Simón Rodríguez: Father of revolutionary teaching (+seeding)

Published at: 28/02/2024 08:00 AM

170 years have passed since February 28, 1854, when the town of San Nicolás de Amotape, in Peru, witnessed the planting and immortalization of one of the most important American intellectuals of his time, the Venezuelan teacher Simón Rodríguez, tutor and mentor of El Libertador Simón Bolívar.

Born in Caracas on October 28, 1769, Simón Rodríguez opened the horizons of libertarian thought to Bolívar, and his educational work, together with the analysis of the Latin American reality of his time, are among the first attempts to vindicate the cultural specificity of our countries in socio-political projects.

He developed a revolutionary conception of what the educational model of American nations should be. In 1824, Bolívar himself, in a letter to General Santander, said that his teacher “taught while having fun”.

This spirit, which tried to break with the rigid educational customs of Spanish colonialism, would be reflected in all the work and thought of Simón Rodríguez.

His participation in the conspiracy between Gual and Spain, discovered in July 1797, against the Spanish crown forced him to resign his position as teacher and flee Venezuelan territory, aged 27.

In 1797, in Jamaica, he changed his name to Samuel Robinson. After spending some years in the United States, he traveled to France in 1801. In 1804, at the age of 34, he met Bolivar in Paris.

Together they set out in March 1805, on a journey that took them to Lyon and Chambery and then crossed the Alps and entered Italy: Milan. On August 15 of that same year, they climbed the Holy Mountain, in Rome, and Rodríguez collected for posterity the oath that his disciple took there: “I swear before you; I swear by the God of my parents; I swear by them; I swear by my honor; and I swear by my country; that I will not give rest to my arm, nor rest to my soul, until I have broken the chains that oppress us by the will of the Spanish power”.

Simón Rodríguez used to say: “I don't want to look like trees, which take root in one place; I want to look like the wind, the water, the sun, all those things that go on endlessly.” In the final years of his life, Rodríguez went to Guayaquil, where he lost much of his work due to a fire that devastated much of the city. In 1853, he undertook a new trip to Peru, accompanied by his son José and his friend Camilo Gómez, who would assist him at the time of his death.

Seventy years later, his remains were transferred to the Pantheon of the Proceres in Lima, and from there, just a century after his death, they were returned to Caracas, his hometown, where they rest in the National Pantheon.

Mazo News Team