Bizarre news from Venezuela at the weekend. President Hugo Chavez has given orders for the body of Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), hero of Latin American independence, to be exhumed, and ‘tests’ performed on the remains.  This isn’t a matter of historical research; it’s just another sign that Chavez is marching down the familiar road that takes political bosses to paranoia and lunacy.

Bolivar was a great man in his way, and is a hero in several South American countries. With no military training, he became a brilliant strategist and led five countries – Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia – to independence. His great dream was a ‘united states of the Americas’ where all American countries would form a free federation.

Bolivar died of TB. But anyone who knows anything about Chavez can see where all this is leading. The ‘tests’ carried out on Bolivar’s body will reveal – guess what? That he was poisoned, either by the USA or more likely by the Colombians. Chavez has been having a border dispute with Colombia (which claims Colombian terrorists are being allowed to take refuge in Venezuela), and he will use the ‘results’ for propaganda, claiming that the Colombians poisoned Latin America’s greatest hero.

Of course no one will believe it. But it will give Chavez a chance to make trouble. Having failed a couple of years ago in his bid to pass a referendum that would let him be President for life, he’s been looking for other causes to take up, and a quarrel with Colombia over Bolivar will be one of them.

When I was in Caracas, there was a big exhibition in the City Hall there called ‘Caracas, Cradle of Liberty’. The building bore huge banners featuring the faces of Bolivar, Miranda (another nineteenth-century hero of the independence struggle) and – guess who? Hugo Chavez.

Chavez has been hijacking Bolivar’s name for a long time, calling his demagogic rule ‘Bolivarian Socialism’. By now, he probably believes that he is Bolivar. Rather than a socialist, he’s simply the latest in a long line of self-aggrandizing political bosses – what the Latin Americans call a caudillo.

It’s a disgrace that he’s dishonouring Bolivar in this way. And Bolivar’s family, who haven’t been consulted, are furious.  But it’s just part of the sad process by which political egoists descend into lunacy on the way to finally imploding.

Having written this, I probably won’t be allowed into Venezuela again. But having spent time in Caracas, which has become the most dangerous city in Latin America outside the border areas of Mexico, as well as the most polluted and traffic-ridden, I don’t think that’s too much of a problem. What Venezuela needs is Bolivar’s wide vision and generosity of spirit, not fake excuses for more tension.