Bolívar's bones revisited



The Venezuelan military regime announced some details about a new maosoleum that is going to hold Bolívar's bones "for eternity". This construction has taken almost 20 million euros from the national treasury at the official rate and is going to cost more, much more. This is going to be an extension to the already existing National Pantheon of Venezuela, now against all kinds of earthquakes. I suppose it is going to be against tsunamis as well.

Meanwhile the regime ordered all scientists working in the analysis of what is pressumed to be Bolívar's bones to be completely hermetic about the findings. This is top secret. Those scientists are trying to find out if some of the conspiracy theories Chávez has in mind about Bolívar's death are true. 

Fat chance you get any news if you ask at the IVIC or to the US and Spanish specialists in charge. Why? Because Chávez is using the whole issue for political purposes and he wants to be the one to reveal an interpretation of the findings when it suits him.

Remember: Chávez is Bolívar's Sibyl. One of the things he loves the most about his job, apart from the possibility of traveling around for free for months and forcing millions of Venezuelans to listen to him every week is to play as Bolívar's medium on Earth, specially while holding Bolívar's gold sword, which is now under his special custody while it was in a museum before.

It would be nice if the democratic forces publicly asked Chávez to stop using bones for political purposes and let scientists say whatever they have to say now and go to work on something else.

So far we have heard those bones do seem to come from the Venezuelan XIX century caudillo and greatest self-promoter of all times and that the original owner of those bones had mostly European ancestors but was of mixed raced (male Y chromosome haplogroup and - I guess- native American mDNA as most Venezuelans, perhaps with some African background). This is just what you would expect from anyone whose ancestors had been living in Venezuela for several generations.

Of course, Chávez will be trying to interpret this last part in the ways he needs. I wonder if he is also trying to see who the closest common ancestor between himself and Bolívar was.