In the schoolbooks I grew up with, Simón Bolívar was not a man. He was a sequence. He swore an oath on the Monte Sacro in Rome, crossed the Andes with a ragged army in 1819, won at Boyacá, freed five nations, and died betrayed. Every town had a plaza with his name and a bronze version of him on a horse. He had no body except the statue, and no doubts except the ones history had already resolved in his favor. …
Cervantes wrote about women’s rights in the sixteenth century with an angle so sharp it cuts through four hundred years. A beautiful woman, financially independent, who dares to say no—and a man who feels so entitled to her love that his suicide becomes her crime. The most appalling part? His friends, and society, agree. The story comes from Don Quijote, Part I, Chapters 12–14. A young woman named Marcela, orphaned and wealthy, decides to live as a shepherdess in the wilderness rather than marry any of the countless men who pursue her. She is free, self-sufficient, answerable to no one. One of her suitors, Grisóstomo—a brilliant, educated man—becomes consumed by his unrequited love. He follows her into the shepherd’s life, writes melancholic verses, and eventually dies, apparently by his own hand. …