El General y "lo pequeño" de la historia: una lectura de los Bolívares de Ricardo Palma

"El General y 'lo pequeño' de la historia" analyzes several of Ricardo Palma's tradiciones that focus on Simón Bolívar. The tradiciones demystify not only General Bolívar, the independence-era hero whose life and times are chronicled throughout Venezuelan and Andean cultural mythologies, but, moreover, history itself, a discourse ascendant in power and prestige during the nineteenth century in Spanish America. Many of these tradiciones present a Peruvian critique of the Libertador, portraying him as an imperfect figure, both authoritarian and effeminate, characterizations that are quite distinct from those associated with the cult of Bolívar. These narratives underscore the artificial separation between history and fiction, while examining history as an ideological, nation-building discourse. Palma's Bolivarian tradiciones emphasize the subjective nature of history in order to cultivate critical counterpublics that might read against the grain, questioning both the general and "lo pequeño" of official histories and their fictions.