On dates like July 5th we remember how we got here and why we have had so many battles on and off the battlefield, with victories and defeats included. But just like a large part of our history, the signing of the Act of Independence not only needs to be remembered but also to be reinterpreted and to carefully adjust certain details that have marked our collective imagination. This is why Inés Quintero, recognized for her efforts to give the right value to each element and character of our history, makes a greater effort to ensure that the importance of civility in the long process of our autonomy from Spain is recognized.
“This historic decision,” explains the historian regarding the signing of the Declaration of Independence that we commemorate every July 5, “was the result of an intense debate whose protagonists were civilians. Of the 41 signatories of the Declaration of Independence, more than half were university students. Thus, civilians and university students were the founders of the Republic,” but the widespread confusion regarding this issue that gives greater relevance and historical importance to military participation is fundamentally due to the fact that when the military junta government was established in 1949, a military parade was decreed on that day, which continues to be repeated today and in addition to this, July 5 was also chosen as the Day of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, in two events that were at least striking.
Without diminishing the importance of the soldiers of the Liberation Army, it is essential to recognize and reconnect with the civil character of this important event that shows that in our men and women of letters, academics, scholars and with great values are the answers to the many questions that we as a country continue to ask ourselves and that can clarify the path of effort, work, commitment and perseverance that we have ahead of us to achieve the bright future that we know we deserve.
Along with Bolívar, Urdaneta, Sucre, Páez and Mariño, just to mention a few of our most brilliant military men, we must remember and remind future generations that civilians such as José María Vargas, Simón Rodríguez, Andrés Bello and Juan Manuel Cajigal were present and made a significant difference in our country. For every painting that reminds us of a battle, we should have books, articles, essays and content in the curriculum at all educational levels that speak to us regarding this fundamental basis of the republic.
That is why we are convinced that a new foundation of this republic, so battered, mistreated and unloved, would not be the solution to the problems that continue to plague us and have become increasingly deeper, especially over the last 25 years. Instead, we are committed to returning to civility and to the intense debates of ideas that would lead us to better steps, debates that build on the learning of all history and all the successes in order to return to them and make them greater, but also to the errors in order to never repeat them.
Today we are living a new journey of possibilities that will culminate – if everything continues according to the schedule we have talked so much regarding – with a date that will mark not only the next 6 years but also the course of our country, July 28, 2024. It is a date that might remain marked in the history of Venezuela and to which we must approach by overcoming those distorted visions of our collective ideology that sometimes seem to make us walk in circles along the same paths over and over once more.
The electoral campaign has officially begun and will last 22 days, from July 4 to 25, and the outcome might be the start of a path that, like that July 5, will lead us with determination to be a better Venezuela, one in which civic and moral values guide us to the recovery and transformation of all the fundamental aspects for the growth and strengthening of our economy, our education, our identity, because that desire for freedom and autonomy with which our country was born is once once more running through every corner of our geography and will need, as in that conquest of national independence, the help and effort of each and every one of us who love this land.
Maria Eloina Conde
July 7, 2024
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2024-07-09 21:04:34
