Meet Bolivar

Great personalities have passed through this world, many of them unfortunately have had to leave before their time and we are left with the feeling that life was unfair to them because the whole world requires their knowledge and actions. If I were given the opportunity to meet a character in history, I would not hesitate to choose Simon Bolivar, our Liberator.

Some time ago he was named by the BBC as the personage of the Millennium. So many things have been said about him, even that he was a megalomaniac foreigner but it is not easy to deal with so many personalities, of that I am more than convinced; you can't do nothing more and nothing less than liberate five nations including your homeland and then expect the books to talk about you and mention that you were "a pear in candy".

Like every man he had his faults and had to impose himself many times before the majority but, the simple fact of fighting for other nations that are not yours I believe that very little has been seen during the whole history of mankind.

What unites me most with him is the love of nature. Since he was a child he lived surrounded by it in the beautiful gardens of the hacienda San Mateo, Aragua and the simple fact that by the year 1825 Bolivar sought to foster an ecological conscience in others is fascinating. At that time there were no polluting industries, luxurious buildings or highways, only dusty roads and he already saw the need to reforest, indicating in the decree of Chuquisaca the planting of one million trees. He also prohibited the slaughter of vicuñas in Peru because by that time it was already an endangered species and he saw the need for waste management.

If I were to explain to him how today's society is managed, I think I could only get one of two reactions, either his vibrant gaze would be extinguished with sadness or the flames in his eyes would flare up even more, since showing him the global environmental situation would be very difficult to assimilate, much more so if I were to explain to him that his native country, for which he was born and for which he is so much in love, is the only country in the world where he has been able to live, that his native country for which he fought so hard is governed by disrespectful, disrespectful,people who use his name to promote a "revolution" where the only purpose is to enrich themselves and oppress the people since they have all the powers in their favor and the freedom of expression is extremely limited.