The Bolivarianism as a political language: the performance of Antônio Leocadio Guzmán in the periodical el Venezolano and the public-party debate in Venezuela (1840-1846)

• Grant number: 21/04544-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2022
• End date: June 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of America
• Principal Investigator: José Alves de Freitas Neto
• Grantee: Matheus Amilton Martins
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 22/14296-8 - Bolivarism as political language: the work of Antônio Leocadio Guzmán in the periodical El Venezolano and the public-party debate in Venezuela (1840-1846), BE.EP.DR

Abstract

In this project, I propose the Venezuelan politics vocabulary investigation in the Bolivarianism emergence context in the local scene. From 1840, a decade after the procér's exile and death, the image and deeds of Simón Bolívar were progressively rehabilitated in his homeland. Based on the premises of the history of political thought, I will observe how the Liberator's evocation in the public debate reticulated the conditions of setting enunciations, providing semantic innovations, which displaced the conventions and contingencies in the national politics. This proposal is a history of the debates in which intellectuals operated to define their positions and themselves as influential actors in public disputes. With such interest, my attention will be on the political articles of the opposer Antonio Leocadio Guzmán in the periodical El Venezolano (1840-1846) and the answers that his utterances provoked in the universe of national political literature. Starting from these texts, it will be possible to perceive that in a short period the Liberator's legacy has been claimed - or understood - in a plural way. Given this polysemy, I advocate that Bolivarianism emerged on the Venezuelan scene as a political language whose communicational aspects were directly involved in the formation of public debate and the possibility of a critical and party politics. Since it was employed in the attribution of meanings to key concepts of the moment, Bolivarianism offers a promising entry to understand, on its terms, the boundaries of politics in the early times of Venezuela's Republic.