The helicopter flew over the mountains embracing the mining camp school grounds. Helicopters flew in with some frequency in the 1950s. In the early part of the decade, they would bring the payroll, which in the 40s, was carried on a treacherous journey by foot, vehicle, and canoe from Ciudad Bolivar. That’s a subject for another post. I’ll only mention that my father often had that duty back then. He slept under trees along the way, the entire month’s payroll at his side. Never worried about theft. Or worse.
Helicopters would also bring in the movies played weekly in the camp club. Relatively current movies were shown twice a week at first, later, thrice per week. They’d also be flown in from Ciudad Bolivar, formerly Angostura, on the shores of the Orinoco.
The helicopter would seem to hover a bit but would actually be flying in an oblong circle above the clearing next to the club grounds, just beyond the swimming pools. Then it would descend onto the field, creating its own whirlwind. Boys sprinted to the clearing to gawk at the descending contraption.
On this occasion the helicopter was bringing some new wonder medicine and all parents were anxious that it be administered to their children. “There’s a cure for polio. Finally!”
We lined up as mini-regiments on the school grounds, as the nurses came to each of us and administered this “cure for polio.” The urgency on the part of parents is embedded in my psyche to this day.
You will find the following links to be of great interest, hence I’ll keep this post short. Read them and remember.
From the AP: “Venezuela will implement a nationwide quarantine after detecting 16 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, President [sic!] Nicolas Maduro said, adding that the total number of cases in the South American country has risen to 33.”
It is a given that the numbers are worse, as the Venezuelan state pronouncements have proved to be among the most unreliable.
There is a macabre irony in this latest news concerning the Wuhan Flu (Coronavirus): one of the worst pandemics to afflict the earth was popularly known as the Spanish Flu (or Spanish Influenza).
About 15 years ago, I read The Great Influenza, by John M. Barry. Setting aside his Darwinian presuppositions, Mr. Barry’s opus is an unforgettable, haunting tour de force. I’ve not opened the book since my first reading, but, given all the frenzy accompanying the Coronavirus, I’m considering re-adding to my reading pile.
The Great Influenza is considered to be the deadliest pandemic in history. It infected 500 million people, one-third of the world’s population, with up to 100 million deaths, or a 20% mortality rate. That’s far more than all the soldiers and civilians killed by the war. Most affected were the very young (under 5), those in the 20-40 age group, and those over 65. A most unique age distribution whose explanation is beyond the scope of this overview.
Mr. Barry makes the case that the virus originated in the hog farms of Kansas and spread to the U.S. Army base there and from thence to the world as armies were transported to all points on earth. However, more recent discoveries point to origins in China.
Although the origins of the flu may be debatable, the origins of the moniker are not. During the Great War (WWI), the Allied powers were very well aware of a devastating virus which was killing thousands of soldiers and civilians; however, they wanted to keep that under wraps so as to not hurt morale and to not disrupt war production. Yes, our wise and compassionate shepherds were telling us to suck it up and get back to the wartime factories and bases.
And spread the virus.
Spain was a neutral country and as the flu ravaged her, their newspapers were not shy in reporting its terrible advance, even infecting the Spanish king, Alfonso XIII. The Allies were perfectly content to let the world think it was due to something in Spain. However, as deaths accumulated — eventually killing 500,000-700,000 in the United States — its ravages could no longer be ignored.
Many Americans noticed symptoms in the morning and were dead by nightfall.
One story tells of a man who boarded a Philadelphia trolley. A fellow passenger fell over dead within minutes, another disembarked and keeled over, dead; finally the conductor succumbed. The passenger, unhurt, disembarked and walked home. Many symptoms were triggered by this pandemic, including coughing up blood as lungs collapsed.
It was a terrible scourge. Death was everywhere. A children’s rhyme in 1918 was:
“I had a little bird Its name was Enza I opened up the window and in flew enza.”
My mother was born about a decade after the flu ran its course. She recalls that my grandmother said little about it other than, “Murieron muchos. [Many died.]” And that was well in the interior of Venezuela. There are few today who lived through that pandemic. Fritzi Bryant is one of them. She is 106 years old and lives in a nursing home in Washington State. She was interviewed recently.
“I’m doing wonderful,” she said. “Just fine. Everything is fine here. Plenty to eat, which is good. You have to look at the sunny side instead of the bad side of things.”
“There’s no sense in playing it down; you have to look it square in the face…to do everything you can in your power to make it better.”
My son, Nathan, recently posted some comments on Isaiah 41:1-10. Below are the first verse followed by his respective comments thereon:
“Keep silence before me, O islands; and let the people renew their strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us come near together to judgment.”
(Everyone pause and listen, stop your panic and hear…. We are not called to keep in silent fear behind shut doors, but to gather near to God and encourage one another with words of hope, and then determine what is right to do and act accordingly. It seems we have skipped that first step, and in skipping it, we are not sure what to do; in not knowing what to do, we fear; and in fearing, we overreact; and in overreacting, we make extreme decisions; and in making extreme decisions, we collapse.)
So far, it’s 0.0039% and 0.0033%. Those are the percentages (.000039 and .000033, in decimal format) which represent the number of cases in the United States and in the world, compared to the total US and world populations, respectively, including deaths, recoveries, in-treatments. Compare those figures to the 33% infection rate during the Great Influenza. However, this is not the picture painted by the media and the bureaucrats, which lead to believe the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us.
It is not irrational to ask: are the “remedies” being imposed upon us worse than the disease? Life savings and annual earnings have been wiped out. And more is to come if nothing changes. A number of jurisdictions have, in effect, ordered the closure of churches. This might be the right thing to do; but be not afraid to ask questions.
We are to be prudent. But we are not to lose our minds, let alone our courage.
“The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)”
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: My God; in him will I trust.
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler,And from the noisome pestilence.
He shall cover thee with his feathers,And under his wings shalt thou trust:
His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; Nor for the arrow that flight by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;Nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.(Psalm 91:1-6)
Trust God and carry on.
A tour de force. Published in 2005.
Infected soldiers from Ft. Riley, Kansas.
November, 1918 photo made available by the Library of Congress. A girl stands next to her sister lying in bed. The girl telephoned the Red Cross Home Service who came to help the woman fight the virus. I don’t know how this particular story ended.Mass graves being dug for “Spanish Flu” victims in Philadelphia.
Teresa Carreño is a well-known name in Venezuela. However, other than associating the name with arts and culture, few know much about her.
Born in Venezuela, she played piano for European and American eminences and twice in the White House: once for Abraham Lincoln and the next time for Woodrow Wilson.
In prior posts, including the recent series on ranchitos, you will have noticed the many terrible wars and rebellions in 19th-century Venezuela. This had undeniable effect on Venezuelan society. Perhaps the story of one young girl and her eventual triumphs and failures will help put “flesh and blood” on aspects of such effect.
This post is a translation of a biographical sketch first published by the BBC a few years ago:
Teresa Carreño was barely 9 years old when, in the fall of 1863, she was invited to play the piano for then-president Abraham Lincoln.
The Venezuelan pianist returned to the White House in the winter of 1916 to offer a Christmas recital in honor of President Woodrow Wilson.
Between the first and the second concert 53 years had passed.
In that period, Carreño developed a successful musical career as performer, composer, and singer, which led her to make numerous international tours and to meet or collaborate with maestros such as Gustav Mahler, under whose direction she played with the New York Philharmonic Society.
A child prodigy, her professional trajectory took international flight, driven by wars and exile.
“Girl Genius”
Born in Caracas in 1853, in the bosom of a musical family — her grandfather was a well-known composer of sacred music –, Carreño gave evidence of great artistic sensibility from a very early age.
This caused her father, Manuel Antonio Carreño, to begin piano lessons and to assign complex exercises which permitted her to develop her abilities.
By 1861, little Teresa was considered to be a “girl genius” and had composed numerous short pieces for the piano, including eight waltzes, three dances, and two polkas.
However, the deterioration of the political situation in her native Venezuela — where her father was minister of the Treasury of a government facing a civil war — drove her family into exile in the United States in 1862, where another civil war was raging.
That very same year, at 8 years old, the young pianist debuted in New York City, where she was hailed by the public as a “musical phenomenon.”
“She deserves to be classified, not as a girl wonder, who at the age of 8 years has mastered all the technical difficulties of the piano, but as an artist with a first level sensibility,” wrote the musical critic of The New York Times.
Her talent greatly impressed the American composer, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who in that time was considered one of the best pianists in the New World, and who became — for a brief time — the girl’s first professor in New York.
After her successful performances in the Big Apple, Carreño initiated her first tour in the United States, including the private concert she offered to President Lincoln in the White House, in which she played several compositions by Gottschalk as well as one of the president’s favorite songs, “Listen to the Mocking Bird.”
Teachers, Friends, and Influences
Her stay in New York does not last long. In 1866, the family traveled to the other side of the Atlantic and settled in Paris, where Carreño performed her European debut.
During her first weeks in the City of Light, the young lady [12 years old] met musicians such as Gioachino Rossini, creator of universal operas such as The Barber of Seville, and the Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt, who offered to give her musical lessons, which she declined.
She did study with Georges Mathias, who had studied under Frédéric Chopin and whose lessons served to make the Polish composer Carreño’s favorite.
During a tour of London, the Venezuelan pianist met Anton Rubinstein, ex-tutor of Tchaikovsky, who became friend as well as an important musical influence to her.
But the artistic career of the Venezuelan in Europe also took other paths.
Carreño was blessed with a beautiful mezzosoprano voice which was discovered by Rossini, who gave her singing lessons which became useful in exploiting another facet of her musical talent: operatic interpretation.
In 1872, in Edinburg on a concert tour, a soprano who was to interpret the role of the queen of Navarra in the opera, The Huguenots, fell ill and Carreño, who had never sung in public, substituted for her.
“In four days she learned the difficult role and performed in the opera with great success,” wrote The New York Times critic in 1916.
Shortly after that episode, Carreño returned to live in the United States, where she continued to perform for several years as singer in roles such as Zerlina in Don Giovanni.
Personal Difficulties
During her first stay in Europe, in 1873, Carreño married the violinist, Emile Sauret, which whom she had a daughter, Emilita, whom the couple left in the care of a German friend in order to continue touring to meet their professional commitments.
Then, a series of problems hit the pianist: the tour failed, she suffered the loss of a second pregnancy, her marriage with Sauret ended in divorce, and her father died in France, which left her in a difficult financial situation prohibiting her from providing for the care of Emilita, who ended up being adopted by the family of her German friend.
She returned to the United States, where she met the Italian baritone, Giovanni Tagliapietra, whom she married in 1876. The couple had three children, but the marriage also ended in divorce in 1889.
The Valkyrie of the Piano
Towards the end of 1889, Carreño returned to the Old Continent to settle in Berlin.
There, that same year, she married the pianist and composer Eugen D’Albert, with whom she had two daughters in a marriage that lasted only three years.
In Europe, Carreño toured several times through Germany, Russia, and other European countries and met the Norwegian Composer, Edward Grieg, and she becomes a proponent of his works.
In Germany, she is named “The Valkyrie of the Piano” and “the lion of the keyboard,” because of her strong, impetuous style interpreting compositions.
This was one of the characteristics for which she was known since childhood, when the critics reported that the strength with which she played the piano was like that of an adult male.
“It is difficult to adequately express what all musicians sensed in the presence of this great woman who looked like a queen among the pianists and played like a goddess,” wrote Henry Woods, director and founder of the London Summer Concerts which are now known last the BBC Proms.
“Her masculine vigor in tone and touch and her marvelous precision in execution excite the world,” he added.
With the passing of the year, however, Carreño began playing with a different type of energy.
After her death, a critic writing for The New York Times highlighted how the Venezuelan pianist had changed throughout the course of her career.
“I remember her as young, and, now, after all these years, it was a pleasure to sit and hear her play again,” he wrote.
“When I heard her recently, it seemed to me that the woman with the kind face and the gray hair played in a way that was much more artistic than how she had played when she was a young woman with a more passionate mood,” he added.
Carreño fell ill in Cuba, when she was about to initiate a tour through South America in March, 1917. She died in June of that year in her apartment in Manhattan, where she lived with her fourth husband, Arturo Tagliapietra, the brother of her second husband, Giovanni Tagliapietra.
Her last concerts in the United States were in Carnegie Hall, where between 1897 and 1916 she gave 32 performances, according to research done by the historian, Anna E. Kijas, of Tufts University (Massachusetts), creator of Documenting Teresa Carreño, a digital project which gathered numerous materials and primary sources about this Venezuelan.
Throughout her career, Carreño offered over 5,000 concerts and composed over 70 original musical pieces.
And, in all those years, she returned to Venezuela only twice. The first time, in 1885, for a recital tour. The second, in 1887, when she had planned to direct an opera company, which ended in failure.
She was cremated and, in 1938, her ashes were sent to Caracas, where they now rest in the National Pantheon.
Since the beginning of the 1980’s, Venezuela’s most modern theater bears her name.
Teresa Carreño in the United States. Initially after exile, she helped support her family with her concerts.Promoted in The United States as “The Child Pianist”.
The first 5 posts in this series on ranchitos, looked at the centuries-old history of land ownership in Venezuela (and in much of Spanish colonial America, including parts of what became the United States). One aspect of landholding, consistent throughout the centuries, up to the late 1950s, was a respect for private property, whether it belonged to small landholders or large.
This changed dramatically with the first democratically-elected president of Venezuela, Rómulo Betancourt. (For more on Betancourt, see here and here.)
In 1958, Venezuela had the 4th highest per capita GDP in the world, despite being governed by military governments since the turn of the century. Its monetary policy was stable and property rights were respected and honored.
Marcos Pérez Jiménez went into exile in early 1958, and a new democratic regime was installed under Mr. Betancourt. His government, and that of his successors, completely overthrew the mostly non-interventionist political order that, with fits and starts, had ruled the day for over a century. This is not the place to discuss the Punto Fijo Pact, which, in effect, ultimately centralized political control in two major parties. But it is necessary to note that both parties were socialistic and interventionist.
To quote a Venezuelan writer: “In 1958, Venezuela became a democracy when the dictatorship was overthrown. With that came all the usual benefits of democracy such as freedom of the press, universal suffrage, and other civil rights. Unfortunately, these reforms came along with … destruction of our economic freedom.”
In the matter of landholdings, the land reform launched by Betancourt, with the support of the Punto Fijo Pact signatories, redistributed property holdings. Although the state compensated the owners for the expropriations, it was a “taking” nonetheless. The recipients of the parceled out land did not have actual title to their land, but only the right to work it. Or, in those cases where they were given title, they lacked the expertise, technical know-how, and the necessary infrastructure to make a go of it. In fact, 90% of distributed lands were transferred without title. It was actually a transfer of tenancy, not ownership. In other words, from being working tenants of large, productive haciendas, the peasants became failing tenants of small parcels owned by the state.
To put it simply: in most cases, ownership of land was transferred from private citizens to the state.
To get an idea of the radical nature of these actions in Venezuela’s history, consider: no tax had ever been imposed on land until the latter half of the 20th century.
As we have seen in earlier posts on ranchitos, historically, land was often ceded, or sold for nominal price, by hacendados to men, or families, or widows, who had lived and worked it. These cessions or sales were duly notarized and recorded in municipal or city records. In many other cases, records reflected men who claimed ownership on the basis of decades having lived and worked on sections of land whose original owners and families had been killed or dispossessed during the great bloodlettings of the 19th century.
Excerpts of one such record reads, “….Carlos Durán, citizen of the State and neighbor of the San Juan Parish, I direct myself to you [governor of the state] to justify my right to title: I have lived and worked a small part of the land called “La Angosturita” in my Parish where, with great effort and sacrifice, I have built an inheritance on which I depend for the sustenance of my family. I am now aged and infirm as a result of the vicissitudes and desolation of the federal revolution [one of many 19th century uprisings] to which I contributed with my insignificant personal efforts in the army….”
The excerpt goes on to describe and delineate the parcel, including its boundaries, “[bordered to the east by land owned] by Juan Manuel Durán, to the north and west by Carlos Herrera, to the south by Mrs. Carmen Betancourt de Otero….” On this basis, which, however pitiful, is very detailed and straightforward, title was granted.
In the case of land reform, as with any socialistic endeavor, the impulse was not only to “take”, but also to somehow modify behavior. For example, to quote an Acción Democrática (Betancourt’s political party) technician who, thirteen years later, analyzed land reform’s unkept promises, wrote with a measure of despondency: “It was necessary to create technicians who would understand [agricultural] processes, it was necessary to prepare administrative and managerial personnel, and to educate and equip the laborer in new disciplines with which he had never had any experience. These are some of the elements that hindered the success of our agrarian reform.”
Necessary to create…necessary to prepare…. How? Ex nihilo? Wasn’t this what the former landholders hacendados had been doing for centuries? What gargantuan conceit made the Socialists think they’d do a better job of this than the prior owners? The state rails against the evil landowners. But is the state composed of heavenly angels? Fifty years later, land reform had become a weapon with which to punish the state’s enemies and reward its acolytes. Hacendados were not known to do that.
Part of the problem is that the state (any state) does not like competition. In its view, the greatest Competition, of course, is God. Hence the state’s animosity. However, large landowners are also a form of competition and so must be opposed as well.
What typical “land reform” fails to take into account are the eternal verities. If the state would merely begin with a half-serious consideration of the Ten Commandments, it would hesitate before taking anyone’s land. Naboth’s vineyard comes to mind.
Almost overnight, Venezuela’s agriculture went from 22% of GDP to 5% and its agricultural labor force went from 60% to less than 10%. Only 4% of the land in Venezuela is under cultivation and food must be imported.
Peasants had been given the right to farm land when they knew not how. Or they had been given land they knew little about. They had also been given loans to buy equipment and infrastructure, much of which was defaulted. Knowing there was food and patronage in Caracas, they did what most folks who are averse to starving would do: they abandoned the land and fled to the capital. And not having housing there, they built their own ranchitos.
And they are there still.
Signatories of the Punto Fijo Pact, 1958. From left to right: Rómulo Betancourt, Jóvito Villalba, and Rafael Caldera
The promise of land reform
The reality of land reform which disregards eternal verities: ranchitos near Caracas
With this, the second to last post on the provenance of the Venezuelan ranchitos, we are now circling the airfield.
We’ve looked at the encomienda and hacienda systems, the latter of which predominated well into the mid-20th century, after which ranchitos began to sprout like wild mushrooms along the Caracas mountainsides.
Despite real poverty in prior centuries, ranchitos in Venezuela were mostly a 20-century phenomenon which persists into the 21st.
What gave rise to them?
The usual answer, which you see in Wikipedia, magazine articles, and books, is the oil boom, which drew folks from difficult, farm labor to easier work in the cities. However, there’s something facile and unsatisfactory in that reply.
In our last post we looked at the first four of the five Andinos who ruled Venezuela in the first half of the past century, the most consequential of whom was General Juan Vicente Gómez, in office from 1908 to his death in December, 1935. He and those who followed him created an environment of stability such as had not been seen or experienced in Venezuela in well over a century. See here for more.
The last of the “pre-democracy” Andinos was the almost equally consequential General Marcos Pérez Jiménez in office from 1951 to his abdication/overthrow in 1958.
Pérez Jiménez sought to enhance Venezuela’s independence by promoting oil and ore concessions and improving or expanding the transit infrastructure. The country was further catapulted onto modernity. Caracas was modernized with skyscrapers, including the symbolic Humboldt Hotel overlooking the capital city. Construction projects were launched to build large public housing projects, bridges, and South America’s finest highway system, most of which are still in use into the 21st century, including the then-spectacular La Guira-Caracas expressway in 1953 and the Tejerías-Caracas expressway in 1954.
Furthermore, his tenure saw the creation, in 1956, of cable car transport to the 6,000 ft. Mt. Ávila, which stands like an imposing sentinel over Caracas. He also commissioned the building of the even more remarkable cable car system to the 20,000 ft. Pico Bolivar in the Andes in the western state of Mérida (Mérida). Both systems were built by Swiss engineers and materiel. During his presidency, Venezuela was transformed into the most modern nation in South America: “modern” defined as excellent infrastructure, breathtaking skylines, and a rapidly growing middle class.
A telling but quickly forgotten change imposed by Pérez Jiménez was the revision of the official name of the nation. Since 1864 the country’s name was “United States of Venezuela”, a name favored by José Antonio Páez (see Ranchitos III) and officialized by a successor in 1864. This name reflected Simón Bolivar’s admiration for the United States, but not his conviction that South America should not seek to emulate a similar type government because, as he put it, “the United States form of government will only work for saints, which is what they are [and what we are not]”; Marcos Pérez Jiménez, apparently understanding Bolivar’s admonition, changed the name to “Republic of Venezuela”, a name which stuck until the 21st century, when another authoritarian politician changed the name yet again, but left Venezuela’s 20 states intact.
A plebiscite was held in December, 1957, which he won by a wide margin, but which opponents insisted was a rigged exercise. He went into self-imposed exile in Miami Beach, in 1959, only to be deported later by the Kennedy administration, which vainly believed it could afford to break, for the first time in its history, the United States’ promise of asylum in exchange for the applause of Venezuelan politicians: honor out; applause in.
But, as often happens with asymmetrical swaps, Kennedy succeed with the former, weightier matter, and failed with the latter, transitory one.
Unbelievably, Jiménez was, in 1968, elected to the Senate, even though he ran in absentia from Spain; however, the Venezuelan politicians, who were known to have too much time on their hands, succeeded in overturning his election on technicalities. In 1973, his supporters nominated him for the presidency; however, the political parties amended the constitution, in effect prohibiting him from running for office again.
He never returned to Venezuela. Nevertheless, love him or hate him, his administration’s negotiations with the petroleum industries brought matchless prosperity to the country. This promise of future increase and liberality was reversed by the overturning of his economic policies which tended to favor free enterprise locally, coupled with pragmatic agreements with foreign companies, within a low tax and regulatory environment. Our next post, the last in this series, will report on this in more detail.
Amazingly, all major projects undertaken by Pérez Jiménez still stand, unsurpassed: either still in use, such as in the case of the magnificent, now barely maintained, and, therefore, in many places, dangerous expressways, or as silent, empty monuments of a long past era, such as the Humboldt Hotel, alone and padlocked, alternating between stints as a reflector of countless brilliant sparkles of sunlight or as a lone sentry shrouded in clouds atop Mr. Ávila, reminding all who look and wonder, that historical eras ought not to be simplistically catalogued as bright or dark, evil or good. Much depends on who tells the story, how it’s told, of whom it is told, and, of course, by whom it is told.
At the end of his rule, Venezuela was by far the largest supplier of iron ore to the United States and one of its primary suppliers of petroleum. The ore was ultimately incorporated in America’s magnificent bridges, skyscrapers, monuments, homes, and automobiles.
Although some of his policies did genuflect to politicians who demanded state interventions, these were limited and, most importantly, he honored private property thereby maintaining a centuries’ old tradition in Venezuela.
We now approach the threshold of the birth and growth of the ranchitos, where we will see that tradition of respect for private property assailed.
Marcos Pérez Jiménez, last of The Andinos (1914-2001)
Caracas-La Guaira Expressway
Humboldt Hotel
Cable car to the 20,000 ft. Pico Bolivar in the Andes Mountains in Estado Mérida
