In Hubbard’s view, the moral of Bolívar and Sáenz’s tragedy is that those with power must use it. Someone close to power, like Manuela, has to dedicate herself to enlarging the strength of her partner. “Real powers are developed by tight conspiracies of this kind,” Hubbard writes. If Manuela had been willing to support Bolívar completely, Hubbard concludes, she would have been a truly historic figure, rather than being “unknown even in the archives of her country as the heroine she was.”
