Imagine our national heroes joining this bizarre climate of public opinion. Which platforms will be preferred by Bolívar, Miranda, or Manuela Sáenz?
By Caracas Chronicles
Aug 14, 2021
Simón Bolívar: Twitter
It started as a platform for microblogging, as if made for dedicated journal writers such as Alexander von Humboldt. Then it showed a great potential to avoid state control during pro-democracy protest waves, as happened in Iran in 2008. More recently, Twitter became the favorite tool to manipulate public opinion by leaders prone to speak about everything and address the masses with their very personal opinion of what truth is.
So Twitter would be perfect for El Libertador. Actually, there’s at least one parody account on his behalf.
Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) not only proved to be a charismatic leader and an agile political strategist, quite aware of the value of communication in warfare and state-building; in the private letters and public announcements he wrote during his spectacular twenty-year career, he showed great talent for coming up with memorable quotes in less than 240 characters, that even if were written in the ampulous, melodramatic style of his time, are used today. Just imagine that same Bolívar who wrote “an ignorant nation is a blind tool of self-destruction,” (54 characters) quoting himself to criticize anti-vaxxers, or repeating what he allegedly said after the 1812 earthquake, “if Nature opposes, we’ll fight it and make it obey,” (50 characters) to address the floods and forest fires of climate change.
Right now, if Bolívar was alive but suffering from COVID-19, he’d be tweeting “if the parties ceased and the union is consolidated, I would descend in peace to my tomb,” as his theatrical way of pressuring the opposition to find a common position against the Maduro regime.
María Antonia Bolívar: Facebook
We knew little of Bolívar’s family. The national doctrine of mestizaje preferred to celebrate the role of the house slaves who raised him, such as “Negra Hipólita” and “Negra Matea” – yes, no family names, this is how we know them – while it ignored the ghostly figure of El Libertador’s mother and the numerous faults of his father, who was a sexual predator with a record. But in the best seller La criolla principal, historian Inés Quintero unveiled the tenacious personality of the hero’s older sister, María Antonia (1777-1842). She was politically adverse to his famous brother, a traditionalist who despised the disasters caused by the revolutionaries, and defended colonial values. She had a strong voice and used it as much as a woman of her time and social condition could.
María Antonia would be a very active Facebook user, the conservative aunt we all have. She’d be spreading fake news and bendiciones, smashing the Black Lives Matter protests, blaming everything on Foro de São Paulo, supporting Trump, Duque, Bolsonaro and Bukele.
Wait, is María Corina Machado the reincarnation of María Antonia Bolívar, as Chávez kinda suggested he was Bolívar’s?
Francisco de Miranda: Tinder
One of the most fascinating characters of our history is known for having invented the concept of Colombia as a great Latin American nation, designing the first Venezuelan flag, and living incredible adventures in two continents before taking part in the First Republic and being blamed for its demise. Miranda (1750-1816) was also, in his own confession, a Latin lover who might or might have not seduced, for instance, Czarina Catherine the Great with his war stories, his Rousseau and Voltaire readings, and his considerable ability to get funding for his “cause” (meaning his pocket).
In 2021, Miranda would be a master of GoFundMe campaigns and a lobbyist with acquaintances in the UN, the White House, the European Union and many palaces in Latin America. And he’d be an active Tinder user, a silver fox with a ponytail, tanned, well-traveled, with very wide tastes, a weak candidate for a sugar daddy but a good younger lover for rich, senior ladies.
Andrés Bello: Tik Tok
What? El Libertador’s teacher a Tiktoker? Such a serious man, an academic, the founder of the Universidad de Chile? Well, think about this: after penning some romantic poetry, Andrés Bello (1761-1865) left a Grammar establishing the rules of the Spanish language that people in the Americas were using. Rather than a guardian of orthodox language, Bello was a researcher and champion of the real language real people used – and had a rather pragmatic approach towards where our mother tongue should evolve. If Bello were to take a peek into the future and the only thing he saw was the “ola ke ase” llama meme, he would surely say: I have triumphed.
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Simón Rodríguez: YouTube
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Antonio José de Sucre: LinkedIn
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Manuela Sáenz: Instagram
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Luisa Cáceres: Pinterest
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Juan Germán Roscio: Snapchat
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José Felix Ribas: Parler
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José Antonio Páez: Spotify
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Read More: Caracas Chronicles – How Venezuela’s national heroes would use social media
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