Thaindian News

May 5, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): An American scientist is endorsing a conjecture that has been broadly discarded as a personal fixation of the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. The conjecture is that Chavez’s hero, Simon Bolivar, might have breathed his last breath owing to arsenic poisoning.

Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chavez, has snubbed the time-honored version that Bolivar passed away due to tuberculosis in Colombia in 1830. Bolivar was a crafty Venezuelan military negotiator, who unshackled much of South America from centuries of discriminatory and haughty Spanish colonialism.

Now, Paul Auwaerter, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is articulating that Bolivar’s bereavement was most likely generated by arsenic. It could have either been from guzzling polluted water or from utilizing the naturally happening poison in order to endeavor to alleviate headaches and hemorrhoids.

At a medical seminar in Maryland last week, Auwaerter elucidated that he did not discount the murder of Bolivar though he clarified that this was only a conservative estimate.

The scientist’s caution, however, did not prevent Chavez from construing the conclusion as corroboration of murder. Chavez has devoted his democratic socialist revolution to the remembrance of Bolivar.

Paul Auwaerter expounded to Reuters that the Venezuelan government had not yet established contact with him. He was apprehensive due to the misinterpretation and politicization of his report.

In his struggle against alleged American imperialism, Chavez has often cited Bolivar, who is copiously venerated by a majority of the South Americans. Many cities and villages in South America are named after him.

Chavez’s government is, at present, performing its own examination into Bolivar’s demise. This year, a recently installed state forensics laboratory intends to employ the 19th century hero’s passing away as its first case.

Chavez has persevered that Bolivar was slaughtered by a Colombian political opponent, Francisco de Santander. Some political analysts have cautioned that re-examining the case could actually exacerbate the already tense relations between the fractious neighbors, Colombia and Venezuela.