Tag: Orinoco River

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

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

Bands of Robbers

Richard Barnes

“Without justice what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? And what is a band of robbers but such a kingdom in miniature? It is a band of men under the rule of a leader, bound together by a pact of friendship, and their booty is divided among them by an agreed rule. Such a blot on society, if it grows, assumes for itself the proud name of kingdom.” — St. Augustine

Before the inauguration of the Caruachi Dam across the Caroní River in the first decade of this century, the river was traversed by ferry (chalana). As a child, I preferred taking that particular ferry to the ferries operating in what became Ciudad Guayana.

I suppose my preference was due to the seemingly wilder or less tamed nature of the area around Caruachi — no towns or cities in the vicinity and the fishing and wildlife were more surprising at times.

Regardless, the Caruachi dam (which I never witnessed) changed all that.

The last time I saw and used the ferry was in 1987. Several of us were in Venezuela on an audit assignment and took our free day to visit the area around the confluence of the Orinoco and Caroní Rivers.

The milieu was very different from that of my childhood: a number of the men who crossed with us looked rough, even ruffian-like. I attempted to strike up a conversation with two or three but it was hard going. One of them did pull his hand from his pocket and opened it for me to see a gold nugget. I asked permission to take a photo and he quickly declined, which I of course honored.

He went on to tell me about the mining in the Bolivar/Amazon areas, which is where he and a number of the other men on the ferry were coming from. He said the area was quite wild and somewhat lawless. 

I asked if any of them would mind if I took a photo. Three of them agreed but only if I did not use their names. 

That incident was a foreshadowing of what was to become of that untamed jungle and river area of at least 35,000 square miles, now known as the “Orinoco Mining Arc”, which encompasses large swathes of the state of Bolívar, where I was born, as well as of the vast states of Amazonas and Delta Amacuro. This area contains bauxite (used for aluminum), coltan (used in the production of electronic devices), diamonds, and, of course, especially gold.

However, in a lawless country as Venezuela has become, any “designated” area is actually limitless. So, unsurprisingly, this “arc” has invaded the Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Elsewhere in this blog I’ve noted Transparency International’s ranking of Venezuela as the most corrupt country in the America’s — yes, more corrupt than Cuba or Haiti, as incredible as that seems — with extensive ties to global criminal syndicates which exploit the mining area and the indigenous peoples who are unlucky enough to not have escaped before their enslavement.

(It is always a wonder to consider that those who hate Columbus and accuse him of murder, torture, and enslavement seem oblivious to how they project onto the great seaman what their own fellow travelers are actually doing now. It’s much easier to indict and delegitimize our founding than to see that the abandonment of our founding has led to the atrocities they so piously and hypocritically decry….)

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the arc is a giant hub for illegal mining, “where armed non-state actors and local gangs compete for control of key mining operations. The Maduro regime has used state enterprises and security forces to legitimize otherwise criminal mineral extraction, collaborating with criminal groups to mine, process, and transport minerals.”

In exchange for what? 

Well, the state-owned enterprises operating there serve to source the minerals extracted illicitly and, ¡Voilà! the minerals are then exported “officially”, thereby, legitimately. The bulk of these exports are to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, according to CSIS. The state does not do this for free, of course. It carves its  handsome cut from every transaction.

However, that maneuver accounts for a fraction of Venezuela’s gold exports. The vast majority is shipped from the country as contraband and later “officialized” into the global market, with the State — both the top bureaucrats as well as the military leadership — receiving a major bite from the gargantuan profits. These profits are in addition to other fraudulent enterprises such as multiple military check points, each demanding bribes or multiple fuel depots supplying needed fuel to the illicit mines, also at large profits.

To give the reader an idea of the immense amounts of money involved, some top army generals are receiving gold in the equivalent of $800,000 per month in bribes. 

But wait! There’s more! Clandestine flights carrying gold are given safe passage, for another nice cut; the state has given ownership of individual mines to many of the country’s state governors and other political leaders to ensure their loyalty; ad nauseam. 

This post is already too long, so I’ll skip over the very real environmental devastation, including mercury poisoning in the rivers whereby fish taken to market as far away as Colombia are contaminated and causing serious harm to the health of regular folks.

We do not know how many laborers are involved in the illegal mining operations, but I’ve seen some estimates as high as 500,000. About half are children; most are from local indigenous villages and practically all are coerced. They work under threat of punishment by armed groups and gangs. Men and boys are subjected to atrocities by violent, pitiless mine owners who know they are “protected” against any and all actions they might take. 

We have eye witness reports of arms and hands being mutilated or amputated; forced prostitution; murders. Per CSIS, “Dozens of massacres have been reported in Bolivar state as well as reports of mass graves in the area.” In addition, the sex trafficking of young children is heartrending; venereal diseases have spiked; disappearances are common. 

And, yes, one of the most powerful crime syndicates ruling in the Orinoco Mining Arc is the Aragua Train, better known as Tren de Aragua. As a criminal enterprise, they not only ruthlessly run mines, they also establish pricing and rations for daily goods and groceries and woe be to him who disobeys or seeks to supply himself independently. Americans need to wake up to the reality that Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan state are an allied enterprise. And neither of them messes around. 

St. Augustine in his The City of God wrote that a people that denies or refuses to be governed by God’s law (justice) will become ruled by “bands of robbers”. The history of the 20th Century with its totalitarian regimes, including Communist dictatorships resulting in 100,000,000 deaths by the state (see The Black Book of Communism) amply justifies Augustine’s affirmation. Not only do “bands of robbers” run rampant through the land, the state itself acts hand in glove with national and international crime syndicates all of whom share the common goal of personal empowerment and enrichment and grotesque pleasures at the cost of the lives and well being of their own peoples.

And before we get too smug, be gently reminded that we have legislators who have become very wealthy while in office. Few are they who, like many of our Founders, actually became poorer when they entered public service. As we ourselves have cast God’s precepts aside, we too are facing the increasing rule by bands of robbers. 

And it is not a pretty picture.

FYI: Claritas, a major mining area, is controlled by Tren de Aragua. Guasipati (not noted) and others are as well. The value of gold extraction in some mines, including Claritas, exceeds $1,000,000 per day.

If It Belongs To All ….

Richard Barnes

After college graduation in 1975, my visits to El Pao were rather irregular yet not infrequent, with visits in 1978 and several times in the ensuing decades when I was able to swing by during business trips. My last visit was in 2005, which, although memorable, had its harrowing moments whose details will have to await retelling.

During my 1978 trip, for which I will be forever grateful, an old family friend and her older children engaged me in lively conversation over coffee and pastries in her home when, pausing and looking at me, which caused me to remain silent, she said, “Nosotros jamás pensamos que el campamento se pondría peor [We never thought the camp would get worse]”.

That was the elephant in the room: surely I had noticed the unkempt open spaces, which as late as 1975 looked like golf course greens but now were overgrown; or the swimming pool which looked like it needed cleaning and maintenance; or the bowling lanes which had clearly seen better days; or the houses, including my family’s, in which we had lived until a few short years prior but which now were almost jungle invaded and “occupied” by surly squatters.

I had noticed, of course; however, I also knew that there was no need to needlessly offend. Prior to and during the “nacionalización” María had been a loud voice extolling the virtues of “public” ownership versus the evils of “Gringo” ownership.

But now she was sincerely looking for a response from someone whom she knew had not been a fan of the jingoistic justifications for theft. Of course, those appeals had been disguised by distortions asserting that the Bethlehem Steel and all such steel and petroleum companies had “stolen” the minerals of Venezuela, had exploited the people of Venezuela, had imposed inhumane conditions on the working class of Venezuela, ad nauseam. 

Carefully, for she sincerely wanted to hear my opinion, I replied, “Bueno, María [not her name], a way to help us understand what we are seeing is to ask a simple question: if something belongs to ‘everyone’, then who, really, is the owner? In other words, who will take the risk to care for the object that is ‘owned’ by all?”

She just nodded, signifying that she understood.

Our conversation rushed back to my mind when, in the late 80s, I visited the even more deteriorated camp. On that visit, I took a photo of the last classroom I attended before leaving for the States (photo below). The ranch style schoolhouse still stood and gave promise of a still bright future if only someone actually owned it. But no one did. María, and many more, had abandoned the camp by then and more recent photos show the pool to be an empty, cracking husk.

A few years after Venezuelan nationalization, Communist Zimbabwe (Rhodesia ceased to exist in 1979) had the presence of mind to keep their elephant preserves in private hands and thereby saved them from ruination for decades. Interestingly, they did not allow their ideological blinders to blind them to the benefit of having their treasured preserves cared for by the actual owners. And they were rewarded with excellent results. Unfortunately, Venezuela opted for the conventional Socialist route with the typical depressing results now well known throughout the world.

María is long gone now but our discussion remains vivid in my mind. 

I had forgotten about that photo until a few days ago when my brother-in-law pulled some envelopes stashed in some corner and old papers and photos, including that of the abandoned classroom, tumbled to the tile below.

And I was reminded that the Bethlehem Steel had built river port facilities about 180 miles from the mouth of the Orinoco River plus about 35 miles of railroad tracks and road inland from there to the site of the ore deposits. Three self-sustaining camps were built: one, Palúa, on the river, the other, El Pao, at the mining site, and a third, Puerto de Hierro, on the Atlantic coast to provide a deep water port for shipment up north. By March, 1951, close to 3,000,000 tons of ore were being mined annually, with most shipped to Sparrows Point, Maryland for processing, with a considerable amount of tonnage stockpiled in Palúa.

In summary, the Bethlehem Steel operations in Venezuela were somewhat complex from a transportation standpoint. Ore was mined and transported from El Pao by rail to Palúa on the Orinoco; then 180 miles down the mighty river by four or five 6,000-ton river steamers, built by a company subsidiary, to Puerto de Hierro on the Atlantic Ocean, from where the ore was transferred to much larger company ships for the 2,000-mile journey to Maryland.

By 1964 US Steel had dredged a 32-foot deep canal down the Orinoco for which other companies, including Bethlehem Steel, paid usage tolls. This allowed deep water shipments directly from Palúa, so Bethlehem shut down the Puerto de Hierro operations and ceded the ports and the camp to the Venezuelan government. All families were transferred to the other two camps.

As the reader can imagine, the capital investment implied in the above cursory descriptions is gargantuan. And that is only one company. In the first half of the 20th Century Venezuela received such investments from many such enterprises in the oil and ore industries.

At the close of 1974, the Venezuelan government nationalized all foreign owned ore properties, agreeing to pay book value, not market value.

And a mere four years later, my friend, María, asked why the camp had deteriorated….

My old classroom. Photo taken circa 1987

Photos of recently-built El Pao mining camp, circa 1953

Black Jaguar

Richard Barnes

“I wish I had been there” is a familiar lament for many. It certainly applies to me with regards to the incident which follows.

In the camp’s early days, my father would travel to Ciudad Bolivar to pick up the month’s payroll. This was long before the bridges which now span the Caroní River and the multiple lane highways which came years later, during my lifetime, in fact.

Back in the 40s, the trip was very long and also required him to spend the night under the open sky, something he did not mind and did not consider dangerous, even though he carried the camp’s month’s pay, in cash. He was never threatened with theft.

On one of those trips my father was rewarded with a sight he often recalled: a black jaguar.

My father had a copy of Fauna Descriptiva de Venezuela, by Dr. Eduardo Röhl, published in 1949. As a child I would avidly thumb through that edition, pausing here and there to read more carefully when the subject especially struck my fancy.

I have my father’s copy with me and regarding the black jaguar it says that it “lives in the jungles of the Orinoco, [and] is a case of melanism”, meaning a genetic issue which causes the skin to hide the spots to greater or lesser degrees and highlight the black color. In Venezuela the terms jaguar or tigre are interchangeable, but all agree that the black version is rarely seen.

This comports with the Wikipedia article which affirms that black jaguars have been sighted throughout Central and South America, but rarely.

On one particular trip, late at night, my father was driving the stretch from Ciudad Bolívar to Puerto Ordaz, the confluence of the Caroní and Orinoco rivers, grateful for a full moon by which he might see the outline of a tree under which he could spend the night.

However, the moonlight rewarded him with a more dramatic sight that night. The landscape was clear even though it was late at night. The brush and sandy loam had the grayish, yellowish hue so common to a full moon. And then he sensed something to his immediate left, outside the driver’s door and open window.

It was black and it was running like a gazelle parallel to the car on the left side of the road. It seemed as if the perfectly formed, graceful creature were racing the car. My father could see the light of the moon reflected off the jaguar’s shiny black coat. The sight was mesmerizing. He kept looking, while quickly glancing to the road, as it ran and ran and ran. And then it swerved to its left and disappeared in the thickets and brush.

My father slowed the car and looked through his open window hoping to see the animal one more time. But, of course, he did not.

The jaguar is a nomadic creature with no fixed pathways for his nocturnal journeys. Its prey ranges from the clumsy Chigüire to tree-based monkeys of all kinds. During Humboldt’s years of discovery, the jaguar was the greatest enemy of the river turtles in Venezuela, which, by the time I left the country in the 70s, were often seen but nothing close to the abundance described by the great explorer.