et demi plus tard dans la chanson
d’Igor, œuvre anonyme, composée par un poète de la cour aux
environs de 1186. C’est l’intérêt des « pays russes », qui l’inspire,
elle fait entendre des admonitions aux princes, qui négligent la vieille
tradition de Kiev. Sans doute l’auteur ne fait que suivre les traces
des anciens poètes de la cour, dont il fait mention à plusieurs
reprises.
Après l’établissement du métropolite à Kiev, les premiers groupes
de personnes versées dans les lettres se réunirent sous son
influence et un des premiers essais littéraires fut le commencement
de la chronique de Kiev.
Jusqu’à la fin de cette période, toute la production littéraire du
royaume vient de Kiev. C’est là que se forme une langue littéraire
commune (κοινή). D’abord ce travail d’unification se trouvait facilité
par la présence à Kiev, aussi bien dans les monastères que dans les
rangs du clergé séculier, de personnes lettrées attirées à dessein de
toutes les parties du royaume et qui, dans ce nouveau milieu,
apportaient pour les polir et les fondre ensemble, leurs particularités
dialectiques provinciales. En outre, on s’appliquait sciemment à cette
uniformisation en s’attachant à imiter le plus fidèlement possible les
modèles fournis par la Bulgarie. C’est pourquoi les monuments écrits
de Kiev se distinguent nettement de ceux de Novogorod par
exemple, en ce qu’ils n’offrent guère de particularités dialectiques [6]
et qu’ils manifestent une tendance à demeurer toujours sur le terrain
commun des intérêts généraux de la « terre russe ». Ceci leur assura
une large pénétration dans les provinces. Ce qui nous en reste
aujourd’hui a été préservé presque exclusivement dans les pays du
nord, qui ont été moins éprouvés par les catastrophes postérieures
qui désolèrent l’Ukraine.
[6] C’est justement ce qui a fait naître l’hypothèse
mentionnée plus haut, d’après laquelle la population de
Kiev aux XIe et XIIe siècles, aurait eu un tout autre
caractère ethnographique, bien plus ressemblant à celui
des Grands-Russiens d’aujourd’hui, et qu’elle aurait été
remplacée plus tard par une émigration ukrainienne
venant de l’ouest. Nous l’avons dit, cette hypothèse ne
résiste pas à une critique sérieuse.

La chronique de Kiev, qui malgré les nombreux remaniements

postérieurs a toujours conservé le même titre : Povesti vremenych
let, se propose de « raconter chronologiquement d’où est sortie la
terre Russe ; qui fut le premier prince à Kiev et comment s’est
formée la terre Russe ». Dans sa première rédaction, qui date
probablement de l’époque de Iaroslav entre 1030 et 1040, le terme
« terre Russe » est pris dans le sens étroit, comme s’appliquant
strictement aux pays de Kiev et il ne s’agit que de l’histoire de cette
contrée. Mais déjà à une époque très ancienne, l’un des rédacteurs
élargit la matière de sa chronique, en incorporant aux récits de Kiev
ceux de Novogorod, lui donnant ainsi l’ampleur d’un ouvrage
« russe » dans le sens le plus large du mot. A partir de ce moment le
travail littéraire ne s’interrompra plus à Kiev. On y crée une histoire
nationale de tous les pays russes, où le particularisme n’apparaît
plus et où sont enregistrées, sans distinction de provenance,
principalement les traditions locales du christianisme, qui surtout
paraissaient dignes d’être transmises à la postérité. Le premier
groupe des rédactions s’arrête vers le commencement du XIIe
siècle ; elles sont suivies d’une vaste compilation de matériaux
historiques et littéraires variés, embrassant tout le siècle. Grâce à la
chronique de Kiev une foule de renseignements précieux et
d’anciens fragments littéraires ont pu être conservés jusqu’à nos
jours.
Du reste, il n’existait pas à cette époque de centre intellectuel qui
eût pu rivaliser avec Kiev. Au point de vue politique et commercial
seulement, on lui opposa au début Novogorod, la grande ville du
Nord en antagonisme avec celle du Midi. Les traditions historiques
des premiers siècles sont pleines des rivalités politiques entre ces
deux grands centres, l’un s’appuyant sur la Mer Noire et restant en
contact avec Byzance, l’autre sur la Baltique, entretenant des
relations avec les « Varègues ». Tantôt les princes de Kiev
s’assujettissent Novogorod, tantôt les boïards de Novogorod
soutiennent leurs princes issus de la dynastie régnante dans leurs
prétentions au trône, et obtiennent en échange des privilèges ou des
droits de souveraineté plus étendus sur leurs domaines provinciaux.
Mais depuis Vladimir et Iaroslav la prépondérance intellectuelle de
Kiev est assurée.
Autant ses chroniques dès le début du XIe siècle sont
abondantes, riches d’idées, estimables pour leur style, autant les
annales de Novogorod sont pauvres et maigres. Déjà sous Iaroslav
nous rencontrons un brillant rhéteur comme le métropolite Hilarion.
Le monastère des cavernes nous fournit les sermons de Théodose,
les hagiographies de Nestor et de bien d’autres anonymes, qui
malgré leur simplicité de style, révèlent des talents de narrateurs qui
nous attirent et nous fascinent. C’est encore à Kiev que sont écrits
de nombreux ouvrages historiques, dont malheureusement seule
une faible part nous est parvenue, comme l’histoire de la guerre de
Volhynie, écrite par un certain Basile. Puis ce sont des sermons,
point du tout dépourvus de talent, que divers recueils nous ont
conservés. De son côté, la chanson d’Igor, par ses allusions, ses
citations, son allure, évoque devant nos yeux toute une poésie
profane, s’épanouissant à la cour.
Quel est le centre provincial qui pourrait nous offrir rien de
semblable ? Où trouverions nous, soit dans les pays des Ruthènes
blancs (chez les Krivitches, les Drehovitches et les Radimitches),
soit dans les contrées des Grands Russiens, un foyer d’élite comme
celui-ci ?
Il ne manque pas de témoignages qui prouvent que, dans les
pays que nous venons de nommer, on regardait Kiev et la Russie du
midi comme une contrée bien distincte des autres territoires. Aller en
« Russie » signifiait à Novogorod se rendre en Ukraine. Dans le pays
de Rostov-Souzdal, nous voyons la population s’insurger contre les
fonctionnaires « russes », venus des villes du midi, c’est-à-dire de
l’Ukraine. Mais l’hégémonie de Kiev se fait tellement sentir dans la
politique et surtout dans la vie intellectuelle qu’elle dérobe à nos
yeux les différences qui existaient entre les trois principales
branches des Slaves orientaux.