Blog

Cero

Richard Barnes

Company towns in petroleum or mining camps in Venezuela, like El Pao, had hospitals and doctors who tended employees and their families. Recently, I was prompted to think a bit about my childhood experiences and interactions with doctors and the hospital. My experience was primarily in El Pao, but also encompassed an annual check up with a doctor in Miami. I suspect my parents just wanted to sort of double check by getting a second opinion to confirm that all was well.

As I’ve told my children over the years and now tell my three youngest who are still at home, we have been blessed with good health. It is far too easy to take this blessing for granted. One should never do so.

Whenever we had to see a doctor (anemia, parasites, fevers, tonsillitis, broken collar bone, sudden nausea), depending on the urgency, we either rushed in as an emergency or made an appointment. In any case, Dr. Hernandez [a composite name serving for several doctors whose faces I can still recall and none of whose names was “Hernández”] would examine the patient and tell my parents what he had noticed and his treatment including any medicines he’d prescribe.

On one occasion, when I was about 6 or 7 years old, I was accompanying my father as he travelled with the company baseball team to play in Ciudad Bolivar, on the Orinoco River. This was before the bridges across the Caroní River were built and crossings were by ferry, making the trip much longer than it was by the time I left Venezuela.

About 40 minutes after the river crossing, the team stopped at El Kilómetro 70, a major highway intersection with a large, popular diner and gas station. I told my father to go ahead, that I’d wait for him in the pickup. I did not tell him that I was feeling very poorly because I did not want him to send me back and so cause me to miss the ballgame. 

However, “Cero”, the water boy who was one of the friendliest and kindest men I have ever known, had decided to come out and look in the pickup, “¿Te pasa algo?“

I had been curled up, not thinking anyone would see me. He startled me but even so I could not move quickly as I was in pain and, as I recall, had nausea.

He turned away and in a minute my father was opening the door and after a brief discussion he along with Cero decided to drive on ahead of the team to Ciudad Bolivar where we had friends. Regardless, this would take less time than to travel back to El Pao, river crossing and all. 

My father drove to our friends, the Graziani’s, who immediately took us to their family doctor who attended me promptly. I don’t recall what he did, but I do remember that by the time we left his office, I was hungry and at Mrs. Graziani’s house she served me the most delicious pumpkin soup ever. And I was not partial to soup. I have been blessed with the opportunity to travel to many different parts of the world. Whenever a restaurant had pumpkin soup, I’d order just to see if it equalled my childhood memory. Of course, none ever has.

My father told me later that Cero had come inside “El Kilómetro 70” and had told him that my color was not good. That caused my father to look at me more carefully when he came out to the pickup. He was impressed with and appreciative of Cero’s perceptions.

I think my father was able get to the game in time that day, but I had to stay with the Graziani’s. However, by then, I was content. I do remember his telling us our team had won.

Medicine and doctor care was very personal then. My father paid the doctor and thanked him. In El Pao, the doctors were paid by the company. In Miami, as I recall, medical costs were a bit less simple because those were paid by the company’s medical insurance; however, care and interactions were far more personal and direct than they are today.

These thoughts were prompted by the chapter, “The Crisis in Medicine” in the book, The Sensate Culture, to which I’ve alluded in an earlier post. 

My intention was to write a brief review of that chapter here, but then I remembered Cero, and it is impossible not to pay tribute to him first. Unfortunately, I do not remember his real name and my mother does not remember either. However, in his case, the nickname was purposefully the exact opposite of the man’s worth. He was respected and admired and was easy to laugh with.

After leaving Venezuela, between college studies and early career hustle and bustle, I eventually forgot about Cero. Then came the expropriations of the oil and ore enterprises in Venezuela under the first administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez and many Americans and their spouses, including my parents, left the country.

The year was 1976 and unbeknownst to my father, word had spread of his imminent departure, and the veterans of the mining camp baseball team, which my father had shepherded to AA ranking and championships, agreed to come from all points of the country and surprise him with a veterans game. Newspapers covered the event but I’ve lost the clippings.

However, several men, including Cero, did not get word of the event.

About a month later, my father and mother, along with my little brother, had begun their trek out of the country. Their first stop was Maiquetía, the international airport which serves Caracas, where they were to spend the night and then head back to the airport the next morning. As they waited for their luggage, Cero saw them and ran to them. They embraced and laughed — it had been more than a decade since Cero had left El Pao and they had lost touch. 

After asking about the rest of the family and being told that everyone is fine, Cero said, “I remember that you usually took your vacation in September. I see you now are taking it in the springtime?”

“Well, this is not a trip for vacation; we are leaving the country.”

Tears welled in Cero’s eyes, and they talked for a long time. But what I remember most from my parents’ narrative of the event was something he said amongst all the words, “Please don’t leave, Charles. This is your country. You are loved here. Don’t leave.”

I still choke up when I recall that; and I had not recalled in many years.

They embraced and parted company one last time.

Cero was worth millions.

Multi-year AA Champions. My father is in front row, far left. Cero is not pictured.

Sopa de auyama (calabaza). Hard to beat a childhood memory.

Maiquetía in better days

Morillo: Spain Seeks to Reconquer America, Part II

Richard Barnes

In my prior post, I alluded to the betrayal of General Pablo Morillo by one of the most despicable scoundrels of South America’s 19th Century revolutionary wars, Juan Bautista Arismendi. For generations, this man, like Bolivar and others, has been held up as a noble, heroic, unselfish paragon of righteousness. And, as is often the case, the writers of modern history are actually agents of propaganda. Arismendi was a cruel, pitiless spawn of 18th Century Enlightenment doctrine. Like Robespierre, he loved ideology and blood more than his fellow man, including his own wife.

One example of his coldness was his reply when informed that his wife, imprisoned for aiding the murderers, and about to give birth, “I’d rather have a country (patria) than a son.” I’ve paraphrased the quote, but that was the gist. Compare that sentiment to the motivations of the North American colonists who risked it all precisely to protect hearth and home. In the case of Mrs. Arismendi, the Spaniards released her. This, in contrast to Arismendi’s slaughter — with clubs and spears — of Criollos (Venezuelans born of Spanish parents) sick and wounded in hospitals in Caracas. Lord, spare us from ideologues!

As noted in the prior post, after the massacre of the few Spanish on the island of Margarita, Arismendi sent word to Bolivar, who was being aided by the disastrous, murderous regime in Haiti. Bolivar headed back to Venezuela, intending to stop first in Margarita to meet up with Arismendi.

En route, his squadron came across two Spanish ships which were promptly attacked in a fierce, bloody battle. The Spanish were overwhelmed and Bolivar’s men, with the War to the Death proclamation still in force, slaughtered all they came across, including a gravely wounded man in sick bay and the physician, who approached the men, seeking to calm them down, only to find himself cut down as well. 

Meanwhile, Simón Bolívar, the Great Liberator, was laughing as he practiced his aim by shooting at the castaways who sought to swim either to safety or even to Bolivar’s ships to keep from drowning. Bolívar, contrary to all laws of war and peace, shot them. Witness accounts note that he killed two in this way. I could find no record if any of the others were spared or simply abandoned in the open sea.

Witnesses affirmed that Bolívar was laughing as he shot, “He completely approves and encourages the killing of prisoners after the battle and during the retreat and has even sought to be a witness to these scenes of infamous carnage.”

Bolivar’s cruelty was well known before Morillo arrived in Margarita the prior year, 1815. Nevertheless, he had considered Arismendi to be sincere in his protestations of loyalty and ignorance, this despite Morillo’s own men urging him to not believe Arismendi as there was overwhelming evidence of his murderous character. However, Morillo waved this aside in his foolish initial desire to fight a raging fire with a spray bottle.

When he learned of Arismendi’s betrayal, of his murder of the men he had left behind, of numerous scenes of unbelievable cruelty beyond even that which he had witnessed in the Napoleonic wars in Spain, he hardened and determined to execute all ringleaders henceforth. As noted in the prior post, this is what he did in Santa Fe, despite the pitiful cries of wives and children. 

Witness accounts relate Morillo’s regret for not having listened to his men upon his initial disembarking on Margarita. He would speak of the wives and children of the men he had left to die at the hands of Arismendi and Bolivar and of the many more Spanish soldiers who perished because of his foolishness.

Morillo is treated poorly in the history books, which must create monsters to slay in order to exalt men of low degree. However, he was a far better man than Bolivar and Arismendi.

General Pablo Morillo (1775-1837)

Morillo: Spain Seeks to Reconquer America

Richard Barnes

It has been a while since I’ve posted about Venezuela’s colonial and early republic history. It is not easy to write about and, should one care to peruse reader comments of the very few books critical of Simon Bolivar and his Criollo allies, one would see passionate, not to say blind, defense of Bolivar and trashing of anyone who would dare question the conventional narrative.

However, the conventional narrative must be questioned. Even as a child, it was difficult for me to understand just what the uprising was all about. The national anthem has a line that says: El pobre en su choza / libertad pidió (“The poor in his hut / asked for liberty”). 

However, setting aside the textbooks and reading contemporary correspondence of that era, or other primary documents, such as Alexander Humboldt’s (no friend of Spain!) voluminous correspondence and journals, one would not see the “poor in his hut asking for liberty”. On the contrary, one would see “centuries of civilization” — Bolivar’s own words as he lamented the maelstrom and cataclysm he unleashed but for which he never recognized responsibility.

Further, one would see men and boys, handcuffed with ropes, hauled out of their homes in front of screaming mothers and sisters, and dragged to the front lines, where the ropes would be cut and they would be ordered to fight, without any idea what they were fighting for. Or why.

Reading first hand accounts of the truly fratricidal upheavals and bloodletting of that era is depressing.

Few Americans know that the initial uprisings of 1811, fomented by the Criollos (the direct descendants of Spanish colonists), coincided with the period of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. The Criollos saw their chance to declare independence when Spain was focused on her own survival. It is important to note that “the poor in his hut” had not idea of the political maneuverings that the Machiavellian, power-hungry Criollos in Caracas were machinating.

Little did they understand the civil war that was being unleashed against anyone — including “the poor in his hut” — who would not swear allegiance to the Criollos, or who was merely suspected of loyalty to the king of Spain for something so insignificant as “centuries of civilization”. And, even less, did anyone suspect Bolivar’s “War to the Death” decree, which hurled vast regions into a truly racial war against all Spanish descendants (who were not bonafide revolutionary Criollos).

By 1815, Spain, having defeated Napoleon’s armies, now turned her attention to her bloodied colonies. She sent General Pablo Morillo as supreme commander. This was the first time in three centuries that Spain had sent such an army to the Americas. His large fleet arrived off the coast of the island of Margarita, then under the command of Bolivar’s sadistic sycophant, Juan Bautista Arismendi. Seeing the large fleet and knowing it meant business, Arismendi immediately surrendered and with tears groveled before Morillo who was empowered by the king to offer amnesty as he saw fit. Arismendi claimed ignorance of Spain’s victory over France and that his actions were actually in defense of Spain against France. He pled with tears, “Clemency! Clemency my general! I ask for clemency in the name of this poor people who have suffered so much! Save me from a deserved punishment, for the love of the king!”

Witnesses state that Morillo was deeply moved and told Arismendi to stand and offered him the amnesty he had begged for so genuinely and repentantly. This despite others present who passionately warned Morillo not to do this; that Arismendi had much innocent blood on his hands and was not to be trusted. But Morillo was firm in his belief that Arismendi was sincere and trustworthy.

Morillo departed to Caracas where he was received with genuine joy by a desperate citizenry which had suffered much under their “liberators”. This was in February of 1815.

On May 30 of 1816, over a year later, Morillo was in Santa Fe, Colombia, as guest of honor of a banquet given by the grateful people of Santa Fe. Toward the end of the festivities, “more than 50 ladies came to the general, most crying, begging forgiveness on behalf of their husbands, sons, and brothers who had been ringleaders in uprisings and killings on behalf of the Criollos against the Spanish authorities and loyalists. The tears and supplications were enough to soften a rock. Mothers had thrown themselves at Morillo’s feet begging for pity and mercy for their sons, refusing to stand up….” 

Morillo summoned internal strength to not show any emotion, however, witnesses state that he was deeply moved. Nevertheless, he remained silent, only once in a while murmuring almost in a whisper, “Levántese usted, Señora” (“Stand up, madam”), as he extended his gloved hand to help them stand.

He allowed them to speak for a long time and then, with a firm voice, said:

“Señoras, my king, as a Spanish gentleman, has generous and humanitarian sentiments and has invested me with the most precious faculty of offering pardon so long as such pardon will work for the health of the kingdom. So, upon stepping for the first time on American soil, on the island of Margarita, I offered pardon to all who requested it of me, very much in the same way in which you are requesting it of me now…”

“Do you know how those ingrates repaid my freely offered pardon? Those who, with many tears, begged me to forgive in the name of his majesty, the king? As soon as I turned my back, they, more bloodthirsty than ever, turned upon the officers and soldiers I, in my credulity, had left behind, outnumbered by 100 to 1. Each one was cruelly murdered by knife, sword, and bayonet.”

“Each one of my men who were so treacherously murdered, each one by 100 assassins, also had mothers, wives, and sons, who today curse my name a thousand times for having been so careless in believing such fraudulent protests from such miserable cowards. Had I listened to my men and executed twenty ringleaders, instead of so facilely pardoning men worthy of death, my conscience would not be burdened with the baleful regrets that weigh so heavily on me today….”

“If I put your men at liberty, who can assure me that the loyal people who remain in Santa Fe will not perish by their hands?”

“I am very sorry and saddened for the pain I see painted upon your faces … but … I cannot pardon when the health of the realm does not permit it. No. I cannot. My resolution as to the ringleaders is irrevocable.”

General Morillo had received a detailed briefing on the treachery of Arismendi. By November of 1815, Arismendi, pardoned by Morillo, had gathered 1,500 men and had come upon the 200 men left behind by Morillo. Each one was cut down with machetes, knives, hatchets, and spears.

Morillo should have known (as his own men had tried to warn him) that savages who would drag Spanish loyalists from hospital beds and then club them to death, were not to be trusted. 

Juan Bautista Arismendi (1775-1841). Considered a hero and patriot by the ruling class in Venezuela; however, his story as another side which is not so sublime.

General Pablo Morilla (1778-1837). He is portrayed as a monster of atrocities; however, the unbiased record does not support that description. He went to his grave remorseful for his untimely pardon of the treacherous Arismendi.

Isla Margarita, Venezuela

Municipal government site in Santa Fe, Colombia. First built in 1787, but then rebuilt in 1807. This structure remained until early 20th Century.

Have We Been Had? Part 4: Another Look At Sweden

Richard Barnes

The last time we considered Sweden’s anomalous experience with the Covid Regimentation was over a year and a half ago, in August, 2021. 

As I stated in that post, “One country refused to bow down to the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, and the Lockdown and Mask Professors (which are legion).

“That country is Sweden. For a refresher, see here. And for my reply to some pushback I got for my comments on Sweden [in 2020], see here.”

John Hinderaker, of Powerlline, published the below post, which we all should read. The Local article he quotes from is behind a paywall so if you wish to read more you’ll have to subscribe:

From John Hinderaker:

Sweden was an outlier during the covid epidemic, in that its government did not order a nationwide shutdown [nor mask wearing]. This policy did not please much of Sweden’s establishment, as represented by The Local, which has been pro-lockdown. So this Local article is notable, in that it recognizes a basic fact about covid mortality that should have been obvious all along:

At one point in May 2020, Sweden had the highest Covid-19 death rate in the world, spurring newspapers like the New York Times and Time Magazine to present the country as a cautionary tale, a warning of how much more Covid-19 could ravage populations if strict enough measures were not applied.

That was very early in the epidemic, obviously. And country to country comparisons of covid-classified deaths are questionable:

Excess mortality — the number of people who die in a year compared to the number expected to die based on previous years — is seen by some statisticians as a better measure for comparing countries’ Covid-19 responses, as it is less vulnerable to differences in how Covid-19 deaths are reported.

Here in Minnesota, a guy who fell off a ladder and broke his neck was recorded as a covid death. Likewise a guy who had a car accident, was flung into a ditch, and died. And many others of that sort. Total mortality, on the other hand, is objectively measurable.

So there was undisguised glee among lockdown sceptics when Svenska Dagbladet published its data last week showing that in the pandemic years 2020, 2021 and 2022 Sweden’s excess mortality was the lowest, not only in the European Union, but of all the Nordic countries, beating even global Covid-19 success stories, such as Norway, Denmark and Finland.

So if you forget about classifying covid deaths and look at how many people died in excess of demographic projections, Sweden’s results were the best in the European Union. How can that be? The answer is, or should have been, obvious:

So why, if the Covid-19 death rates are still so different, are the excess mortality rates so similar?

This largely reflects the fact that many of those who died in Sweden in the first year of the pandemic were elderly people in care homes who would have died anyway by the end of 2022.

About 90 percent of Covid-19 deaths were in people above 70, Aavitsland pointed out, adding that this is the same age group where you find around 80 percent of all deaths, regardless of cause, in a Scandinavian country.

“My interpretation is that in the first year of the pandemic, say March 2020 – February 2021, Sweden had several thousand excess deaths among the elderly, including nursing home residents,” he said. “Most of this was caused by Covid-19. In the other [Nordic] countries, more people like these survived, but they died in 2022. The other countries managed to delay some deaths, but now, three years after, we end up at around the same place.”

An important fact here is that people who died from covid were overwhelmingly not just old, but old and already sick. So covid tipped them over sooner than would otherwise have happened, but not by a lot.

The bottom line is a point I have made more than once: covid shutdowns, at best–i.e., not in states like New York and Minnesota where infected old people were sent into nursing homes–delayed the inevitable for some of the already-sick elderly, at great cost to the rest of us, and especially at appalling cost to young people. It was a terrible bargain.

The above post by Mr. Hinderaker is not surprising to many of us who strongly questioned the worldwide “Covid Regime”. However, contrary to The Local’s assertion, it gives us no “glee” to see the devastation unquestioning acquiescence to corrupt reasoning has caused.

Again, it is important to remember that the world’s “public health experts” estimated that, without coverings and curfews, Sweden would suffer 80,000 to 90,000 deaths by May, 2020. That is, before the summer of 2020, Sweden was to have experienced massive numbers of deaths, not to mention a crippled hospital network. 

That did NOT happen. So the “experts” then moved the goal posts and began to assert that Sweden’s death rate was higher than that of her immediate neighbors.

“But, of course, curfews were not imposed upon the world because of ‘death rates’ [or “number of cases”] but rather because of absolute numbers of death. Numbers which never came close to materializing. Regardless, her death rate was lower than those of countries (and some U.S. states) who did exactly what the “public health experts” told them to do. And, what’s more, around June of 2020, her neighbors, Finland and Norway, actually reverted to very laissez faire approaches as well. In other words, their approaches emulated Sweden’s. And their approaches resulted in lower death rates. So, the experts’ and media’s comparisons to her neighbors left out the fact that her neighbors’ also had a “light touch” response to the plague. I know, I know: we are all shocked (!) that the reporting was misleading.”

“If you relied only on the usual media to keep informed, you would think the unified intelligent world was in agreement and that only quacks and idiots differed. You would not know that an entire developed European country was among the refuseniks.”

My conclusion back in 2021 applies today even more forcefully:

“Government Central Planning will have even less success in controlling a virus than it has had controlling the economies of the former Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela.

“A virus will virus. Central Planning will only exacerbate its effects. 

“But, as we have seen, and will continue to see, the temptation for man to play God and to control the lives of others is overwhelming. It was so in Eden (“ye shall be as gods”) and it will be so until the end of time.”

Lest we forget: Sweden vs. New York mortality in 2020. Both ended up at about the same. However, the trajectory of each presents a grotesque contrast. New York’s mandates were draconian. So were her results.

Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top epidemiologist who withstood unrelenting, withering criticism while staying the course

https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/accelerated-urgent-care-doctors-recommend-lifting-shelter-in-place-order

This briefing to local California media took place almost three years ago, in April, 2020. After 5 million views, it was taken down, a practice that has since become all-too-common. However, the news station still has it up. Both videos are available as of this writing and well worth your time because they so clearly reflect what many knew even back then but were censored from saying so. The first is roughly 51 minutes, the second, 2 minutes.

Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index

Richard Barnes

In the mid 1980s I had the privilege of working with the Gideon’s organization. Every Saturday, rain snow or shine, a group of us would meet for breakfast in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, to review assignments and plan the upcoming weeks. Although our conversations covered just about everything under the sun, I’d often hear these men, all of whom were older than I, express gratitude for God, family, and country. In that order.

However, they were also realistic enough to gently tamp down my younger-man’s exuberance about America. In my naiveté I still believed that, if one would scratch beneath the surface across the country, one would tap into a vast reservoir of appreciation for our roots, both colonial and early republic. By that I meant, surely, the great majority of Americans understood that the truths we regard as “self-evident” are so because of the religious tradition undergirding our beliefs and our very lives and that to reject that heritage would lead to tyranny and ruin. 

My colleagues would point to Scripture, which has plenty of examples of nations whose names now gather dust in forgotten manuscripts and unvisited libraries. Nations that knew the Triune God but did not honor him. The words of Daniel to Belshazzar come to mind. Even the nation of Israel was judged for her betrayal. Sadly, it is the nature of men and women to forget, to deny, to dishonor.

John Stuart Mill, the great relativistic thinker, assumed that Christian ethics are permanent and hence we can take them for granted. He provides yet another example proving that “great thinkers” are not often wise.

I recalled my friends from Kalamazoo when I read the 2022 Transparency International Corruptions Perceptions Index comments on Venezuela.

Venezuela’s foundations differed widely from colonial and early republic America. However, she did have a basis for understanding the source of her prosperity in the first half of the 20th Century, a time when she enjoyed high levels of economic freedom which produced an environment of numberless voluntary transactions and unprecedented years of well-being with high growth rates. In 1960, Venezuela’s per capita income, at 45% of the US per capita income, was the highest in South America while her growth rate was higher than even Germany’s. 

Her great economic success fueled the transition to democracy in 1959. However, her democratically elected officials immediately began to curtail her economic freedoms in favor of Socialistic policies which eventually led to contractions and, by the end of the century, ushered in an authoritarian Socialist regime that, like a protean, angry octopus, has its tentacles in every nook and cranny of Venezuelan’s lives. By 2013, even the Carter Center, albeit belatedly, acknowledged the Venezuelan “elections” to be a sham (my word, not theirs; I don’t have to be diplomatic). By then the damage was done and the fix was in, and continues to be in, to this day.

Oh, but there’s more.

Transparency International’s 2022 report ranks Venezuela as the most corrupt country in the Americas. That’s “most corrupt”, as in more corrupt than Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Her rulers are reliably accused of leading massive drug cartels and having extensive ties to major international criminal organizations. Incredibly, illegal businesses account for 21% of Venezuela’s GDP. And her mining, especially gold and diamonds, are controlled by criminal groups who, with impunity, extort, enslave, prostitute, and murder the inhabitants, mostly defenseless indigenous peoples. 

In other words, Socialists are grossly guilty of what they delight in accusing Capitalists and Christians (they purposefully interchange the two).

In my youth, I would often hear the older generation’s assurances that Venezuela would not go the way of Cuba or Allende’s Chile. That she understood very well that liberty created her prosperity. As for her dalliances with Socialistic policies since 1960, those were very limited and did were not slippery slopes. I wanted to believe such assurances, even though my own family history said otherwise. Cuba, where my father was born, was also an economic miracle which went the way of all flesh practically overnight. At the time I did not know enough to ask my elders what made Venezuela any different; what would keep her from doing likewise.

And I certainly was not aware of Venezuela’s deeply infiltrated military, in cahoots with Castro and determined to rule Venezuela in Communist fashion, tyranny and all.

Venezuela “understood” where her prosperity came from. However, she ditched it nonetheless. 

The United States appears to be doing the same, with even less excuse.

Mourning the death of a child. In addition to the griefs which are the common lot of all, these peoples have been abused, murdered, displaced, and enslaved. Countless have fled to unknown destinies in Brazil.

Mother and children in Brazil after fleeing criminal attacks in Venezuela’s mining arc.

Plaza Colon in Caracas, Venezuela, circa 1950

Caracas boy, circa 1950