Passion, terror and bodies in Venezuela. Sketch for a new reading of the War of Independence (1810-1814)

Abstract

In this article we will take a emotional journey of the first four years of the process of the Venezuelan War of Independence (1810-1814). Our approach will be against the grain of the story of the official historiography, offering an analysis of these elements of understanding of the past: first, the role of collective emotions as forces mobilizing social practices; second, enhancing terror as the joints of ideological and political confrontation; and third, the echo of bodies amid the social fear, important in understanding the suffering endured by our ancestors axes. The article opens, finally, the ability to affectively read the Venezuelan past; but also establish the need and the challenge of lifting archival documents these emotional cleavages still waiting for future historians.