Where The Jaguar Roars
Mireya Vargas, 2/21/2021
One can tell it’s Saint Barbara from sound of the thunder
The plain has been a part of me all my life. That is where my family comes from and, in some way, I am from there too, though not by birth. It was in the plain where my family´s epic began, where our patriarchy was created; where the Ferrers and then the Lavado and the Vargas were founded. And although I risk sounding too literal by saying that in these lands lie my roots, I have to say that in the plain is that part of me that doesn't change, although the plain is not always the same.
Romulo Gallegos, a Venezuelan writer, who captured the nature of the plain like no other, said that it is beautiful and terrible at the same time, as life there is part of death and this latter lies everywhere. And that is exactly how it is. When you kill a cow and chop it up you immediately make a stew of the bones and from the still palpitating flesh; you hunt an ibis in the middle of the plain to make fried pasties or you chase an armadillo before it digs down into a burrow so you can cook it. Death brings you your food to live. The blow on the head of the pig with a stick and the shaving of the bristles is what provides you with the crackling, the fried pork, and the juicy black puddings, full of hot blood flavored with marjoram and seasoning, then boiled and fried to be eaten with cassava. A duck shot in the lagoons brought by the rains, brings you life in a soup with coriander and chile.
The dance of life and death in the plain is not only about food, it is also fighting, survival. It is life when a cow gives birth at midnight and you hear her lowing in pain and the first moo of the calf, or when the storks wake you in the morning, from the top of the palm trees hovering around the chick which they won't leave until it learns to fly. It is the running of the anteater in the middle of the plain fleeing from men's eyes, the grazing of the cattle and the round-up at the end of the day to save them from rustlers. It is that chatter of the plainsmen rocking in their hammocks, talking about the day's work. It is the excitement produced by the initiation of a young llanero who bestrides a calf for the first time or who mounts an unbroken horse and drags it to the ground. It is in the song at milking time, in the routines of the day, in the stamping of feet in the dance when the harp bursts out in a counterpoint competition between singers who want to show their wit in beating the opponent.
The plain is also violent death. Stabbings in a fight, ambushes on the highway, blood payment for a broken promise or an unkept word, the impassioned fight to death over a stolen woman. It is the hunting of the ocelot after stalking it for several nights to lure it with a female in heat; it is the shot that takes life when, racing after a deer, a bullet that cuts its life short for a hunter's trophy. It is the blood beating wildly in the heart when the jaguar hunts the deer. It is the eagle attacking the wild rabbit. It is the snake lying in wait for the armadillo or the puma chasing the calf.
The plain is also an endless flood. Seasons of unceasing rain that turn everything into swamps, that bury you in isolation, absence of communication, immobility. It is watching the rain fall hour after hour, lost in your thoughts lying in the hammock. It is shaking with cold and fear in the night when lightning strikes the roof and kills the odd cow out on the plain. This endless rain accompanies you for hours when you go on horseback to the village, or when you are mired in the sticky mud that swallows your tires on the dirt roads. Many times, we got stuck and all we could do was watch the rain and wait for someone to come and pull us out; meanwhile a leech could suck your life out. You can only pull it off by candlelight when you finally get home at midnight. The plain is silent, compulsory introversion. It doesn't let your inner life lose itself in those vast lands.
The plain is also superstition and witchcraft. You can find a Hecate ready to lead you to Hades if you want to tie down a husband, soften up a boyfriend, do harm to a bad neighbor, wreak havoc on a relative, sicken a woman you envy or drive mad the one who has the beauty and youth you no longer possess. It is the land of Doña Barbara, where stories of ghosts are woven, spirits are prayed to, favors are begged from the beings of darkness and spells are cast to damage your fellow. The witches have a special charm to take off the evil eye, to heal shingles, to cure a sick animal or person. They also have the power to bring peace to your heart.
The plainsman believes in evil, in the creatures of darkness, and pays homage to the spirits and dark forces. He is afraid to ride horseback alone at night for fear of La Sayona, La Llorona, of a battle between Florentino and the Devil, as is told in the famous joropo. He knows the strength of Nature and his intuition recognizes the strength of psychic life and he mixes it with his beliefs and mythology to give sense to it from his daily imagination. Everything is transformed into tales of specters, into verses of vigorous song, into inexhaustible anecdotes that describe heroic feats, but also into a spiritual life expressed in the paying of promises to the Nazarene of Achaguas in Easter Week, as did my mother, or to the spirit of Guaritico, which my father firmly believed in, or the witchdoctor of Capanaparo, believed in by my aunt Maria Teresa, or the candle that my grandmother lit to the saint to give thanks or from whom to ask a favor.
But that plain which I knew no longer exists as such, it is rather a shadow of what struggles to survive. A battle is being fought so that all should not be lost, for the survival of the best of the plain; that which my grandparents and my parents saw as a land of opportunity in spite of its hostility, its gloom.
Happier than a monkey in a fruit tree
My memory of the plain is almost as boundless as the land itself. "Your gaze gets lost", said my maternal grandmother, talking about the plain, but also about the patriarchy. A great part of my recollections are of La Paz Ranch. How many days of absolute joy I spent there! On the ranch, at the moments of the "sun of the deer" the colors are exactly that, vivid red and yellow, contrasting with the blue of the lagoons, the green of the wetlands, the dark blue of the sky, and a radiance that blinds you on the edge of a boundary that you never know where exactly it lies.
La Paz marks the origin of my mother's family in the country. It was the great feat that occupied the life and work of a Spanish immigrant from the Canary Islands, Antonio Ferrer Ciracuza, my great-great-grandfather, who arrived to Venezuela in 1833 at the age of twenty-five, fleeing from the revolutions that were shaking Mediterranean Europe. Coinciding with the recent birth of Venezuela as a nation, he entered through Falcon State and after many risky moments, in the midst of the wars of the mounted revolutionaries and the changes of presidents, he began to buy land in Apure State and over the years attempted to establish himself as a cattle rancher. My great-great-grandfather managed to tame eleven leagues of land; they say his property stretched from Mantecal to Guasdualito and he had many heads of cattle. His children, Antonio –born in 1861— and Marina Ferrer Perez, continued his work after he died in 1898 from natural causes at the age of seventy. At this succession my great-grandfather bought his sister Marina's share and began to consolidate La Paz Ranch as a breeding center for cattle.
Antonio Ferrer Perez married Petra de la Luz Gonzalez who gave birth to eight children – Benedicta, Rafael, Gustavo, Pastora, Eulalia, Pedro, Petra and Marina— among whom was my grandmother Eulalia. My great-grandmother died when she fell, pregnant, off a horse and her sister took charge of the children, a woman called Vespasiana, who was strong-minded and independent. With a deep love for my great-grandfather, his older daughters, Benedicta, Eulalia and Pastora, helped him raise the family. Vespasiana molded them into women of strong, enterprising character. Then they all moved to live on the ranch and only Pedro stayed in Caracas studying medicine while Gustavo worked for the English Company near Mantecal. The ranch grew to a great size in cattle and my great-grandfather took decisions as to partnerships which would turn out later to be disastrous. These would cost him part of his land and cattle.
An espadrille fell into the soup
The Unceine brothers were partners of my great-grandfather for a few years but their ambition grew along with the ranch so they decided to separate legally from my great-grandfather in 1923. For this task the Unceines hired my grandfather, Manuel Vargas Rivas, a fierce lawyer, who handled the separation with great success, among other things because of his relations with the dictatorships (he was made senator for Apure State in the times of the dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez). My grandfather Vargas managed to take away more than half the land from my great-grandfather Antonio. The Unceines gave these lands to my grandfather Vargas in payment and that is how the Los Camorucos Ranch (also known as El Vargüero) was founded. He also lost more than half the cattle, which the Unceines sold to be able to return to Spain. On his death in 1966, my great-grandfather Antonio left his children a ranch that covered around seven thousand hectares, something like a thousand head of cattle and more than three hundred horses.
History never lets its cycles close and this family dispute, which we carry on like that of the Montagues and Capulets, is the background of the marriage between my father, Manuel Vargas, and my mother, Gladys Lavado Ferrer, granddaughter of Antonio Ferrer. Since they both decided to get married, with a love affair conducted through correspondence which developed from the military college where my father was sent to study as a punishment for his revolutionary activities against the dictatorship, they negotiated a wedding with my aunt Petra –sister of my grandmother Eulalia. My father came back to Venezuela when he was about to become of age –21 years old— and they got married both by civil contract and in the church in Caracas, in the presence of my grandmother and my aunt Petra. Like the Montagues and the Capulets, they were detained at the airport and, only because of a well-made calculation as to legal age were, they allowed to leave and live in the U.S. They returned after a while to Venezuela and then two years later went back to the U.S. where I was born.
Everyone creates a world out of his own life
At that time the infrastructure of the ranch that was built up during the 19th century was already completed by the middle of the 20th century. It consisted of the main house for six children, a house for the manager –my great-uncle Rafael, the man with the resounding guffaws— a shed for the men who worked in the plain and which could fit in a hundred workers easily, and two houses which served as deposits where they kept the salt, the piles of unrefined sugar blocks, the soap made from the fat of the cattle, the candles and all the other foodstuff and goods. I remember that the bats flitted through these warehouses. At the far end was a windmill that supplied water to the house and underneath was a giant tub where my grandmother bathed us, next to a pen with more than two hundred tortoises, the pigsties at the far end, and the hen pens, and an electric generator that supplied power at nightfall and kept us company with its hum until nine o'clock at night when it was switched off. At the entrance were the paddocks, all shaded by the blossoming Saman trees, and the calf stalls where part of the branding of the calves took place as well as the breaking in of the horses. On the outskirts of the ranch lay La Barbada, a big house with huge pens where the work of the plains took place; cattle branding –each son and daughter had their own brand— the castration of the bullocks for fattening up, whose testicles we ate roasted according to family tradition, and the branding of the horses, called "beasts" in the plains.
It tugs at you more than a tender woman
The big house had eight rooms opening off a central corridor and, in each room, there were great windows reaching up to the ceiling and which looked out onto the patio and let in the cool breeze. The corridor had spikes for hanging the hammocks. The threshold of each room became a landing place for the hanging hammocks where we played at airplanes with my siblings and cousins. Once I fell out of my airplane onto my back and got a big bump on my head, but those were battle scars that I treasured. I got another one when I was getting out of the van, at the beginning of the vacation when I was travelling with my grandmother; I got caught on the fender and the tendons in my arm were pulled and I had to undergo the torture of a "sobador", a kind of rustic masseur, who half way through the vacations had put everything back in place and I could carry on playing. Yet another time in the roots of a great masaguaro tree, that dated back to the beginning of the twentieth century, I sprained a foot and again was thrown on the mercies of the "sobador" to recover. Trophies of war, in the light of an imagination as active as mine, that were shared with that invisible friend who always kept me company, especially when I was in the plain, and who I laughed with while I played in my solitary spaces.
The morning began with the daylight, at six o'clock, and that is where I think my habit of always getting up early comes from. A llanero breakfast waited for us in the main dining room. The wood stove was next to it and the smoke wafted over to us the flavors of the menu; scrambled eggs straight from the nest boxes, fried or stewed meat according to the cook's whim, arepas (maize cakes), and plantain strips, warm white rice, a cup of coffee, all with a mind for the men who had to go out and work on the plains and come back at the end of the afternoon for lunch.
The kitchen was a spectacle I really enjoyed. The sleeve for percolating the coffee was enormous and hung from the roof over one of the great fires where the cooking was done. A wooden work table stood to one side; there, four women worked together in harmony to prepare the food for around thirty people every day. The pots carefully stacked up on a lovely wooden board painted by hand and next to it a pile of enamel dishes arranged on a board designed for two hundred plates and a hundred mugs. Meat was kept in a gas refrigerator, but most of it was dried in the warehouse by the sun and the wind. Chickens were killed the same day and the pig was sacrificed once or twice a month. A cow was slaughtered weekly and maize and beans were grown on the banks of the River Matiyure which was part of the life of the farm.
This is how you rock an ox calf so it gets out like a light
For an introverted girl like me there were many possibilities for fun apart from the game of flying in airplanes in the hammocks. The river was one of those places as its dark waters offered mystery. We crossed it in a canoe, to the other side where my grandmother lived until her husband died. We also fought endless battles on the bank of the river, leaving enough time for the late evening walk when the howler monkeys began to utter their fierce roars while balancing in suicidal acrobatics among the branches. Another fascinating place, apart from the warehouse, was the llaneros' shed where all their riding equipment was seen hanging in harmonious order and I would take advantage to gallop on imaginary horses while sitting on those rows of saddles. A real horse ride always waited for me and Marciano, a half-brother of my mother born out of wedlock, took up the task of patiently leading me round the home paddocks while he told me stories of phantoms and hauntings. I also loved to go to my great-uncle Rafael's house and poke among his trunks full of the farm papers, old photographs and documents, but most of all to talk with him for hours at a time about my great-great-grandfather, my great-grandfather and him and his siblings. He was the memory of the family. I valued every story. I would wait anxiously until five o'clock in the afternoon; my great-uncle would open his huge bottle of Polar beer and begin the conversation, standing in the patio dressed in his usual shirt and khaki pants.
Sometimes I would watch a traditional joropo fiesta, with llanero music, and would see the men and women stamping their feet until they raised clouds of dust. The harp, the cuatro and rattles accompanied each dance as well as a singer of strident music. Sometimes a singer would go counterpoint with another in a nighttime dual of images and endless rhymes. Sometimes too the dances ended badly with a knife fight between llaneros. Silent, with a diffident and evasive gaze, occasionally this violent side came out but which, curiously, made them no less loyal and generous. It was all part of that life and death nature of the plain where the llaneros were actors in that theater.
You recognize a llanero by the way he drives his cattle
As well as the fiesta and celebrations, the ranch was also characterized by the hard work of the llanero. Breaking in the horses is a ritual where the plainsman shows his skills and demands recognition for his courage and ability. It is always done in "winter", when the rainy season is unending and everything is flooded. The breaking in begins by tying the animal to a jib for three days of unceasing rain. At first the horse tosses his head furiously but the rain gradually tames this impulse and he ends up with his head drooping and almost collapsing, having had no food the whole time. On the third day, at dawn, the horse-breaker and llaneros get up. Two of them saddle up their horses to ride next to the horse-breaker when he mounts the horse and shoots off like the devil himself and it is only the flood which makes the run so hard that the horse is quelled. Shouts and uproar accompany the race and this goes on for two more days until all the horse's rage is overcome. This method of horse-breaking still goes on, although in many places it has changed and now the more peaceful breaking in with sound and movement is practiced.
The cattle drive-in winter was another of the jobs I enjoyed for years. With my grandmother Eulalia we would go on horseback from the ranch to the town on a journey that lasted six hours. I remember clearly the splashing of the horses and the cattle as we went, while the water reached halfway up the horse's body. We spent hours with our feet in the water and I would see how the current flowed gently, moving the submerged pasture that barely floated. "Shwa, shwa, shwa" was the rhythm imposed on our steps and we had no alternative but to go at the pace of the oxen ahead who were guiding us to our destination. The llaneros wore hats and a poncho, indifferent to the rain and were ready to race off if they saw an animal straying. The same trip could take place in the dry season, "summer", but then the ground was arid and dry which brought up an enormous cloud of yellow dust which would not disperse however strong a breeze blew up. On both sides of the herd, next to the oxen, the llaneros would lead the cattle with songs and melodies and the occasional joke directed at someone in the caravan.
When he was already an old man, my grandmother Eulalia and my mother took charge of my great-grandfather Antonio who died at 105 in 1966. That changed the life of La Paz Ranch and a new generation tried to maintain those lands until the illusion of its being a great cattle ranch disappeared forever. One is always hoping, as Don Romulo Gallegos writes in his novel "Dona Barbara", "One day it will be true. Progress will penetrate into the plains and barbarity will be overcome. Maybe we will never see it; but our blood will beat with the emotion of whoever does."
With little feathers, like a young lady's hat
As was repeated since the times of great-great-grandfather Antonio, the family’s task was to found, to set up an enterprise. In some way each generation had to re-found, renew the legacy of the land of opportunities’ conquest, taking it one step further in the civilizing process. This meant dividing up the land among the new generations and giving way to new projects and uses. That is how the El Ochenta Ranch arose. It was the project that united the matriarchy begun by my grandmother Eulalia, continued by my mother, and then followed by my siblings and me. "El Ochenta" was the scenario of so many businesses and memorable moments for me that I don't need to even close my eyes to roam through the house and the rest of the farm centimeter by centimeter; perhaps because when we lose something or someone, it becomes even more ours since it belongs totally in our memory.
It was a simple house which gave us shelter, surrounded by great windows and wire netting, embraced by gourd trees, ceibas, lime trees, mangoes, guavas, oranges, mandarins, ponsigue and little local cherries, with shrubs of hibiscus vibrant with vivid red flowers that lasted one day, and further off the yellow poui, cedars, pink poui, samans, and the masaguaro. The bougainvilleas had a special place as they took over the fences and gave a special color to the house with their violets, crimsons and whites, blooming with life and intense joy. All the bedrooms were equipped to hang hammocks, as well as the main corridors, and in the somnolent hours brought on in the plain at two in the afternoon, we would lay down in them to swing and catch the breeze while the hours passed like drips in a cave, in the lethargic advance of the afternoon. The bedrooms were large and we arranged the hammocks with a symmetry that would allow each person to stretch out a foot and swing without touching your neighbor. My mother slept in a bed as she didn't like to ruffle her hair and my grandmother was always in a corner, where occasionally, when we were small, she would cuddle us if we were afraid.
The kitchen was at the back. It was my grandmother's favorite place, a wood-fire adapted for her own use. In the last years we used a gas cylinder that my mother brought from town, but Eulalia always preferred the wood stove. On this were cooked the flavors of the plain; beef stew, arepas in the morning, salt beef with red beans, boiled cassava, sometimes tortoise in its shell, fried pasties of ibis, ground beef, juicy hen stew, heated up roast beef, duck with rice, roast armadillo or turtle soup. My grandmother was an enchantress with the alchemy of food and transformed any little piece into a dish that delighted the senses. The dining table was inside but we always ended up eating at the long patio table, next to the wood fired stove, where we would all sit in an uproar of conversation and laughter. We ate under a gourd tree which gave us shade and cool air while my grandmother busily served us on the enamel plates which was our dinner service.
The mill which turned unceasingly day and night kept company with the silence of the plain. It just gave news of a gentle breeze or a gale that shook the roofs of the house and it seemed as if the blades would fly off. Underneath was an outdoor tub for bathing the children or washing clothes with a tablet of blue soap. Next to it was a magnificent shower, with a powerful jet of cold water which came from the subsoil and fell straight onto your head, a real treat of relaxation at the end of the day. The same mill filled the trough where the cattle came to drink in the evening. From time to time we would discover one of them peering, watching us with curiosity as we bathed naked, enjoying the afternoon breeze.
Walking in the pens with the cattle inside was one of my greatest pleasures. I loved the smell of the wet earth, of the cattle, to gaze into the eyes of the animals and just by looking at them I knew and understood their feelings. I also have to admit that I loved that strange mixture of excitement and fear that walking among the cows gave me, and I learnt the wisdom of the llaneros as I roamed around talking with one of the workers. The pens were on one side of the main house, near the mill, and the two hundred head of cattle fitted in there when they were brought in at the end of the day for safety and to keep them tame. They never attacked, unless it was an enraged mother protecting her calf, but as most were milkers they were patient and quiet.
El Ochenta was my grandmother. She built it. While the Colombian Gustavo built the walls, she would supervise all the work and then sleep under a palm tree. First the wood stove and the kitchen, then the bathroom, finally the bedrooms and thus the main house took shape. My grandmother, who lived in Apure until Acacio, her husband, died of a brain hemorrhage, was pregnant thirteen times but only raised three girls --Esperanza, Maria Teresa and Gladys. She was fine-boned, thin, small; her skin as white as milk with long hands covered with freckles; she would say she was "as bent as a hook" because of an aggressive operation on a kidney that she lost when she was very young. My mother was 17 when my grandfather died and, from then on, my grandmother lived with her or nearby in her own house in Caracas, called "Mi Papa" in El Cafetal. Eulalita, or Dona Eulalia, as she was called, divided up her paternal inheritance while still alive, and founded together with her second daughter, Maria Teresa, "Las Mercedes", a farm next to El Ochenta, and then helped my mother make her own. She put all her passion into El Ochenta; founding for her was to create life. She was a specialist in that, she carried it in her blood like her grandfather Antonio. She was clearly an entrepreneur; she bought a house in Caracas –which she later lost because of my mother's debts—, she founded Las Mercedes and El Ochenta, pushed my mother and my aunt, Maria Teresa, into the cattle business, sold imported clothes which she brought from the U.S.A., and made clothes and food to sell. To set up businesses and innovate were the key for her creativity.
With us she was always very special, a beloved grandmother and when she came back from the plain, saturated with that land, I would say "grandma, you smell of Apure." She had a severe side too that showed in her relationship with my mother. Eulalita was very generous. She was always ready to help anyone, with a particular solidarity which might involve taking them under her own roof, or making the workers pants from the scraps from the sacks, making cloth and espadrilles as presents for the children, sewing dresses for the women out of remnants, cooking pots of food for the ones who always arrived hungry or offering a prayer for the dead or someone sick out of her own private introverted world. My grandmother was the backcloth for everyone, an emotional prop always there, behind the scenes, ready to give you a hug, to make you an arepa, to show you affection, to give you advice or simply a blessing. She stayed on the farm for long stretches at a time, watchful as a hawk, wise as a serpent, and saying little, but when she gave some advice there wasn't anyone who ignored it. She loved planting, cooking, fixing gadgets –always busy— and sitting gazing at the plain, talking with her inner Hermes always imagining a new scheme. She prayed at night, a prayer of thanks and to ask for peace for her dead; she asked for protection from the spirits and the saints. When she was no longer there, you could feel her presence slip along the corridors of the farm, giving the sensation that she was still alive, like the fire from the woodstove, bringing alchemical transformations between life and death.
El Ochenta was not only Eulalia, it was also Gladys. It was my mother's life. She was born in the plain and, although she was brought up and lived all her life in Caracas, she never abandoned her beloved plain. My mother drove eight hours from Caracas to attend the business and spent days in that vast land which welcomed her back. She was like Dona Barbara, with no fear of work nor of the plain nor of the men. She loved medicine and prescribing remedies, spiritism, clandestine loves and drinks. She travelled with my grandmother or alone and she sold and bought cattle. She didn't ride a horse for the tasks with the cows but she was in the pens first thing and attended the workers as the owner of the business. Always looking good, she dressed in white with a scarf at her neck, "so they won't see my wrinkles" she would say, in boots with heels, her hair styled in a beauty salon –with plenty of hair spray— and her lips always painted red. When she left Caracas, she always hung a thermos of coffee from the door of her SUV. She only stopped to go to the restroom in San Fernando de Apure and to have a refreshing beer in Achaguas and another finally, when she arrived at the town of Mantecal. She had a house there, "La Guaricha", where she usually slept for the convenience of electricity (a fan was crucial). There she could have a social life, vital for someone as extroverted as herself. The line of people waiting to consult with her about some ailment was endless and I was always anxious and telling her "Mum, you can't be prescribing for anyone, it's dangerous", and she would shrug her shoulders and turn away.
The ranch was my mother's occupation until her illness –breast cancer— began to destroy her and she could no longer go. First, she moved to Barquisimeto to be closer to her beloved plain, leaving Caracas, a city she enjoyed. Then my grandmother died and one year later she could no longer bear it and died too, as if swallowed up by that maternal complex that made them inseparable.
For thirty years we had that ranch. I rode beside my mother and my grandmother, thousands of stories that were interwoven in that period. At twenty, I began to accompany them in that impossible task of making it productive and civilized. In the last years my siblings joined us and together we worked to attend the business. We tried to improve the breeding production with better cows and bulls, we installed electric fences, we set up a health program for the cattle, we planned the reproduction times so the calves would be born in the rainy season, we established hunting restrictions, we sowed pasture and dug new wells. But the plain is tough, and nothing could be changed when the guerrilla, the thieves, the paramilitaries, the drug trafficking, like locusts, began to devour everything.
A mosquito fell into the coffee
From a few years back, in the land where my ancestors lived and died, a feeling of hatred has taken over everything. In the name of the revolution, "rustlers" rob and hijack what before was work, pleasure and delight. They kill cattle to provide enough food for the guerrilla, they kidnap people to maintain the business of violence, they flay people to teach fear in the drug-dealing business, they take boys and girls to serve in the revolution and put a gun on their shoulders so they can loot the little that remains. They are the new border smugglers, where they trade in lives and wealth, where they deal in organs, drugs, weapons, where they kidnap and kill according to the business involved.
Before, the dance of life and death was the joropo dance of survival. Killing was used to bring life, to become food: it was not destruction. But it isn't like that anymore. Now the plain is an untilled land fit for barbarity. The plainsmen have nothing to hunt anymore as every living creature has been killed because of hunger, no animal can survive the famine felt in the plain today. They live on the brink, but in a different way. The "Law of the Plain", based on a code of honor and Solomonic laws that solved every conflict, is obsolete. The fashion now is to kill for the pleasure of ending someone else's life, of taking someone out. Lordship was exchanged for the meanness of triumphing in annihilation, you have to make sure you are the last man standing. Compassion is left out there, "where the Devil left his sandal".
Cattle stealing is the winner, looting by the guerrillas has become a daily event, indiscriminate hunting. The hunger of a family that depends on a very occasional distribution of a "CLAP box" hand-out has finished with the scruples and behavior of the llanero who now is characterized by depredation and destruction. Many, too many, have lost contact with that hard work of the plain and have become used to the crumbs falling from State programs that diminish all the time. Their biggest struggle is to hunt down a subsidy to get enough money to buy beans. They have become human scraps that live hanging by a thread and afraid to die. Survival is no longer the force that moves the countryside, but rather a state, a kind of motionless limbo where the greater the inhuman situation and limit experienced, the less the effort, better. The floods of the plain have become this, not something that corresponds to a season of the year, but a psychic state in which the water seeps through and dissolves everything.
The season of floods now brings diseases eradicated in the last century, like malaria, or even pandemics like Covid-19 more recently. A simple cold ends in pneumonia and any sickness will awaken Cerberus. Sicknesses are destroying that race of sturdy plainsmen; if not, let doña Petra tell us, a woman who worked on many farms as well as ours, who, weary of the impoverished life she was leading decided to end it in the middle of the "winter", as if that water had drowned her hopes in bottomless depths.
In the presence of death and the current tragedies, of this disjointed and derailed life, Hecate seems to demand more strongly the infliction of damage on one's fellows, to cast evil with rage, with hate of everything produced by the revolution. Now witchcraft feeds on pure hate, it springs from the water flowing from the Styx to finish with the horror of life. The dark beings are no longer of mythology, but rather they have become incarnate in the belief that everything is possessed by them. Everything is transformed into stories of curses, of black magic, no longer spirits in verses of robust song, in endless anecdotes of heroic prowess, but in living stories of how someone's soul has been possessed by that dark force.
With her eyes out Saint Lucia is nothing
Violence is no longer an occasional event but a daily one; settling of accounts to sow fear, extrajudicial executions that claim blood for a broken promise or just for the pleasure of elimination. Heroic feats, the stories of spirits and hauntings are not now the center of the imagination, which has been taken over by stories like that of my cousin Raul who was arbitrarily detained by the national guard and died when he was tied by his feet to a jeep and dragged for hours through the town and along the road. In a curfew his life was cut short simply for existing, his life ripped to shreds, burst open inside. There are too many people sacrificed in the most barbarous fashion. Miguelito was hanged from a masaguaro tree and his guts ripped out because he refused to carry a dispatch of drugs that the dealer had to send to its destination. Everything is stained red, with rot. Fear leaves no place for other emotions because an arbitrary act roars louder than the jaguar.
My ancestors, those who are still alive, know of many deaths. Nevertheless, in these times it is better to be blind, like my aunt Luciana, so as not to see the piles of the fallen, destroyed by these days of revolution and barbarity. As Canetti says: "our body now is naked and exposed; its softness makes it vulnerable to any unexpected blow. Everything nearby which it kept at bay by arts and mafias, from far away can reach it easily. Swords, spears, arrows can penetrate. Shields and armor have been invented, walls and whole fortresses have been raised around it. But the most desired security is feeling invulnerability."
Honey, don't waste gunpowder on a vulture
Almost ten years have passed since my last trip to the plain and my farewell to El Ochenta, a short while after my mother's death. I have a vivid memory of those last times on the farm.
We were driving in the SUV on the usual embankment and the darkness enveloped us as night approached. Bush on each side gives a sensation of a tunnel in time and, every once in a while, a gate of metal pipes or barbed wire would appear separating one field from another or one property from another. I felt afraid, a feeling I only had on my skin in that way when I was going to the plains. I still had fresh in my mind the episode when my brother was taken by the Colombian guerrilla for a few days and then released. It was night when we reached the farm. Doña Barbara made her presence felt with that precariousness and return to another century; there were only kerosene lamps to light us. Groping in the dark, I walked through the house, my feet were like my eyes and my pupils adjusted quickly to the nighttime shapes. Before, we used to sleep piled up in the hammocks to be able to tell stories and jokes until overcome by sleep, with the doors that had no locks, open. That night the man in charge of the ranch, Celestino, slept with the shotgun in his hammock, the days and the hours had become an eternal nightmare as barbarity enters without asking permission.
That night I dreamt:
"I am in Apure looking at the pen with the tortoises. As I watch I see one is bleeding and I turn it over to see what was happening. I see a red stain at the end of its tail and tell Marcos, the manager of the farm, that the tortoise has cut itself. But smiling quite naturally, he tells me that it isn't cut but is giving birth, look at the baby that is coming out of that little bag of water hanging from it." The birth was my departure.
The next morning, like every morning, at 5:45 am, Celestino got ready to go to the field to check the cattle; routine...I always get up at six as I liked to see the sun rising, as if hidden behind the morning mist, and to feel the delicious chill. It rose fiery red; round, glowing, announcing the day and the spectacle lasted just an instant, but it made you feel the emotion of the plain. I walked over to the field, gave a few turns inside and asked Celestino about each animal. "How did Full Moon give birth? Did you vaccinate Water Mist? How long will you milk Little Star? How is Relacina getting on?" After the inspection came the milking, normally done by the woman of the house or the young apprentices, sons of the manager. They called them by name, led the calf up and when the mother was stimulated, they took it away; then the milking began and I watched the foam and the pure white milk rise in the gourd or the bucket. So happy was I to drink a sip of that milk after it was boiled. Finally, after the miking was finished, the cattle were let out to graze and once more they were counted. A routine constantly repeated, every day, as it was pure nature carried out without interruption, while it continued to be nature and instinct.
But that routine wasn't the same. Things had changed over the last few years. One day we found a dead calf, then there were two and that is how the stealing of the animals began, "born dead" according to the manager. That almost idyllic way of waking up was preceded by a night of terror where death and looting took place. One of those nights we heard shots and a movement among the cattle, then a stampede and soon, in the morning, we found dead cows. Everything took place in the shadows, in the darkness and this turned us into guards of our own cells, afraid of being touched by that unknown, that barbarity. One shut oneself up in the house so that no one could come in and only inside did I feel moderately safe during the days I was there. Fear of the thief takes the shape not only of fear of being plundered, but also of fear of being touched by some sudden, unexpected attack coming from the shadows.
What before was the greatest delight –the openness, the revealed, the wide spaces— was transformed into the torture of the unknown. We lost the liberty of always going further, of walking in the bush, of roaming along roads, of welcoming anyone approaching without distrust. We dropped the veil of daily ingenuousness, of trust in one's fellow. We created our own inner plain, with its isolation, avoiding as far as possible entering into contact with others. The ranch became just a question of survival and suddenly changed from being an image of liberty to being one of prison. My grandmother talked less than usual and you felt an underlying concern about what she felt was coming. One day she said to me "it is time to leave, if you can, sell what you have". I didn't understand, nor could I believe it. Hearing that from her, whose great-grandfather had come to these lands from Spain at the beginning of the 19th century and had struggled all his life to bring civilization, seemed incomprehensible to me. I told her not to worry and she said again, "it is time to leave."
At that moment, there fell a great silence, only the windmill, turning unceasingly, kept company with the silence of that conversation. Underneath, in the tub, my grandmother went on washing the clothes with the blue soap while I kept quiet as I showered under the jet of water coming straight from the mill, feeling it drill my brain.
A short while later, my grandmother died, followed by my mother the next year. With the loss of both of them, a deadly wound entered my heart and I could no longer go back. What gave sense to that story that began with my great-great-grandfather Antonio had died, my grandmother and my mother were no longer there, my country had died. These final days, when we began to think about selling the ranch, I had many dreams about Apure, and I remember one.
"Two cows give birth to twins and three of the calves die. A bloody birth and one of the cows gives birth standing. While Said, a friend, gets drunk as he saw Pablo and me sleeping together in the hammock, curled in a fetal position."
Author's note:
Sayings are part of the llanero's culture, they are his way of speaking through a metaphor to express with an image a certain feeling, a meaning, a dream. They are also an important part of the endless games of musical counterpoint they play amongst themselves, not only when they compete singing ballads but also in sprightly conversations full of puns. Writing this essay I wanted to delve into this counterpoint; to show, just as they do with their wordplay, that the humor and the wit can (and usually does) prevail even in the adverse moments I have described. The images included here have the following meanings:
- Where the tiger roars there is no donkey with rheumatism (the title of the essay plays with the first part of this saying): when danger looms even the weakest reacts.
- One can tell it's Saint Barbara from the sound of the thunder: to notice a situation when it is already overhead. It also refers to recognizing that something is about to happen from its very presence. This comes from the connotations that in Venezuela and other Caribbean countries are given to Saint Barbara who in the santeria syncretism is Chango, goddess of fire, lightning and war.
- Happier than a monkey in a fruit tree: to be in seventh heaven, delighted to have reached a place or situation where everything provides happiness.
- An espadrille fell into the soup: an unexpected situation that changes circumstances for worse.
- Everyone creates a world out of his own life: to live life unconsciously, disconnected from reality, to be in one's own world, isolated, governed by individual will instead of by norms and expectations of others. It is also connected with perspective, in that it refers to having one's own, single viewpoint.
- It tugs at you more than a tender woman: the importance of feelings in a relationship; nothing binds you more than affection, to be treated with love.
- This is how you rock an ox-calf: so that it goes out like a light: there are skills in life available for getting the desired results; you need to know how to behave according to the situation, to be able to respond to the demands of circumstances.
- You recognize a llanero by the way he drives his cattle: it refers to how habits decide people's way of life, but also expresses more widely the idea that people are recognized by their trade, by the skills they have cultivated.
- With little feathers, like a young lady's hat: it can refer to moments in life when it is appropriate to take action, but also refers to the beauty that crowns something that is already attractive and visible, what is appropriate to have or to do (like a woman's hat having some adornment).
- A mosquito fell into the coffee: something good that was wished for and is now ruined, things which shouldn't be damaged are spoiled.
- With her eyes out Saint Lucia is nothing: taken widely it means that what is inevitable will take place in spite of everything, but it also means that when what is essential to one is lost, nothing can be done to replace it (like the martyr Saint whose eyes were put out so she could never see again).
- Honey, don't waste gunpowder on a vulture: not to waste energy and efforts on unreachable goals, on senseless projects without any real chance of achieving them.