Anita Arnand

Pretty unwilling to change them.

He writes to General Flores.

Remember him, president of Ecuador, who his paramour Manuela ends up saving, even though he is horrifically awful about her.

He writes a letter, Bolivar, to Flores just a month before he dies.

And he summarizes his 20 years of leadership with six points of disillusionment.

Okay, so this is what he's saying almost on his deathbed.

America is ungovernable.

He who serves a revolution plows the sea.

All one can do in America is leave it.

The country is bound to fall into unimaginable chaos after which it shall pass into the hands of an undistinguishable string of tyrants of every colour.

And when he says America, he's talking about South America.

Once we are devoured by all manner of crime and reduced to a frenzy of violence, no one, not even the Europeans, will want to subjugate us.

And finally, if mankind could revert to its primitive state, it would be here in South America in her final hour.

So it's a really devastating assessment of what one man can do

And it's actually quite prophetic.

I mean, it's not wrong, is it?

Because the countries that Bolivar liberated, many of them did fall into chaos, ruled by a string of tyrants and military strongmen and populist demagogues and corrupt oligarchs and

You know, with people suffering beneath them.

I did a little thing of sums here.

So there have been 60 military dictatorships in various Latin American countries during the 20th century alone.