Ramtin Arablouei and Randa Abdel-Fattah

So to understand Maduro, you have to understand Chavez.

But you can always go deeper, right?

Like, what motivated Chavez?

Well, the answer to that question takes us back to when Venezuela was created and a man named Simón Bolívar.

Or, as he's become known across South America, El Libertador.

Their stories, Chávez and Bolívar, and the rise and fall of the Venezuela they ruled over, are strikingly similar and offer a window into the soul of a country that's been in a revolutionary cycle for centuries now.

So today, we present a split screen of sorts and travel back and forth through time between Bolívar's almost mythical story and Chávez's use of that powerful story to make his own.

Part 1.

Rise of the Phoenix.

Some believe that on his deathbed in 1830, Simon Bolivar's final words were, Damn it.

In the early hours of July 16, 2010, at the northern edge of the old town of Caracas, Venezuela's capital, Hugo Chávez set out to free Bolívar from what Chávez had, in the past, called lies.

Chavez suspected foul play and wanted to check for himself whether Bolivar actually died from tuberculosis or something more sinister, like poison.

So he decided to exhume the body of Bolivar.

And there's a whole lot of theater built around this moment.

Journalist Rory Carroll was there to witness it.

I was the Guardian's Latin America correspondent from 2006 until 2012, based in Caracas, Venezuela.

and all this being recorded live on national television.

People were glued to the TV because this had been built up as the moment when the Bolivarian Revolution reconnects with its namesake beyond symbolism, that this is where the two bodies, the political body and the actual body of the revolutionary leader here and the revolutionary leader then are going to connect.

This is Alejandro Velasco.

He grew up in Venezuela and is now an associate professor of history at New York University.