To my understanding, the series appears to have taken a few creative liberties with the actual story, (it was a telenovela after all) but it ultimately remained true to the actual history of Latin America's great liberator Simon Bolivar. I am a student of Latin American History and I certainly studied extensively about Bolivar in college, but I must admit that I never studied much about Simon Bolivar's life as a child or young man, and to my mind, this is where the series really shines in particular. Both of the actors who played Simon Bolivar in his younger years brought a lot of passion and excitement to the character and each helped the viewers relate to Bolivar and understand how he became the man he became. No offense to actor Luis Geronimo Abreu who played Bolivar as an older adult, but I think the director should have stuck with actor Jose Ramon Barreto who played Bolivar as a young man instead of switching actors; since the viewers had already bonded with him as the adult Bolivar during episodes 5-25. In any event, both Maximiliano Gomez Silva, who played Bolivar as a 12-13 year old and Jose Ramon Barreto did a remarkably good job in their portrayals of Bolivar, and there were many other great performances by the supporting cast members; such as Erick Rodriguez, who played Simon Bolivar's mentally disturbed cousin Pablo. I would recommend this series to anyone with a love for history or just as a good bit of drama.
