Simón Bolívar, Letter to the Governor of the English Colony of Jamaica, September 6, 1815
The role of the inhabitants of the American hemisphere has for centuries been purely passive. Politically they were nonexistent. We are still in a position lower than slavery, and therefore it is more difficult for us to rise to the enjoyment of freedom....States are slaves because of either the nature or the misuse of their constitutions; a people are therefore enslaved when the government, by its nature or its vices, infringes on and usurps the rights of the citizen or subject..
We have been harassed by a conduct which has not only deprived us of our rights but has kept us in a sort of permanent infancy with regard to public affairs. If we could at least have managed our domestic affairs and our internal administration, we could have acquainted ourselves with the processes and mechanics of public affairs....
Despite the convictions of history, South Americans have made efforts to obtain liberal, even perfect, institutions, doubtless out of that instinct to aspire to the greatest possible happiness, which, common to all men, is bound to follow in civil societies founded on the principles of justice, liberty, and equality. But are we capable of maintaining in proper balance the difficult charge of a republic? Is it conceivable that a newly emancipated people can soar to the heights of liberty, and, unlike Icarus [a character in Greek mythology who flew close to the sun and fell to his death when his wings melted], neither have its wings melt nor fall into an abyss? Such a marvel is inconceivable and without precedent. There is no reasonable probability to bolster our hopes.
2. Identify what changes in the past, as identified by Bolívar, would have better prepared
South Americans to "obtain liberal, even perfect, institutions."
(written as an 8th grader and in a short sentence)