VENEZUELA: The Cult Of Simon Bolivar... Lives.

NYTIMES/ SIMON ROMERO/    President Hugo Chavez recently exhumed the body of the legendary So.American revolutionary Simon Bolivar. Romero adds some new details to the question of "WHY?"

ROMERO: "Even Venezuelans used to Mr. Chávez’s political theater were surprised by the exhumation, which pushed aside issues like a scandal over imported food found rotting in ports, anger over an economy mired in recession and evidence offered by Colombia that Colombian guerrillas are encamped on Venezuelan soil."

AND: "This country’s intelligentsia fixates on Bolívar’s legacy and the use of Bolívar not just by Mr. Chávez but by rulers stretching back to the 19th century.
Slip into a bookstore and titles like “Divine Bolívar,” “The Cult of Bolívar,” “Thought of the Liberator” and “Why I’m Not Bolivarian” line the shelves. Scholars argue over how it was possible for one 20th-century dictator, Juan Vicente Gómez, to have conveniently shared the dates of his birth and death with Bolívar’s."