SIMON BOLIVAR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19502, 10 June 1925, Page 8

SIMON BOLIVAR

WEL-L-KNOWN FIGURE ON POSTAGE STAMPS. Apart from the Sovereigns of our own Empire and of Spain and prior to 1911, Portugal, the celebrity who has been portrayed most frequently on postage stamps is Simon Bolivar) states Fed J. Melville in the Daily Telegraph. With a record of about 300 different stamps, bearing good, bad and indifferent portraits of the Liberator, he leaves Christopher Columbus p long way behind. We meet his picture on the stamps of most of the States which owed their independence to his brilliant leadership a century ago, Venezuela, Colombia—particularly the State of Bolivar—Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. The last named’ has just celebrated the centenary of the battle of Ayacucho in a series of eight stamps, all showing a small but finely-en-graved portrait of Bolivar. These stamps, authorised under a decree of October 2S, last, were ready in good time for the centenary date, December 9. 1921. They have been printed in the quantities here given; —2 centavos, olive green (750,000); 1 centavos, deep green (1,000,000); 5 centavos, black (100,000); 10 centavos, red (3,000,000); 50 centavos, purple (85,000); 1 sol, yellowbrown (75,000); 2 soles, light blue (20,000). It is stated in the decree that the stamps will circulate concurrently with another issue, authorised on March 21 last, and bearing a portrait gallery of other heroes of the independences. So far as the Ayacucho commemorative issue is concerned, no further supplies will' be printed, but of the other series it is announced that it will constitute the new permanent series of Peruvian stamps. The portraits and first quantities ordered from the American Bank Note Company of New lork of this permanent series are:—2 centavos, green and sepia, Rovadeneira (It'O.OOO) ; 4 centavos, green, M'arrano Melgar (800,000); 8 centavos, black, Iturregui (100,030); Iff centavos, Vermillion, A. B. Leguia (8,000,000); 20 centavos, deep blue, J. Olaya (800,000); 5 centavos, blight purple, Bollido (200,000); 1 sol. dep brown, P. Saco (160,003); 2 soles, bright" blue, J. Leguia (20.000). TJie independence “’of Peru was proclaimed by San Martin in 1821 (an event commemorated on the Peruvian stamps of 1321), but it was not until the end of 1824 that the decisive ■ victory over the Spaniards of Ayacucho made the emancipation a reality The actual leader of the victors in this battle was General Antonio de Sncre, whom one might have expected to see on at least one of the stamps of Peru. His clarion call to his very mixed 6000 troops is historic: " Upon what we do to-day depends the destiny of South America.” Venezuela, which has also commemorated the centenary of Ayacucho on a 25 centimas ultramarine stamp, presents the portraits of Bolivar and Sucre side by side. Sucre's picture is familiar to collectors on a few stamps of Bolivia. Colombia, and Ecuador, and he is not likely to be overlooked on the stamps now preparing for the centenary of the independence of Bolivia, which occurs this year.