Author: Richard Barnes

Birthday

Richard Barnes

“…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence — that which makes its truth, its meaning — its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream — alone …. Of course, in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you know ….” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

A great challenge, which I have not conquered, is to accurately convey the life sensations of the epochs lived in El Pao. To describe the people who played life-long roles in shaping my character — the person who I was and who I became. In this, I agree with Conrad: it is impossible.

I do not pretend to be a literary genius — guffaw, guffaw! — nor anywhere near a master of a vocabulary which can precisely portray the people I so longingly miss and love. All I can do is write snippets and recall persons and events which had an influence on me. 

But I do ask my readers to know that I love the people I grew up with in my childhood. I respect and honor them. Beginning with my father and mother and relatives such as aunts and uncles on both sides of my family. And friends — not only friends, but also their parents and grandparents. It is a great honor to be able to have called your father’s and mother’s friends your own.

Family bonds are critical, not only to the family, but to friends and acquaintances thereof.

These introductory thoughts are elicited by memories of one of my childhood birthdays. It may have been my fifth, but I can’t be sure….

Birthdays were pretty big deals in El Pao. 

I sat inside, on the living room window sill, watching my mother standing under the shade of the giant Araguaney, placing beans in a glass jar. I looked away, not because I didn’t want to win that contest, but because I was afraid someone might see me and call me a cheater.

I would not be able to explain my fear. I only sensed a profound need to not disappoint my father or mother and, in my mind, being publicly accused of cheating would have been a very great embarrassment to them and, so, to me also. I felt I represented my father and mother as much as they represented themselves and, therefore, I would second guess myself on occasions such as this, when I might be able to see my mother’s lips as she counted the beans or as she gave the total to Mrs. C. for recording.

I recalled, with sudden stomach turmoil, the Easter party earlier in the year when I had indeed seen Mrs. Y’s lips as she told Mrs. S, who then wrote the number down. I had closely observed the movement of the pencil in her fist as she wrote the number, confirming what I had read in the lips. I had repeated that number, 146, silently to myself throughout the following hour or so and when the guessing game began I astounded all when I loudly exclaimed, “One hundred and forty-six!”

No one had seemed to suspect me. On the contrary, they laughed and congratulated me on a perfect guess.

Sure. A perfect guess. But it hadn’t been a guess at all.

I soon apperceived guilt and wondered whether there were someone who had seen me looking and had guessed my dirty little trick. Anyways, I knew God had seen me. Except when my mind was on games and scrambling around, I was miserable the rest of that afternoon.

That was a feeling I did not want to entertain on this day.

So I looked at the balloons tied to tree limbs and overhangs and clothes lines, seeming to bounce against the breeze. I recalled watching my mother and Elena, their mouths forming embouchures, as they filled each balloon. I liked the colors: blue, yellow, orange, purple, red, and white.

Many were tied to the branches of the fustic just outside my bedroom and I remembered the yellow dye that seeped from any wounds on that particular tree. All these colors — blue, yellow, orange, red, and many whites — colors were the only differentiation between the numberless globes of cheer, which would be one of the memories of that day that would ever remain with me.

And these colors were perfectly limbate against the green. I loved the green of the massive Araguaney in our front yard and the dark green of the jungle around the mining camp where I was born five years before.

That green I could see from practically any point in the camp. Right now, I looked up a bit, a little beyond the balloons, and there it was. The green. The foliage painted the distant hills and mid-sized mountain green. To me, green was the color of freedom, of excitement and adventure, of danger, of a magnificent future, of poignant music and children’s laughter. It was a color which would forever remind me of not only this day but of all that comprised my entire childhood in El Pao.

Soon, children were scurrying and crawling over the birthday grounds as their mothers coordinated the various games which culminated with the striking of the Piñata.

Above photos are not of the party I recalled in today’s post. Am not sure where those photos are today.

Above was carnival and most of us wanted to be elsewhere.

Warao

Richard Barnes

This afternoon, like often happens to the human creature, a random memory came to mind; an event my father and I, along with others, witnessed as we stood at the iron ore freighter’s railing on the Orinoco River around the year 1960. 

I wrote about the Orinoco River in a 2020 post about the rapids between Atures and Maypures which so fascinated Alexander von Humboldt and also in a  2019 post about the Monster Aguirre and his depredations along that river and other places in Venezuela. 

The aforementioned memory that came to mind was not about a monster or the writings of the great naturalist, but it was one of those things that perhaps one never forgets.

We had boarded the freighter in Palúa, next to San Félix, on the shores of the Orinoco, about 600 miles upstream from its confluence with the Atlantic Ocean. Downstream, well beyond modern towns and their hustle and bustle, well beyond any dwellings that I can remember, we saw five or six Orinoco Crocodiles stretched on the sand. 

Crocodiles were still somewhat numerous in 1960 and I remember seeing three or four every now and then as the freighter made its way to the Atlantic, sometimes motionless, at times with the jaws opened at right angles, at other times, disturbed, and rushing into the river, immediately separating every which way.

During Humboldt’s expedition in the late 18th Century, the crocodile was much more numerous; his descriptions had him seeing many on the sands for miles, with scarcely any long stretches uninhabited.

He wrote that every year one or two people, particularly women who go to the river to wash clothes or get water, were drowned by these “overgrown lizards”. The advice given him by the monks and the Aborigines was, “Should you ever be grabbed by one of those, you must, with all your strength, poke it in the eye, which is just about the only place it will feel any pain you can mete out. Grab a stick, a knife, your fingers, and poke with all your strength.”

Well, I hope I have the presence of mind to poke a crocodile in the eye should I ever find myself with such a creature holding me by the torso! 

I’ve been told that reptile has become almost extinct and is rarely seen now. 

After a while, we saw no dwellings whatsoever, let alone towns, much less cities. In fact, between Palúa and the ocean, there would be no more towns along the Orinoco. 

This was an isolated realm of the earth: wild, lush, green; a wall of jungle bordering each side of the wide, flowing river. It is difficult to depict the intensely, arrestingly vibrant, yet utterly forbidding panorama that unfolded endlessly before my gaze as the ship sailed steadily downriver … downriver … enriching the palate of my memory.

Late the second morning of the journey, sailing in one of the narrower sections of the great river, three curiaras (indigenous, dugout canoes) sliced through the water, port side, approaching the ship. 

They were Warao people, Indians who lived in the Orinoco Delta at the time Columbus discovered it, and whose huts on tall stilts spurred Alonso de Ojeda, a year later, to name the area Venezuela, or “Little Venice”.

Warao children learn to paddle before they can walk. The only mode of transportation for hundreds of circuitous miles is by curiara. In fact, one possible translation of Warao is “boat people”. 

The Indians in the curiaras rowed swiftly, and seemingly effortlessly, towards the ship. They grinned and laughed and yelled. Several people crowded the port side railing of the after deck as each sought to contemplate the primitive scene.

I stood against the railing watching. Quietly. Next to me on the right stood my father and, further down, as well as on my left, other passengers. 

Part of the memory was seeing some fellow passengers loudly enjoying the spectacle of the Warao as they zigzagged off the port side, yelling, laughing, pointing at the ship and its passengers and crew.

Suddenly, someone tossed a store-bought loaf of bread at the curiara closest to the ship at the moment. The lead rower caught the loaf in mid-flight and immediately bit into the loaf: plastic, cellophane, bread, and all!

Several in the group errupted in uproarious laughter, with the energetic Warao joining in the laughter.

The laughter surprised me. The sight of the Warao biting into a loaf of bread wrapped in plastic and cellophane induced surprise and sorrow, even pity and compassion, in me; but certainly not laughter. I did not enjoy seeing someone display an understanding not much above the level of a dog, which would also have chomped right through the plastic and cellophane. 

Was I missing some nuance, some understanding available only to adults?

But I was comforted when I noticed that my father was not laughing, nor were a few of the others.

Over the years, later in life, I’ve met many who would not have laughed but would have been offended at exposing the Warao to modern civilization. Instead of laughing, these people would be scowling. Which, to me as a boy, would have been as anomalous an expression as that of those who laughed.

These are the folks who would have seen the ship and even the loaf of bread as crass attempts to destroy the beautiful, ancient cultures of the aborigines. Their view is that man is a product of a universe in continuous, evolutionary change. As a part of that evolutionary process, these Indians, over the centuries, have changed in harmony with the nature that surrounds them. They are one with the jungle. By interfering with them, by tossing bread at them, all we do is hasten their destruction. We certainly do not preserve them nor do them any favors.

If there had been passengers who, instead of laughing, had expressed such sentiments, I would have been as nonplussed with them as with the laughing mockers. As a boy I would have wondered how it could have been right to laugh at these Indians or to ignore them: to just let them waste away in ignorance. In essence, the bien-pensants say that those Indians were just as well off as I was. Something that a boy would have intuitively known was simply not true. 

The Indians continued to yell and laugh and point and row. The passengers drifted off.

I stayed at the railing contemplating the Warao, two of whose curiaras had swung around and were now headed back to the green shore. But the third one, the one whose forward navigator had caught the wrapped loaf, was suddenly right below me. 

He yelled and laughed and pointed at me as well as at his mouth. Hearing him, his companions quickly swerved back to the ship and soon all three were yelling and laughing and pointing at their mouths. But I had nothing to give them, although they did not seem malnourished. I waved at them and forced a smile. They waved back, laughing.

Then they adroitly and quickly rowed the curiaras around and instantly, effortlessly, were on their way back to their distant shore. 

I watched as they rowed farther and farther away, seemingly deliquescing into the dark river and the green forest. 

I, reluctantly, pushed away from the railing and walked to the stairs to join the rest.

Orinoco Crocodile

Warao on the Orinoco

Warao

On the Orinoco, circa 1960

Uncle Max

Richard Barnes

Last week I was interviewed for hours regarding my Uncle’s and my father’s murders in 1968 and 1982, respectively. The discussion went far longer than anticipated because the interviewer wanted to understand how Massachussets, Pennsylvania, Florida, Cuba, and Venezuela all “connected” so extensively with our family. 

This morning I enjoyed coffee with an acquaintance who also asked how my grandfather, whose fathers had lived and died in Massachussets since the 17th Century, ended up in Cuba and then his offspring went to Venezuela. I was happy to give him the 60,000 foot overview.

The fact is that all families have interesting histories. The problem is that relatively few take the time to describe or narrate such to their children and grandchildren, who, if experience is any guide, would be positively delighted to know them and would never tire of hearing them. Who doesn’t remember seeing little ones wanting to know what their fathers or mothers did “when you were little”?

My father would often tell us about his brother, Uncle Max’s antics in Cuba. My father was an excellent baseball player, Uncle Max was an excellent swimmer. My father only beat him once: a marathon swim in Santiago Bay (if memory serves) where Uncle Max committed the cardinal sin of over worrying about another swimmer who was supposed to be his greatest competition. 

As Uncle Max kept looking over his shoulder to see where his “competition” was, my father pulled away and beat him. Everyone — especially my father! — knew that would be a once in a lifetime. And it was. But that didn’t stop my father from teasing Uncle Max about it for decades.

Uncle Max was a firecracker — full of energy and stamina. Retired in Miami, well into his 70s and into his 80s he swam 100 laps, and later, 50 laps every day. I am convinced that exercise regiment forestalled his succumbing to Parkinson’s Disease in 2007, his 91st year.

That energy and invincible good humor was on full display early one morning, again in Santiago Bay. Only this time my father and Uncle Max along with two other friends were in a boat fishing. Uncle Max’s line tensed suddenly and the boys realized he had caught something terribly big! He worked the fish, but eventually ran out of fishing line.

Yes, he jumped into the bay and kept working the fish! I laugh as I write this. I always think of Uncle Max when I see the beginning of The Lord of the Rings where Peter Jackson depicts Déagol, Sméagol’s cousin, hooking a large fish and jumping into the river after running out of line. It is there that he sees the One Ring to Rule Them All and … well, you know the rest of that story.

In Uncle Max’s case, his friends and my father rowed while yelling at Uncle Max to “Let it go!” They caught up with him and laughed until they cried. I believe it was a giant Grouper, but do not remember. This story was last told me many years ago.

My cousin Eileen once told me that when she understood that her father, Uncle Max, had fought in WWII in the Philippines, she climbed on his lap and asked him, “Did you die?” I was not there but can easily see my uncle laughing uproariously.

It’s not easy to choose one’s “favorite” Uncle Max story, but I suppose it would be the one where, again in Cuba, the boys, including my father and Uncle Max were swimming back and forth and jumping or diving in, just having the time of their lives.

They did not notice, or rather, they ignored a large yacht moored nearby. 

Soon a crewman, in bright whites, came to the dock where the boys were diving and swimming and called Uncle Max to him. 

“My boss would like to challenge you to a swim. Would you agree?”

“Yes! Yes! Tell him yes!” — It is difficult to convey Uncle Max’s energy and enthusiasm with mere words.

So the gentleman on the yacht approached in a dingy and introduced himself by name.

They agreed to the natural markers for their swim and dove in. Uncle Max won.

As they caught their breath and congratulated one another for a good swim, the gentleman again stretched out his hand and asked, “Do you know whom you just defeated?”

“No!”

“You just defeated the Jamaica Olympic champion. Congratulations!”

None of that ever went to Uncle Max’s head.

In 1984, at my wedding’s reception held in a military base in Puerto Rico, someone came to me and whispered, “You have a call.” 

A call? 

I followed the gentleman to an office and picked up the phone which was lying on a desktop. 

“Hello Ricky! Congratulations!” said the voice on the other end. It was a voice and a laugh I so easily recognized. It was Uncle Max and his wife, my Tía Carmencita.

May you rest in peace, Uncle Max.

Uncle Max, far left; my father, center. With cousins in Massachussets, circa 1920

Uncle Max and his sister, Aunt Sarah, circa 1975

Uncle Max and Tía Carmencita and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Luis (“Wichy”) came to see us at the gate at the Miami International Airport while we were on a layover on our way to Venezuela. Uncle Max is second from right. Circa 1989. 

Middle row, left to right, Cousin Sarita, eldest daughter to Uncle Max and Tía Carmencita, Tía Carmencita, Uncle Max. I am in the back; the rest are five of my children. Miami, Florida, circa 2002.

What Happened in 1971?

Richard Barnes

The below is a May 26, 2025 post from the Powerline Blog, by John Hinderaker. I found it interesting and provocative, especially in light of Proverbs 11:1 — “A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.”

John Hinderaker, Powerline Blog, May 26, 2025 (What Happened):

1971 was the year when I graduated from college and started law school, so I remember it well. But I had no idea, then, that something momentous was happening that year–something that would shape America’s history, and the world’s, for the next 50 years and more.

But what was it?

This site has collected a number of charts that illustrate how pivotal 1971 was. Some have to do with inflation, spending and debt:

What happened? In August 1971, the U.S. went off the gold standard. I think it is fair to say that the inflation and exploding government debt we have seen since then are the direct results of that action. Since time immemorial, people around the world have been willing to trade goods and services for two things: gold and silver. Sometimes, but not always, bronze. China was the first country to introduce paper currency. At some point–I don’t remember what century–a European traveler to China was astonished to see people accepting paper in exchange for goods. He asked his Chinese guide why in the world anyone would do that. The answer, the guide explained, was simple: you could take those pieces of paper to a government office, and they would give you gold for them. So the paper was just a convenience.

When the U.S. went off the gold standard, the value of the dollar relative to gold crashed, as did the values of most other major currencies, which were linked to the dollar:

An exception was the Swiss franc, which was not connected to the dollar. The Swiss franc is now also a fiat currency, but the dollar has been in long-term decline relative to it.

Was going off the gold standard a catastrophic mistake?

The linked site has many other charts, some of which relate to matters of currency and money supply, but others do not. Some charts suggest that rising income inequality began in around 1971.

Since growing income inequality is basically another term for increasing opportunity, I generally assume it is good. But presumably there are limits. And this is interesting, and possibly linked to abandoning the gold standard:

Of course, there was a lot going on in 1971 that wasn’t related to currency. The women’s movement, for instance, or, as we called it then, “women’s lib.”

Per capita GDP increased, but men’s wages didn’t. A lot of that GDP increase was earned by women who had been smoked out of the home and into the labor market, where their labor could be taxed:

Black progress, relative to whites, slowed. Most people probably don’t know that black progress was faster prior to passage of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s:

There is much more at the link, some of it reflecting a political perspective that I don’t share. But most of it is pure data. 1971 is when the number of lawyers began to explode, as did the pages of federal regulations, in a case of mutually accelerating cause and effect. That is also when health care costs took off, and when we began spending grotesquely more money on education, to zero benefit.

For better or worse–mostly worse, it seems–1971 represents a turning point in history. And of everything that happened that year, it appears that going off the gold standard–relatively little remarked at the time, and approved by all right-thinking people, even though it was done by Nixon–was the most momentous decision.

July 14: Further Comments

Richard Barnes

(This was first posted in July, 2022 and given the anarchic violence “in the name of justice” and any other of the prevalent shibboleths of today, it is prudent to be reminded, once again, that there is nothing new under the sun.)

The fall of the Bastille and its attendant, macabre events (see here) were a sinister foreshadowing of what was to come to Paris and to all of France, not to mention much of the world in the ensuing centuries, including the bloodletting in Spanish America.

The King, Louis XVI, had been awakened long before dawn in Versailles to receive the news of the Bastille. The Assembly had been meeting in Versailles. In the morning, as the deputies listened to themselves give speeches, the King was announced, entered, and spoke, “You have been afraid, well it is I who have confidence … in you.” 

He then announced further that the troops would be removed not only from Paris, but from Versailles as well. As if to say, “You see? No need to fear me at all.” The announcement was greeted with thunderous applause and cheers.

Two days later, the king journeyed to Paris to further demonstrate his goodwill. But Maximilian Robespierre, one of  history’s most blood-soaked names, in a surviving letter to a friend, wrote, “The present Revolution has produced in a few days greater events than the whole previous history of mankind…”

“A patriotic army of 300,000 men, composed of every class of citizen, accompanied by Gardes Françaises, Suisses, and other soldiers, has captured the Bastille and punished its Governor and the Prévost des Marchands for their treachery. The fear that this army might march to Versailles has decided the Revolution.”

That’s how the more astute revolutionaries saw, interpreted, and described the king’s supine actions.

The crowds had been admonished, upon pain of death, to not dare shout out, “Vive le Roi“. Unsurprisingly, they humbly obeyed.

After touring the city, surrounded by deputies and armed crowds, he returned to Paris.

The following is from Otto Scott’s Robespierre. I quote it as a microcosm of what was to follow throughout the country and, through the next two centuries, many corners of the entire globe, but especially Eurasia and China:

“Five days later … on July 22, 1789, ex-Minister Foullon [whom the newspapers had accused of saying the ‘people could eat hay’; this was never proved or sourced] was … surrounded … a bundle of straw [tied] to his back and … a necklace of nettles and thistles around his head. He was dragged to City Hall….”

“The new Mayor Bailly orated about the law. Lafayette, summoned to the scene, argued that if Foullon was taken in safety to prison instead of being summarily lynched, he could be brought to disclose his ‘confederates’. After several hours of this the fiery crowd seemed placated. But when the old man — he was seventy-four — and his guard emerged from City Hall, a man suddenly jumped forward, caught Foullon by the neck, and three him into the crowd. A cluster closed around [him] immediately. Beating him energetically … [dragged him] across the Place de Greve to the lamp iron at the corner of the rue de la Vannerie. A noose was thrown over him; one man hoisted him up while others pulled on the lower end of the rope. After he was strangled to death his cadaver was lowered, his head cut off and stuck onto a pitchfork. The rest of the body was stripped, mutilated, and carved into pieces. A horrid parade through the streets started.”

A side note, Alexander Hamilton had expressed concerns about the nature of the French Revolution to his friend Lafayette, who paid no heed as he hastened back to France. Hamilton’s warning likely rang in his ears a few short years later, when he escaped just ahead of the mob.

Many men and women, including the king and queen, were executed after days, months, and years of imprecations and insults hurled at them, culminating with the same accusations painted on placards and posters as people trudged behind them, shortly before their lynchings.

Words are powerful. And effective. All revolutionaries understand that.

Clarence B. Carson wrote, “What particularly intrigued revolutionary socialists, Karl Marx among them, about the French Revolution was the drastic changes it made in the lives and ways of a people. It demonstrated, at least for them, in embryo form, the potentialities for changing man and men in society by revolution. The relentless thrust to equality especially caught the attention of socialists….

“In sum, society would be completely reconstructed.”

The French Revolution expressed those ideas loudly and made attempts at such. It moved to change the calendar with Year 1 being the first year after the Convention of 1792. But the most virulent attacks were on the church and its priests, nuns, adherents, and property. In Nantes the guillotine could not kill priests quickly enough so the representative-on-mission there, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, conjured up an even more effective way to rid the revolution of clergy, and entire families of men, women, and, children too. “Wolflings grow to be wolves,” he explained.

Boatloads of people were towed to the middle of the Loire and scuttled. Other boatloads were merely emptied into the river and, should any unfortunate attempt to grasp the side of the boat, his or her fingers or hands were slashed or cut off, ensuring drowning. Reports survive of many cases where Carrier ordered men and women stripped, tied together, and thrown into the river. “Republican Marriages” he called them. Modern historians tend to discount this, although they cannot deny the fact of thousands of cruel, inhumane deaths.

Carrier later became yet another fulfillment of Jacques Danton’s exclamation at his execution, “The Revolution, like Saturn, devours her own children!” 

But the main objective must be kept in sight at all times: the de-Christianization of France. In this hatred of Christianity, revolutionaries have been consistent throughout the centuries. And this hatred is very knowledgeable, it not only attacks the church and churches, it attacks the home. One of the first acts of Revolutionary France was to   make it much easier to dissolve the marriage bonds. It also decriminalized abortion. This was re-criminalized in 1810 with the Napoleonic Code.

As noted before, all this was studied with great interest by Karl Marx. As for Vladimir Lenin, an absolutely pitiless man, he said that he had learned much from the French Revolution, but that the revolutionaries had made one major mistake which he would not make: they had ended the Terror. This he was determined to not do.

The king and the queen were executed by guillotine. Their young son, born in 1785, died in prison ten years later, in 1795, days before physicians were called to perform an autopsy which revealed countless scars reflecting indescribable torture. The people whom the king loved and trusted had repaid him with their own currency.

It pains me to say, yet again, that Venezuela, the land of my birth, had its own birthing pangs in the philosophies and anti-clerical fervors of the French Revolution, however much lip service her revolutionaries paid to the American Declaration of Independence. 

Simón Bolivar said, “We need equality to recast, so to speak, into a single whole, the classes of men, political opinions, and public custom,” thereby neatly encapsulating The One while ignoring The Many. His executions of defenseless prisoners of war, his pitiless emptying of Caracas, and his Declaration of War to the Death follow logically from such sentiments.

May Venezuela see better days soon. Meanwhile, may those of us in the USA, learn to push back and not acquiesce so easily as did Louis XVI.

Whenever you hear lofty sounding words and ideals, be sure to check the fruit. That’s always a dead giveaway. 

Liberté, égalité, fraternité, sounds marvelous. But the fruit is seen in the original’s last three words: ou la mort.

Joseph-Foullon shortly before strangling and beheading.

Depiction of executions by drownings in Nantes. Jean-Baptiste Carrier is in the center.

King Louis XVII, the dauphin in captivity. He died at 10, likely of torture, certainly of neglect. Some believe he was poisoned.

Simón Bolivar. His political philosophies were steeped in Rousseau and other French thinkers.

Maximillian Robespierre. An absolutely ruthless politician utterly convinced of his own virtue and superiority to other men while proclaiming equality for all. His political thinking was steeped in Rousseau. He too fulfilled Jacques Danton’s cry, “The Revolution, like Saturn, devours her own children!”