My Heroes

MY HERO FROM THE PAST

Name: Simon Bolivar From: Caracas, Venezuela (1783-1830)

Occupation: Independence Heroe, Venezuelan Military, President of Venezuela. With only 47 years of age, he fought 472 battles being defeated only 6 times, he took part in 79 big battles with the great risk of dying in 25 of them. He freed 6 nations, rode 123 kilometres (more than what was sailed by Columbus and Vasco da Gama together) was the Head of State of 5 nations, took the torch of Liberty for a lineal distance of 6.500 kilometres (this distance is approximately half turn to the Earth). He travelled 10 times more than Hannibal, 3 times more than Napoleon, and the double of Alexander the Great. His ideas of liberty were written in 92 proclamations and 2632 letters. The most incredible is that most of them were simultaneously dictated in different languages to several secretaries. The most important is that the army he commanded never conquered only liberated!

The above was the argument with which the BBC chose Simón Bolívar as the most outstanding American from the 19th century

MY HERO FROM THE PRESENT

Name: Henrique Capriles Radonski From: Caracas, Venezuela

Occupation: Center-left Politician for the Primero Justicia party. Capriles, a 39-year-old with a runner’s physique, is Venezuela's youngest presidential candidate. He is also the most experienced: a former chairman of the lower house of Congress, once a big-city mayor and then a big-state governor. He served for four months in 2004 on implausible charges relating to the 2002 attempted coup against Chávez. (He was eventually acquitted.)

As a former political prisoner, Capriles can see through this authoritarian regime’s veneer of democratic legitimacy. Yet rather than coming out of prison embittered and radicalized, Capriles developed just the kind of big-tent political identity that Venezuelans seem to crave after 13 years of hyper-polarization under Chávez.
In 2008, Capriles beat Chávez’s dauphin in the race for governor of Venezuela’s second most populous state, Miranda. There, despite constant harassment and budget cuts from a central government determined to undermine his administration, Capriles managed to work with grassroots pro-Chávez groups on community projects and became one of the country’s most effective and popular governors. He rebuilt Miranda’s outpatient-clinic network and started an ambitious school-building project. He focused spending on the state’s poorer, rural areas — areas that had largely voted against him. Though he is nobody’s idea of an exciting public speaker, he has carved out a niche as an understated, sensible and trustworthy problem-solver.

MY HERO FROM MY FAMILY

Name: Jacobina Carrera de Padilla From: Sucre, Venezuela

Occupation: Pastry Cheff and Seamstress. Jacobina is my Grandmother, she is 85 years old. She is diabetic and Cancer survivor. She also survived a heart attack. She is brave, courageous, determined, dedicated, perseverant, and very generous to everyone she knows.

She means a lot to me and to all my family.

MY HERO FROM MY COMMUNITY

Name: Sister Francisca de Los Angeles From: Carmen de Viboral, Colombia (1916- )
Occupation: Sister of the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation, since her arrival to Maracaibo, in 1975, at the age of 18, she has dedicated her life to help those who need it the most. In 1991, she founded the House of Mercy and and directed it for 20 years, dedicated to help the needy. Sister Francisca has colaborated with the spiritual physical healing of many people, through faith and prayers. Last year alone, the House of Mercy served 9.658 people from the community in areas such as health, education, food, clothing and others. Sister Francisca will be 96 years old this year, and is actively helping and healing people from our community. God has blessed her with the gift of healing.

MY HERO FROM THE MOVIES

Name: Batman From: Gotham CityBatman's secret identity is Bruce Wayne, an American millionaire (later billionaire) playboy, industrialist, and philanthropist. Having witnessed the murder of his parents as a child, he swore revenge on criminals, an oath tempered with the greater ideal of justice. Wayne trains himself both physically and intellectually and dons a bat-themed costume in order to fight crime. Batman operates in the fictional American Gotham City, assisted by various supporting characters including his crime-fighting partner, Robin, his butler Alfred Pennyworth, the police commissioner Jim Gordon, and occasionally the heroine Batgirl. He fights an assortment of villains such as the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face, Poison Ivy and Catwoman. Unlike most superheroes, he does not possess any superpowers; he makes use of intellect, detective skills, science and technology, wealth, physical prowess, martial arts skills, an indomitable will, fear, and intimidation in his continuous war on crime.

MY HERO FROM THE CARTOONS

Name: Jerry Mouse From: United States of America

Cartoon character in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's series of Tom and Jerry. Created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Jerry is a brown mouse. Jerry Mouse, an "incurable scene stealer", served more or less as the protagonist of most of the films; instead of being a "cowering victim" of his pursuer, Tom Cat, he took delight in besting, and often torturing, his antagonist. Hanna and Barbera considered Tom and Jerry "the best of enemies", whose rivalry hid an unspoken amount of mutual respect.