Venezuela (1781-1865)

                                                                      "volved a los campos y la vida sencilla..."

A patriot and a poet, Bello was an erudite with very progressive ideas. He thought that the new republics in Latin America needed to foster education to get ahead; he also saw that the Spanish language would be the great unifying element in the continent. Bello was a Romantic and a Neoclassicist. He owns to the first his love of nature and the believe of the goodness and  corruptibility of mankind; from the former he draws his didactic objectives, and his wish of going back to nature. He believed that Latin Americans should stop looking to Europe for guidance, and  should instead concentrate on their own resources as the basis of their development. His famous works are Alocución a la poesía and Silva a la agricultura de la zona tórrida. He also wrote Gramática de la lengua castellana (1835).