Author: Richard Barnes

The Barracks

Richard Barnes

The three Latin American countries most identified with Simon Bolivar are Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. In the 40’s and 50’s, some used to say: Colombia is the University, Ecuador is the seminary, and Venezuela is the barracks.

Having visited but never having lived in either Colombia or Ecuador, I am reluctant to comment on their monikers above. As to Venezuela, I am reluctant to press its characterization too far. However, at times, a generalization might have a grain of truth. 

I recall getting ready to accompany my cousin to see a movie in San Felix, in the state of Bolivar, a little under 500 miles southeast of Caracas. My aunt cautioned us as we walked out the door, “Be careful! This is the season for recruiting!” My cousin, assured her we’d be all right but I had no idea what she was talking about and just let it go over my head. 

As we approached the theater area, we saw a commotion in front of the theater doors. Soldiers were grabbing young men and boys and tossing them into patrol trucks with cage-like structures on top. My cousin grabbed my shoulder and pulled me behind a corner from where we watched as boys scattered as fast as they could run but many did not make it because soldiers were strategically placed at random points and were pretty successful in apprehending them and dragging them to the trucks which would transport them to boot camp and years in the army. 

I watched in a bit of horror soldiers kicking the boys to the trucks and pushing their posteriors as they scrambled into the cages. Years later, reading about colonial era British shanghai methods and about the American, Shanghai Kelly, I’d recall this scene, which has remained with me since.

Venezuela lost a third of its population during the South American revolutionary wars of the early 19th century. The bloodletting in Venezuela was unmatched by any other South American country or region. To help understand the magnitude of the carnage, with 600,000 to 800,000 deaths (depending on which source you trust), the United States lost about 2 or 3% of its population during the Civil War. That’s more deaths than all her major wars combined.

Venezuela lost 33%.

The military campaigns were heroic, atrocious, incredible, treacherous, and pitiless. They featured unimaginable tortures which paralleled those documented in Wilbarger’s Indian Depredations in Texas. 

In the words of the British Legion’s Captain Mahoney, recorded in Recollections of a Service of Three Years in Venezuela and Colombia: “The best and dearest blood of the inhabitants flowed profusely; their fairest towns and cities were laid waste; and one of the finest portions of the globe became a grievous theatre of rapine, devastation, and murder. It is scarcely hazardous to assert, that there was never a period, in any age or country, in relation to which history has recorded more premeditated slaughter or greater cruelty in the application of tortures more dreadful than death itself.”

That helps explain why Venezuela was known as the barracks.

Humanitarian Crisis

Richard Barnes

As stated in the “About” page of this blog, my sincere intent is to tell about Venezuela irenically. I want to avoid polemics here, not because polemics are bad or unimportant; they are not. They play a role in aiding our understanding of events and even life and death issues. However, in these polarized times, it is most necessary to first go back to basics. Vince Lombardi once addressed his team after a terrible first half performance and, holding a football aloft, he declared, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Hard to polemicize about that. And that sort of explains what this blog attempts to do.

So, you may wonder why I might bring up the current humanitarian situation in Venezuela here. Is there sufficient reporting about that readily available in the media? Are there enough debates on Venezuelan Socialism? Are there ample arguments on the competence of the government there?

The obvious answers to the above interrogatives are, of course, “yes, yes, and yes.”

But, and here I must tread on some toes: the reporting is nowhere near thorough.

There is indeed a crisis. And the poor and the indigenous peoples are those who suffer the most.

Today (this was written, mostly, on February 22, 2019), one of the trucks loaded with medicines and food, was burned as it crossed the Colombian frontier onto Venezuelan soil. See photo below and caption for additional commentary.

At the other entry point, in the south, specifically at Kumaracapay, Gran Sabana municipality, near the Venezuela-Brazil border, the actions taken by the national police painted an even worse picture: 

From the Caracas Chronicles:

“Chavista officials say there was a shootout, a fight at the border. There was not, they gunned us down!” Very few times I’ve spoken to a man like Aldemaro Pérez. A 36 year-old indigenous leader, he speaks in plain terms, but unambiguously.”

“Is it true there are two Pemones [indigenous Venezuelans] dead?”, I ask.

“That’s absolutely true. We were near the border (with Brazil) expecting what we really want, the humanitarian aid. At five in the morning, a group of soldiers arrived trying to block the border. We tried to stop them, and they shot at us.”

“They killed two of us, Zoraida Rodriguez and her husband, and now we have four national guardsmen arrested. Three lieutenants and a sergeant, they’re our prisoners.”

After filing the above report, Aldemaro Pérez and four other Pemon Indians were arrested by the national police. Their whereabouts are unknown. The four police who had been arrested by the Indians for their atrocities are no longer in Pemon custody.

Seven of the fifteen people shot have since died.

(Above: Friendly fire? Food and medicine burning at the Colombia border. It may have been inadvertently set alight by the Venezuelans who were tossing Molotov Cocktails to disperse the government troops from blocking the truck coming to them. They may have missed and set fire to the truck itself. Others insist that the government forces themselves set the aid on fire. Reporting is sketchy. I cannot confirm either version)

“‘We don’t understand how a policeman can do this. How can they shoot their own people? Why wouldn’t they care they are sick and starving? Why would they burn medicine?’ said a member of the Colombian police while the truck with humanitarian aid burned on the Venezuelan side.”

Many headlines in the United States and Europe have noted the blocked humanitarian aid. Many have also reported the deaths of “protesters.” 

However, relatively few have reported the loss of food and medicines and almost no one has emphasized that the dead and wounded — some critically — are indigenous people in desperate need of help. In other words, they are Native American Indians. Twenty-five are missing. Either they fled to the jungles of Venezuela and Brazil or they are detained in undisclosed locations or they are dead.

“… the locals know the regime brought 80 buses full of armed people, so nobody’s going out. ‘This is a ghost town today, and let me be frank with you,” says our man, “We feel abandoned. We feel isolated. Everyone was supporting us until this attack began and now we’re alone and we’re cut off from the rest of the country. How are we supposed to defend ourselves if those attacking are our supposed protectors?”

This area is rich in gold. Might that explain the state’s zealotry?

In a time when just about anything is an outrage and an offense, one would think that shooting unarmed, defenseless, destitute, and ill Indians, in addition to starving them, would merit at least more extensive reporting, let alone a bit of sympathy.

One of the most “left-leaning progressive” Democratic presidential candidates has called for support of the Venezuelan people who are fleeing the dictatorship. In effect, such a pronouncement puts that candidate pretty much in agreement with the President she hopes to unseat. 

This is not a partisan issue. Nor should it be.

The situation is desperate and very sad.

Pray for Venezuela.

a pemon girl

Nixon in Venezuela in 1958

Richard Barnes

Although I was only four and one half years old at the time of this event, I do recall the commotion occasioned by this event and the embarrassment and sincere regrets expressed by Venezuelans in El Pao and San Félix. Back then, children were not to interrupt adults as they spoke; this gave us much opportunity to listen in on conversations. Although I don’t remember exact words, I do very much recall the revulsion and the anger and the consternation, by both Venezuelans as well as Americans

By my college days, many Americans were downplaying the seriousness of this incident; even making jokes about it. But it was serious enough for President Eisenhower to have ordered a naval squadron to the Venezuelan coast, plus to have placed our Caribbean bases on high alert. All public events were cancelled and the Nixon’s left the next day. Furthermore, a cache of Molotov cocktails was discovered in a building adjacent to where the Vice President was to have participated in a wreath-laying ceremony later that day.

Readers might find the old newsreel linked below to be of interest; especially the gracious words spoken by Vice-President Nixon upon his return to the U.S.A. It’s only 3 minutes.

Guayana: The Reverse Miracle (Guayana: El Milagro Al Revés)

Richard Barnes

The book is in Spanish, but richly deserves translation into other languages, especially English. However, those of you who read Spanish and have an interest in the massive industrial works of Venezuela’s interior and their catastrophic decline in recent decades, or have an interest in understanding how seemingly eternal, gargantuan enterprises can indeed be short-lived, will find this book of great interest.

Although its subject matter includes pretty technical themes (lots of engineering and mining, and capacity and waste, etc.), the author has a certain talent for making such esoterica comprehensible for those of us who are not versed in those professions but who do have an interest in Guayana (southeastern Venezuela, mostly the Venezuelan state of Bolivar) either because we were born there, or because we love Venezuela, or we simply want to understand what has happened in an area so critical for the well-being of a country

A few excerpts from chapter 11 will have to suffice to give an idea of the treasures inside, which will amply reward the interested reader:

“Sixty years ago, in what today is the industrial emporium of Guayana, all we had [there] was what Venezuelans would refer to as ‘bush and snakes’. Old San Felix was a small, ramshackle embarcadero for cattle driven from southern villages like Upata and Guasipati, to be shipped across the Orinoco to Ciudad Bolivar and from there to Trinidad, Carupano, or La Guaira [Caracas port]. Puerto Ordaz did not exist….

“From the years of [Medina Angarita and Perez Jimenez] steps were taken to conceptualize and realize a massive steel project with an experienced and renowned Italian enterprise and to begin construction of a small hydroelectric dam, today’s Macagua I, with 360 MW generating capacity….

“Later, towards the end of the 1960’s, a major expansion and modernization, Plan IV, were launched.

 “Those who have never visited Guayana have no idea of the magnitud of the wondrous Sidor. A look at the data at the end of the 1990’s, taken from one of the brochures that were then handed out to visitors who in those years engaged in ‘industrial tourism’ will give the reader an idea: ‘CVG Siderúrgica of the Orinoco, C.A., located on the right riverbank of the Orinoco River, in the Matanzas Industrial Zone, in Ciudad Guayana, Bolivar [state], 200 nautical miles from the Atlantic Ocean, sprawls over an area of 2,838 hectares of which 87 are covered. It includes 17 KM of perimeter fencing: 2 KM along the Orinoco River; 70 KM of paved roads; 132 KM of internal railroads; 13 mess halls; 19 production plants; 1 port with all modern facilities. For perspective: 2,838 hectares are about 28 square kilometers, which is double the municipality of Chacao [one of the larger municipalities of the Caracas area, the federal district]. It’s internal roads and highways covered 70 KM in length. Placed linearly, this would cover two round trips from Caracas to La Guaira [the capital city, in the northern mountains, to the major port on the coast]. Its 132 kilometers of railways would be enough to travel from Caracas to Maracay and some 20 kilometers beyond that. Or to go from Ciudad Bolivar [the state’s capital] to El Tigre [in another state]….

“All schools, hospitals, commercial buildings, manufacturing plants, universities, housing, buildings, stadiums, museums, theaters, and transportation infrastructure that exist in Venezuela and which were built in the last 50 years, were erected with rods supplied by Sidor or Sevensa-Sidetur [the private venture associated with Sidor]. That datum alone indicates how important Guayana is to Venezuela; but there is much more….”

The book is: Guayana: El Milagro Al Revés: El fin de la soberanía productiva (Guayana: The Reverse Miracle). I found it in Amazon.