I´m Venezuelan so biased, but the dude liberated 3/4 of an entire continent on horseback. Perhaps tactical geniuses like Napoleon or Alexander get recognition due to the colonial purpose of their strategies. But what other 'liberators' can compare with the sheer expansiveness of the territory Bolívar helped decolonize?
Well, he does have an entire country (not to mention currencies) named for him. It also depends on what you mean by a "household name." Where are you referring to, exactly? Bolivar might not be a household name in the U.S. and Canada (although I think a lot of folks know the name), but he certainly is South America.
Your question implies something about "colonizing" strategies, and I'm not sure what you mean by that. Genghis Khan's conquests affected a great deal more territory than Bolivar's did, for example, as did Joseph Stalin's, but they are hardly thought of as beneficent forces in history.
Marie Arana postulates in Bolivar: American Liberator that because his desired legacy (a unified Greater Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina working together as a coalition of American States) and legal reforms (his constitutions) did not match the trajectory of reality, that there is a view that perhaps he 'failed,' whereas Napolean's law code informed Western Europe for decades, Washington was the first president of a country that continues today, and Alexander died young and victorious without having to tackle the less glamorous issues of governance.
Arana (and I must say, myself), laughs at this attempt to undermine Bolivar's legacy: he wrote multiple constituitions (each one tailored for the specific country), continually evolved his positions to suit the political mood South America at the time, masterfully brought together a coalition of dissimilar and rival Caudillos to work towards common goals and defeated the (admittedly dying - but determined!) Spanish Empire.
Read the book for a well written monograph on the man.
Piggybacking on this, what was the American conception of Latin America's independence wars, both amongst the general population and the political class? Was there concerted support for their anti-colonial brothers-in-arms, or suspicion at a multiracial uprising almost entirely composed of Catholics?
Venezuelan here, he totally is.
"the dude liberated 3/4 of an entire continent"?!
To my knowledge, he got Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia (and -very- partial credit for Perú)
It definitely is a household name in my country Venezuela.
But not as you might think, after slaves got their freedom they were asked what kind of lastname they desired? and many of them decided to settle for Bolívar the man that achieved freedom so you can acknowledge that there is a large sum of people that have the last name Bolívar but are in fact not related to the original spanish-household.
