I think Bolivar was a liberal hero from his time, and played a magnanimous role during the liberation wars against colonizer Spain. Although latam wasn’t ready yet for socialism, thinking about it dialectically it means that latam transformed from an exploration colony to a bunch of semi-independent agrarian countries. This new arrangement meant that now an urban bourgeoisie and, consequently, an urban proletariat could start to develop.

Let’s keep in mind that all those countries still relied heavily on agricultural or mineral exports, so the new contradiction of latam became this agricultural bourgeoisie that prevented the rise of an industrial bourgeoisie in the region. The US also had this problem, but the secession war destroyed this rural and semi-colonial bourgeoise that operated in the south.