Venezuela is still Number One on the list of countries with the highest known oil reserves. According to WorldAtlas.com (link below), her production has fallen because of the decline in oil prices and because she did not “invest in the renovation of its obsolete oil extraction infrastructure.”
Second on the list is Saudi Arabia, which makes “it a strong ally to the United States, despite many [sic] blatantly problematic aspects of the country. Some of those include human rights violations and many international incidents.”
Readers of this blog know that I love the country of my birth and grieve for what she has been becoming. I have childhood friends there whom I dearly love and hold in the highest esteem, especially the few surviving friends of my own parents. However, I must say that to point out “blatantly problematic aspects” of Saudi Arabia while blithely ignoring the very real “blatantly problematic aspects” of Venezuela is irresponsible and is the type of reporting which has given cover to the catastrophe that has been unfolding there since the 1960’s and which accelerated dramatically since the Chavez regime.
Venezuela continues to be very rich in natural resources: not only is she the richest in oil reserves, but she is also supremely rich in other minerals (see here and also see under “Juan Vicente Gómez here) and yet many of her people are malnourished (I have personal knowledge of this), others have regressed to the use of donkeys because they cannot afford to buy rationed gasoline even at under $0.10 per gallon. Many thousands are now turning to fire for energy in their homes given the ongoing failures of the energy grid, often plunging them into utter darkness. Some reports say that the grid failed over 80,000 times (!) in 2019. Think of the impact on public transportation, hospitals, clinics. On everything needed for modern life.
The situation is so dire that the Venezuela refugee crisis is the largest ever recorded in the Americas.
Let that sink in for a moment. The largest ever recorded in the Americas. We’ve all read and heard about the despotic regimes of Gómez and Pérez Jimenez in Venezuela, Pinochet in Chile, the generals in Argentina, Stroessner in Paraguay, and others in Central America. But none of them — none — caused such magnitudes of peoples to flee their homelands in such massive numbers. None. The only one that comes close, as a proportion of her population, is Castro’s Cuba. The reader can deduce whatever similarities there may be between Cuba and Venezuela that would cause their peoples to leave their homes and head to unknown destinies through even less known, and frightening, seas and jungles.
Latest estimates are that about 6 Million Venezuelans have fled the country. That’s twenty percent of her population. See here.
How is it that a land so rich can be so poor? How is it that a land once hailed as the most stable democracy in South America is now a despotic regime where torture is commonplace (see here)?
As has been seen throughout this blog, the current problems did not begin with Chavez or Maduro.
Venezuela’s initiation into democratic rule took place in 1959, after a half century of unprecedented prosperity, mostly under General Juan Vicente Gómez, who in my childhood, an era of less political correctness, was often referred to as “the father of modern Venezuela.” He was a dictator but was not hailed as Castro was, even though he too was a dictator. The difference? Castro was one of the Socialist Beautiful People; Gómez was not.
Be that as it may, the long years under Gómez (in office from 1908 to 1935) were characterized by unparalleled stability and prosperity. This stability began years before the discovery of the first major oil reserves in Mene Grande (see here). Venezuela had a growing and prosperous middle class by the end of the Pérez Jimenez regime (see here), after which came the election of Rómulo Betancourt, generally acknowledged to be the country’s first democratically elected president.
So, Venezuela’s first democratically elected president was installed 140 years after the country’s declaration of independence. In sum, during the preceding (19th) century, Venezuela, like her neighbors, had been racked by revolutionary governments and bloodletting, and during the first half of the 20th century she had phenomenal growth and stability under authoritarian governments.
(The unfortunate fact is that South America’s wars for independence were not at all like North America’s. Unlike the North American colonists, the South American Criollos were enthralled by French Revolutionary ideas and sought the positions of power to which they believed they were entitled. This partly explains the long years of despotism and carnage, which is similar to post revolutionary France. If interested, see more on the differences between the United States and the Venezuelan Declarations of Independence here.)
As we have noted before (for example, see here) Betancourt, who had organized the Communist Party in Costa Rica in the 1930’s, but who had since shed his radical outspoken ideology and had migrated to a kinder, gentler democratic socialism, immediately set about to dismantle the structures of economic freedoms and low levels of taxation and regulations that had enabled the country to achieve such heights. In effect, his policies spurred the growth and intrusions of government, including nationalizations of major industries such as oil and iron ore. These reversals of economic liberties continued up to Chavez and Maduro where such policies did not change. They accelerated.
So the owners of industries in Venezuela are now the people. And, of course, when politicians say “the people,” that means The State and all those who, along with them, have the right political connections. And that has been catastrophic for Venezuela.
And so the country with the highest known oil reserves in the world is now a financial nightmare suffering shortages under political oppression, with many of her people in distress and, where able, voting with their feet by leaving.
Pray for the people of Venezuela.
For more on the power outages, see here (Spanish language article).
For the WorldAtlas report on oil reserves, see here.
Back to use of donkeys, mules, and horses. Colombian police stand before a multitude of Venezuelans seeking asylum. Juan Vicente Gómez (1857-1935), circa 1920 Marcos Pérez Jimenez (1914-2001), circa 1955 Fidel Castro (left), Rómulo Betancourt (center), in Caracas in 1959. Betancourt’s relationship with Castro ended shortly thereafter when Castro sought to foment guerrilla activity in Venezuela. Once one of the continent’s most prosperous countries, Venezuela is now plagued by frequent blackouts.
Isabel Godin was not an Amazon, but what she lacked in training in swordplay and bow and arrow, she more than made up in strength, character, determination, and resilience, qualities which helped her confront and endure the Amazonian jungles.
She was born in 1728 in Riobamba, of the Viceroyalty of Perú, now central Ecuador. Her father was Don Pedro Gramesón y Bruno, a Spanish official of some renown in Riobamba. She was well educated and spoke fluent Spanish, French, and Quechua, in addition to ancient Inca communication methods still in use by certain Indian tribes at the time.
(Riobamba was completely destroyed and buried by the earthquake of 1797, years after Isabel’s departure. The city was rebuilt about 20 kilometers northeast of its original site.)
In 1741, at the age of 13, she married the French naturalist, Jean Godin des Odonais, who accompanied the great French explorer, Charles-Marie de La Condamine on his journeys of exploration in South America. Jean Godin was 28. This was not seen as anything unusual in that era or even up to relatively recent times in North and South America. My grandfather (from Massachusetts) was 19 years older than my grandmother (from Cuba). My father was 14 years older than my mother. Ronald Reagan was 14 years older than Nancy Reagan. Boaz was clearly older than Ruth, having called her “my daughter” and also having praised her for not having gone after younger men. Ad infinitum.
In 1749, upon receiving news of his father’s death, Jean Godin decided to return to France with his family. His plan was to travel to French Guiana, in the extreme northeast of South America, about 500 miles east of the Venezuela border, via the Amazon to sort of “prepare the way” for his wife and children. He would then return to Riobamba for his family.
However, the Portuguese and Spanish authorities would not allow him to return through their territories. These infuriating bureaucratic machinations were as common then as they are now. Humboldt’s big dream of sailing via the Orinoco to the Amazon was thwarted by such civil servants (Humboldt). Godin could travel to France without his wife and children. Or he could remain stuck in French Guiana. He decided to remain. He wrote increasingly intemperate letters to Europe, pleading for safe passage back to Riobamba. All without success. Most of his bile was reserved for the Portuguese, something he came to regret as, eventually, it was a Portuguese vessel which was given permission to transport him west on the Amazon to Iquitos and back again. But Godin was by then so concerned about his letters strongly criticizing Portugal, that he feared assassination and excused himself while requesting the ship go on up the Amazon without him and wait for his wife and children to reach it.
That was in 1765. Sixteen (16) years since he last saw his wife and children. Eight months later, the ship docked at Iquitos, the highest point of river transportation. Months after that, word reached Isabel that a ship in Iquitos waited for her and her children to take her to her husband in French Guiana.
During those years, Isabel had had no news from her husband. By all accounts she had been a beautiful young lady whose visage now reflected almost twenty years of the strain of not having heard from her husband and the loss of her four children to the scourges of the tropics: malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, and dysentery. After years of false alarms and false hopes, she sent her slave, Joachim, whom she had purchased from a slaveholder she had considered too cruel, to go to Iquitos and confirm the news.
Joachim did as ordered and returned — two years later — to confirm that, “It is true, su Merced, the vessel is there and your husband, although ill, is alive in Cayenne [French Guiana].”
See the image of a map of the Amazon (below) to get an idea of the distance and hardships between Riobamba and Iquitos. This helps explain how it could take two years to go and bring back news.
And now, with confirmation from her trusted servant that her husband was indeed alive and waited for her across the continent, she immediately determined to embark on a journey that no one, even in the bloom of youth, could look upon “except with unmitigated horror, a journey down the whole of the Amazon.”
She sold what property she could, and the rest she entrusted to her brother. She also went about selecting those who would accompany her and by October, 1769, she was ready to commence the trek.
Her father, Don Pedro, decided to precede her to arrange for such comforts as he could devise. Don Pedro was elderly but vigorous, having survived epidemics of the tropics in his many years of service in Riobamba. He went to Baños and arranged for portage for his daughter. At points along the trail, he arranged for caches of food. This he did all the way to Canelos, “the outpost of God,” seven days’ journey from Baños. He requested the monks receive his daughter and her party and provide all the necessities they might require. He also received confirmation from Christianized Jivaro Indians who agreed to convey her in their canoes from Canelos to Andoas, the next mission down the Río Pastaza. At Andoas, other canoes would be provided to take Isabel and her party 400 miles down the Pastaza to Lagunas and from hence to Iquitos, where the galiot would board them and transport them down the Amazon across the continent.
He went on to Lagunas to await her arrival there, but not before sending a message: “Hija mía, all is in readiness. Canoes and men to paddle them are waiting at the village of Canelos. The roads are bad. Keep down the amount of baggage and the members of your party. The canoes and space therein are limited.”
In October, 1769, almost four years after the ship’s original departure, and twenty since Jean Godin’s trip to French Guiana, Isabel Godin began what became an unprecedented expedition across Andes mountains and down to the Amazon Basin. Accompanying her were her nephew, Joachin (10), two brothers, three mestizo servants — Rosa, Elvia, and Heloise — three Frenchmen, her black slave, Joachim, and a company of 32 Andean Indians.
The party traversed the gorges and trails from Riobamba to Canelos in seven dreadful days of interminable rains, seemingly bottomless mud, falling branches, and crashing trees. Surely, they felt, this would be the worst of the journey. At Canelos, they’d be on canoes down the broad Pastaza River and then down the giant Amazon River. However, they had not counted on smallpox having decimated the village. When Isabel’s party stumbled into Canelos, they found it utterly deserted: most had died, the rest had fled. Houses and huts were still smoldering since all had been set on fire to purify the air, as the Indians believed.
Upon waking the next morning, with few hours’ sleep, Isabel confronted the news that the Andean Indians had deserted them during the night. However, four of the original inhabitants of Canelos had returned and had agreed to help the party with payment in advance, which Isabel agreed to.
There was only one canoe and a raft. A great amount of their food could not fit and so was left behind; the rest was put on the raft which was manned by the Indians while what remained of the party boarded the canoe. The river was too full of debris and rapids to travel at night, so they camped on the banks. The following morning, the party saw that the Indians had deserted. Surely Isabel regretted having paid them in advance.
The Frenchmen urged a return to Riobamba. Isabel would not hear of it. She had not undertaken this journey to then turn back. Besides, to paddle against an 8-knot current would need far more manpower than they had. They were about 5 days from Andoas, which they could make on the raft and canoe.
The river here was about half a mile wide, deep, and fast flowing. Isabel’s brothers piloted the raft, which was swiftly caught in the current and headed rapidly downriver. The canoe, piloted by Pierre, one of the Frenchmen, followed. A few hours into that day’s journey, a breeze blew his hat into the river, he lost his balance reaching out for it. and fell into the water. He did catch his hat and waved it aloft as he surfaced. However, a floating log struck him on the head and he disappeared under the dark waters, never to be seen again.
The river became more swift and filled with rapids and increasing dangers. Towards the end of the day, as they were turning to the banks to camp for the night, the canoe struck a floating log, dipped its bow into the river, throwing them all overboard. As they were close to shore, no one drowned in that mishap. Joachim helped Isabel ashore and then went back into the waters for the rest, bringing each in, and finally bringing the canoe in as well. As for the raft, as much food as possible was salvaged before it was completely destroyed by floating debris.
That night, around the fire they had built they decided Joachim and one of the remaining Frenchmen would travel as quickly as possible down the river to Andoas and seek help and food to bring back to the rest. This was a great risk to those who remained as they would be left with no means of transportation. But the party felt they had no choice. The next morning, Joachim and the Frenchman struck off, leaving Isabel, her 10-year-old nephew, Joachin, her two brothers, the three mestizo women servants, and the remaining Frenchman.
Expecting help to come soon, they were careless with the remaining food that first week. By the end of the second week, Isabel was spending most of her time caring for Joachin who was rapidly wasting away. The men hunted and gathered wood and the women sought tubers and birds’ eggs on which to feed. They battled mosquitos and black flies: “They itched and scratched until the blood flowed and until most of them were half mad.”
The Frenchman developed signs of madness which climaxed when he awoke one night to find a vampire bat sucking the blood out of his toe. He screamed and went utterly berserk. The others were in an uproar and by dawn Isabel Godin decided they had waited long enough and ordered the building of a raft. This done, they placed their meager belongings thereon and themselves climbed aboard, as if dragging their wasted bodies. The women sat in the center with the sick boy; the three men pushed it out into the fast river where it promptly struck a submerged tree.
The raft split into pieces and all were thrown into the river. All supplies and belongings were lost. Incredibly, they made it back to shore, but Joachin was already at death’s door and died that night, not having opened his eyes since coming ashore from the destroyed raft. The party did not have enough strength left to bury him.
Rosa, one of the mestizo servants, died overnight. Heloise walked off into the jungle in a delirium and never returned. The older brother expired as he recited his rosary. The Frenchman and other brother had already died, their bodies set upon by ants. The remaining servant died also.
Isabel Godin lay between the decaying bodies, fully expecting to die there. But two days later, seeing she still lived, she remembered her husband, who called her “my cherished wife,” whom she had not seen for 20 years and who waited for her. She later remarked that the memory of her husband, the father of the children she had lost, infused her with strength and propelled her to rise from among the dead, putrefying bodies. With a knife she cut the shoes off her dead brothers, fashioned crude sandals therefrom, and, with a machete in one hand and a staff in the other, she set off, with an unsteady pace into the jungle. As she slogged off, she thought she heard someone calling her, but believed it was delirium and kept going.
It was not delirium. It was Joachim who had returned and to his horror, had found the bodies, unrecognizable for utter decay. He could not even count how many there were but assumed Isabel was among them. He, utterly bereft, knelt to pray quickly, because the stench was overpowering, and left, headed back downriver, in a canoe manned by 4 mission Indians who tapped tapped tapped on their canoe messaging ahead downriver to Andoas, “Mme Godin and her party are dead. All perished in the jungle.” There he reported more fully on what he had seen. Don Pedro, having lost a daughter, two sons, and a grandnephew, received the news very badly and never fully recovered. The news made its way to French Guiana where Jean Godin learned his “cherished wife” was gone forever.
Doña Isabel’s dark brown hair had turned white, her skin, depigmented, made her look ghostly, floating among the trees and vines. Counting from the days of Joachim’s macabre discovery, she wandered, alone, in the jungles, for nine days. She could not say how she could have endured it other than the thought of reuniting with her husband gave her strength. Not to mention her unquenchable spirit.
One night, she stumbled onto three Shimigai Indians sitting around a fire. They were so frightened they began to run away but were held back by her otherworldly voice asking them to stay, in Quechua, a language they could understand. She told them to take her to the mission in Andoas.
She then collapsed.
It took a month for her to recover sufficiently to travel on to Lagunas. On the way there she stopped in Loreto where a missionary, seeing her utter emaciation, and noting that a journey down the Amazon would be a very arduous one, suggested she return to Riobamba, which was far closer. Her reply gives us an indication of this woman’s indomitable spirit:
“I am, Padre, surprised at your proposal. God has preserved me when alone amid perils in which all my companions perished, in my wish to rejoin my husband. Having begun my journey for this purpose, if I were not to prosecute my first intention, I should esteem myself guilty of counteracting the views of Providence and rendering useless the assistance I have received from the dear Indians and their wives, as well as the kindness which you, kind Father, have given me….”
She and her father, Don Pedro, sailed 2,000 miles down the Amazon. Jean Godin sailed on a small vessel and boarded the boat to embrace his wife. He later wrote:
“On board this vessel, after twenty years’ absence and a long endurance on either side of alarms and misfortunes. I again met with a cherished wife whom I had almost given over every hope of seeing again. In her embraces I forgot the loss of the fruits of our union: nay, I even congratulated myself on their premature deaths, as it saved them from the dreadful fate which befell their uncles in the wood of Canelos beneath the eyes of their mother, who certainly would never have survived the sight.”
Two years later, Don Pedro, Joachim (the now freed black slave), Jean Godin, and his wife, Isabel Godin, sailed to France.
Her husband preceded her in death by a few months in 1792. She hardly ever talked about her ordeal. Some days, her servants would see her holding or fingering a piece of cloth, looking at it, saying nothing.
Isabel Godin (1728-1792) statue in Ecuador. Facsimile of portrait made for her family circa 1740 Amazon River near Iquitos, Peru Riobamba was in the region of Quito (relatively speaking). Notice the distance between Quito and Iquitos. Isabel Godin’s party’s objective was to travel from Riobamba to Iquitos to take ship there. It had taken her slave two (2) years to travel to Iquitos and back to Riobamba to confirm the existence of the ship. Mt. Chimborazo overlooking Riobamba, Ecuador. Until the 20th century, Chimborazo was thought to have been the highest peak in the world. Humboldt and Bonpland climbed it but failed to reach the summit. Amazon Basin jungle south of Riobamba
Nicolás Maduro: “Only Socialism can be in balance with nature, it is the only way to the preservation of the environment and the salvation of the human species. Let us save the World!”
There has been a massive oil spill in Venezuela. It happened in early August, 2020.
It has impacted the Morrocoy national park in western Venezuela.
Per the Caracas Chronicles: “There was a new spill in El Palito: the residue pond is full and the experts say that every time it rains, the pond overflows, bringing oil to the sea and accumulating one spill after the other. Up to 40,000 barrels of oil have been spilled into the coasts of Falcón and Carabobo states, causing an ecocide that could be irreversible with how often the spills are happening. There has been no damage control.”
The Environmentalists have said little or nothing.
No word from Leonardo yet. Or Harrison. Or Al. Etc.
One tweet from Greta.
Mass media? Crickets.
Since Venezuela is a Socialist regime, oil spills cannot be reported or made too big a deal about. Goes against the narrative.
Above photos taken August/September, 2020 Before the spill(s)
One of the least accessible, not to mention explored, areas of the world is the Territorio Amazonas in Venezuela. The Amazon River flows through part of the territory through the Rio Negro (see here and here for posts on Humboldt’s adventures on or near the Río Negro).
The length of the Río Grande (Great River, now known as the Amazon River) was first sailed, most improbably, by Captain Francisco de Orellana.
Orellana was a friend (some say a cousin) of Francisco Pizarro and helped the latter in the conquest of Peru in 1535. For his services, Pizarro named Orellana governor of Guayaquil in what is today Ecuador. Concurrently, Pizarro named Gonzalo Pizarro, his half-brother, to lead an expedition into the South American interior to find the “Land of Cinnamon” and he also appointed Orellana as his second in command. The expedition met in Quito and Gonzalo Pizarro sent Orellana back to Guayaquil to recruit troops and also commission horses for the mission. Pizarro felt he could not wait for Orellana’s return and proceeded to leave Quito in February, 1541.
Orellana arrived in Quito with the men and horses and, finding Pizarro gone, immediately commenced the pursuit of the main expeditionary force, making contact in March. By that time, over 3,000 Indians and over 100 Spanish had died or deserted, “melting away into the jungle.”
They did reach an area of Cinnamon trees and built a small settlement there, named Canelos (“Cinnamon”), a parish still in existence today. By then, they had been set upon by head hunters, disease, and hunger which had taken a dreadful toll. Not far from the settlement they came upon a huge serpentine yellow-waterred river called the Napo. Where did this river lead to? These men immediately began to build a brigantine on its banks and Pizarro ordered Orellana to sail downriver to find food and return once he’d found such.
However, once the craft went out it was drafted by the strong current at 4 to 5 knots. Orellana left Pizarro and his ragged, half starved men on the banks of the Napo. The craft came to the mouth of the river onto the vast Amazon. Efforts to return to Pizarro came to naught and he and the men with him sailed down the entire length of the monstrous Amazon River.
Accompanying Orellana on this momentous odyssey was the missionary friar, Gaspar de Carvajal, who eventually published his Relación del nuevo descubrimiento del famoso río Grande que descubrió por muy gran ventura el capitán Francisco de Orellana (“Account of the recent discovery of the famous Grand river which was discovered by great good fortune by Captain Francisco de Orellana”).
For centuries his work was considered too fantastic to be taken seriously for he talked about large settlements and towns along the river’s banks as well as paths and roads and other constructions. He also talked about Amazons. However, his Relación has been taken more seriously in recent years, including by the great 19th century English botanist explorer, Richard Spruce.
But for our purpose today, let us see what Carvajal had to say about the encounter at the mouth of the Trompetas River in the eastern Amazon River, where, after sailing down, down, down, and coming to the Trompetas, they had to battle with the fiercest of Indians they had come against to that moment:
“I want it to be known what the reason was why these Indians defended themselves in this manner, It must be explained that they are the subjects of and tributaries to the Amazons; and when our coming was known to them, they went to them to ask help, and there came as many as ten or twelve of them, for we ourselves saw these women captains who were there fighting in front of all the Indians as women captains, and these fought so courageously that the Indian men did not dare to turn their backs and anyone who did turn his back they killed with clubs right there before us…. These women are very white and tall and have hair very long and braided and wound about the head…they are very robust and go naked save that their privy parts are covered; with their bows and arrows in their hands doing as much fighting as ten Indian men….”
Carvajal wrote that after few days after the fight with the Amazons he “came to a pleasant country where there were Evergreen-oaks and Cork Trees.” That would be near today’s Santarem, about 500 miles from the mouth of the Amazon River. A bishop in the Antilles, upon hearing this tale, asked, “Did these Amazons cut off their right breasts so as to use the bow more easily?” This was believed by some Greeks who fought female warriors repeatedly, according to Greek histories and legends. Orellana did not know such stories. He and Carvajal merely reported what they had seen and experienced.
Upon his return to Spain, the king’s court disbelieved him, even though other Spanish expeditionaries had heard persistent reports about Amazons, though never had seen them. Spruce writes:
“The voyagers heard rumors of the Amazons’ existence long before reaching them. An Indian chief on the Napo called the Amazons Coniapuyara, the masterful women, the old Indian went into some detail about them, but Orellana lacked a good understanding of the language and let the matter go by until their brigantine reached the río Trombetas, about 600 miles from the mouth of the river…. There they were attacked by Indians led by women. The Amazons were tall, fair, robust, naked except for skins about their loins. The bow and arrow in their hands they wielded with deadly accuracy.”
Orellana and Carvajal reported what they saw. It was not that Orellana mistook long-haired Indian men for women: he had lived two years among the Indians of the Upper Amazon — Jivaros, Zaparos, Huambizas — where all the males wore their hair waist-long and were attired in knee-length skirts.
Most interestingly, the 50 men who followed Orellana on that extraordinary voyage appeared at court in the presence of the king (Carlos V). Although all of them were not favorably disposed to Orellana, they nevertheless affirmed that they were indeed attacked by Indians led by Amazons.
As Spruce put it: “It is incredible that fifty persons, and among them a religious priest, should agree in guaranteeing the truth of a lie, especially when nothing was to be gained by it.”
He also saw that all the famous authorities on the Americas — including Humboldt — agreed that the Amazons tradition had been based on fact. Most of the missionaries of the 18th century testified to the same tradition. It was not uncommon for Indians, in confession, to admit having visited periodically the “women living alone.” And, with respect to Orellana’s expedition having fought the Amazons, no Indian tribe doubted it.
Where did these light-skinned women warriors come from? Some researchers posit that after the Trojan Wars they scattered across the globe, with some coming to the shores of South America. Others believe they came during the time of the Phoenecians (1200 BC) who were known to sail the world. We really do not know.
What happened to them?
An old Indian with whom Spruce spoke told him that his forefathers said that after the Spaniards and Portuguese began to settle in larger numbers, the Amazons retired from their villages near the Trombetas and migrated to somewhere on the Río Negro. He also told Spruce that many an Indian, long from home, confessed the he had spent several months among the warrior women. The Amazons would meet the invited Indian at a place agreed upon, then dismiss him with presents of gold and green stones. He carried back the male children who had reached the age of three.
Green stones? These were known for a long time as Amazon stones. The great 18th century French explorer, La Condamine, had found them worn by Indians in Santarem and these Indians affirmed they had received such from the Amazons. And Sir Walter Raleigh (1591-1618) spoke of Indians on the Orinoco having “chiefly a kinde of greene stones… commonly every king or Casique hath one….”
Possibly, the Amazons migrated to the portion of the Río Negro that flows through the Amazonas State in what is now Venezuela. It is fitting that it be so, as the Río Negro’s name was given by the same Francisco de Orellana who fought the Amazons on the “Grand River”.
The name originally given to the Grand River was Río Orellana. But that was changed to Río Amazonas based on his own comments describing it as “the river of the Amazons”. The great territory in Venezuela was also named accordingly: Territorio Amazonas, which became a state in the 90s.
Gonzalo Pizarro made it back to Quito two years later, very ill and with very few men who had survived with him. He went on to rule Peru after his brother’s death, but this had not been sanctioned by the king and he was defeated in battle, tried, found guilty of treason, and beheaded in Peru in 1548.
Gaspar de Carvajal returned to Peru in 1545, three years after his eventful partnership with Orellana. He lived a long, fruitful life, dying there in 1584.
Francisco Orellana’s astonishing expedition took place in 1542. He returned to the Amazon in 1545, but that journey was far more grim than the first and he died, according to his wife “of grief”; according to other sources, he drowned in the river he once had called “the river of the Amazons.”
Río Negro, Territorio Amazonas, Venezuela
Parque Nacional Serranía La Neblina (The Misty Range National Park). Mt. Phelps is the lower peak (9,800 ft) and is in the south of Amazonas State in Venezuela. Pico da Neblina is the higher peak (9,900 ft) is in the north of Amazonas State in Brazil. Río Autana, an Orinoco River tributary, with Cerro Autana at right in the background. This is located close to the Colombian border in the western section of Amazonas State. Humboldt and Bonpland explored and selected many botanical specimens here. Gonzalo Pizarro (1510-1548) Francisco de Orellana (circa 1490 Spain — 1546 Amazon River). Memorial to Richard Spruce (1817-1893) in Ecuador Drawings by Richard Spruce
Looking for a YouTube source on Alexander von Humboldt, I took a break to listen to “Rainy Days and Mondays” performed by The Carpenters (see Vevo link below). As the song played, I scrolled down and read many listener comments, most of whom would make the composer, Paul Williams, proud, as his songs have a knack for nostalgia. Think Rainbow Connection, for example.
One comment serves to summarize most:
“This song brings me back to the 70’s when I was a young boy. All of my sisters and I were still living at home with my mom and dad. My dad worked in a refinery and my mom was a housewife. Dinner was always ready at 4:30pm. We’d watch “I Love Lucy” reruns on our small TV while we ate. Everyone I loved and cared about was still alive and healthy. Now, so many of the people in my life that meant so very much to me are gone. How I wish I could go back in time…but when I hear great music like this, I close my eyes, and all of those wonderful memories come rushing back into my mind.”
I appreciate the comment and recognize it is one shared by many, and my intent is not to criticize, for I do sympathize with the sentiment.
Thornton Wilder wrote about this very emotion in his no-nonsense Pulitzer Prize winning play, Our Town. Very briefly, the story is set on an empty stage, with a stage manager and the performers. It takes us from the childhood to the death of one of the protagonists, Emily. She is distraught at not having had the understanding and wisdom, during life, of appreciating and cherishing every moment with friends and, especially, family. She is given the opportunity to return on her 12th birthday to her home in Grover’s Corners only to see her initial joy turn to pain. The pain comes from seeing how little we appreciate one another and how fast every minute flies by as we go about our daily routines, seemingly ignoring each other.
She begs to return to the cemetery.
The play was written in 1938. It is still popular today, the most recent revival in New York City, in 2009, for the longest production in its history. The message still resonates.
So when we (and we all have some regrets about how we have invested or wasted our time) say we’d like to go back for a day, or a year, would we really do it differently? Would we truly appreciate our home and loved ones?
One way we can answer that question is to appreciate them now. Today. And going forward.
I’ve read Our Town several times and I guess it’s time to read it again.
The movie version is fine, but the Hollywood ending robs the play of the punch Wilder intended. Original Broadway production with Frank Craven (left; he also starred in the movie) as the Stage Manager, Martha Scott (Ben Hur) as Emily, and John Craven (Frank Craven’s son) as George Gibbs.
