Towards the end of my childhood life in Venezuela, my father took us to Puerto la Cruz. Back then, this was a 5 or 6-hour drive but Puerto la Cruz was the closest city with an American consulate. She sits on the northeast coast of Venezuela, east of Caracas, west of Cumaná.
We always looked forward to trips there because such trips would invariably include at least one visit to the spectacular beaches on the coast of Sucre to the east of the city. That trip, in 1966, marked the last time I ever visited a beach in Venezuela, not counting those in Canaima, which are river beaches.
Childhood memories are notoriously unreliable. However, over the years I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a few “round-the-world” sailors who agree that this area of Venezuela contains some of the world’s most picturesque, but unknown, ocean spots.
On that visit, my father drove us for what seemed like hours snaking our way through the high coastal mountain ranges over some unpaved roads affording us breathtaking vistas of this striking cordillera and crystalline seas far below. We eventually arrived at Playa Hicacos. We had it all to ourselves. The water was cold (not cool but cold). However, we quickly warmed up and enjoyed our day at the beach. That last beach outing has remained indelible in my memory and I’ve judged all other beaches by that standard. Most others fall short — unfair, I know, to judge the rest by a childhood memory, but indulge me on this, please.
I had little idea that year was a tumultuous one for South America. Signs of political agitation were almost everywhere, not only in Venezuela but in practically all large cities of the continent. Scrawlings on walls — this I do recall — ranged from “Castro is a traitor!” to “Vote Communist!” and, of course the ubiquitous, “Yanqui go home!”
That was the year of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul and I remember hearing “Michelle” here and there at stops during this and other trips — including the one to Maracay alluded to in an earlier post (“Coffee”). That was also the year the same Beatles released an album cover posing as butchers with mutilated dolls and cut meat. It was later pulled, which reflects the fact that, even in 1966, an anteroom year for the Hippies and Woodstock shenanigans, sensibilities were more respectful than today.
I also recall lots of ruckus about a gal named Peggy Fleming who skated on ice, spectacularly. I now understand that she was a key figure (no pun intended) envisaging the return of the USA to figure skating dominance after the entire 18-member team was killed in a plane crash in 1961.
And large scale anti-Vietnam War protests also began to take shape that year.
But news from South America was sparse. You had to be living there to hear about Communist guerrilla bands attacking landowners in Peru or the rumors of Juan Peron’s return to Argentina and the upheavals that led to the military coup, with labor support (!), which deposed its president.
In Chile, Eduardo Frei was president. He downplayed the Communist threat and, like many South American intellectuals, would chide the Americans for being so “childishly afraid” of a non-threat. It was a turbulent year in Chile culminating 4 years later with the election of Salvador Allende with 36% of the vote; an election which had to be decided by the legislature who voted him in, after receiving assurances by Allende that he would not go full Communist. Assurances which went promptly out the window. Such was the shock and such was the disaster, that Eduardo Frei himself came to support Allende’s ouster by a military coup in 1973. The Chile situation did get press in the United States in the 1970’s, but as usual it was very incomplete and much too colored by Hollywood.
In Colombia, lawlessness had its own peculiar name: La Violencia. In 1966, as in prior years, President Guillermo Valencia sought to explain to US diplomats and legislators and dubious journalists that the violent guerrillas causing havoc in the country were Communist-inspired and supported (there was plenty of evidence for this, including Cubans embedded with the guerillas and pamphlets espousing the Communist line).
Perhaps La Violencia’s most despicable exponent was Pedro Antonio Marín, known as Tiro Fijo (Sure Shot). The prior year he had waylaid a bus, and killed thirteen of its passengers (including two nuns). This was followed by an attack on a nearby village. He and his men murdered the mayor and police chief and then preached revolution to the stunned villagers. Marín was the chief leader of the Communist FARC, which he founded in 1966. His toll of known murders exceeded 200 by the end of the 1960’s, then grew exponentially thereafter.
In Venezuela President Betancourt, a former Communist who had been betrayed by Castro (here, besides written propaganda, the evidence included weapons, explosives, and ammunition smuggled in from Cuba), had denounced Castro to the Organization of American States (OAS) and demanded sanctions, thereby earning the eternal hatred of his erstwhile comrades. The FALN (a Communist group akin to Colombia’s FARC) was active, but Betancourt clamped down, hard, in the early 60’s including outlawing the Communist Party. The damage to infrastructure and commerce, including oil pipelines, was great; however, by 1966, things were somewhat calm, business was good, travel was open, and the National Guard checkpoints along critical highways gave us a sense of security. Acts of violence still occurred, but not as seriously as earlier in the decade.
It was an intense year. But as a child, I knew little of all that and certainly had no premonition of the storms which were about to burst in the few short years that followed.
My only concern (whenever I would think of it, butterflies would fly in my gut) was that this would be my last year living at home. That day in Playa Hicacos was fun and peaceful and strikingly beautiful; sort of an oasis, a recreational rest midst the gathering storms. Looking back, I now suspect my father’s desire was to provide opportunities to create memories to cherish in the years ahead. Not only for me, but for him as well.
In September of 1966, at the end of annual family leave in Miami, I bid farewell to my mother and father and siblings as they boarded the Pan American jet which would transport them back to Venezuela. I remained in Miami, Florida for schooling, as did most of my cousins.
As for Playa Hicacos, I later learned that, in 1973, the entire area was designated a national park, Mochima, and I hear it’s as beautiful now as it was back in the day when I visited.
There are some things that never change.
