Overview
Simon Bolivar, who is known as El Libertador (The Liberator), was one of South America's greatest generals. Today, he is revered as a hero who devoted his entire adult life to fighting, often in the face of overwhelming odds and difficulties and at tremendous personal sacrifice, to bring freedom to South America. The Gentleman's Magazine was a real magazine, published in England from 1731 to 1914. However, the magazine never interviewed Bolivar. The information presented in this fictional interview is based on the facts of Bolivar's life.
Bolivar lived for only six years after the triumph of his long struggle to make South America independent of Spain-but it was long enough to see his hopes for a union of democracies dashed. Many factors, including illiteracy, the people's lack of experience with democracy, and entrenched economic and class inequalities, combined to undermine the great new South America. In 1830, a sad and disillusioned Bolivar died in poverty of tuberculosis at the age of 47.