Orinoco River – Page 3 – The Pull Of The Land

Atures and Maypures on The Orinoco, and Humboldt’s Parrot

May 29, 2020May 29, 2020 Richard Barnes

A good number of posts on this blog either direct themselves to or reference the grand Orinoco River, which exercises a majestic “pull” on all in Venezuela, whether locals or foreign residents or long term visitors. It is more of a presence in Venezuela than the Mississippi is to the United States. I suspect the Nile exerts a similar pull in North Africa, especially Egypt, but, having never lived there, I don’t know for sure. But the literature does affirm its centrality to life in that world for many centuries. I’d say the same applies to the Orinoco and Venezuela.

Those readers who have a sense of adventure, or have children who do, cannot do much better than to explore that river, especially the Upper Orinoco. Alexander Humboldt is still a pretty reliable as well as fascinating source of information and background for this.

Shortly after arriving in Cumaná, Venezuela, the “oldest continuously inhabited European established settlement in South America,” Alexander von Humboldt wrote to his brother back in Germany, “What color of birds, fish, even crabs (sky blue and yellow!). So far we have wandered like fools; in the first three days we couldn’t identify anything, because one object is tossed aside to pursue another. Bonpland [renowned French naturalist, Aimé Bonpland, friend and collaborator with Humboldt] assures me he will go mad if the marvels do not stop. Still, more beautiful even than these individual miracles is the overall impression made by this powerful, lush, and yet so gentle, exhilarating, mild vegetation.”

As he made his way to the Casiquiare, that natural channel which connects the Orinoco with the Amazon, via the Rio Negro (see “Orinoco, Casiquiare, Humboldt, and Monster Aguirre” for more Here), Humboldt and his party, including untiring and powerful Indians who at times jumped into the water to pull the canoe from the unforgiving currents, eventually came to the rapids between Atures and Maypures.

Here is a description of this section of the Orinoco, in Humboldt’s own words: “Nothing can be grander than the aspect of this spot. Neither the fall of the Tequendama, near Santa Fe de Bogota, nor the magnificent scenes of the Cordilleras, could weaken the impression produced upon my mind by the first view of the rapids of Atures and of Maypures. When the spectator is so stationed that the eye can at once take in the long succession of cataracts, the immense sheet of foam and vapors illumined by the rays of the setting sun, the whole river seems as it were suspended over its bed.”

That’s quite a compliment, considering it was written by one of history’s most accomplished travelers and explorers.

Atures and Maypures are names missionaries took from nearby tribes. Some years before Humboldt’s voyage, the Maypures had been exterminated by the violent Caribs (see more on the Caribs here and Here) and, according to legend, had taken their domesticated parrots as spoils. Humboldt had come across some Caribs one of whom gave him his parrot as a gift.

The explorer noticed that the words spoken by the parrot did not correspond with the Carib dialect and he asked his host why. The Indian told him that the words he heard were not Carib, but Maypure, the now extinct tribe. So Humboldt was hearing language from a tribe that no longer could speak.

That’s a fascinating tale, although I’ve not been able to confirm it in Humboldt’s massive, multi-volume Narrative.

A few more observations by the great explorer about this area of the Orinoco:

“We passed two hours on a large rock, standing in the middle of the Orinoco, and called the Piedra de la Paciencia, or the Stone of Patience, because the canoes, in going up, are sometimes detained there two days, to extricate themselves from the whirlpool caused by this rock.”

And, finally,

“The Indians would not hazard passing the cataract; and we slept on a very incommodious spot, on the shelf of a rock, with a slope of more than eighteen degrees, and of which the crevices sheltered a swarm of bats. We heard the cries of the jaguar very near us during the whole night. They were answered by our great dog in lengthened howlings. I waited the appearance of the stars in vain: the sky was exceedingly black; and the hoarse sounds of the cascades of the Orinoco mingled with the rolling of the distant thunder.”

We will continue to visit with Mr. Humboldt.

Alexander von Humboldt’s map of a section of the Upper Orinoco River.

Alexander von Humboldt camped on the shores of the Orinoco River.

Between Atures and Maypures rapids. Note one of the granite stones which so impressed Humboldt.

Orinoco rapids between Atures and Maypures. These delayed, fascinated, and at times frightened Humboldt’s party as they made their way on the Orinoco towards the Casiquiare.

Security

May 7, 2020May 7, 2020 Richard Barnes

“Security can get on the nerves just as much as danger.” (Brown in Graham Greene’s The Comedians – 1965)

I am in a minority in refusing to see politicians and bureaucrats as beings before whom we, as bleating sheep, must bow the knee as if they were our wise and compassionate shepherds.

In general, I do not think they are wise, and I do not think they are compassionate.

I am in an even smaller minority in my viewing church leaders with deep disappointment in how we are responding to the current state of affairs. (But those country churches, mostly non-denominational, whose leaders still have the backbone of our forebears, have earned my respect in recent weeks.)

It has become very clear that, in general, if our founding era’s church leaders had been like those of today’s, we’d still be speaking the king’s English.

Spare me the theological expositions and explanations. Looking at the fruit tells me what I need to know. And that fruit lacks courage.

This is the context in which my respect for my father, which was already of the utmost, has in recent weeks done what I would have considered to have been impossible a mere month ago.

It has grown.

He was not a great reader or student of philosophy or theology, although he, and my mother, played a key role in preparing me to appreciate such, and more.

But he was courageous.

And he was loyal.

He loved God and he loved country and he loved home. Besides him, I can think of very few men — very few — whom I would want with me in a foxhole, or in any trial or crisis of life. One I can think of died many years ago. I still see him as he walks from his little shack up to the labor camp alongside his burro. Another, died relatively recently. I see him as he drives his truck up my driveway on a Sunday afternoon as I’m listening to the BBC on short wave radio.

I used to think I am easily impressed. I guess I’m not.

The scene: San Félix, a town on the shores of the Orinoco River. It’s about 10 P.M. on a night in the 1940’s. Communist militants and sympathizers have been active. My father and the company controller, Mr. T, have been at the town’s movie theater and are now heading to the company pickup to drive back to Palúa, the riverfront camp.

A group of about 10 men accosted them and one ran up to Mr. T and struck him in the face, knocking him down. His glasses hit the ground and cracked.

Striking a man with glasses was considered cowardly. Striking an older man, such as Mr. T, was unforgivable.

My father instinctively swung and landed his fist with a violent blow against the jaw of the perpetrator, who fell back awkwardly and heavily with a muffled thud on the dusty street. Then he realized: the man was drunk.

He looked up and saw that the other men stood, staring at him. Some were drunk, while others seemed sober, but sullen.

“Men, your friend is drunk. Otherwise, I am sure he would never have struck an older man wearing glasses. I assume you do not want to see your friend get hurt. Help him get up and return to his home! There is no need for us to fight. If you have any grievances, you must know by now that we will happily [con gusto] receive you and talk with you about it. Will you help your friend?”

As he spoke to the men, in perfect Spanish, Mr. T, following my father’s whispered commands, slowly made his way, undisturbed to the pickup, glancing back at my father, knowing that if the situation got out of hand, there would have been little for him to do to help out.

No one moved, except for the man on the ground, who rolled over on his stomach and vomited.

He clearly was not going to get up unassisted.

A man stepped forward and knelt by the fallen man, taking his left arm and wrapping it over his shoulder, “B, listen to me, I am going to stand up slowly, but I need you to hold on to me. Escúchame!” Then, looking over his shoulder, “Men, I need your help! Vengan!”

At this, the men stepped forward, almost in unison, and, having come to the area where B had fallen, strove to help the kneeling man rise along with the other, who was rapidly gaining full consciousness.

Eventually, about 5 or 6 of them accompanied the man helping B towards the south end of the town. The group, composed of individuals insistent on helping out one-by-one or two-by-two, continued southward, looking like a receding Rorschach test image. Others remained nearby, looking at Mr. T in the pickup as my father, leaning on the passenger side’s door, talked with him while also looking back, off and on, at them.

I did not learn about this incident from my father. In fact, I never heard him talk about it.

One summer, in the 1970’s, I interned at the mining office and, during my breaks, I’d visit the archives and read the dusty, decades-old memoranda submitted over the years by the general managers and controllers to the Pennsylvania home office. I came across a memorandum with a vivid description of my father’s actions many years before. The controller freely admitted, in his own writing, that my father likely saved him from great bodily harm that night in San Félix.

I know of several other such incidents involving my father, at least one of which occurred in my presence.

The circumstances for each were different. But they all pointed to one common constant: courage. A man’s refusal to be governed only by security. In doing so, he, ironically, created security for himself and for others.

We need to learn from such men again.

Palúa was about a mile west of San Félix (now part of Ciudad Guayana), and 180 miles from the Orinoco River delta.

San Félix, circa late 40s, early 50s. The theater (not pictured) was about a block to the right.

San Félix at the Caroní River ferry crossing, circa mid-50s

My father and Mr. T, circa 1948. San Félix, Venezuela.

My father and Mr. T, circa 1960. El Pao, Venezuela.

My father and me, circa 1963, on the Orinoco River, headed towards the great Orinoco delta on the Atlantic Ocean

El Loco

April 17, 2020 Richard Barnes

El Loco’s haunts were unknown. For the most part.

Mining camp residents spotted him occasionally, and only when they journeyed to or from San Felix, the port town on the banks of the Orinoco River, about 40 kilometers north. If they were lucky, their trip would coincide with an El Loco sighting. He’d be seen walking jauntily, swinging his arms in an exaggerated, yet nonmilitary-type, arc; unmindful of the storms of dust raised by cars or trucks as they passed him, always slowly, because everybody wanted to see El Loco and laugh with him, and the sightings seemed too few and too far between.

He’d always laugh and lift his arms in childlike, yet firm salute; one hand always gripping a staff, as if some sort of rudderless Moses wandering the El Pao – San Felix road for generations.

Probably no American had seen him up close. But, judging from 30 or 40 feet away, a consensus of sorts had developed among them affirming El Loco was probably in his early thirties

He seemed to be much taller than average in that era and in those regions, maybe five feet nine or ten inches; wiry, strong, virile, and with huge hands. These judgments-from-afar were about as much as could assuredly be said about him, as the distance did not permit inspection of his physiognomic features. More on that further below.

Of course, everybody understood that someone had to be “taking care of” El Loco, else he could not survive. Here, perhaps, the legendary Venezuelan hospitality played a critical but hidden role.

An American cattleman with business interests in Venezuela once wrote his personal impression of Venezuelan society saying that it was the most open and cordial in all of South America. He further noted that, unlike the Argentines and Brazilians, who used hotels or restaurants or clubs to entertain visitors, the Venezuelans entertained in their own homes; in that respect, he concluded, they were very much like the Americans.

That observation was true, though too limited. Venezuelans didn’t invite only known, or business, guests to their homes; they compelled strangers, especially the poor, and the “locos”, apparently mindful that, at times, some, unawares, had entertained angels.

Then weeks would go by with no one having seen him. Where was he? At such times I would hear speculation when accompanying my mother at the commissary in the Otro Campo (known to the Americans as the labor camp), or with my father in the American Camp bar. Some voices affirmed, as if they were eye-witnesses, that El Loco was still on the road, but, in fact, no drivers or passengers had seen him. Others rumored El Loco was on jungle paths, headed temporarily for other destinations, as if looking for side adventures to spice up his El Pao – San Felix routine. Still others did not really care or think about it, and just assumed El Loco would reappear on his favorite road soon enough. And he eventually did, as if he had been nowhere else. As if he would live forever.

Regardless of opinions as to his whereabouts, the Venezuelans along the El Duo road just shrugged, confident in the truth of the old Spanish aphorism, “God takes care of the widows, the orphans, and the crazies.” It did not occur to them that God used them to do the caring.

El Loco walked with a swinging gait, a long, thick staff in one hand. His dusty jet-black hair shagged over his collar and a bit over his ears. He always walked with, never against, the traffic. Whenever I heard or read about a man in rags, I’d picture El Loco. His rags were always in khaki, just like the men in El Pao, only very worn and torn. And, instead of a dull yellow, El Loco’s khakis seemed rusty red.

Once, on a drive to San Felix, we saw him up close.

As we approached him in our car, to my utter, indescribable delight, El Loco swung round and stopped, looking toward the Oldsmobile as it slowly approached. El Loco began jumping in place, raising his arms and waving them. He was strong; he could wave the arm carrying that staff as easily as the other. Then he yelled a loud, croaking-like cheer as he laughed. His entire face laughed. And his teeth shone a bright white.

To me, laughing with my parents as we all saluted El Loco, it seemed even the Oldsmobile laughed. We drove slowly by El Loco, as we waved at him while he waved back, croaking, yelling, laughing, screaming, jumping. His cheeks’ bony arches seemed like sharp hills guarding his oviform eyes, whose color matched his hair, only brighter. And they seemed, to the boy, to be looking right into his own eyes.

Unlike most adults, El Loco was able, with absolutely no awkward self-consciousness, to look at someone in the eye, no matter what the age, and sustain that look until naturally broken. I just knew El Loco looked only at me, as if he knew me. As if we’d met before. Somewhere. There was no fear in me. On the contrary, like all children, I considered El Loco as very approachable, a dear friend and protector.

I stuck my head out the back window resting it on my arms on the frame as I looked back at El Loco, who was still jumping and yelling and laughing, forming a striking, puppet-like silhouette against the green, as the dust rose behind the car.

What most knew about El Loco was limited to the fact that he spent his days and years striding between El Pao and San Felix. Clearly folks cared for him; after all, it was assumed, he ate and slept. The I recall once, and only once, during an unusual mid-day drive to San Felix, seeing El Loco sitting peaceably in a chair in the front, porch-like structure of one of the cabins off the road. The farmer sat across from him, as the wife served him lunch and the children stood by. Sometimes El Loco would not be seen for what seemed to be weeks, before he’d reappear again on the road bringing joy to folks, especially children, who drove by.

I don’t remember the last time I saw him. He just melted away, like a mirage, into the jungle and before I knew it, I realized I had not seen him in years, maybe decades.

But I think about him. I can see him walking firmly, soldier-like, on the right side of the road, gripping his staff with his right hand, wildly swinging the left. El Loco whirls round and there is that wide grin once again, mouth way open, white teeth flashing. He lets off that loud cheer as he raises his hand and staff, pointing to the heavens.

1959 Oldsmobile Delta 88. Ours was white, not two-toned. As my father used to say, “Se come la carretera.”[Roughly translated, “She swallows the road.”]

Picture a cross between Henry Silva and Anthony Perkins in old, raggedy khakis, with hair more like Perkins’, but a bit longer, and you’d have an approximation of *El Loco* as I remember him from early childhood.

Clearing and building the El Pao-San Felix road. The period I remember most about El Loco was when the road was unpaved.

“Venezuela’s Magnetic Mountain”, Harry Chapin Plummer, Popular Mechanics, July, 1949

January 29, 2020January 29, 2020 Richard Barnes

Prep time for this blog has had me looking through old journals and publications partly because I get a kick out of the more un-self-conscious, optimistic (exuberant?) mid-20th century reporting compared to today’s dour, blame-America-first, Chicken Little iterations.

Something else that impresses me upon reading this over 70 years after its publication, is how accurate it was in reflecting the plans being made in 1949. There were, of course, some changes to the plans, as there are in all good plans. However, these great American companies were pretty thorough in their operations.

Enjoy:

When the Conquistadores of old Spain explored the jungle country of eastern Venezuela four centuries ago, the native Indians told them tales of a strange mountain which attracted lightning. Later the Spaniards saw for themselves this magic mound which, when struck by a lightning bolt, game forth a spray of flashes. The Spaniards dubbed the mountain “El Florero” — the Flower Pot — because the lightning flashes looked like flowers growing from the peak.

Today that mound has been found to hold one of the world’s richest iron-ore deposits.

Credit for that discovery goes to an alert Venezuelan mining inspector, Eduardo Boccardo. In 1926 he determined to penetrate beyond the superstitions of the natives and to find out why the mountain was one of the spots most frequently struck by lightning on the South American continent. What he discovered was a fabulously rich lode of iron ore which, by magnetic attraction, drew lightning to the mountain. The Spaniards, intent upon their quest for gold and silver, had passed up a deposit so valuable that even now its riches can be only estimated.

Surveys of that part of the mountain granted to Boccardo show that about 35,000,000 tons of mineral rich in iron underlay his concession. Assays have proved that this ore actually is 55 to 68 percent iron. Absolutely pure iron ore is made up of 72 percent iron and 28 percent oxygen. The iron content of Minnesota’s famous Mesabi range is about 57 to 63 percent. On this basis, the Flower Pot represents one of the most important discoveries of the century in the field of metallurgy.

Naturally, it didn’t take industry long to jump into this whopping mountain of ore. Today the Iron Mines Company of Venezuela, organized as a subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel Company of the United States, already has a small army of employees in the jungles near the Orinoco. Their task is to form a modern mining industry in the heart of the forests. They are at work between El Pao, the ore site, and Palua, the loading point on the Orinoco.

The task of these workers is staggering. They must build the mines and the port, highway and railway — even their own homes in the wilderness. Already they have completed a highway more than 14 miles long which eventually will serve as the right-of-way for a standard-gauge railway, the vital artery from the mines to the river. This railroad will have a steep grade from sea level to the mines.

When the harbor and dock installations, the roads and railways finally are completed, the ore will move by truck and train from the mines to the ships on the Orinoco. It then will travel aboard a fleet of ore carriers, especially built for the purpose, to the blast furnaces at Baltimore, Md.

It is estimated that production will rise to 3,000,000 tons of ore annually from ore reserves that will last a quarter of a century.

Already rolling along the uncompleted rail line is a 1500-horsepower diesel locomotive. When the track is completed, the railroad will have four locomotives, 100 ore cars with a capacity of 70 tons each, eight boxcars, four tank cars and a crane.

Before the end of this year the ore will begin to flow from the mines atop the magnetic mountain. There crews especially trained for the job will perforate and excavate the rock and earth, which will be picked up by four gigantic electric shovels each capable of taking a huge bite out of the ground. The shovels will load the ore into trailer-trucks hauled by tractors. From there it will be taken to big ore crushers — one of them said to be the largest in the world. The fragments of crushed ore will be carried by an aerial cable arrangement to the waiting ore cars on the railway.

It is estimated that about 10,000 tons of the rich earth will be hauled down the mountainside every working day.

When the ore reaches the harbor, it will be dumped into a huge storage area. An ingenious series of chutes at the base of the area will drop each load into an underground conveyor installed in a tunnel. After passing through the earth, it will climb up a huge loading bridge which extends like a pointing finger over the waters of the Orinoco. The load will slide by toboggan into 4000-ton lighters. Tugs then will pick up six of the lighters form them into a train and haul them downriver to the Gulf of Paria. From there the new 24,000-ton ore carriers will take the ore by ocean to Baltimore.

This modern industrial system in the heart of the jungle is within the orbit of Ciudad Bolivar, the principal river port of the Orinoco and the administrative and financial center of the region watered by the river.

Almost due south of Ciudad Bolivar the United States Steel Corporation has been conducting explorations of another area that appears to have huge ore deposits. it seems likely that the same vein which crops out atop the magnetic mountain also appears in this new area [the author was correct: that ‘new area’ became known as Cerro Bolivar, one of the greatest ore finds ever].

Reports state that the mineral deposits found in this second area are of a high quality, satisfactory for smelting in open hearth furnaces.

These two ore strikes are the second great boon to Venezuelan national within the past half-century. The first was the discovery of petroleum around Lake Maracaibo. Huge investments in drilling and pumping equipment, pipe lines, railways, bridges, community settlements, hospitals, and schools have been made by the participating oil companies.

Venezuela has enacted a law which requires the oil companies, both foreign and national, to refine within the country a percentage of the crude oil that is recovered. The purpose, of course, is to have a supply of domestic oil. It is anticipated that similar legislation will apply to recoveries of iron ore, and that eventually there will be smelting operations within Venezuela [a major understatement, of course].

Such a development would place Venezuela in the forefront of South American nations which at the turn of the century were dependent upon agriculture — cattle, coffee, sugar, cacao, tobacco, and rubber growing.

Thus the magic mountain that attracts lightning may revolutionize the economy of a nation.

Ore Crusher (one of the largest, if not the largest at the time, in the world) in El Pao. Note the administrative (American) camp in the background.

Alas! Alas! Puerto Ordaz!

January 20, 2020January 20, 2020 Richard Barnes

The following is a post by Rafael Marrón González which is making the rounds in Venezuela. For a refresher on Puerto Ordaz (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Ciudad Guayana) refer to posts, Life in an American Camp and Mining II and Guayana: The Reverse Miracle.

I came to Puerto Ordaz in December, 1963, and here I stayed.

I have witnessed the rise and the fall of one of the greatest cities of Venezuela. In the era when I arrived, Puerto Ordaz was beginning to “see the world” and, in its intimacy, due to it’s noble call to lead the development of great swathes of the country, it generated the 20th century’s last harmonious, multi-racial community on the planet.

I saw, day after day, the wonder of its architectural growth, both commercial and industrial. In her bosom, arose the most significant and complex metallurgical industry of Latin America. In those days, to go to America from Europe was to board a ship or plane to Puerto Ordaz to seek one’s fortune. She was sort of a modern Babel, that wonderful Puerto Ordaz, composed of an adolescent population that persists in the memories of those of us who populated its streets with the dizzying dynamic of youth. How it hurts to see her today, prematurely aged, poorly bathed, and worstly dressed, with her depressed facades and her sidewalks burst through by unpruned trees with abandoned coronas infested with guatepajarito [parasitic bush: untranslatable].

Walking about the lonely streets, empty joints, closed malls, centers, and streets abandoned for fear as soon as the sun begins to set, I do not recognize that city that never used to sleep but rather led a loud and long night until sunrise. Her best views have been invaded by the misery severely imposed by demagogic powers. A city now disrespected in her privileged spaces. There is no limit to the degradation of her expected end. Chaos is her daily bread.

Begging for food is now ubiquitous and neighbors on street corners despair for any transportation. Ignorance imposes preferences of poor taste; long held cultural practices now abandoned; ancient crafts are gone; and foolishness is now dressed up, crowned with titles on the anemic social pages. The cretinism of the newly (and suspiciously) rich, is heard by their loud applause at trashy performances, as they demand another grilled meat with cassava in the flea market of gastronomic decadence.

Her once florid freeway gardens have withered and a swarm of bars shout out the uncertainty that life has now become. A city that in her day, not so long ago, gathered the best in thought and technical expertise, both national and international, now displays its toothless ruins in Matanzas [the site of the city’s teeming, massive industrial works], its enthusiasm now overwhelmed, shut down, and known by the flapping of bats’ wings in its giant industrial sheds.

The ancient stacks that once announced prosperity, today herald diseases of the skin and lungs. Their toxic excretions poison the waters of the Orinoco. Children are born with aluminum inside their skulls; neurological effects camp nearby.

Her basic enterprises, Venezuela’s pride, undulate — like a canoe in rough waters — between the impact of intermittently paid salaries, technological obsolescence, and dashed productivity. Her laboring class now become engrossed in parasitic sadness in the service of an empowered ignominy which has emptied it of any conscience. Her history hides that tab that once she ostentatiously paid for suits and parties but now cowers with the embarrassment of being a have been. A swarm of damnable, protected thieves imposes sentences against dignity and permeates what’s left of the night life with their nauseating presence, while those who labor and have labored for lifetimes, stand aside.

I am not sure if I have succeeded in manifesting my indignation.

What intolerable infamy! What ugliness! What filth! Dirt, grime, and grease are now the identity cards of “equality.” Mold is now the strident patina of false brotherhood.

Alas! Alas! Puerto Ordaz! Now a mere gibberish of yellow pages and abandonment. A site of processions of thugs and murderers; of rude and gross speculators and carpetbaggers all looking for quick and easy money, of misery rooted in deplorable suburbs. A city of late awakening and shortened evenings. Of crime imposed for any posible error of interpretation. Of dead traffic lights, announcing at top volume the irresponsibility of brutish governors who accuse those who challenge them for their strident ineptitude. Like the underworld, they cannot be called out. There is no real authority. Only a payroll that demands paid vacations.

Alas! Alas! Puerto Ordaz!

I have lived 53 years in her and refuse to exile myself. But when I drive its desolate streets, as I pass each corner or enter a long forgotten passageway, I oft recall the intensity of it’s snatched life. She did not deserve this assault of inmoral and inept rulers. This violent aggression of barbarians and savages in taxis, motorcycles, and trucks, all dubiously acquired.

How much they hated a city that was on its way to being another Germany! Now reduced to a solitary shack, run over by caretakers focused on the furious selling and transportation of gems on gondolas carrying riches from the proud north of Brazil. Not only isolated, but dependent!

Alas! Alas! Puerto Ordaz!