Fernando Rodriguez was an Arthur Andersen audit manager in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He had a delightful sense of humor which, upon remembrance, still makes me chuckle, if not laugh outright.
Once, around noon, having gotten his haircut in the barber shop in the lobby of the Royal Bank of Canada, he walked out and ran into one of the firm’s partners who gruffly rebuked him, “Hmmm. Getting a haircut during office hours!” to which Fernando, without missing a beat, replied, “My hair grows during office hours!”
Of course, the partner laughed.
During one of our trips to the mainland, we had a stop in Miami during which he called relatives there, introducing himself as “Fernandito”. After he hung up the phone, I asked him a bit about his childhood in Miami. A couple of his stories remain with me presumably because they are not too dissimilar from my own childhood experiences.
As a child, he had escaped Cuba where, like his friends and family, he was a die hard New York Yankees fan, as I had been in my childhood. They lived in the Coral Gables area of Miami and every day, he and other young Cuban refugees would run to Sears where they could see the previous night’s baseball scores. He told me of their loud delight whenever the Yankees had won and, looking back, how strange that must have seemed to the Sears employees. Who are these Spanish-speaking kids yelping as they would in the baseball stands when this is not a stadium and there is no game going on?
As he told of that era, I instantly related. Every year our family took our annual leave in Miami where we also had relatives. And every year, my mother would include a long, tedious day or two of shopping in Sears of Coral Gables. In retrospect, I have to admire my parents’ planning. They guesstimated their children’s growth for the following year and bought them clothing on that basis. I can remember only once or twice having to buy clothes in Venezuela, for funerals. It was very expensive and that is why we, and other families in El Pao, bought in the USA once a year.
And I also recall rooting for the Yankees over the big short wave radio at the El Pao Club.
Fernando went on to tell of how he and his childhood friends were so taken by The Beatles phenomenon. They would run to Sears every week, baseball season or no, to check the standings of any Beatles songs on the hit parade. He chuckled as he pondered how crazy they must have seemed to those Sears people.
This too rang true. In another post I’ll tell about the “arrival” of that band in El Pao in 1964 and how that coincided closely with a heartbreaking Yankees loss that year. But for now, I’ll say that when their hit song of the moment came on that short wave radio, my childhood friend, Anne, came running to me, insisting that I come and hear them. Just like Fernando and his friends ran to see how they were doing against the competition.
Fernando went on to live and to thrive in Puerto Rico, first as an Arthur Andersen audit manager, and then as partner and president of a regional CPA firm based in the San Juan area. I last saw him when he and I along with a mutual friend and colleague, Vicente Gregorio, met to reminisce and, mostly, to laugh, in Christmastime, 2012, during one of my visits to Puerto Rico. He passed away on June 4, 2014.
Coral Gables, Florida, was founded in the 1920s and was designed to be a pedestrian city. That, it certainly was as my childhood memories can attest: walking up and down Miracle Mile and Alhambra; visiting the Miracle Mile movie theater; walking to and diving into the gigantic Venetian Pool are all vivid memories decades later.
Many Cubans settled in Venezuela and I was privileged to know them, to love them, to miss them. As I miss my friend, Fernando.
Sears in Coral Gables is one of the very few remaining Sears stores in Florida.
Douglas Entrance to Coral Gables, Florida as I and my friend, Fernando, remembered it. Sears in Coral Gables, Florida. Miracle Mile is seen in background. Thanks to Dreamstime for photo. Venetian Pool, Coral Gables, Florida Miracle Mile Theater, Coral Gables, Florida Fernando Rodriguez, my friend and colleague. May he rest in peace.
The first of September, 1981, began inauspiciously enough for Rómulo Ordoñez, who piloted the Cessna YV-244-C. The last passengers he would ever carry were Colombian Judge, José Manuel Herrera, Venezuelan police officer, Salvador Mirabal, and Raiza Ruiz M.D. The policeman was carrying a slaughtered deer as a favor to friends in San Carlos who would pick it up there. The flight originated in Puerto Ayacucho and landed in Atabajo from whence it had flown to Maroa in the Amazonas Territory of Venezuela (now Amazonas State). It then headed to San Carlos on the Río Negro. The plans were to drop off the judge and the policeman in San Carlos and pick up a few of Raiza’s colleagues and then fly back to Puerto Ayacucho, the Territory’s capital. To understand the flight plan’s trajectory, refer to the map below.
No one imagined the Cessna would not arrive in either San Carlos or Puerto Ayacucho.
The Amazonas Territory was, and still is, one of the most unexplored regions of the world. To illustrate, imagine lodging somewhere in San Carlos from which you plan to explore the Baré and Yanomani regions. You’d begin by canoeing east on the Casiquiare and then, with an expert guide, you’d need to find the Río Parsimani from which you’d motor, paddle, hike carrying your canoe, wade in knee deep, waist deep, and chin deep waters and swamps to the Caño Emoni. A caño is a river or stream that can be many or few feet deep and wide and flows into the deep jungles sometimes through boundless swamps, with ever changing depths and currents. Some explorers find them a bit creepy. At any rate, if you get that far, you’d be doing better than many experienced explorers.
You might then decide to turn back as the Yanomami are not always friendly.
On that September 1st, the pilot, Ordoñez, had dropped off passengers in Atabajo and had picked up the policeman, Mirabal, and the Judge, Herrera. He then flew further south to Maroa where he picked up the medical doctor, Ruiz. They were now headed to the last stop, San Carlos, from whence they would fly directly back to Puerto Ayacucho.
Rains were now heavy as the plane took off from the Maroa airport.
About halfway to San Carlos, the plane, flying in heavy fog, hit a mountain with a high, thick canopy of trees. The trees, having “absorbed” the impact of the crash, also immediately “entered” the plane transforming the passengers’ environment from fog to green foliage which now scratched and blinded them. When they saw fire breaking out, they arose as one from their stupor, abandoned the craft, three of them jumping out the left side onto branches, trunks, and bush and catching twigs and trunks as they fell, and landed on the jungle floor. The policeman crawled out the right side, through the window he had broken in order to exit.
Within 30 minutes after takeoff three rescue planes took off from Maroa to seek the stricken craft. Another pilot who had been in communication with Ordoñez had suddenly lost contact with him and had raised the alarm. The search craft, assuming the mishap had occurred shortly after take off, focused their search area on the jungles surrounding Maroa, not knowing that Ordoñez was about halfway to San Carlos when he crashed.
The Cessna had lost its tail and almost immediately had caught fire; nevertheless, for a few minutes, it hung suspended above the canopy, mostly between two gigantic trees. The policeman had apparently not been badly injured by the impact. The pilot had broken his collarbone and three ribs. The Judge had a broken leg. Dr. Ruiz had bad scratches on her hands and legs, but all three were able to exit the plane, now enveloped in flames, on the left side.
As they fell and descended, the plane also fell, exploded, and caught the policeman on the right, covering his body in flames. He walked, robot-like, calling for help, before finally falling. Even so, he managed to smile to Dr. Ruiz and say, “Doctor, my lights are going out.” He died in terrible agony about an hour later. The survivors crossed his arms and prayed.
The others had also been burned, though not as badly and after about 3 hours, their thirst took over and they made the fateful decision of leaving the accident site in search for water. They did manage to find a small pond, but they lost their way and never returned to the plane.
At this point, I must note that other testimony and records say that Dr. Ruiz did not want to stay next to what would certainly become a rapidly putrefying corpse. This became a point of harsh criticism against her, despite her own ordeal.
Since one of the passengers was Colombian, and since the accident could have taken place in either jurisdiction, both countries, Colombia and Venezuela, initiated joint rescue efforts. After three days’ search they saw the remains of the craft. They initiated the journey via Caño Iguarapo for two hours followed by 6 hours on foot, arriving at the site late that afternoon.
The dreadful weather prevented the immediate evacuation of the remains of Mirabal, the dead policeman, whom they found with his arms crossed, although badly decomposed and exhibiting the gross results of scavenger jungle animals. The rescue team then deposited into a single bag what they had assumed were the now unrecognizable remains of the others. One of the members reported on human tracks heading out of the accident site but he was ignored because everyone knew that no one could possibly have survived this disaster and, besides, the remains were there for all to see, even though they could not be identified, other than the policeman’s. As to the crossed arms of his body, not much thought was given to that, even though, logically, someone must have done the crossing. Maybe he did so himself just before dying. They thought.
They camped there for the night and evacuated the next day having concluded their mission as accomplished. The remains were delivered to doctors in San Carlos. There were no forensic personnel there; they naturally assumed that the charred deer remains were what was left of the pilot, Ordoñez, the judge, Herrera, and the doctor, Ruiz. These were sent in three different coffins to their respective origins and were buried.
However, the three survivors had been wandering in the vast jungles, disoriented, with multiple fractures and burns about their bodies. It was a terrifying place. Dense foliage and vegetation that, they knew, would severely hamper any efforts to find them. But they were determined to find help in or through those intimidating lands. They came to a small stream and decided to follow it, thinking it would take them to the Río Negro, thinking they were near San Carlos. They were not.
After a long journey on foot, Judge Herrera, who could no longer walk on his broken leg and who was severely exhausted, sat down on a trunk. His burns, wounds, and traumas had become too heavy a burden for him. He decided to stay there, next to the stream and begged the others to stay with him there, to accompany him.
The pilot and the doctor felt they had to keep going. They promised Herrera that they’d return with help and went on, hopeful of returning for him soon. This did not happen. The judge was never seen alive again.
That night, Ordoñez and Ruiz essayed to cross a swamp to then find to their horror that it seemed to never end as the waters had risen to terrifying levels because of the rains. Exhausted, they each embraced a trunk and held on through the night, hoping to somehow rest a bit. They could not rest, but held on, each to his or her trunk, till daylight. Sharp leaves, underwater sliced their legs, further aggravating their injuries and further providing cracks and slits for worms to feast.
Hungry, ceaselessly attacked by insects, legs horribly cut by leaves that were sharp as blades, even underwater, Ordoñez and Ruiz went on, Ordoñez coughing badly and in one fall breaking his ankle. Both stumbled and fell often, which was especially a danger for the pilot, Ordoñez, with broken ribs. Ruiz was “covered” with worms seeking to burrow into her open wounds and cuts and scratches. She cleaned her cuts every time they stopped for water, not knowing that in her situation the best thing to have done was to cover her open wounds with mud instead of water.
They came to what appeared to once have been a large clearing of sorts. Later, it was learned that that area had been a rubber harvesting sector over 60 years earlier, now abandoned and nightmarishly ghostlike. While they looked around, they heard the sounds of an airplane! They ran in opposite directions thinking that would give them more of an opportunity to be seen from above. They yelled and jumped.
But to no avail.
Ruiz then realized she could no longer hear Ordoñez. She made her way, stumbling, to where she had heard him yelling.
He was dead. It may be that in the excited jumping and waving and yelling, the broken ribs had punctured his lungs. Or it may be he had finally succumbed.
Ruiz was now alone. She thought she was losing her mind. Her body was bloated, her skin covered by worms which ran up and down her. It was as if death stalked her and its agents had begun their work before her passing. She also noticed that she was losing her eyesight.
Nights in the jungle are never-ending and terrifying, especially when one is alone and lost.
On the seventh day, she fell and knew she would not get up again.
Here, the accounts diverge greatly. Some say she was rescued by Baré Indians, whose children were playing nearby and saw her, thinking her to be dead. Other accounts say a local fisherman and his young son had decided to go near the crash site to scavenge for metal to use in their fishing enterprise. Her own accounts vary in this.
Regardless, she was indeed found alive. Barely. Covered with worms.
They ignored her delirious demands to be left alone, and gave her spoonfuls of water with cinnamon, little by little, until about half a glass was consumed. They made a makeshift cot and carried her to a nearby stream and from thence to Río Negro where she was eventually taken to San Carlos and tended by medical personnel who cut and peeled the little clothing she still wore and gave her antibiotics and anis to apply to the horribly infected skin. When they first saw her legs they initially thought they would have to amputate. But Ruiz had demanded that she be treated first and then any decision could be made. The demand was met and she kept both her legs.
Months later, she learned that the plane she and Ordoñez had heard that day was carrying her remains to Caracas where she was buried a day later.
It took over 15 years for the paperwork to be fixed and the courts officially corrected her status from dead to alive.
And the doctor who had declared the charred deer bones to have been Dr. Ruiz’s remains was named as minister of health by President Chavez and a “revolutionary” hospital bears his name.
The Cessna’s flight plan was to take it from San Fernando de Atabajo, south to Maroa. Then further south to San Carlos from which it would fly back north to Puerto Ayacucho. The capital city of Puerto Ayacucho in the municipality of Atures in Amazonas State. Atures is known as “practically the only area with population” in the entire state. A White-Throated Tucan, Amazonas, Venezuela Air Taxi similar to the one taken by Dr. Ruiz that fateful day. Dr. Ruiz a few days after rescue (top) and before the accident (bottom) These are leaves we have on our property in Puerto Rico. They are as sharp as razor blades. I do not have a description of the leaves that cut Dr. Raiza in the Amazonas Territory in Venezuela, but her descriptions of the pain and the cuts are most believable based on my encounters with sharp leaves in a friendlier ambiance.
To give an idea of the difficulties in finding a lost craft in the State of Amazonas, the following photographs were taken during the search of a lost plane in 2007. In this case, the crash site was never located and all are presumed dead.
Dangerous storms arose directly in the path of the flight. Indigenous tribes were called upon to help. They know the areas, but even they do not know “everything” in the jungles, although they did help greatly. One of the search teams Search helicopter and a search member. Area where last “seen” on radar. Easy to lose oneself in the Amazonian jungles of Venezuela and elsewhere.
Venezuela is still Number One on the list of countries with the highest known oil reserves. According to WorldAtlas.com (link below), her production has fallen because of the decline in oil prices and because she did not “invest in the renovation of its obsolete oil extraction infrastructure.”
Second on the list is Saudi Arabia, which makes “it a strong ally to the United States, despite many [sic] blatantly problematic aspects of the country. Some of those include human rights violations and many international incidents.”
Readers of this blog know that I love the country of my birth and grieve for what she has been becoming. I have childhood friends there whom I dearly love and hold in the highest esteem, especially the few surviving friends of my own parents. However, I must say that to point out “blatantly problematic aspects” of Saudi Arabia while blithely ignoring the very real “blatantly problematic aspects” of Venezuela is irresponsible and is the type of reporting which has given cover to the catastrophe that has been unfolding there since the 1960’s and which accelerated dramatically since the Chavez regime.
Venezuela continues to be very rich in natural resources: not only is she the richest in oil reserves, but she is also supremely rich in other minerals (see here and also see under “Juan Vicente Gómez here) and yet many of her people are malnourished (I have personal knowledge of this), others have regressed to the use of donkeys because they cannot afford to buy rationed gasoline even at under $0.10 per gallon. Many thousands are now turning to fire for energy in their homes given the ongoing failures of the energy grid, often plunging them into utter darkness. Some reports say that the grid failed over 80,000 times (!) in 2019. Think of the impact on public transportation, hospitals, clinics. On everything needed for modern life.
The situation is so dire that the Venezuela refugee crisis is the largest ever recorded in the Americas.
Let that sink in for a moment. The largest ever recorded in the Americas. We’ve all read and heard about the despotic regimes of Gómez and Pérez Jimenez in Venezuela, Pinochet in Chile, the generals in Argentina, Stroessner in Paraguay, and others in Central America. But none of them — none — caused such magnitudes of peoples to flee their homelands in such massive numbers. None. The only one that comes close, as a proportion of her population, is Castro’s Cuba. The reader can deduce whatever similarities there may be between Cuba and Venezuela that would cause their peoples to leave their homes and head to unknown destinies through even less known, and frightening, seas and jungles.
Latest estimates are that about 6 Million Venezuelans have fled the country. That’s twenty percent of her population. See here.
How is it that a land so rich can be so poor? How is it that a land once hailed as the most stable democracy in South America is now a despotic regime where torture is commonplace (see here)?
As has been seen throughout this blog, the current problems did not begin with Chavez or Maduro.
Venezuela’s initiation into democratic rule took place in 1959, after a half century of unprecedented prosperity, mostly under General Juan Vicente Gómez, who in my childhood, an era of less political correctness, was often referred to as “the father of modern Venezuela.” He was a dictator but was not hailed as Castro was, even though he too was a dictator. The difference? Castro was one of the Socialist Beautiful People; Gómez was not.
Be that as it may, the long years under Gómez (in office from 1908 to 1935) were characterized by unparalleled stability and prosperity. This stability began years before the discovery of the first major oil reserves in Mene Grande (see here). Venezuela had a growing and prosperous middle class by the end of the Pérez Jimenez regime (see here), after which came the election of Rómulo Betancourt, generally acknowledged to be the country’s first democratically elected president.
So, Venezuela’s first democratically elected president was installed 140 years after the country’s declaration of independence. In sum, during the preceding (19th) century, Venezuela, like her neighbors, had been racked by revolutionary governments and bloodletting, and during the first half of the 20th century she had phenomenal growth and stability under authoritarian governments.
(The unfortunate fact is that South America’s wars for independence were not at all like North America’s. Unlike the North American colonists, the South American Criollos were enthralled by French Revolutionary ideas and sought the positions of power to which they believed they were entitled. This partly explains the long years of despotism and carnage, which is similar to post revolutionary France. If interested, see more on the differences between the United States and the Venezuelan Declarations of Independence here.)
As we have noted before (for example, see here) Betancourt, who had organized the Communist Party in Costa Rica in the 1930’s, but who had since shed his radical outspoken ideology and had migrated to a kinder, gentler democratic socialism, immediately set about to dismantle the structures of economic freedoms and low levels of taxation and regulations that had enabled the country to achieve such heights. In effect, his policies spurred the growth and intrusions of government, including nationalizations of major industries such as oil and iron ore. These reversals of economic liberties continued up to Chavez and Maduro where such policies did not change. They accelerated.
So the owners of industries in Venezuela are now the people. And, of course, when politicians say “the people,” that means The State and all those who, along with them, have the right political connections. And that has been catastrophic for Venezuela.
And so the country with the highest known oil reserves in the world is now a financial nightmare suffering shortages under political oppression, with many of her people in distress and, where able, voting with their feet by leaving.
Pray for the people of Venezuela.
For more on the power outages, see here (Spanish language article).
For the WorldAtlas report on oil reserves, see here.
Back to use of donkeys, mules, and horses. Colombian police stand before a multitude of Venezuelans seeking asylum. Juan Vicente Gómez (1857-1935), circa 1920 Marcos Pérez Jimenez (1914-2001), circa 1955 Fidel Castro (left), Rómulo Betancourt (center), in Caracas in 1959. Betancourt’s relationship with Castro ended shortly thereafter when Castro sought to foment guerrilla activity in Venezuela. Once one of the continent’s most prosperous countries, Venezuela is now plagued by frequent blackouts.
Nicolás Maduro: “Only Socialism can be in balance with nature, it is the only way to the preservation of the environment and the salvation of the human species. Let us save the World!”
There has been a massive oil spill in Venezuela. It happened in early August, 2020.
It has impacted the Morrocoy national park in western Venezuela.
Per the Caracas Chronicles: “There was a new spill in El Palito: the residue pond is full and the experts say that every time it rains, the pond overflows, bringing oil to the sea and accumulating one spill after the other. Up to 40,000 barrels of oil have been spilled into the coasts of Falcón and Carabobo states, causing an ecocide that could be irreversible with how often the spills are happening. There has been no damage control.”
The Environmentalists have said little or nothing.
No word from Leonardo yet. Or Harrison. Or Al. Etc.
One tweet from Greta.
Mass media? Crickets.
Since Venezuela is a Socialist regime, oil spills cannot be reported or made too big a deal about. Goes against the narrative.
Above photos taken August/September, 2020 Before the spill(s)
In Alexander von Humboldt’ Narratives, Volume V, one reads a brief mention of what the locals called the juvia tree. Humboldt and Bonpland (see here), having canoed the Casiquiare (see here), and camping in the southern regions of what is now Venezuela’s Amazonas territory, were excited to have seen this tree of which they had heard so much. They were not disappointed.
The two explorers named the tree, Bertholletia Excelsa, “that majestic plant which furnishes the triangular nuts called in Europe the almonds of the Amazon.” And that is its name today. It is found in the Amazonian areas of Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, even Perú, and is known by a multitude of names including Brazilian Nut Tree, Castaña del Brasil, Castaña del Maranon, and others. In Venezuela it is still known as the yubia tree, which is what Humboldt noted as juvia.
These majestic trees grow up to 50 meters (over 160 feet) and more, towering over the jungle canopy. Their coronas spread over 30 meters (close to 100 feet), and their trunks have been measured at 2 and even 3 meters (6 and 10 feet) across. Their fruit can weigh up to 4 or even 5 pounds each. These are not Planters Peanuts.
These trees are estimated to age up to a thousand years or more, each tree producing crops for centuries. Readers with an instinct or desire for exploration and adventure can raft down the Casiquiare and measure Humboldt’s tree today. It should still be there for you to enjoy.
Bertholletia Excelsa Brazilian Nut NOT the Brazilian nut
