The Positivation of Natural Rights and the Limits to Democracy in the Bolivarian Constitutional Project of 1819

The end of colonial rule in Spanish America posed difficult questions regarding the political organization of the newly sovereign states. In this respect, the constitutional project presented by Simon Bolivar to the Second National Congress of Venezuela, which met in Angostura in 1819, insisted that the country should be under the control of a conservative central power capable of guaranteeing the rights of the individual without endangering the socio-political stability of the republican order. This article examines the Liberator's conception of the Venezuelan political body in the light of the socio-historical circumstances he was forced to confront during the Wars of Independence.