Ramtin Arablouei and Randa Abdel-Fattah

Rise up, Simón, as it's not time to die.

Immediately, I remembered that Bolívar lives.

It's 1803, and a young Simón Bolívar stands at his wife's deathbed, looking at her for the last time, the love of his life, María Teresa.

What happens that day in 1803 would change Bolívar's life in South America forever.

But first, let's go back to the beginning, to where his story started.

Bolivar grew up in Caracas, in a really wealthy family.

And they also owned slaves.

Despite that massive wealth, Bolivar's early years weren't all that easy.

His mother died not long after that.

So by age nine... He was an orphan.

This is Marie Arana.

She's written a bunch of books on Latin America, including the biography Bolivar, American Liberator.

So Bolívar, now orphaned, was passed around from relative to relative.

He goes to Madrid, and it's there that he meets his future wife, María Teresa.

Like Bolivar.

She also came from an aristocratic family, and in the way that these things happened at the time, it wasn't so much that it was prearranged, but that they were part of Criollo elite.

Criollo is a term for people of mixed European and Afro-Caribbean descent.

Both Bolivar and Maria Teresa were from the upper class, so they rolled in the same social circles.

And they sprung a romance that, by all accounts, was very genuine.

Returned to Venezuela, settled into a life on Bolivar's family plantation, and began the rest of their life together.