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Boovivar: The Life Of Bolivar

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The author of this piece, Masur, was presented with an interesting problem in writing this piece. Unlike the other authors on this Masur was writing in a period in which there were no works that focused comprehensively on the life of Bolivar. The secondary source work that did exist tended to either focus on some aspects of Bolivar’s life to the detriment of others or served as tools to lionize Bolivar into the near deity that the fledgling Venezuela needed. Masur’s goal therefore was to write an account of Bolivar’s life which thoroughly examined each element. He was aided in this by the objectivity and training that came with his European birth and education. In writing this piece Masur took several years hunting down primary sources from various collections, both private and government controlled, in South America. Due to this his work boasts an impressive repertoire of primary sources including letters by Bolivar, memoirs, speeches, official proclamations, diaries, and government resolutions. This base of primary sources is the perfect foundation for writing a biography that focuses on the diverse elements of Bolivar’s life. Of particular value were the letters and documents written by Bolivar himself as they helped the reader understand Bolivar’s frame of mind. Masur also sites an array of secondary sources,…show more content…
It successfully serves as a comprehensive study of the life of Simon Bolivar. It creates a work that attempts to understand each aspect of Bolivar’s life and how they related and manipulated each other. This makes Masur’s piece the basis for most of the other writings on Bolivar covered in this essay. Each attempts to refine the details of Bolivar’s life, but maintains the same approach and techniques used by Masur in this piece. While this work was not perfect, it served as the best account of Bolivar’s life that I could find until Madriaga’s
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