The day Simón Bolívar was made a Mexican citizen during his only visit

The government of Mexico commemorates this Saturday the birthday of the liberator of Gran Colombia, Simón Bolívar, to strengthen ties with his Latin American neighbors. But something that few people know is that Bolívar received Mexican citizenship in 1824.

The event, which aims to give a Latin American perspective to the celebrations of the bicentennial of Mexico, envisages the presence of 33 countries from the region and will precede a meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), which is tentatively chaired by the Mexican government.

The truth is that there is not much relationship between Mexico and Bolívar (Caracas, 1783), who, although he was in this country only once during his adolescence, has received Mexican citizenship as an honorary title after the feat of independence that liberated the current Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Bolivia.

“He actually obtained Mexican nationality in 1824. The deputy of Nuevo León, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, proposes to the Constituent Congress that he obtain citizenship as America’s most important liberator with George Washington, “Alfredo Ávila, historian of the National Autonomous University of Mexico ( UNAM), explained to Efe.).

By this time, Mexico had overthrown the Empire of Agustín de Iturbide, established after the country’s independence three years earlier, and was building the Mexican Republic.

When the new Republic established diplomatic relations with Colombia, the then Mexican Minister Plenipotentiary in that country, José Anastasio Torrens, expressed his gratitude to Bolívar.

“There is no testimony that he received it, probably Bolivar received it like so many other acknowledgments that have been sent to him,” said the historian.

The truth is that Bolivar had better relations with the Republic than with the Mexican Empire, since “He was suspicious of an imperial power in northern Colombia.”

At that time, the Mexican Empire and Gran Colombia were border, since Costa Rica belonged to the first and Panama to the second.

Even the Minister Plenipotentiary of Colombia in Mexico, Miguel Santa María, was a “Convinced Republican” that “he began to conspire with Mexican Republicans to overthrow Iturbide,” Avila said.

For Bolivar’s first contact with Mexico, we have to go back much earlier, in 1799, when he was only 15 years old.

Like so many other aristocrats, he was sent to Madrid to receive military training but first his ship docked for a few days in the port of Veracruz, belonging to the Viceroyalty of New Spain, because Mexico did not yet exist.

According to a letter Bolívar allegedly wrote to a relative, he took advantage of the fact that the ship had stopped to visit Mexico City, but Ávila considers it an “apocryphal” text.

“We don’t really have much more testimony on this. If he was in Mexico City, it would have barely been a few days, ”said the historian.

On March 20, Bolívar left for Santander (Spain) to arrive in Madrid, and there is no record that he ever returned to Mexico, not even after receiving Mexican nationality.

Many were surprised that Andrés Manuel López Obrador included Bolívar’s 238th birthday in the marathon of events for commemorate in 2021 the 200 years of the independence of Mexico and the 500 years of the conquest.

“The impression is that López Obrador recovers a very traditional twentieth-century idea of ​​Bolívar’s supposed Latin American unity project, which is something present in the political discourse of Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico from the 1930s and which was taken over by Chavismo, ”said Avila.

But according to the historian, Bolívar never looked for “a single Latin American homeland” but “An alliance of American countries against the possibility of a European reconquest.”

Proof of this is that he even invited the United States to this project, concluded the historian.

EFE

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