Author: Richard Barnes

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!”

July 14

Richard Barnes

(This was posted on July 16, 2020. Given that Bastille Day continues to be celebrated or recognized mostly uncritically, and, seeing the apparent affinity of many for anarchy and violence [with weapons and costumes seemingly appearing miraculously], the post is still timely.)

I was on an audit in Mexico City on July 14, 1989. The radio station dedicated hours to the meaning of July 14, 1789, Bastille Day, two-hundred years before. The reason I know the program was hours long is that when, close to noon,  I got back in the car to drive to another location, it was still going on.

The seemingly erudite, and fawning, discussions about liberté, égalité, fraternité brought back childhood memories from my Venezuelan history classes and my utter frustration at my inability to understand just what the multiple Venezuelan 19th century wars were all about. See here.

If my teachers had told me that the phrase originally ended with three additional words: ou La Mort, it might have helped my understanding. Those last words were eventually dropped. Clever move. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” sound much friendlier than “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.”

And death was certainly a prominent guest on July 14, 1789.

The King, who was determined to not offend the people, ordered his troops to withdraw from Paris. He was in Versailles, hosting and groveling before the National Assembly while assuring them of his utter acquiescence to their demands. As his troops withdrew, crowds converged at the Bastille carrying countless pikes and wearing tricolor pins that appeared seemingly from nowhere. But, of course, nothing appears from nowhere. 

The Bastille had a hereditary governor, the Marquis de Launay, who, a few days earlier, had been visited by a delegation of Paris who told him the cannons in the building were an insult to the people. He promptly removed them and blocked the embrasures with wood. Then, on the 14th, “the people” began firing and demanding the drawbridge be lowered. 

The Marquis appears to have finally realized that his appeasement had only emboldened the mob and, believing the Terms of Surrender the mob had sworn to, he lowered the draw bridge, as the crowd had been demanding. 

A few minutes later, the Marquis de Launay’s head, had been severed and was atop a pike, dripping with blood, as it bobbed in the crowd. Several soldiers who had negotiated the Terms of Surrender with the mob, had their heads severed, but not before they had been disemboweled. The entrails carried amongst the crowd did not seem to elicit any horror or reproach from the bloodthirsty rabble. On the contrary, heads, hands, torsos, genitals, and more entrails were soon seen bobbing among the multitudes.

Seven prisoners were released. Seven. Who were astounded to see the head of their former warden, known to be a hesitant, mild sort, with a placard underneath: “De Launay, Governor of the Bastille, disloyal and treacherous enemy of the people.”

The king’s reaction, to the applause of the multitudes, was to send more troops away in order to not further provoke the people. We all know how his acquiescence ended for him, for his family, and for his country. A country that has never, to this day, recovered the heights and glories of its past.

The events of the storming of the Bastille were an ominous foreshadowing of what awaited France, including the French Revolution’s progeny, culminating with the Russian Revolution of 1917, a little over a century later.

This year, on July 14 (when this is being written), I checked a different Latin American land’s radio stations and, sure enough, inevitably, a paean to Bastille Day emerged. As noted in several posts on this blog (see here and here for two examples) Venezuela’s and much of Latin America’s intellectual heritage looks more to Paris than to Madrid. It has always been so in the modern era. And that helps explain the differing trajectories taken by North and South America.

As we observe and react to the current disturbances, let us ask ourselves whether these resemble 1776 or Bastille Day. They are not the same.

And whenever you hear or read liberté, égalité, fraternité, or similar sentiments, be sure to remember to add the remaining words from the original: ou la mort.

Propaganda poster from 1793. Note that even as late as 1793 the phrase, ou la mort, was still in use.

The king of France, Louis XVI.

The French Revolution as depicted by its admirers.

A more accurate representation of the French Revolution. 

Burial of victims of Russian Revolutions of 1917. Ou La Mort.

Fourth and Fifth of July: Declarations of Independence

Richard Barnes

(First posted on July 4, 2020)

Those who grew up in El Pao will remember celebrating both the Fourth and the Fifth of July, reflecting yet another similarity between the two countries. The American and Venezuelan holidays afforded an opportunity for executives to declare and affirm ongoing genuine friendship and a collaborative spirit between both peoples while we children looked forward to a long “recess” as well as having our fathers home for a more extended time than usual, and also learning a bit more to understand and appreciate our liberties. 

I was fortunate to have had a father and mother who, as best they knew how, taught us appreciation and gratitude for America and also for Venezuela.

Venezuela history was a required subject in school. And a most frustrating one it was for me. For the life of me, I could not understand what the early 19th century fighting was about. My teachers seemed to tell stories assuming we students possessed presupposed knowledge as to why the revolutionaries rose against Madrid. But I had no such knowledge. My father had told me about the North American colonies and how they had a history of self-government and liberties and how England had begun taking those liberties away, even to the point of stationing mercenary troops in private homes where they abused and in some cases even defiled the mothers and daughters. 

Furthermore, the English parliament had decreed the assignment of Church of England bishops to the colonies: a last straw. I could see why folks would resist and seek to stop that, even if it meant overthrowing the rule of the English king. 

Although my mother and father taught me to respect and honor Venezuela, my teachers told no stories about Spain’s abuses against Venezuela. We heard much about abstract concepts of liberty and fraternity and equality. However, all stratospheric disquisitions about intangible concepts did not satisfy me as to why the Criollos rose against Madrid initially, let alone explain the eventual extermination of over one-third of their number. The entire country churned with violence and at the end had been practically depopulated. It was clear to me that the savagery and atrocities occurred not prior to, but during the Revolution. I do remember hearing a teacher quote the words uttered by Simón Bolivar as he approached death in the late 1820’s, “I have plowed in the sea….” And, “…those countries will infallibly fall into chaos and dictatorships….”

But why cast off Spanish rule for intangible concepts only to install tangibly cruel “chaos and dictatorships”? 

To read the July 4, 1776 and the July 5, 1811 declarations of independence back to back is an instructive exercise which might help explain why.

The Venezuelan is over 800 words longer and reflects allusions to French revolutionary thinking that is absent from the American. Consistent with the American, it also alludes to the Christian religion which sounds discordant if one has a basic understanding of Rousseau and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

The Venezuelan opens by alluding to a former declaration (April 19, 1810) which was adopted as a result of Spain’s occupation by France. It goes on to complain about three centuries of suppressed rights and that recent political events in Europe had served to offer an opportunity to restore those rights. They then, following the 1776 Declaration, proceed to justify their actions.

The United States [American] declaration does not complain about 150 years of colonial rule. Rather it expresses concern that, when abuses make it necessary to dissolve long-standing political bands, that such action must be taken carefully and with strong justification. It expresses the need and the willingness to “suffer, while evils are sufferable” before abolishing government and relations to “which they are accustomed.”

I know this is simplistic, and historians will disagree, but to the layman, the 1811 comes across as willful, the 1776, as reluctant.

The longest body in each is the justification. The Venezuelan uses 1,156 words, beginning with another allusion to 300 years of Spanish rule and affirming that a people has a right to govern themselves. Then the author expresses a willingness to overlook those 300 years by “placing a veil” over them (“corriendo un velo sobre los trescientos años“) and proceeds to recent European events which had dissolved the Spanish nation. It goes at length criticizing the Spanish monarchy for its abandonment of her throne in favor of the French and how this state of affairs had left Venezuela without legal recourse (“dejándola sin el amparo y garantía de las leyes“). 

It asserts, furthermore, that the vast territories of the Americas with far more population than Spain itself cannot be governed from afar, etc. Here, the author presumes to speak for all the Spanish Americas. The layman is justified in wondering if this misdirection is inserted to remove attention from special pleading in the document that does not wholly stand up.

This section is not easy to follow today without some knowledge of the events current in 1811.

This was not a unanimous declaration; three provinces did not join, presaging the terrible bloodletting which was to follow.

For its justification, the American declaration uses 824 words (332 less than the Venezuelan), to list the abuses and their attempts to humbly address these legally only to have their attempts rebuffed. They make no allusions to 150 years of oppression or of unhappiness with their colonial status. They address only relatively recent abuses, including violence against life and property, mercenaries on their way to fight against them, war waged against them, threats to their religious liberty (the Quebec allusion), and much more. These are listed almost in bullet point format, but without the bullets, and are easy to understand, even 244 years later. It reads as if the document were a declaration of the right to self defense.

This was a unanimous declaration signed by representatives of each of the thirteen colonies.

In their conclusion, the Venezuelans, yet again, allude to centuries of oppression and their natural right to govern themselves. They assert they have a right to establish a government according to the general will (“voluntad general“) of her people.

It is hard to miss the influence of French revolutionary thinking in the Venezuelan document, despite allusions to a Supreme Being (“Ser Supremo”) and to Jesus Christ (“Jesucristo”). Its reference to the “General Will” is Rousseauean and is also found in the atheistic French Declaration of the Rights of Man. 

They also state they will defend their religion. 

The layman can’t help but be impressed by the schizophrenic nature of this document which contained appeals to atheistic revolutionary thinking then in vogue, while recognizing that the “regular folk” were still very religious and needed to hear allusions to religious fidelity.

The American conclusion appealed to the Supreme Judge of the world and in the name and authority of the people in the colonies they declared independence.

I know that professors delight in pointing out that Thomas Jefferson was the “author” of the American declaration and that he was not a Christian, etc.

However, one does not read the Virginia Fairfax Resolves (1774), or the Virginia Declaration of Rights (May, 1776), both of whose  primary author was George Mason, a Christian, nor does one read clergyman, John Wise, who in 1710 wrote, “Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man,” and “The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth…” and “Democracy is Christ’s government in church and state.” Jefferson drew from a rich, deep Christian well. According to President Calvin Coolidge, Jefferson himself “acknowledged that his ‘best ideas of democracy’ had been secured at church meetings.”

The American declaration was followed by seven more years of war whose official end was the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and a constitution, still in effect, whose final ratification was in 1790. The Venezuelan declaration was followed by nineteen years of wars (plural) characterized by unspeakable cruelties and tortures, including a proclamation of “war to the death” by Simón Bolivar. By their end in 1830, one third of Venezuela’s population had perished. These wars were followed by more wars and rebellions which continued to the end of the century. She’s had at least 27 constitutions.

In sum, the American hearkened to her Christian heritage and history; the Venezuelan, to French revolutionary atheism, most starkly demonstrated by yet another revolution, the Russian, in 1917. Both the American and the Venezuelan shed blood. But the latter, like the French, shed it more abundantly.

I love the United States of America and its history. I love her Christian heritage and her pioneers. She is a wonderfully great country with a people who will always pull at my heart. I also love Venezuela and the warmth and genuine friendship of her people. I am grateful the Good Lord has exposed me to both and shown me that, in Christ, our best days are yet ahead.

​​Declaration of Independence – Text of the Declaration of Independence | Britannica

Text of the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence

​​Acta de la Declaración de Independencia de Venezuela – Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

Towards the bottom of article linked above, the reader will find the text of the July 5, 1811 Venezuela Declaration of Independence. It is in Spanish.

​Speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence | Teaching American History

Highly recommended to all, not just Americans

The USS Thresher

Richard Barnes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But my memories about that ship have kept intruding.

So here we are. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She never did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

La Sayona and La Llorona

Richard Barnes

Guest Post by Professor Cristóbal Lárez Velásquez

Mérida, Venezuela

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Dr. Lárez Velásquez!

Guest Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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