Rainy days in the mining camp are cherished memories and I suspect they are so for many of my contemporaries. Put another way, rainy days did not get me down. (Although, every once in a while, Mondays did.)
Of course, the rains I witnessed in Hurricanes Donna, Cleo, Maria, and others were extraordinary and Texas rains that come with some spring seasons are dangerously intense. Nevertheless, the curtains of water that fell during every rainy season in El Pao made a lifelong impression on the memory banks of my childhood (Memory).
The rainy season ran roughly from May through November, with crashing rains especially concentrated in June, July, and August, which overwhelmed more than half the days of the month. I’ve been told that El Pao’s rainy season more or less paralleled that of South Vietnam’s monsoon season. If so, that explains how landscape photos or films of that part of Venezuela can be easily confused with similar scenes of Southeast Asia.
For example, after watching The Ugly American, my father’s first comment was how much the landscape in the movie looked like our area of Venezuela. Of course, this was a Hollywood film; however, Thailand landscape around Bangkok provided the background sceneries and some scenes were actually shot there, because they very much looked like South Vietnam.
A former colleague had served in the Vietnam War and when he visited our property in Puerto Rico, which looks like the regions around El Pao, he walked to the edge of our ridge and stood silently for several minutes. Later, as we drove back to town, he merely said, “This looks like South Vietnam.”
This might explain why I became so attracted to Singapore whenever I visited on business less than a decade ago. Unlike southern Vietnam and El Pao, Singapore has two monsoon seasons. One of them runs from June to September, which is roughly parallel to El Pao’s. The rains, her lush, abundant jungle foliage, the green which predominates, and the tropical climate surely were major factors for my remembering my visits there with fondness.
Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Puerto Rico, El Pao. In my child’s memory, I do not think of war and devastation. Just rains and green and beauty.
Monsoon rain in Singapore Monsoon rain in Ho Chi Min City (formerly Saigon) Rainy season in Venezuela Scene from The Ugly American Approaching rains in Puerto Rico
Oscar Wilde wrote, “Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.”
There is truth in that, especially when it comes to childhood memories.
I write this from our home in the Puerto Rico mountains on a very rainy day. My mind, or more accurately, my heart, has been transported to El Pao and the many afternoons during the rainy season (May through November, inclusive) when the rains would fall incessantly for hours. There was something peaceful about it all. At least for me.
I remember on occasion sitting on the floor or the ground out back, under the roof whose shelter extended beyond the porch and listening either to the pitter patter on the roof or the gentle sound of the water dropping on the innumerable leaves of the giant mango trees.
Poet I never was, nevertheless, more than once I’d think in my child’s mind that I would look back on such days and remember them fondly.
And, lo, I do remember them. With love.
After a rain in Venezuela Somewhere in a mining camp in Venezuela years ago. Children in Venezuela, like children everywhere, love going out in the rain
One cannot begin to understand Venezuela without knowing some of its revolutionary history.
In the previous post I alluded to the bloodletting in Venezuela in the revolutionary wars of the 19th century. Among the most terrible campaigns of the era (of any era) were those of José Tomás Boves, Venezuela’s own Attila the Hun, also known as The Beast On Horseback. Boves was born in Spain but lived in Venezuela most of his life. He began his horrors in the vast plains of Apure and Guárico, scenes of immense bloodshed. Numerous contemporary reports describe the monstrous rainy season lakes as reddish with the blood of thousands of Venezuelans slaughtered by their own countrymen during the unbelievably heinous racial wars unleashed by strongmen such as Boves who incited los negros against the white criollos, including the gang rapes of women, children and even toddlers. Some of the tortures inflicted on the criollos (Spanish descendants, but Venezuelan-born) are beyond belief, including the live skinning of men, women, and children.
By the end of the revolution in the late 1820’s, foreign observers reported without exaggeration that Venezuela’s criollo population had practically disappeared. Young women from reputable families, when initiating a courtship, felt compelled to inform their beaus early on, “I am from the time of Boves.” Nothing more needed to be said.
Boves lived by the sword and died by the spear. A few months before his death his army had left Valencia in ruins. One of his many despicable acts was to swear profusely and formally, as the Eucharist was held by a priest outside the city, that he would harm no one. After this ceremony, he and his army entered and called the citizens to a banquet and elaborate ball at which he had his musicians play the tawdry songs of the Apure region, to which he forced the women to dance with his men while the husbands and fathers and brothers were taken and thrust through, impaled, skinned, or otherwise tortured before suffering the coup de grace.
This frenzy lasted 3 days.
On their way out of Valencia, heading east, they came to the home and ranch of the Bravante family. Boves gathered the family, including the 19 and 12-year-old daughters. He ordered his men to defile the girls as he forced the father and brother to watch. He then ordered the family’s slaves to further defile them. Finally, he himself proceeded to engage in the same acts only now the girls were in death’s agony and shortly afterwards were killed.
Boves’s men killed the father but somehow the brother tore loose, killed one of the attackers as he took his horse and fled.
Now we come to the battle of Urica, about a day’s journey north of Maturín, a colonial town just north of the Orinoco River in southwest Venezuela, about three months after the slaughter in Valencia. Boves was in the midst of the battle as the town of Maturín was emptying out into the vast prairies of Venezuela. There was little hope that Boves’s army would be stopped and the people knew better than to expect anything but the vilest treatment.
As the battle raged and Boves’s men took advantage, a young man, fighting in defense of Urica and Maturín, espied him on his horse as he led his men and fought. This young man, with a singleness of purpose and steel in his eyes, fought desperately, to get closer to Boves. As he neared Boves, the opposition of Boves’s men became almost irresistible, but the man, killing as he advanced, was not deterred. Closer, closer he came.
Finally, after several wounds, the young man was thrust to the hard ground. With his sword he killed one of Boves’s lance men and, grabbing the dead man’s lance, he ran like a whirlwind towards the horse and his rider. Screaming like a dervish, he mightily rammed the lance right through the chest of the evil man. So powerful was the act, that the lance protruded out Boves’s back as he fell from his horse, the eyes glazed open, dead, before he hit the ground. The young man was immediately sliced to death by Boves’s frenzied men.
The young man was Ambrosio Bravante, avenging his sisters’ miserable deaths at the hands of Boves.
The ravages experienced in Venezuela resembled those of the French Revolution. That is not a coincidence. And it explains much of Venezuelan history. More on this in later posts.
Early 19th century depiction of José Tomás Boves
Mid-19th century depiction based on description by Daniel O’Leary, Irishman who fought with Bolivar against Boves. Boves defeated Bolivar the two times they met in the field of battle.
Note: Historians agree that Boves won the Battle of Urica, but was killed there, by a spear through his chest. But they disagree as to the identity of the man who killed him. I’ve used a well-sourced biography for my description above, but others disagree. Furthermore, historians acknowledge, some reluctantly, that arguments can be made that Boves’ actions were in reprisal to Simón Bolivar’s own actions and his “War To The Death” proclamation. These posts will discuss these and more, in future weeks and months.
