Three Heroes [antikvár]

Once upon a time, a traveler arrived in Caracas as night was falling and, not pausing to even shake off the dust of the road, asked—no, not where he could eat or sleep, but how to get to the statue of Bolivar. They say that, alone with the tall, fragrant trees of the square, the traveler stood in front of the statue and tears ran down his cheeks, and the statue seemed to move, like a father when his son draws close to him. The traveler was right to do this, because all of us in the Americas should love Bolivar like a father—Bolivar and all the others who fought like he did so the Americas would be for their own people. We should love them all: from the famous hero down to the very last soldier, who is an unknown hero. Men who fight to make their homeland free grow handsome in our eyes. Liberty is every man's right to be respected and to think and speak without hypocrisy. In the Americas, in the past, nobody was respected or could think or speak. A man who hides what he thinks or doesn't dare to say it has no honor. A man who obeys a bad government and doesn't try to make it good isn't honest. A man who obeys unjust laws and allows those who mistreat his country to remain there has no honor. As soon as a child is big enough to think, he should think about everything he sees and suffer for those who can't live with honor. He should work to give everyone the chance to live with honor, and he should be honest. A child who doesn't think about what is going on around him and doesn't want to do anything but live, not caring whether he is living with honor or not, is like a rascal, and is on the way to becoming one. Some men are worse than animals, because animals need to be free to be happy: an elephant that isn't free doesn't want to bear young; the Peruvian llama lies down and dies if an Indian speaks harshly to it or puts too heavy a load on its back. Men should have at least as much self-respect as elephants and llamas. Before the Americas were free, men lived like overloaded llamas. We, too, had to shake off our load or die. Some men are happy even when they are not respected. Others suffer agonies when they see men without any self-respect around