I moved to Venezuela when I was in Tranquility Scholarship class with Mr Moore. I was very happy to do so. Mr Moore, of Grenadian descent, liked guavas, especially guava whips.
One Monday morning he asked me if my mother had agreed to my staying after class for extra lessons. I replied, "Yes sir, she said OK." He rounded on me like a flash, "Are you sure she said OK or did she say KO.....because if she did I will KO you right now!"
I still am not sure what he meant but I, and the rest of the class, stayed very still for the rest of the morning.
My new school was in Guarico state in the middle of the eastern plains or llanos of Venezuela, where there is lots of oil. It serviced an American petroleum camp, Roblecito, and I duly began attending classes where I learned that America was the greatest country in the world, Venezuelans did not have the know how to pump their oil out of their earth and how to hit a baseball.
Luckily we soon moved to another American petroleum camp, Mata, where, being Trinidadians, we were not allowed to live inside the gated compound but about one mile away, in a long air-conditioned trailer. Since then, when I see movies of working class Americans living in trailer camps, I have always felt sympathetic.
Being outside of the camp, however, now exposed me to Venezuelans. I quickly became friendly with a family of llaneros (plainsmen) as the people who live in the llanos are called. The youngest, Baltazar, became my firm companion especially after his father, who owned a bit of scrunting cattle and horse land, gifted me a young chestnut colt with a white streak down his nose who I immediately named "Streak." It helped that he ran like the wind. I spent about a year riding him, mostly bareback, with the other vaqueros on their bigger horses, swimming and fishing in the caiman-infested rivers, visiting other llanero families or being invited to birthdays where an entire cow would be barbecued and we ate standing up in a corner burping and sopping up the gravy with cassava bread whilst the braver of us danced joropo with the family girls under the watchful eyes of grannies and aunts.
The llanos of central Venezuela are immense stretches of grasslands, essentially treeless savannas, that extend from the foothills of the Andes in the north and west to the Orinoco delta in the east and the Guiana highlands in the south. They have their own particular culture, songs, dance, expressions, fauna, flora and loyalties.
The llaneros formed the backbone of General Jose Antonio Paez's army, which some say was the real reason why Venezuela won its independence and they are only outshined as hard men in Venezuela by the gochos, as the people from the Andes are known. The two most prominent Venezuelan dictators, Juan Vicente Gomez (1908-1935) and Perez Jimenez (1952-1958) were gochos. It was during the reigns of these two gentlemen that many middle and upper-class Venezuelan families moved to live in Port-of-Spain. It was also the time when many Venezuelan socialites would make periodic visits from Caracas to a clinic in Tragarete Road to "look after their pregnancies."
I write these memories to point out a couple of things. The closeness Trinidad has always had with Venezuela, linked as we are by oilfields, refugees from dictators and a minor Gulf that facilitated trade, legal or not. Two, the immense variety of Venezuelan geography, truly wonderful and unknown to most Trinis, who may know a bit of "bella Caracas" and Margarita shopping but know little of the vast cattle-filled prairies that once used to supply our meat needs and gave rise to Corbeau Town.
The snow-capped mountains of Merida, one hour's flying time from Caracas, with the highest (15,000 feet) and longest (eight miles) cable car in the world. The glorious Caribbean beaches of Eastern Venezuela and Los Roques islands. The complex Orinoco Delta system where our local word "Warahoon" originated and finally the entire southern section of Venezuela encompassing Canaima National Park and the Gran Sabana with its tepuys (flat-topped mountains) and waterfalls, a tourist paradise waiting to be discovered and just two hours away.
I know all of these places and it hurts to see what a promising, rich country like Venezuela has become. Venezuela gave me a profession, a wife, a daughter, family, friends and colleagues. It hurts to see Venezuelans having to come over to Trinidad looking for work, for food, for medicine. It amazes me to walk into a restaurant or bar or shop and see them working their butts off, catching their nennen.
Fourteen thousand of them are said to have entered the country between January and May this year and 13,953 returned. Doesn't seem so. One expects the Minister of Finance counts our money better than he counts our Venezuelans.
Now comes word that the head of the organisation that ruined Venezuela, the Chavistas who ruined the Venezuelan petroleum industry (PDVSA) by firing over 18,000 Venezuelan engineers in 2003, is coming here "for a couple of hours." What is he coming for? To ask for help with his dying petroleum company? To pay Caribbean Air the US$50 million. To beg for medication and pampers and caraotas and rice and toilet paper? For his people or for his cronies?
One hopes the 47 Venezuelans left here gave him the time of his life yesterday.
Go nah man!