Which is it?

The Indian worker is poor, but he is free. His condition is preferable to that of the peasant in great parts of northern Europe …. — Alexander von Humboldt, circa 1800

… y el pobre en su choza, libertad pidió [And the poor man in his hovel, for freedom implored.]. — Venezuelan National Anthem, 1810

Well, which is it?

This blog has often referred to Humboldt (see Monster Aguirre and The Invention of Nature for but two allusions; the search bar will direct you to more). Humboldt was no royalist; he did not even pause for an irony alert to ponder that “modern”, progressive France denied him permits to travel for scientific inquiry, whereas obscurantist Spain did. 

Nevertheless, he recognized that the poor in pre-revolutionary Spanish America were free and many were prosperous. He wrote that a Mexican peasant under the Spaniards earned five (5) times more than a peasant in India under the English. He further discovered that Nueva España (Mexico) provided twice more to Spain’s treasury than India, with 5-times the population, did to England’s. During his visit to Spanish America, Venezuelans consumed 189 pounds of meat per capita, compared to 163 pounds by Parisians. Mexicans consumed 363 pounds of bread per capita compared to 377 by Parisians. Miners earned 25 to 30 francs per week compared to 4 to 5 francs by Saxons.

Esquivel Obregón, a Mexican, wrote that a wage earner in his country could buy 38 hectoliters (a hectoliter is 100 liters) of corn and 2,300 kilograms of flour in 1800, but only 24 and 525, respectively, in 1908, after “independence.” These are not isolated figures, but they do signal the catastrophic decline of Spanish America’s standard of living and reflect the desolation caused by the “chimera of liberty”. 

But no need to rely on a Humboldt or an Obregón. What did Simón Bolívar himself write in 1829, a year before he died?

“From one end to the other, the New World is an abyss of abomination; there is no good faith in [Spanish] America; treaties are mere paper; constitutions, books; elections, combat; liberty, anarchy; life, a torment. We’ve never been so disgraced as we are now. Before, we enjoyed good things; illusion is fed by chimera … we are tormented by bitter realities.”

So one must wrestle with the fact that “the poor man in his hovel” most certainly was not imploring for freedom. He was free and prosperous. 

Much, much more was going on at the time, but the overarching canopy was the French Revolution and its atheistic concepts which sought to disparage all that went before, including one’s own history. A 19th century Colombian diplomat wrote perceptively,

“In the codices [Spain was notorious for documenting everything. These codices are treasure troves for those willing and able to research largely unread tomes waiting to be rediscovered] known by me, the history of the Conquest and of the vice-royalty was recorded…. Three centuries of a patriarchal empire whose glories were echoed in palaces, pulpits, taverns, Indian colloquiums, and in royal audiences…. Then the violent winds blew and our ship ran aground on the Oedipus reefs where the desire to assassinate the fathers, to destroy the moorings of common ethics and religion which bound diverse cultures and civilizations to one tongue, one culture, and one loyalty to common principles, exalted the passions and drove men to madness.”

That diplomat went on to say, “…the degree of destruction and depopulation experienced in these lands compares with my vehement desire that someone, one day will love the Truth enough to divulge what I have observed and written.”

Readers of this blog know that I love Venezuela, the land of my birth. It is a land of heartbreaking beauty and one that has absorbed many rivers of blood since the early 19th century and is even now suffering greatly. The way back to sanity, prosperity, liberty, and peace begins with the Truth. 

Readers should also see significant parallels to current events in the United States. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, addressed similar matters as were addressed by that Colombian diplomat, including the need for a common religion and common culture to bind together diverse peoples. The current, unbridled rush to deny anything good in our founding, and especially to denigrate our common religion, is very similar to the temper which became prevalent in Spanish American elite circles in the early 1800’s.

In both, Truth is the first casualty and all else follows, beginning with ordered liberty.

To restore and preserve our ordered liberty, we must recover and speak the Truth. Pilate tarried not for an answer when he asked, “What is truth?”, but turned away from Truth Personified, Who stood before him.

Unlike Pilate who inquired and did not await for a reply, we must do differently.

And the Truth will set us free.

17th century Spanish American art from Peru
Colonial house in Venezuela
Colonial street in La Guaira
Colonial architecture, Caracas

Playa Hicacos, 1966

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.

The Beatles’ original Yesterday and Today album cover. Later pulled.
The Beatles’ highly influential Rubber Soul, which included the song, “Michelle”
Peggy Fleming on a South American postage stamp in 1983, commemorating her gold medal in the 1968 Olympics.
Arturo Illia, President of Argentina, deposed by military coup in 1966.
Eduardo Frei, president of Chile in 1966. He came to support the military coup against Salvador Allende in 1973.
Salvador Allende deposed by military coup in 1973; committed suicide before he could be removed. He was president of the senate from 1966 to 1970. A doctrinaire Communist who betrayed his assurances to the Chile legislature. They would not have supported his appointment as president otherwise. 
Pedro Antonio Marín (Tiro Fijo). A most despicable murderer. The United States State Department eventually put a price of $5 million on him. It is said he died, in Colombia, of a heart attack in 2008.
Guillermo León Valencia, president of Colombia until August, 1966. He at least understood much of the instigation of La Violencia.
President Rómulo Betancourt and Fidel Castro in 1959. The relationship soon soured.
Puerto La Cruz
Playa Iquire
Playa Nivaldito
Playa Los Hicacos
Playa Medina
One of the countless beaches in the Mochima area
How to get there. Better by water.
All beach photos are from the Mochima area.
The boy and his sister at Playa Hicacos, 1966

The Barracks

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

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

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

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

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

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

Venezuela lost 33%.

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

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

That helps explain why Venezuela was known as the barracks.

Humanitarian Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Caracas Chronicles:

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

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

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

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

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

Seven of the fifteen people shot have since died.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The situation is desperate and very sad.

Pray for Venezuela.

a pemon girl