A glimpse of the Venezuelan capital
The statue of Simón Bolívar in the central plaza of Caracas
At last there appeared, far ahead, a slight ridge, at the base of which Lopez promised the River Guanipa. As we neared it two horsemen, the only fellow-travelers we had seen in days, called to my companions from under some scraggly trees, but I had not their aboriginal endurance in the matter of thirst and stalked on until I could throw myself face down at the edge of the river. We had intended to push on to Cantaura, eight leagues farther, but it was already mid-afternoon, we were sore and weary, and there was unlimited water close at hand. Moreover, the horsemen, with whom I found Lopez hobnobbing when I hobbled back, reported that a “revolution” was raging in Cantaura.
The day before, three hundred bandits, or patriots, according to the political affiliations of the speaker, had taken captive the local government, looted the shops, and were now camped on the edge of town. It was admitted that they were unlikely to molest foreigners; the ordinary citizen, in fact, is little affected by such “revolutions,” carried on by a small part of the population and disturbing the general stream of life less than do our presidential elections. But there was a possibility that the band might need hammocks, or even wish to add to their ranks so lusty a youth as Lopez. We therefore swung our chinchorros under the scrub trees, which gave time not only for a swim but for a general laundering and, most important of all, a chance to nurse my lacerated feet. Our new companions were white enough to pass for Americans, yet they were as ignorant of anything outside their immediate environment as jungle savages. They did not know, for instance, that water separated their country from the warring “towns,” as they called them, of Europe—which they took to be a single small country from which came all “gringos,” or white foreigners. To them the great war of which they had heard faint rumors was merely another “revolution” similar to the one in the nearby village; yet it was plain that, for all these frequent uprisings instigated by ambitious leaders, the Venezuelan country people were as peace-loving as they are, like Spanish peasants, intelligent even though illiterate.
With water at hand and a cool breeze sweeping across the sandy plains, I looked forward to a comfortable night at last. But it was the first one in Venezuela when mosquitoes and gnats made me regret abandoning my mosquitero; moreover, Lopez, having decided to push on at midnight, spent the interval incessantly chattering with his new friends, the conversation consisting mainly of a similar but much stronger expletive than “Caramba!” At midnight he decided to go later, when the stars came out, and renewed the profane prattle; then we could not find one of the donkeys, and I got at last a little sleep. When I awoke the stars had abandoned the sky and the birds in the trees were beginning to twitter. There was a classical sunrise that morning, for the rays streamed out fan-shape on the clouds, as from the throne of God in old religious paintings, no doubt modeled from this very phenomenon of nature. Long after this was dissipated, we were still wandering the countryside, looking for the lost donkey. When at last we were off, I had not finished redressing my tender feet after fording the river before we got a “palo d’agua,” a sudden heavy shower that drenched us through and through. In the unladylike words of my companions something or other was always “echando una vaina,” which is the nearest Venezuelan equivalent to “raising hell.”
We marched four leagues in sand and cutting grass, with muddy pools to wade here and there, all very slowly because a sick donkey was unable to keep a fast pace, even though “stark naked.” I arrived, therefore, at a sluggish river in time to swim and get dressed again before the others overtook me; but here Lopez left his negro assistant to bring in the ailing burro, and we covered at our old pace the four leagues remaining. The country changed completely from sandy llano to stony hills, in which a well-marked road cut zigzags. Worn, hot, and hungry, we came in the early afternoon to Cantaura, a flat, quadrangular, silent town in sand and weeds, of several thousand inhabitants. There were five by seven solid blocks of mud houses, every corner one a shop with the counter aslant it and scanty custom or stock-in-trade. It was an incredibly languid town, much given to the crime of bringing into the world children who could not be properly cared for, so that no woman who could by hook or crook have an infant in arms was without one, and they swarmed everywhere in spite of a naturally, perhaps fortunately, high death rate. In fact, it was incredible how many human beings were vegetating here, doing nothing but a little apathetic shopkeeping and hammock-making, with the silence and inertia of the grave over everything.
All sorts of odds and ends of humanity were tucked away in the rambling old adobe houses, in one of which we at once made ourselves at home, tethering the donkeys in a patio filled with weeds and bush, and swinging our hammocks in the monasterial old corredor surrounding it. Here we gave the slatternly woman of the house thirty cents with which to buy beef and rice and make us a stew, she no more thinking of charging us for the cooking than for room to hang our chinchorros. Eggs were three for five cents; a large corn biscuit, or pan de arepa, was one cent; “wheat bread,” as a tiny, dry ring of baked flour of the size and shape of a bracelet was called, cost something more than that; native cheese, papelón, even milk, though probably from goats and certainly boiled, could be had by persons of wealth. It was not long after our arrival, therefore, that Lopez and I might have been seen squatting beside a makeshift table, eating in a Lord-knows-when-I’ll-get-another-meal manner, with a crowd of dirty women and children hovering about us and the kitchen, waiting to snatch any scraps we might leave. One of the former passed the time by feeding black coffee to a hollow-eyed baby some eight months old. These people disregard the most commonplace principles of health, wealth, and marriage—though certainly not with impunity. The town had no water supply except a sluggish creek two miles away, to which I had been forced to hobble even to wash my hands. Asses brought two small barrels of it to a house for five cents, but even they were lazy, and many people had no such sum, so that not only do the people almost never wash, but a thirsty man must often canvass several families before he gets a drink of water in which newly dug potatoes appear to have been soaked. Like the political atrocities which long experience has made seem unavoidable, these torpid people endured these things without complaint or the thought of a possible remedy.
The “revolution” two days before had been much less serious than the telegraph, a strictly government organ, had reported to the outside world. It was the first anniversary of the organizing of a revolt against the national tyrant by a man highly favored in this region by all except the political powers. That date had to be celebrated by a “gesture” that would be heard even in Caracas; besides, the revolutionists were hungry. On the other hand, they did not wish to antagonize the generally friendly metropolis of Cantaura. The three hundred, therefore, had camped nearby and sent a delegation of thirty men into the town, to take the gobernador prisoner—merely as a sign of disdain to the hated tyrant who had appointed him, for that evening he was released at his own hato. No shot had been fired, all food had been paid for, and nothing stolen. It is not the revolutionists whom the people of the llanos fear, but the government soldiers, who enter houses, attack women, and carry off anything that takes their fancy. In Venezuela the government picks up men of the lower classes wherever it can find them and impresses them into the army. It is not only the favorite depository for criminals, but fully two thirds of their thirty cents a day is stolen from the soldiers by those higher up, hence, though they are rarely men enough to revolt against their oppressors, they are quick to pass their misfortunes on to the population. In this case, as in many others, the knightly deportment of the revolutionary leader was not matched by the tyrant in power, for less than a fortnight later he and a score of his staff were given no quarter when the government troops surrounded them.