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