Ah, it seems like the bpo-832799 (reported in 2003) is similar to the RHEL bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1585201

Extract of the RHEL bug report:
---
pythontest.c:
#include <dlfcn.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    void *pylib = dlopen("libpython2.7.so.1.0", RTLD_LOCAL | RTLD_NOW);
    void (*Py_Initialize)(void) = dlsym(pylib, "Py_Initialize");
    Py_Initialize();
    int (*PyRun_SimpleStringFlags)(const char *, void *) = dlsym(pylib, "PyRun_SimpleStringFlags");
    PyRun_SimpleStringFlags("import json\n", 0);
    return 0;
}

2. Compile with "gcc -Wall -o pythontest pythontest.c -ldl -g"

3. Run ./pythontest -

Actual results:

it will fail with ImportError: /usr/lib64/python2.7/lib-dynload/_struct.so: undefined symbol: PyFloat_Type
---

The reporter is already aware of the fallback on RTLD_GLOBAL: "(optionally) change RTLD_LOCAL to RTLD_GLOBAL and see that it works".