Month: June 2025

The USS Thresher

Richard Barnes

Two major outlets dominated the Venezuela newspaper universe when I was a child: El Universal and El Nacional. My father subscribed to the former although both were readily available in the club, in addition to the English daily, The Daily Journal (formerly The Caracas Journal). 

I used to skim through the papers pausing only for the cartoons, the Caracas movie showings, the sports pages, especially anything having to do with the New York Yankees during baseball season, and whatever else might cause me to stop and look or read.

In April, 1963, something made me stop: the loss of the USS Thresher. A few months later, there was a spread with photos of the members of the crew. I believe this was in Miami but am not certain.

I cannot explain why I would spend many minutes, if not hours, over several days, looking at the photos of the crew that the newspaper had published, imagining their attempts to correct whatever might have been the issues. It left an indelible impression on me, which I have carried to this day.

A few years later, when the USS Scorpion was lost several hundred miles southwest of the Azores, or over 1,000 miles west of Portugal, my mind immediately took me back to the Thresher. 

Many months ago, I made a note to write a post about the Thresher. However, I kept purposefully ignoring the note: I know nothing about submarines or the Navy; my first time attempting to maneuver a catamaran with a buddy in St. Thomas, we capsized; on my first long distance snorkeling adventure I swam right into the tentacles of a Portuguese man o’ war and would have panicked were it not for my late cousin, Max (Papaito), who saw my idiocy and calmly guided me to the nearest jetty and then treated me. 

So, knowing very little about seafaring (or even snorkeling!), I kept putting this off.

But my memories about that ship have kept intruding.

So here we are. 

This post is merely to bring to remembrance a ship and events of sixty two years ago which, in my opinion, ought to be remembered by us, if only to honor the men who died and the many loved ones they left behind. 

As I attempted to research the Thresher and its final exercise, I was overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of the many articles, the relatively recent release of the formerly classified hearing documents, blog posts, facebook entries, and so much more.

Speaking of facebook entries, here’s a recent one:

“My grandpa’s best friend was lost in the Thresher accident. His name was Pat Garner. I believe he was a Lieutenant Commander. It’s sad that none of the bodies were never recovered and now still with the submarine and the crew time has forgot. My grandpa and him were childhood friends and it bothered my grandpa for decades that he was gone. But they have been reunited in heaven or another world.”

There are many such entries or comments in many different, easily available sources. 

None of the below is original. I’ve gathered it all from sources such as noted above, should the reader be interested in looking into this event from April, 1963 for himself.

The USS Thresher was the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine to be lost at sea. Since then, there have been three submarine sinkings with all hands lost. The Thresher, with all 129 lost, is still the incident with the greatest loss of life.

And to this day, there are rival theories as to what went wrong.

She was launched from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine in April, 1961 for a series of initial sea trials. Her reactor plant “would give her unlimited range … ” she could dive to 1,300 feet, which was unprecedented for a U.S. submarine.

Her initial trials took her down the Atlantic coast as far as San Juan, Puerto Rico, where, in port, the “crew encountered problems with her diesel generator and then had difficulty in restarting her nuclear reactor.”

She underwent “shock tests … subjected to a greater intentional pounding than any other submarine in Navy history….” She did very well, with only minor damage, most of which was repaired by the crew with their store spare parts.

She returned to the Portsmouth yard where the crew’s “wives, parents, and children were allowed on board for a ‘happy cruise'”. She was then docked for major maintenance work. 

On April 9, 1963, at 7:30 AM, the Thresher was once again underway. “On board were 129 men: 12 officers and 96 enlisted men of the submarine’s crew; a Submarine Force staff officer; 3 officers and 13 civilian employees of the Portsmouth yard; a specialist from the Naval Ordnance Laboratory; and 3 civilian factor representatives.”

That next day, she was undergoing diving tests 220 miles east of Cape Cod. She reported she was suffering “minor difficulties” and would return to the surface.

She never did.

She was at her test depth of 1,300 feet, with the submarine rescue ship, USS Skylark waiting above. At 9:13 AM, fifteen minutes after reaching test depth, she reported the above as follows: “Experiencing minor difficulties. Have positive up angle. Am attempting to blow [ballast tanks]. Will keep you informed.” 

At 9:14 the Skylark asked, “Are you in control?” There was no reply, even after several repetitions of the same question.

At 9:17 a garbled message was heard, ending with “test depth”. Some believe they heard the word “exceeding” preceding “test depth”. 

A few seconds later, the Skylark heard what sounded like “a ship breaking up … like a compartment collapsing.”

“Thresher was never heard from again. Its hull was found at the bottom of the ocean, under a mile and a half of water, ruptured into six pieces. 

A reader interested in technical discussions of possible causes can easily find such online. However, he will find that each is debated to this day.

The U. S. Navy did move to thoroughly analyze and study how to prevent a repetition of such a tragedy. Her analyses and tests resulted in SUBSAFE, “a program designed to ensure the structural integrity of submarine hulls at pressure and, if an emergency occurred, ensure that the submarine could safely surface. Ever since, no tragedy like the Thresher has occurred; the Scorpion was not a SUBSAFE certified vessel, which, of course, was no consolation to the loved ones of the 99 men lost in that event.

In the U.S. Navy, submarines lost at sea are said to be on “eternal patrol”. The Thresher, meant to be the first of a new generation of “fast, nuclear-attack submarines”, now rests, along with 129 men, under more than 8,000 feet of ocean water. On eternal patrol. 

Brothers and Thresher crew members Master Chief Electrician’s Mate Benjamin Shafer (left) and Senior Chief Electrician’s Mate John Shafer (right) specifically requested to serve together.

Some of the crew of the USS Scorpion, lost at sea five years after the loss of the Thresher. I post this photo to also tip my hat to this terrible loss.

La Sayona and La Llorona

Richard Barnes

Guest Post by Professor Cristóbal Lárez Velásquez

Mérida, Venezuela

Professor Lárez Velásquez was born in El Pao and currently works at the Polymer Group, Department of Chemistry, University of the Andes, in Venezuela. He has published numerous articles on chemistry and is also a full professor at the university.

Like myself, Dr. Lárez Velásquez is grateful for the nurture given him during his infancy and childhood in El Pao.

His post on his recollections about La Sayona and La Llorona is of a different kind. I do not recall ever hearing about La Sayona; however, I did hear about La Llorona from the maids and mining camp charwomen but was never interested in inquiring about her. 

Professor Lárez Velásquez does have a knowledge about the origins of the legends which I found entertaining as well as revealing about the superstitions which often grip folks of any land on this earth. 

Not to mention The Scarlet Letter nature of the origins of La Sayona.

Thank you, Dr. Lárez Velásquez!

Guest Post

In just about every town in Venezuela legends related to figures like La Sayona abound.

Briefly, La Sayona is supposedly a ghost or specter that arose when a very jealous woman named Casilda murdered her mother and husband suspecting they were having an affair. Her mother, in the agony of death, cursed her and henceforth, her tormented soul wanders without rest or peace, pursuing unfaithful men to conquer them and then murder them. 

Another legend is La Llorona (The Crying Woman). She is another mythical creature who haunts rivers, lakes, and lonely roads; she comes out at night, searching for her children who drowned. 

Such legends existed in El Pao and surrounding areas of my childhood, and persist to this day. 

Interestingly, many tales about some of these fabled beings were often narrated at wakes as late as the 1960s and into the 1970s. I learned several of them when we accompanied our parents to some of these events. It should be remembered that there was no electricity in the surroundings of El Pao at the time, so the lighting was quite eerie and, as the reader can imagine, the stories told at some wakes had a powerful, long lasting impact on many of those who attended — especially on the children.

One of these narratives told of a woman on fire who would emerge on black nights on the curve just above Vuelta de Correa, up the road leading to El Pao, near the entrance where the Navarro family lived. This woman would chase anyone who ventured alone there. Many people were afraid to walk there; even drivers in their vehicles hesitated to drive through alone on dark nights. 

My grandparents, Juan Velásquez and Gumersinda Rivas de Veláquez, had their grocery store near this site, in front of Mr. Mario Picarone’s old gas pump and a little further down from the bus stop. 

Whenever an incident related to this dreaded ghostly apparition occurred, the episode was recounted again and again in their grocery store. Obviously, the versions expanded with added color to some aspects as they were recounted by different narrators, some of whom felt so strongly about their yarns that it seemed as if they had experienced them personally.

For many years, it was also said in the area that on the San-Félix-El Pao highway, at the entrance to the Macagua dam, a very beautiful woman would appear inside the vehicles passing by. Nothing would happen if the driver, who was likely very frightened, treated her courteously. However, she would become terrifying to those who tried to seduce her. 

The fear was so great, according to the stories, that many fainted or went crazy for a few days. It was believed that these apparitions were meant to punish and discipline unfaithful men, because nothing would happen to those who behaved courteously and gentlemanly. In those cases, the woman would disappear as mysteriously as she had boarded the automobile. 

Many jokers (called “jodedores” in the “guayanés lexicon”), who fortunately have always been abundant in the area, even in the worst of times, said that these stories were told by the drivers to persuade their wives to forgive them for traveling in that area, which was known to be in the vicinity of several places of ill repute.

Unsurprisingly, in the wake of these stories, it was also common for some “brave” men to loudly express their desire for this woman to appear to them, to show them who was in charge, so they said. So, soon enough other places in the region were regaled by women appearing to lone drivers. For example, the place called Guayabal, on the El Pao-Upata highway.

As for El Pao itself, there is a story about its early years that seems difficult to imagine and paints a different picture as to the origins of the La Sayona legend. I knew this story first hand because one of the protagonists related it to me all the while assuring me it was true.

It is about a very tall being, dressed in a hat and a long white suit, who, midst the darkness and fog, which was quite thick in El Pao at that time, supposedly came down from Rankin High, around the back of the church, crossed the school road, and skirted the place known as “el bajo”, behind the houses where the telegraph and post offices later operated. 

If it sensed someone approaching, it [like Marley’s ghost] would drag chains that produced a terrific and chilling sound and continue walking quickly toward Las Casillas. There, it would wait to make sure it could ascend without incident to the front of Pasaje Bolívar, from whence it would pass to the back of the houses on Apure Street, and then walk quickly, dragging the chains again. 

It would reach the hospital steps, climb halfway up, and then descend through the center of what was, or later was, a playground with swings, reaching to the hospital road, crossing it and the road to the now disappeared Labor Office. Then it continued behind the houses on the Guardia Street until, finally, it reached the bachelors buildings and the police headquarters that were in those parts at that time.

There, it disappeared for a long time. Afterwards, the ghostly creature would reappear and return along the same path, always in darkness and under heavy fog, sometimes in a persistent drizzle.

The legend had been circulating in the camp for some time, supposedly told by some drunks whom no one believed, although later told by people who were going to work the night shift and had to pass near some of the aforementioned places along the way. And, it seems, a competition arose among some young people to follow the mysterious entity, which they began to call “La Sayona”, and if possible, to catch it.

One of these groups of young men, who were around 17 or 20 years old and drank liquor “encapillados (drank in secret)” in some of the many places in El Pao where they did so (without causing much of a fuss because otherwise people would complain and the Guardia would come), set out to catch La Sayona. 

According to my source, they were on the verge of success several times, but something always happened that saved her. The most common cause of her escapes seems to have been the fear that paralyzed all the young men with terror when La Sayona stopped, and began to rattle her chains. 

However, one day, when they were under the heavy effects of alcohol, two of them managed to catch and subdue her. And, finally, the secret of La Sayona of El Pao was revealed. 

The two “brave” ones negotiated with her and promised to keep the secret, for which they received a small, monthly gift from her. However, because these two “brave” men, true to blackmail in general, increasingly increased their demands, La Sayona decided to move out of the camp.

According to the story told to me by the man who supposedly caught La Sayona, she was a beautiful, married woman, unfaithful to her husband, who under cover of the El Pao darkness and fog would betray her husband in adultery.

Unfortunately for this story — or perhaps not — my source never revealed the identity of La Sayona of El Pao.

El Pao plaza in the memorable, dark fog. Photo provided by Profesor Lárez Velásquez, courtesy Alfredo Sánchez FB

They That Hate You Shall Rule Over You

Richard Barnes

The title of this post is directly from Leviticus 26:17, a verse right smack in the middle of an extended passage wherein God promises blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. The passage also speaks of repentance accompanied by forgiveness and future blessings once again.

When I read this as a child and later as a young man, I assumed it referred to foreign powers or strangers who would rule over a rebellious or disobedient people, either nationally or personally.

However, as one decade dissolved into another, I came to see that this passage need not speak only of foreigners or strangers, but of anyone who held godless or antithetical views to God’s covenant. In other words, judgment would be seen in the disobedient or rebellious — those who have forsaken the God of their fathers — being ruled by those who are outright antithetical to God, let alone to His law.

Have you ever paused for a moment to consider that the men who spilled the rivers of blood from the veins of Frenchmen in the Reign of Terror in France were also Frenchmen?

Or that the men who tortured and slaughtered — by sword, gun, or mass starvation — the millions and millions of Chinese in Mao’s Great Leap Forward and later his Cultural Revolution were also Chinese?

Or that the men who bayoneted and butchered Russians and Eastern Europeans by the tens of millions — millions!; we often subconsciously affirm the quote attributed to Josef Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”; millions! — were also Russian and Eastern Europeans?

Throughout history, murderous tyrants were often men blood related to the people they hated; their own peoples and nations. 

This truth, helps us understand how in November, 2024, a high ranking Venezuelan official ordered the expropriation of Grupo Lamar, Venezuela’s largest shrimp producer, representing 70% of its shrimp production and over 80% of exports to Europe. And on Easter Sunday this year, its most productive processing plant, Antártica C.A. in San Francisco del Zulia, was in flames and likely reduced to ashes. 

The reasons for the expropriation are so common and mundane as to be boring: “plotting a coup” basically summarizes them.

The results are predictable: production has stalled and output has collapsed with exports to Europe falling 52% and the in country prices of shrimp have skyrocketed adding yet another blow to the strapped Venezuelan peoples.

It’s looking like another Mao-sized failure with a Mao-sounding name, only instead of a Great Leap or a Cultural Revolution, we have the Maduro Seven Transformations. 

Don’t ask.

Readers might recall that expropriations in Venezuela did not start with Chavez; but, initially, they were justified by the fomenting of envy of the foreign, primarily American, companies who were accused of exploiting the Venezuelan populace. 

In the dire straits the country now finds itself, her people can be forgiven if they do not see that the companies now being expropriated are not foreign, let alone American, but local. The men being displaced are not the ugly Gringos, but their own families, neighbors, and friends. 

I understand the founders and leadership of the Lamar Group have left the country. I do not know how many of its 10,000 employees are still on the job.

And who is doing all this damage to the beautiful land of my birth? Who hates the country so much that they are willing to shut down one of its most successful homegrown enterprises? 

A stranger? A foreign enemy? Why no! Those who now hate Venezuela and her people are fellow Venezuelans with a godless ideology of envy and hate.

A “counterrevolution” will not rectify this lamentable situation. But there is a God on His throne and He calls us to repentance. That will do far more than any machinations that man can muster.

Lamar Group owned over 13,000 hectares in the states of Zulia and Falcón

Presentación – Grupo Lamar

A YouTube presentation of the Lamar Group, pre-expropriation

Photo taken in 2023. This was a family founded business. 

Tikal, Teotihuacán, and Human Sacrifice

Richard Barnes

The April 9, 2025, CBS headline summarized it nicely: “Ancient altar found in Guatemala jungle apparently used for sacrifices, ‘especially of children’, archaeologists say”.

It is indeed a spectacular discovery of an aspect of an ancient Central American culture, and its religion, that was long gone before the arrival of Cortés in the 16th Century. The Mayan civilization has long been recognized as technologically advanced and, like the Aztec, is usually compared favorably against the “motley crew” of Spaniards who arrived after the former and in the midst of the latter.

This particular altar was from the Teotihuacán religion and culture. It was in a dwelling place in Tikal, the ancient center of the Mayas. The reason this is striking is that Teotihuacán is about 800 miles away, to the north, in what is now Mexico. 

This tells us that both civilizations interacted with each other and that distances back then were not so formidable but were likely as little of a barrier as they are today.

In a similar vein, scholars who have studied, and continue to study, the Middle Ages tell us that travel and international commerce were extensive and, although the distances took time to traverse, little was thought about it. As is the case today.

Apparently the same can be said of the ancient peoples of North and Central America. 

Therefore, we have the apparent anomaly of a house in Tikal, the center of the Mayas, with a sacrificial altar linked to Teotihuacán.

“Lorena Paiz, the archaeologist who led the discovery, said that the Teotihuacán altar [in Tikal] was believed to have been used for sacrifices, ‘especially of children…. The remains of three children not older than 4 years were found on three sides of the altar,’ Paiz told the Associated Press.”

Another archaeologist, Edwin Román, said that this “discovery reinforces the idea that Tikal was a cosmopolitan center at that time, a place where people visited from other cultures, affirming its importance as a center of cultural convergence.”

Yet another archaeologist, María Belén Méndez, gushed, “We see how the issue of sacrifice exists in both cultures. It was a practice; it’s not that they were violent, it was their way of connecting with the celestial bodies.” 

The peak of both Mayan and Teotihuacán empires coincided between 100 and 600 AD, with the Mayan having thrived before and after the Teotihuacán, and both having disappeared by the time of the rise of other empires with the same unique way of “connecting with the celestial bodies”: the Aztec and the Inca.

Why is it that human sacrifice, including the ritual sacrifice of children, is so blithely minimized if not dismissed by our moderns? We no longer deny that the Aztecs had sacrificed thousands in the years preceding the arrival of the Spaniards. John Eidsmoe writes that in 1487 “Ahuitzotl, Montezuma’s immediate predecessor, dedicated the great temple to Huitzilopochtli, the sun-god, and sacrificed twenty thousand victims; they stood in four lines stretching between three and four miles long, and the ceremony lasted four days and was conducted by eight teams of priests.” 

Sacrifices exceeded 50,000 each year.

Jon M. White, in Cortez and the Downfall of the Aztec Empire, writes, “When we visit or study photographs of Aztec temples, we should picture to ourselves those tall staircases as they frequently appeared: covered from top to bottom with a tacky, crimson sheath of blood.”

I’ll skip Aztec cannibalism and their several methods of exquisite, torturous, execution, including skinning alive, as was also done by the savage Caribs in Venezuela and the Caribbean islands.

Alfonso Caso, perhaps the premier scholar of the Aztec religion in the 20th Century, is a good representative of our modern sages when, after documenting what can only be objectively described as bizarre, heinous, and savage practices, he goes on to write about the Spanish conquest, “a sad event, for the Aztecs’ way of life was no longer to impose its views upon these peoples and their civilization.” 

That is how many of our intelligentsia describe what we deplorables rightly see as a cult of savagery, debauchery, and death. 

In other posts I’ve written about the voluminous dishonesty of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the deleterious impact he had not only in his lifetime but to this very day.

One of the bitter fruits of his propagandistic endeavors was the indigenismo (“Indianism”) that took hold, not only in Latin America, but also in our own continent. This is the cult which emphasizes Indian America over our European heritage, accompanied by bitter denunciation of the latter. And, of course, the propagators of this condemnation are very careful to blacken “Spanish” or “European” culture, not “Christian” culture, although their target is very obviously Christianity. 

This poison has been running through the educational systems of the Americas for generations now. Its fruits are manifest and it is not a pretty sight.

Therefore, when evidence was discovered of high altitude sacrifices of children by the Incas, an avalanche of words poured forth from our betters explaining the lofty significance of such bloody rites, but no word was uttered in gratitude to our European Christian forebears for having put a stop to this vile death cult.

Instead, we have scholarly encomiums such as that by the aforementioned Alfonso Caso, lamenting that the elimination of such practices was “a sad event” or the assurances of archaeologist María Belén Méndez that Teotihuacanes ritually murdering 4-year olds does not mean “that they were violent”; it was their way of communicating with “celestial bodies”. 

We may respect the archaeological digs of such people, but we must not honor their sorry lack of wisdom, which is hypocritically and intellectually dishonest. All they prove to us is that scholarship is by no means synonymous with wisdom. On the contrary, scholarship unmoored from fixed moral codes and divine laws only serves to inexorably return us to barbarism and tyranny.

I visited Teotihuacán in 1986. A resident guide assured me that the Teotihuacanes did not practice human sacrifice; that the stairs up and down the impressive pyramids, unlike those of the Aztecs, were for approaching the sun and moon, not for the spilling of blood. But now, with such practices more and more evident, such sages no longer seek to hide but to blatantly glory in them.

Ours is a wonderful and truly glorious Christian heritage. But it must be defended and it must be taught.

View of Teotihuacán’s sun and moon pyramids.

Atop the Sun Pyramid with friends and colleagues, Doug and Jerry, November, 1, 1986

Tikal, Guatemala

Ancient Teotihuacán altar found in a residence in Tikal. Humans, including children, were ritually sacrificed by both Teotihuacanes as well as Mayans.

“The frozen body of the 13-year-old-Maiden [sacrificed by the Incas] was entombed in a small chamber 1.5 metres underground near the summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina, together with the bodies of two 4 or 5-year-olds. With the blood still visible in their hearts and their lungs inflated, the three are probably the best-preserved mummies anywhere in the world….” — New Scientist, 29 July, 2013.