One of Latin America’s most famous historical figures, Simón Bolívar has become a mythic symbol for many nations, empires, and revolutions, used to support wildly diverse— sometimes opposite—ideas. From colonial Cuba to Nazi-occupied France to Soviet Slovenia, the image of “El Libertador” has served a range of political and cultural purposes.

Here, an array of international and interdisciplinary scholars shows how Bolívar has appeared over the last two centuries in paintings, fiction, poetry, music, film, festivals, dance traditions, city planning, and even reliquary adoration. Whether exalted, reimagined, or fragmented, Bolívar’s body has taken on a range of different meanings to represent the politics and poetics of today’s national bodies.