Simón Bolívar’s Jamaica Letter and its socio-political context

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Bolívar’s Jamaica Letter, undoubtedly his most well-known political essay, has never ceased to be a source of inspiration for all sorts of Americanist projects on various sides of the political spectrum. The Jamaica Letter is nevertheless fraught with the social and political prejudices that characterized the conservative sectors of the Spanish American creole elites. It also shows the potential risks posed by Bolívar’s desire to obtain British support in the consolidation of prosperous liberal republics in South America. It is clear, nevertheless, that Bolívar was able to surpass the idiosyncratic principles of natural law he defended in the Jamaica Letter in order to promote, in 1819, a revolutionary conception of the social contract based on the legal equality of all members of society which included the abolition of slavery and, a few years later, the legal protection of basic indigenous rights. Sadly, the implications of his social doctrine proved to be too revolutionary for his time. In a deeply hierarchical and racially stratified society economically dependent on slave work force, the ideas of universal freedom and equality were doomed to meet strong opposition. The failure of the Venezuelan Congress of 1819 to implement the Liberator's social reforms marked the beginning of a new political order based on exclusion and inequality, principles which were not radically different from the hierarchical structures of the colonial regime against which the Wars of Independence had been waged and which still dominate the social organization of most countries in Latin America.

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