The worst spot in Venezuela is the despot dictator, President Gomez. His authority is absolute, with the accent on the “loot.” He takes what he wants; a man’s personal property, wife or daughter. Dark stories make him a modern Bluebeard. He is a moral and physical leper. Rumor says that he sacrifices children and drinks their blood to cure his maladies. Gomez is the government; the legislative, executive and judicial branches consisting of the cockpit, race-track and palace harem. He has panderers who scour the country to procure beautiful women for him. His personal and public character is so putrid, that many of the inhabitants would like to elect him president of a Guano island, with a salary in Guano. In the land of Bolivar, the Liberator, Gomez muzzles the press, suppresses free speech, maintains an army of spies, and has imprisoned some of the best and brainiest men of Venezuela in horrible dungeons for the crime of loving liberty. The following would seem to be his daily prayer:
“My Father which art in Hell, powerful be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in Venezuela as it is in Hell.
Give me my daily bread, booze, and beef, whether everybody else starves or not.
And forgive me my debts, but not as I forgive my debtors.
And tempt me not into revolutions with my neighbors, and deliver me from the evil of any defeat; for thine and mine is the kingdom, and the power, and glory, forever. Amen.”
Coffee, cacao, cane, cattle, corn and illegitimate children are the principal products of the country. At one time the official census for three years in Caracas gave legitimate births as 3,848, and illegitimate as 3,753. The ratio is even worse in the country districts. A Venezuela bachelor who hasn’t a half-dozen mistresses, has lost caste and is looked down on; a married man is expected to run two or three home establishments. Love is free, but drugs are costly. A friend of mine in the interior had a dear motherly lady come to him and offer her three daughters for five dollars a week.
’Tis said Alexander the Great wanted to destroy the antique town of Lamsachus because of its Priapus worship and obscene rites. Caracas was overturned by an earthquake in 1812, when 12,000 people perished. If that was a visitation of God’s wrath on account of its wickedness, another punishment is due, for it is in the class of the “Cities of the Plain”—
“Cities of hell, with foul desires demented,
And monstrous pleasures, hour by hour invented.”