Uses of the past and war abot the memories in the Venezuela of the “Second Independence”’

Abstract

Since the Revolution of Independence, the historical account has been accompanying the political evolution of Venezuela, since this plays a key role in developing the unifying myth of the nation. Formalized in an oficial way in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the cult of Bolívar’s figure has been the starting point of an official history that today relies on an appropiated instrumentalization of the national past. This paper attempts to highlight this particular conformation of recent memories and its major issues, and to analyze the fierce struggle for the writing of history that is occuring now in the Bolivarian Republic.