Author: Richard Barnes

Creede: Part 1

Richard Barnes

Never underestimate the childhood experiences you offer your young ones.

Having been born in a mining (iron ore) camp, and having a father who’d take me “to the mine” and a mother who’d participate on “giras” [tours] of historical or natural wonders relatively nearby, I was not only born in what surrounded me, I was purposefully immersed in it. 

I don’t think my parents did this “intentionally” — I’ll have to ask them on Resurrection Day — but I do know they believed in the importance of gratitude. Therefore, they wanted their children to appreciate their birthplace and their heritage — in my case that would be both Venezuela and Spain as well as Massachussets and England. So as we grew up, we learned to respect, if not love, “where we came from”. 

We also learned, albeit intuitively at first, the tremendous capital — human and material — necessary to carve out a mine and camp and to provide sustainable living in the Venezuelan jungle.

So, although we never had much of an interest in engineering or prospecting or related fields, we certainly respected the immense effort and costs and sacrifices entailed in any mining operation.

Early in my career, I was in an economics conference in California where a gentleman spoke of miles of pipeline being laid from Alaska down to the 48 states. 

I do not recall exactly what his involvement in that multi-billion-dollar project was, but I do recall that he told of how he insisted his daughter accompany him on one of his trips to the project. She was in college and into all the trendy activism of the time. 

He wanted her to see the colossal efforts and investments required to enable her to turn on her blow dryer and to successfully turn on her car ignition. And the men working the required 10 to 12-hour days to make her creature comforts happen.

As I listened to him, I felt gratitude in my heart for my parents, who did similarly to that man, only my folks did not wait till I was in college to do so.

Another aspect of mining towns was the colorful nature of some of the men who worked there. This was an aspect that a child did not automatically pick up. Rather, it was something that grew inchoately over the years, in many cases long after the child had moved away from the camp and reflected on certain characters and, if lucky, was able to ask others, still living, about them. 

How many novels yet remain to be written and movies to be filmed!

So mines, any kind of mines, have always drawn my attention. I even once seriously considered accepting a position in mining operations in Senegal! Colleagues and friends advised me to wait on something like that. So decades later I was much better prepared to accept a position in Saudi Arabia.

In 1991 or thereabouts, during a family trip to Southwest Colorado, we were intrigued by a dot on the map, on the Continental Divide, that was labeled as having been a booming silver mining town in the late 19th Century. 

We decided to visit and we’ve been heading back there whenever we have an opportunity to do so, most recently after my son’s wedding last month.

To summarize, Creede is named after a man who was born around Fort Wayne, Indiana circa 1843. In infancy his family moved to Iowa territory and began farming. In his late teens he volunteered with the army and worked as a scout in cavalry campaigns against the Sioux. It was during this time that he traveled through Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and other western areas. He also witnessed the discovery of gold in the Black Hills and that piqued what became his lifelong interest in prospecting.

The man’s birth name was William Harvey. After his service in the army his intention was to return to Iowa to woo a gal he knew “back home”. But he had been gone nearly a decade and upon returning he found that the girl had married his brother and was mother to a young child.

This discovery greatly rattled William Harvey, provoked him to change his name to Nicholas C. Creede, and spurred him in his resolve to become a successful prospector, which is (most of) the rest of the story.

His first strike was near Monarch Pass, on the Continental Divide in Central Colorado. He sold his strike and promptly struck another, which he also sold for a larger sum which he used to tour the areas he considered most promising and, as he went, to study and learn about prospecting and minerals. He clearly had the desire, energy, and intelligence to become a successful entrepreneur.

After several other strikes, Creede discovered what became known as the Holy Moses strike and this drew the attention of David H. Moffat, a well known financier and industrialist, one of the pioneers of Denver, Colorado. He and his partners not only leased the Holy Moses from Creede, but also partnered with him in his further prospecting. This arrangement became very lucrative for all parties and we can only imagine how encouraging this was for Nicholas C. Creede.

And this led to his greatest find: the Amethyst vein, from which several mines were developed, including the Bachelor, which we will see in later posts. The years of study, hard work, and wise dealings and associations finally rewarded Creede, as he was now a millionaire and even lived to see a town named in his honor: Creede, Colorado, sitting on the Amethyst vein. He was described as reserved, modest, and courageous.

The town of Creede was the last silver boom town in Colorado, growing from 600 inhabitants to over 10,000 by end of 1891. The boom was over by 1893; however, Creede was never a ghost town and continued to operate well into the 1960s, relying on other minerals in addition to silver.

While mining in the area was very successful, the town attracted men and women whose primary interest was to relieve the miners of their money while in turn making “easy money”. This unfortunate state of affairs — common throughout history — was, ironically, exacerbated by “reform” activities in Denver which pushed underworld characters and their businesses out of the capital onto Creede where their trades were welcome. 

So Creede (and Bachelor) were known as “having no night” and yet also had churches and, in Bachelor, even an opera house. 

If you visit the Creede Mining Museum, you will learn about Jefferson “Soapy” Smith, known as the king of the Creede underworld, whose brother-in-law happened to be the deputy sheriff. You’ll also be reminded of the notorious Robert “Bob” Ford, the murderer of outlaw Jesse James. Ford moved to Creede where he himself was murdered by Ed O’Kelley whose motive for doing so was never ascertained with certainty. O’Kelley served less than a decade in prison and, after release, moved to Oklahoma where he was killed in a shootout with a policeman.

Another resident of Creede was the famous buffalo hunter, scout, and lawman, Bartholemew William Barclay Masterson, better known as Bat Masterson. In Creede, however, Masterson ran a gambling operation while also betting on prizefighting. He eventually succeeded in journalism in New York City where he died in 1921, a few months after attending his last prize fight, where Jack Dempsey defended his heavyweight title. 

By the way, Jack Dempsey lived in Bachelor as a child. He likely learned how to fight there.

Creede’s population today is just under 300.

As for Nicholas C. Creede, he, sadly, did not marry well. He eventually moved to Los Angeles and died of an accidental morphine overdose in 1897. He suffered from chronic and severe stomach pain and took morphine frequently. The coroner ruled his death accidental, which most at the time considered a reasonable conclusion.

Creede and Bachelor are types of mining towns all over this earth as well as microcosms of society everywhere. Good, pious folks, living among genuinely bad or shady people. 

The names above are well known to us because of so many works of fiction and non-fiction, not to mention movies and television shows. Nevertheless, we must also remember that such were not the majority of these towns. They also had folks, like Mr. Creede, who were modest, reserved, courageous, and decent. 

To be continued.

Downtown Creede, Colorado

Creede, Colorado in 1892

Bachelor, Colorado, late 19th Century

Bachelor, Colorado, today

Nicholas C. Creede, c. 1843-1897

Bat Masterson, 1879-1921

Jack Dempsey, 1895-1983

A War You Likely Never Heard Of

Richard Barnes

Unless you lived near the Orinoco River Delta in late 1969 and early 1970.

I am referring to Murphy’s War, one of the most difficult films Peter O’Toole ever made. And that’s saying something, given his exertions in Lawrence of Arabia and Lord Jim.

Michael Deeley (The Deer Hunter) and Peter Yates (Bullitt), producer and director, respectively, had spent months across the vast, virgin Orinoco River Delta searching and agreeing on location sites. One of the sites selected was Santo Tomé de Guayana, known in my childhood as the Castillos de Guayana. 

Incidentally, this is the area of the incident which led to Sir Walter Raleigh’s execution upon his return to England in the 17th Century.

As a teenager I’d heard rumors about the filming of a movie starring Peter O’Toole, even [eagerly] eavesdropping on a camp worker who spoke with a pilot who flew “someone” looking for filming locations. But no one seemed to know much more than such snippets. 

Then I was gone to school while the actual filming took place and by the time I returned for the summer of 1970, filming had wrapped up and conversations turned to the recently inaugurated Pan American 747 jets, the exploits of Pete Maravich, the Chicago 7 trial, The Beatles‘ release of Let It Be and their break-up, Apollo 13, Vietnam War protests, and, about Midnight Cowboy winning the best picture Oscar.

I did read about the critics dismissing, if not outright despising Murphy’s War; so I suppose I figured it simply had turned out to be a badly made film and forgot about it. 

Or I thought I had forgotten about it.

That film, which I never made a point of seeing, and which slipped from institutional memory almost overnight, kept creeping back into my consciousness every time I visited Venezuela, especially when in Puerto Ordaz and San Félix. 

A few months back, my wife and youngest children indulged me and, over several weeks, we watched Lawrence of Arabia, Lord Jim, The Night of the Generals, and My Favorite Year. Then I decided to risk whatever goodwill I had left with my loved ones by suggesting we watch Murphy’s War. 

From the opening credits I knew I was going to enjoy this film. And I did. Not only that, but my family liked it as well.

Yes: it is an adventure film. But it has three, perhaps four, major characters which you see developing over the course of the film until its shattering climax. These three men, and one woman, who was a Quaker missionary doctor, will stay with the attentive viewer long after “The End” appears on the screen. 

The primary location site was the aforementioned Los Castillos de Guayana, which I had visited at least twice in my childhood.

However, there was one additional character, the fifth character, which almost overwhelms and dominates, yet, counterintuitively, doesn’t get in the way, but without which, the movie would have lost much of its long-lasting impact. That character is The Orinoco River Delta over which O’Toole’s character flies in search of his wartime enemy submarine — the Orinoco River handled a submarine lent by the Venezuelan navy for the picture. Those shots of the river and its meandering tributaries within the vast, interminable Venezuelan vibrant green jungle are unforgettable. They make the movie at least as much as its renowned actors do.

As O’Toole and Pillippe Noiret build and patch back the damaged seaplane the viewer is pulled into the auspicious, tentative friendship building between those two characters. The viewer is also sympathetic with the Quaker doctor who, as she begins to realize the compelling urge to vengeance in Murphy’s heart, urges restraint and pleads with Noiret, who has served her for seven years, to desist his assistance.

But it is the Orinoco which is always in the background and, at times, in the foreground. It is the Orinoco over which Murphy flies and zig-zags; on which Murphy and Noiret sail in their quest; on the shores of which the doctor attends to her patients and looks on in horror as the German submarine crew comes ashore; under which the submarine sails. 

I’ve not seen any CGI coming anywhere near replicating the reality of the cinematography which regales us in Murphy’s War. 

And, watching the picture, one sees that the harshness and great difficulties of the filming are quite obvious, even before reading production notes which state just that. The budget included the purchase of an old Irish ferry boat which was adapted to house the actors and crew but which could not sail to the set, therefore, flat bottom craft were used and the team actually had to row at times every day from the ferry to that day’s set. Eventually, several of the actors hired a plane to fly them to Puerto Ordaz on weekends to stay in more “civilized” quarters for the nights.

One of the crew members spoke for many when he said the filming was like having a picnic on Vesuvius. Boiling hot and humid. However, others also said that it was a “happy” set. They assumed it was because the difficulties made everyone desire to work together and help each other out, etc.

Why was this film so overtly rejected by the literati? Perhaps the timing of its release was unfortunate: anti-war protesters when the war in Vietnam was at its apogee. Maybe the faux intelligentsia’s grip on art had something to do with it. After all, this was the year of Midnight Cowboy, originally an “X” rated release. Whatever Murphy’s War may be, “X” is not one of them. 

I really do not know why it was so ill received. What I do know is that for decades critics have been far from audiences and light years away from Main Street. Had it not been for the trashing of the movie, it would have been better received, I think. Nevertheless, it has become one of those films whose worth is appreciated many years after its premier. After all, It’s A Wonderful Life was also not received well until many years later and it is now a Christmas “classic”. 

One final thing about the star of the movie: he is yet another example of a man succumbing to the lure of Venezuela. 

We’ve noted that Sir Walter Raleigh was attracted to Venezuela, even to the point of his own death. Jimmy Angel, the daredevil discoverer of the fabled Angel Falls, was so struck and pulled by that land that as he lay dying in Panama, he requested his ashes be taken back to Auyantepui, the site of the falls named after him.

And now we have the late actor, Peter O’Toole, who was bitten by “the Venezuelan Bug”, as he put it. He said the southeast section of that country, the section bordered on the north by the location sites of Murphy’s War and towards the south by Angel Falls, is “the most beautiful and exciting place I have ever seen…. There are mountains that are flat and straight-edged, like someone built them. All colours. Some red, some blue, some brown. And rivers, too, rivers of blue and one the natives call Río Coca-Cola because it’s that colour. And the clouds come out of nowhere, and suddenly it is black. And then they open, like a curtain, and there is another mountain you haven’t seen before!”

Well said, Mr. O’Toole.

After filming, Peter O’Toole and his wife, Sián Phillips, who also acted in Murphy’s War, explored the southeast section of Venezuela, eventually taking a helicopter to Angel Falls. Photo from IMDB

Atop Angel Falls. You can see O’Toole as he carefully crawls towards the edge, while his wife picks flowers well away from that edge. Photo from IMDB.

Filming a scene on the Orinoco

Resting between takes; submarine in the background

Sián Phillips on the Castillos de Guayana set; the Orinoco in the background

The Orinoco near where Murphy’s War was filmed

Some of the sites of Murphy’s War on the Orinoco

Puerto Ordaz in the early 1970s

If you’d like to read a blog post from someone who researched the actual filming see link (in Spanish, but good photos): Crónicas de Guayana

The O’Tooles, celebrating with the helicopter pilot in Puerto Ordaz after a successful return from Angel Falls. 

Photo credit: ©Bob Willoughby / mptvimages.com

Caracas To Washington On Foot: 1935-1937

Richard Barnes

“Sleeping high in a tree, they awoke to scratching sounds, as if a large animal were climbing the tree. Frightened and unable to move, they fired their weapons, and almost immediately the sound stopped. They remember spending that night awake, thinking some jungle animal was stalking them, and at dawn they saw the body of a jaguar at the base of the tree.” — Rafael Petit and Juan Carmona

A childhood friend alerted me to a FB post by Luis Waldemar Salazar recognizing the epic feat of two young men in the early part of the 20th Century. I was overwhelmed by what that short post narrated and told my friend that I would seek to confirm and, if true, I’d post about it in my blog, with proper attribution.

Well, it was not difficult to confirm as the internet has several links about this odyssey, easily translated to English. In addition, in the first decade of this century, the late Alberto Álvarez published a book about this event: “La extraordinaria hazaña de Petit y Carmona [The Extraordinary Feat of Petit and Carmona]”; however, the book is not available in Amazon or eBay and although I did find it in a bookstore in Uruguay, I finally desisted in acquiring it after several rebuffs.

Reading the several accounts and watching a brief documentary has left me in awe in the face of the determination and goodwill of these men and the utter selflessness they reflect. For example, the quote above is actually only by Petit, as Carmona had already crossed that jungle alone and, unknown to Petit, was close to losing his leg to gangrene in a Panamanian hospital. The jaguar encounter was Petit’s alone. At least on that occasion. However, during his time alone (over a month) every time he wrote a letter or made entries in his journal, he always used the plural pronoun to recognize his friend. In honor of that trait, I attributed the quote to both of them. Petit would have wanted it that way.

The original team was composed of three young men: the aforementioned two plus Jaime Roll. They embodied the cosmopolitan character of the Venezuela I remember from my childhood as Petit was Venezuelan but Carmona was a Spaniard and Roll, a Lebanese.

It appears the one who promoted this idea was Roll, almost immediately joined by Carmona. The two of them met Petit after the latter had won an 800 meter race in Caracas in 1934. Petit was known for having walked a route of about 900 miles from Maracaibo to Caracas along with two or three others (the accounts differ).

The three were members of the Boy Scouts International and desired to promote scouting in Venezuela but also to promote the recognition of Venezuela scouting abroad. They therefore decided to walk to the first Boy Scouts Jamboree to be held in Washington, D.C., in June, 1937.

With this objective having been determined, the three set off from Caracas on a cold morning on January 11, 1935.

By the time they arrived at the Simón Bolívar International Bridge which crosses the Táchira River between Colombia and Venezuela, there was trouble in the camp. They had walked 79 days and had developed some animosities and, perhaps, rivalries.

Juan Carmona separated and headed towards Bogotá alone, being the first to arrive there, the 12th of May, 1935. By the time the other two reached the capital, Carmona had already headed towards Panama. Alone. Meaning, he was determined to traverse the impassable jungles of El Chocó, now better known as Darién, alone.

In Bogotá, Jaime Roll, who had been named Expedition Chief, abandoned the quest and returned alone to Venezuela. I could not find anything else about him or his life; he seems to have fallen off the map shortly after that departure.

That left Rafael Petit alone in Bogotá. He wrote his commander in Venezuela seeking instructions. The reply was to return to Venezuela. Petit was not about to do that (which makes me wonder why he wrote in the first place!).

However, his reply is instructive as it gives us a portrait of this young man’s determination:

Until now, your advice and orders have been followed to the letter. But on this occasion, the situation is different. At stake is not only my honor, but also that of my family, my country for which I wish to achieve sporting glory, and the Boy Scouts of Venezuela, which, along with the Association of Sports Journalists of Caracas, has placed its trust in me. Therefore, if I die in this audacious undertaking, I will die willingly. Better to die with honor than to live in dishonor.

Both Carmona and Petit, with no money, and little supplies, headed alone into a jungle whose canopy’s shade creates a never-ending penumbra, like a dark cathedral, which receives about 9,000 inches of rain annually, creating miles of swamp and mud and quicksands. Not to mention the dangerous wildlife, including poisonous reptiles and stalking jaguars. That swath of jungle was one of the most hostile territories of the continent. It was forbidding even for experienced explorers. I pause in admiration as I write this.

Petit headed there about 15 days after Carmona, knowing he had to sleep high up in trees for safety and had to be alert to predators during the day as he trudged on and on and on. After numerous mishaps, including being utterly lost, he made it to Colón, Panama, at the end of August, 1935. While there he heard disquieting news: a young man had emerged from the Darién Jungle gravely ill with an infection provoked by a worm bite and the indications were that he would lose his leg. 

Petit rushed to the St. Thomas Hospital, knowing that young man had to be Carmona. It was.

They renewed their pact to walk to Washington or die trying. Carmona recovered and they continued their trek.

They walked into San José, the Costa Rican capital at 8 P.M. one night shortly before Christmas and were treated with great care and empathy. Petit came down with a severe case of malaria which delayed their onward march until March 15, 1936, when they proceeded north.

They were received by the president of Nicaragua in Managua three days later. The president provided some economic assistance which was an encouragement to the young men.

Honduras was undergoing a coup and both Carmona and Petit were arrested, their explanations being ignored and their identifications and travel documents being unread as the soldiers were illiterate. After a few days the man in charge arrived, read the documents, and released them.

Their memories of Mexico were positive overall, although they also suffered some mishaps there as well. However, what they very much appreciated was the official hospitality in Mexico City where both Boy Scout executives and government officials were solicitous towards them and admired their determination. They were official guests in Mexico City for a month of much needed rest and recovery.

Having set foot to large areas of Venezuela and having traversed Colombia, Panamá, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, they finally crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico to Laredo, Texas, on the 27th of January, 1937. However, incredibly, their documents were not in order and they had to return, first to Monterrey and eventually to the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico City where the issues were resolved and they returned to Laredo.

They told of the wonderful roads in the United States which enabled them to cover plenty of ground each day. Among other events, they were greeted and feted by the governor of Texas. 

In Texas they bought a small wagon which they refurbished to facilitate the carrying of their supplies. They pulled that wagon all the way to their destination.

They set foot in Washington, D.C. the 16th of June, 1937, two years and five months after having left Caracas that cold winter day. Their feat was heralded by the Washington Post, “Venezuelan Boy Scouts Arrive in Washington After a 9,000 Mile Walk….”

They were received by the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States to whom the young men gave the Venezuelan flag, having carried it all those hard miles.

On the 30th, at the First National Boy Scouts Jamboree at the National Mall, over 27,000 scouts participated. Petit and Carmona were celebrated as living symbols of the Boy Scouts spirit. They were the only scouts who had walked to that major event. So impressive was their adventure that the president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, greeted them personally.

Pan American Airways ensured they did not have to walk back, but flew them via Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, back to Venezuela.

Someone somewhere wrote that he could not understand how this has not been made into a movie. I agree. 

Later on, Carmona explored large areas of Guayana, Venezuela, before moving to Chile, where folks lost track of him.

Petit stayed in Venezuela working to promote sports and scouting. He had almost completed a book-length manuscript of their adventures for publishing; however, sadly, it was either stolen or somehow lost, which saddened him deeply. He died prematurely at the age of 51 in Caracas.

Several extracts of the book are available including the following from his introduction:

A daring and risky journey on foot from Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, to Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. Twenty months and five days to unite the three Americas by walking.

At the Jamboree, they greeted the amazed crowds, concluding their remarks thusly:

We, Rafael Ángel Petit and Juan Carmona, Boy Scouts from Venezuela, have walked ten thousand miles to greet you in brotherhood, to give you a round of applause in the spirit of Scout brotherhood. No jungle is impassable, no river wide or mountain high enough, no illness, thirst, or hunger can stop us from achieving the goals of citizenship and international brotherhood of the Scout Movement. All the Scouts we have met along the way join us in greeting you. We have worn out twelve pairs of boots to be with you at the first National Jamboree.

From Left: Jaime Roll, Rafael Petit, Juan Carmona, 1934, after Petit won his track event. 

Costa Rica, 1935

Pulling their wagon somewhere in the USA, 1937

In Washington D.C.

Rafael Petit and Juan Carmona

Peter (Pete) Colon 

Richard Barnes

The last time I visited with Pete was in early February, 2023, when a good number of us gathered in Miami, Florida, for Cousin Louis’s memorial service. 

As usual, his sense of humor was intact and his ability to laugh and to make me laugh along was no less sharp than was the case ever through the decades.

Pete was also known to many as Peter, his given name; however, in the mid 70s he was introduced to me as “Pete” and it stuck with me. Many of my long-time acquaintances still call me “Ricky” and I don’t mind it at all, as I’m sure he didn’t mind my (and others) calling him “Pete”. 

I had the opportunity to say a few words to him over the phone the day he died. As I told him, “I know you can hear me” and spoke assuming just that. In fact, his loving family, including his wife, my cousin Janis, and his parents, now in their 90s, also spoke to him till the end. 

I told him that when I thought of him, two characteristics immediately came to mind.

First, his faithfulness. Pete was a consistent and faithful Christian dedicated to serving the Lord, along with his wife, Janis. In this he never wavered. And for this, I, for one, am truly grateful and humbled when I consider it. This is not flattery on my part; only a recognition that there are many today who truly desire to do right, by God’s grace. And Pete was one of them.

Second, his sense of humor. I reminded him of the time he and Janis visited us decades ago and Pete told of his visiting several churches in the Midwest and reading up on the customs and ways of life so as to know what to talk about with his hosts. In one town, after church, he and Janis had Sunday dinner with a large family under the shade of a massive tree. The family raised hogs and Pete asked them when they would “slap the hogs” as he wanted to witness that. The family was nonplussed and Pete kept insisting that he had read this. Finally one elderly gentleman leaned over and said, “Well, we do SLOP the hogs….”

As I laughed, Pete told about folks falling off the picnic benches convulsing with mirth before this city slicker.

Pete’s life began on an air force base in Illinois; however, he lived his childhood in New York City and played in various rock bands and even a folk group in Greenwich Village. He came to know the Lord Jesus in the 70s when his family had moved to Miami, Florida. Shortly thereafter, he was called into full time ministry and never looked back.

In addition to earning his Doctor of Ministry Degree he developed an interest in antiquities and participated in archaeological digs in Israel. Our family enjoyed a movie he filmed, “Rossvally: From the Synagog to the Savior”. But that was not enough to exhaust his energies as he also was very active in Civil War reenactments in several states.

Pete cheerfully battled cancer for many years and, after a series of mishaps he succumbed on January 17, 2026, at the age of 72.

I don’t remember a time, if ever, in which I did not see him as a member of the family. We cousins grew up very close to one another. Our aunts and uncles were just a degree removed from our parents: they could discipline or instruct us without any pushback whatever. When Pete joined the gang, he quickly became one of us, and I’m sure we became one of his.

On that phone call the day of his passing, I read to him Psalm 23, knowing that as one approaches death, there is nothing better than to hear the Word of God as one is about to meet him face to face. I know Pete appreciated that.

Pete departed this life over a month ago, but it is still fresh to me. And I know it is very much more so with Janis.

Rest in peace, Cousin Pete.

Cousin Vivian is second from left, her son Jeremy is to her right and her daughter Rebecca is to her left. Cousin Pete is to my right and Cousin Rick (Vivian’s widower) is to my left. Photo taken at Cousin Louis’s memorial service, February 11, 2023

From left, cousins Janis, Pete, and Vivian, February 10, 2023

Bands Of Robbers II

Richard Barnes

“Without justice what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? And what is a band of robbers but such a kingdom in miniature? It is a band of men under the rule of a leader, bound together by a pact of friendship, and their booty is divided among them by an agreed rule. Such a blot on society, if it grows, assumes for itself the proud name of kingdom.” — St. Augustine

In recent months, I’ve written about Venezuela’s outright support for and complicity with the Tren de Aragua worldwide enterprise (see here, here, and here).

Sociologists tell us that one of the important indicators of a society’s or culture’s ability to withstand or defeat the lawless chaos it may be confronting is “resiliency”. Ronna Rísquez, in her courageous exposé, El Tren de Aragua, cites a sociological definition from the Índice global del crimen organizado (The Global Index of Organized Crime): “… the capacity of state and non-state actors to resist and dismantle the activities of organized crime through political, economic, legal, and social means.”

According to the index, the indicators which serve to measure the resiliency of a country or community include their “political leadership, governance, civil government [state] transparency, accountability, international cooperation, the judicial system, law enforcement, territorial integrity, the fight against money laundering, and the support and encouragement of victims and witnesses”.

Ms Rísquez goes on to note that Venezuela has negative numbers in practically all those indicators, principally because “authoritative states have lower levels of resiliency than do democracies….”

However, seemingly oblivious to the irony, she then goes on to say that such resiliency, as defined, has also decreased significantly throughout the continent and the world. In other words, regardless of political structures, criminality has filled in the vacuum left by the loss of resiliency worldwide.

So, whether democratic or authoritarian, peoples across continents have lost resiliency.

Seems an important indicator might be missing from the list cited above.

The late Harvard Professor, Harold J. Berman, wrote in his magisterial Law and Revolution (1983):

“The traditional symbols of community in the West, the traditional images and metaphors, have been above all religious and legal. In the twentieth century, however, for the first time, religion has become largely a private affair …. The connection between the religious metaphor and the legal metaphor has been broken.”

Is it any wonder that bonds of race, religion, soil, family, class, neighborhood, and work community have dissolved into abstract and superficial nationalisms? “It is impossible not to sense the social disintegration, the breakdown in communities, that has taken place in Europe, North America, and other parts of Western civilization in the twentieth century,” Berman wrote in 1983

In other words, the loss of resiliency, as defined above, has very much to do with our willful ignorance if not outright hostility towards our Christian heritage and this loss has resulted from a total absconding of the Christian religious jurisdiction by those who should know better.

In his follow up volume, Law and Revolution II Berman writes:

“Why is it important to remember the influence of Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity on the Western legal tradition in past centuries? First, because we are the heirs of that tradition and our law is a product of those influences. We cannot understand what our legal institutions are if we do not know how they came to be what they are, just as we cannot know who we ourselves are if we do not know how we came to be who we are. Our history is our group memory, without which we as a group are lost. If we live only in the present we suffer from memory impairment, a kind of social amnesia, not knowing whence we came or whither we ar going.”

Berman notes what most of us have understood since childhood but has been effectively blotted out of our collective consciousness: without a knowledge of the past there can be no true commitment to the future. All of life becomes an existential — and short-lived — fling.

Berman goes on to state, “For many centuries, [the West] would be identified very simply as the people of Western Christendom.” 

“From the eleventh and twelfth centuries on, monophonic music, reflected chiefly in the Gregorian chant, was gradually supplanted by polyphonic styles. Two-part, three-part, and eventually four-part music developed. The contrapuntal style exemplified in the thirteenth-century motet evolved into the harmonic style of the fourteenth century ars nova, exemplified in the ballade. Eventually, counterpoint and harmony were combined. The sixteenth century witnessed the development of the great German Protestant chorales, and these, together with Italian and English madrigals and other forms, provided a basis for opera …. Eventually Renaissance music gave way to Baroque, Baroque to Classical …. etc. No good contemporary musician, regardless of how off-beat he may be, can afford not to know this story….”

Not too long ago, American citizens, and certainly lawyers, judges, and justices were required, in a similar way, to know the story of the development of our institutions and their great debt to Christianity.

For example, about a century ago, in the early 20th Century, just about everyone in the United States understood that [church] canon law constituted the first modern Western legal system. Eventually, canon law and royal law complemented each other and formed a basis for the Western legal tradition. It was understood, at least inchoately, that rejecting the religious heritage of the West has always led to tyranny. 

(This knowledge encouraged or otherwise allowed even children to appeal to the Christian tradition when rebuking behavior contrary or opposed to it. Behavior such as we see on just about every American street today.)

However, today, our rich heritage is not only generally unknown but should it be even mentioned it is only to have it dismissed outright, even by clergy who delight in writing books or preaching sermons denying our Christian legacy. In so doing, we greatly err and worse: we join forces with those who would destroy our legal and social foundations. 

We encourage the bands of robbers that mark the disintegration of a civilized society.

It is no mystery that many who most despise the American heritage have an undisguised hatred for the Christian religion because that religion places man and his institutions under an eternal, Triune God and His law. And this is unacceptable.

Once we understand this philosophical enmity, much of the violence and chaos in our era — such as the invasion and disruption of church services in St. Paul, Minnesota, two Sundays ago — becomes not only intelligible but compellingly so.

Previous Revolutions, even the execrable French and Russian, may have altered or amended our Christian legal tradition; however, they ultimately remained within it because the former peoples understood their heritage far better than we do today.

The present upheavals are far more concerning because the secularization of the modern mind has succeeded in obfuscating the minds of even intelligent, courageous allies like Ronna Rísquez, who neglect to acknowledge that ours is the Christian heritage and without it there is no resiliency. 

Without it, we have bowed the knee to our ostensible enemies:

Engels: “We … reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatever as eternal, ultimate, and forever immutable moral law ….”

Lenin: “We repudiate all morality derived from non-human and non-class concepts. We say it is a deception, a fraud in the interest of the landlords and the capitalists … We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the toilers around the proletariat … We do not believe in an eternal morality.”

Marx: “Man makes religion, religion does not make man … The abolition of religion as an illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness….

Anyone who has read the detestable Communist Manifesto will recognize the above sentiments, and more.

Such sentiments, so fashionable today, are the polar opposite of our legal and cultural heritage, which no amount of “indicators” will ever restore, absent a genuine return to the Christian faith which transformed the world.

“Without the fear of hell and the hope of the Last Judgment, the Western legal tradition could not have come into being.” — Harold J. Berman

Harold J. Berman (1918-2007)

The French Revolution (late 18th Century) was characterized by rivers of blood and debauchery

Unearthed bodies massacred by the Soviet Communists in 1940. Mass graves are a feature of atheist regimes. But even they had enough understanding of their remaining Christian heritage that they sought to conceal their atrocities.