The Problem with Heroes — Role Models, Statues, and the Other Option
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. …