Data extracted from the DNA pulled from the remains of Simón Bolívar’s sisters will be used to create a digital picture of the man who led the nation to its independence. (Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images)

CARACAS, Venezuela – The government has disentombed the remains of Simón Bolívar’s sisters, María Antonia and Juana, who have been buried at the cathedral of Caracas since the 1800s.

DNA was extracted from María Antonia’s remains to compare “the genetic patterns and then determine whether they coincide with those at the Panteón Nacional [where Simón Bolívar is buried],” Venezuelan Vice President Elías Jaua said.

The data gathered from the process, which took 13 hours, also will be used to create a digital rendering of Simón Bolívar’s face and body, Jaua said.

“A historical debt with the people is beginning to get paid thanks to these investigative advances,” Jaua said. “To be certain that the remains at the Panteón Nacional are in fact the ones from the Father of our Motherland, Simón Bolívar, is without a doubt a great historical contribution to our identity and national dignity.”

Simón Bolívar’s remains were exhumed around midnight on July 16 at the Panteón Nacional. President Hugo Chávez, along with members of his cabinet, was in attendance when the tomb was opened as the Venezuelan national anthem played in the background.

“Our father who is in the earth, the water and the air … you awake every hundred years when the people awaken. I confess that we have cried – we have sworn allegiance,” Hugo Chávez posted on social network Twitter during Bolivar’s exhumation.

People in costumes take part in the commemoration of the 227th anniversary of Simón Bolívar’s birth, in Caracas, July 24. (Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images)

“That glorious skeleton has to be Bolívar, because his flame can be felt. Oh my God. Bolívar lives ... We are his flame,” he wrote in another Tweet.

Venezuela’s National Academy of History called the exhuming of Simón Bolívar’s remains “absolutely unnecessary and unjustified.”

“This was a spectacle and rhetoric unheard of in Venezuelan history, and it will be known as the greatest disrespect ever done to our Liberator, Simón Bolívar,” it said in a statement. “In the aftermath of such an inconceivable deed, unfortunately already done, we invite Venezuelans to reflect and to offer a prayer to the Father of the Motherland, desecrated in his tomb.”

Venezuelan lawyer Raymond Orta said the results of Simón Bolívar’s exhumation and DNA analysis “will probably never be known” since it’s part of a political game.

“Simón Bolívar has always been the image that the government has used,” he said, “and in this electoral year everything related to heroics works very well.”

Venezuelans will elect new members to the parliament, which is under the control of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), on Sept. 26.