Originally Posted by octothorp
In the Southern Hemisphere category, Team Strange Things Afoot at the Circle K selects Simon Bolivar.
If you were to make a list of leaders who have been president of four different countries, is considered a revered national hero in about six, has units of currency named after him in two, and even has one entire country named after him, it would be a pretty short list. In fact, it would probably begin and end with Simon Bolivar. Venezuela, Peru, Columbia, Panama, Ecuador, and, of course, Bolivia all attribute their independence in large part to Bolivar's efforts.
Bolivar came from a wealthy family that made its fortune in mining in present-day Venezuela, a fortune that he would spend vast amounts of on the revolutionary effort in western South America. By the age of 30, he had served as both a diplomat and a military leader for the struggling independence movements of Venezuela and Gran Columbia, and that same year liberated Venezuela and became its second president. Later, he'd become president of Columbia, and then help liberate a form both Peru and Bolivia, bringing his political influences - Scottish and French enlightenment - into those country's constitutions, and eliminated slavery in the region. Through it all, he used a combination of military acumen and diplomatic strategy to work against the Spanish powers in the region, and local military juntas.
He never succeeded in his dream of uniting those colonies into one american-style union, and political pressures forced him to increasingly centralize authority and become less of a president and more of a dictator, moves that caused him to become increasingly unpopular. However, his almost single-handed influence on the region is really amazing.
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