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Columbus Day

Richard Barnes

On 12 October 1492, when the little fleet of Christopher Columbus raised a Bahamian island that he named San Salvador, neither he nor anyone else guessed that this would be an historic date. Even Columbus, who regarded himself as a child of destiny, thought he had merely found an outlying island to “the Indies.” 

Had his entire fleet been wrecked, nobody would have been the wiser, and in all probability America would not have been discovered until 1500 when Pedro Alvares Cabral, on his way to the real India, sighted a mountain near the coast of Brazil. 

Thus the entire history of Europeans in America stems from Columbus’s First Voyage. The Northmen’s discovery of Newfoundland almost five centuries earlier proved to be dead-end. Pre-Columbian Portuguese, Welsh, Irish, English, and Venetian voyages to America are modern-made myths, phantoms which left not one footprint on the sands of time.

But Columbus’s First Voyage proved to be the avant-garde for thousands of hidalgos who, weary of sustaining their haughty pride in poverty, were ready to hurl themselves on the New World in search of gold and glory.

Columbus’s discovery led within a year to the first permanent European colony in America, in Hispaniola; and he himself made three more voyages of discovery, as well as sparking off those of Ojeda, Juan de La Cosa, the younger Pinzón, Vespucci, both Cabots, Magellan, and countless others. 

Not only the northern voyages, starting with John Cabot’s of 1497, but the southern voyages of discovery and Spain’s vast empire stretching from Florida to Patagonia and out to the Philippines stem from the First Voyage of that intrepid mariner and practical dreamer Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea….”

        Samuel Eliot Morrison (1887-1976), distinguished naval historian, Harvard

So the surname of Colon [Italian form of Columbus] which he revived was a fitting one, because in Greek it means “member”, and by his proper name Christopher, men might know that he was a member of Christ, by Whom he was sent for the salvation of those people …. [Christopher Columbus] carried [the Name of] Christ over deep waters with great danger to himself …. [Christopher Columbus asking Christ’s aid and protection in that perilous pass, crossed over with his company that the Indian nations might become dwellers in the triumphant Church of Heaven. There is reason to believe that many souls that Satan expected to catch because they had not passed through the waters of baptism were by the Admiral made dwellers in the eternal glory of Paradise….”

        Ferdinand Columbus (son of Christopher Columbus; 1488-1539)

In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Because, most Christian and very Exalted, Excellent, and mighty Princes, King and Queen of the Spains and of the Islands of the Sea, our Lord and Lady, in this present year, 1492, after Your Highnesses had made an end to the war with the Moors who ruled in Europe, and had concluded the war in the very great city of Granada, where in the present year, on the second day of the month of January, I saw the Royal Standards of Your Highnesses placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra ….

[He goes on to recap the insistent petitions of a prince of India for instructors from Rome to teach them the holy faith but such had not been provided] thus so many people were lost through lapsing into idolatries and receiving doctrines of perdition….

[And therefore] Your Highnesses … devoted to the Christian Faith … resolved to send me….

[Throughout, Christopher Columbus repeatedly emphasized the goal of converting people to Christ]

        Christopher Columbus, extracted from Journal of the First Voyage, 1492

Today, October 12, is what used to be universally and uncontroversially known as Columbus Day. 

In 1892 planning for the great Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, began in Chicago and culminated the following year. It was a phenomenal and confident celebration of Columbus’s discovery and the progress of American, Christian civilization. A mere century later, in 1992, the 500th anniversary was, to put it mildly, a major downer, with high school and college students instructing us that it would have been better had Columbus just stayed home. 

Presumably these young scholars would prefer to have been appetizers gracing the tables of the cannibalistic Aztecs, Incas, Caribes, and others.

The Russian, Zurab Tsereteli, dedicated a gargantuan bronze statue, The Birth of The New World to Columbus, Ohio, to celebrate; however, that city turned it down as did others. Puerto Rico distinguished herself by eventually accepting it. 

To our cynical age, men such as Columbus who took their faith with all seriousness; who genuinely feared God and sought to do their best to please Him are seen anachronistically as hypocrites and materialistic frauds. 

But nothing could be further from the truth. 

By remaining silent over much of the 20th Century and well into the 21st, we have allowed the Zinnistic charlatans and their ahistorical narratives to dominate our schools and universities which in turn have bequeathed us with countless generations of robotic, atheistic know-nothing, violently angry clones.

Although I would rather we as a country placed more emphasis on the church calendar — sans the countless saints days — it is notable that the three Christian themed holidays on the civic calendar — Christmas, Columbus Day, and Thanksgiving — have been under virulent attack for generations. Is it too much to ask for us to know how to defend the history behind these? 

Once again, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s warning is apropos: to destroy a country you must first cut off its roots.

May you enjoy your Columbus Day with gratitude to the Lord for having raised up such a man.

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)

Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1892-1893)

The Birth of The New World, Zurab Tsereteli, Arecibo, Puerto Rico

Chigüire

Richard Barnes

This post is mostly fact — the description of the Chigüire and the Tragavenado — and some imagination — the scene of the snake trapping the rodent. With a true bit of Alexander von Humboldt thrown in for good measure.

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Chigüires (known as Capybaras in the US) are rarely seen alone. Their two principal enemies are the crocodile and the jaguar, followed closely by a third: the tragavenado (“deer swallower”), Venezuela’s version of a python or a boa constrictor. Despite these enemies, they reproduce with amazing rapidity.

The Chigüire thrives abundantly in Venezuela, living fifty or sixty together in troops on the banks of rivers, of which the principal is the grand Orinoco. They also congregate along the Apure and Caroní, other major rivers which happen to be tributaries of the Orinoco. These animals grow to about the size of pigs in Midwestern farms and even look a bit like them, but with yellowish-brown bristly fur. 

They swim better than they run, often gracelessly diving precipitately when feeling the least alarm, squealing sharply and loudly. Their eyes are large and protruding, a characteristic of nocturnal animals. They defend themselves only at the last extremity, by then usually too late, although, according to some naturalists, their grinding teeth, especially the rear ones, can tear the paw of a jaguar or even the leg of a horse.

In the colonial era, inland, Chigüires were considered appropriate food, including hams in time of lent. In this, the monks and the Indians were agreed. It is not clear what the monks’ reaction was when Chigüires were determined to be not swine, but the world’s largest rodents — serious, persistent biological study of these mammals did not occur until the twentieth century.

Humboldt, the great 19th and early 19th Century explorer and naturalist, tells of having captured two by simply outrunning them. When Chigüires run, their gait seems like a slight gallop (their hind legs being longer than their fore legs) and not very swift. When he brought them to his host out in the great llanos of Venezuela, expecting to have them slaughtered and roasted that night, the proprietor assured him that such “Indian game” was not food fit for “us white gentlemen”.  He, accordingly, offered his guests venison instead.

Their natural habitat is near the river. In fact, they can remain under the water for eight or ten minutes. However, during the rainy season, they might be seen up to 20 miles from the banks of the nearest major river, but that is rare. 

And this was a rare occasion. 

Five Chigüires had wandered off, rooting for herbs and wild weeds, deep into the jungles south of the Orinoco and east of the Caroní, rivers whose banks during the rainy season expand for many miles. And beyond those banks, the rains create expansive swamps, rivulets, creeks, lakes, and ponds … far, far beyond.

The Tragavenado may be found on the ground. However, it is primarily arboreal, spending most of its time wrapped around low hanging branches waiting for quarry to pass below. For good reason, she is known as an ambush predator. She can capture and eat animals exceeding three times the size of her head, making the young chiguire an ideal prey.

The Tragavenado does not consider herself to be in the company of white gentlemen. For her dinner, the Chigüire’s greasy meat is satisfactory. 

This Tragavenado was a large snake. Her body was coiled atop a thick, low hanging bough below which ran a small creek which appeared only during the rainy season. It was an hour before midnight; but that wasn’t an impediment since she recognized her prey by smell, not sight. She flicked her tongue in and out, picking up the Chiguire scent particles in the air, noting their approach. Chiguire flesh is possessed of a strong, musky smell, easily discernible to a predator such as the Tragavenado. Soon the nerve endings lodged in the scales around her mouth sensed the heat of the Chiguires, indicating her prey was near.

The Chigüires grazed under the large tropical oak tree overhanging the small creek. One of them was in the creek, directly beneath a large bough from which shot, at lightning speed, the head of the Tragavenado. She bit the top of the Chiguire’s neck with her sharp teeth and held on with her powerful jaws as she quickly dropped from the bough and wrapped her body entirely around the hapless Chiguire, whose companions had scattered off in different directions into the forest.

The Tragavenado has specialized scales, called scoots, on the belly to feel when the prey releases a breath, and then she squeezes tighter and tighter until her prey either suffocates or dies by cardiac arrest. The Chiguire soon stopped breathing and died and her conqueror began swallowing it whole, beginning with the head. Soon the dead Chiguire’s legs folded up and the carcass began going down smoothly into the body of the snake, whose muscles have wave-like contractions, sucking it even further and surging it downward with each bite.

She wouldn’t need to eat again for a very long time.

Chigüire, the world’s larges rodent. 

Tragavenado 

Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, circa 1799

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.