CHAPTER III
A free chapter of my book: “A life full of changes”:
THE MILITARY COUP IN CARACAS.
The General Marcos Perez Jimenez was in power in Venezuela in 1958. He had guided the destiny of the country since 1952, although he had also formed part, along with two other military men, of a triumvirate that was in charge since 1948, when they headed a military coup that had overthrown the democratically elected President, the immensely popular writer Mr. Romulo Gallegos.
When the then President and leader of the triumvirate, Lieutenant Coronel Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, was killed in November 1950 (Kidnapped and in a set of very strange circumstances, to the point that rumors said that Perez Jimenez ordered his death), the military named Perez Jimenez President, ratified later by the popular vote in a plebiscite (Which was supposed to have been rigged).
Perez Jimenez was ousted from power on January 23, 1958, in a military coup headed by the then Rear Admiral Wolfgang Larrazabal Ugueto, who later was a losing candidate in the election to the Presidency of the Venezuelan Republic (lost to the political party AD’s candidate, Romulo Betancourt).
The evening of the military coup, the warplanes were flying low over Caracas and when it was dark, from the courtyard of the house where we lived, from the corners of Mamey to Dolores, in Caracas, the brightness of the tracer bullets could be seen.
In the house, they placed upholstery against the tall windows of the room to the right of ours, which by then was empty and closer to the streets. Everybody went to bed early that night, with my parents glued to the radio, which announced the liberation of the political prisoners, and many demonstrations.
The Dictator, having lost the backing of a good deal of the military, and fearful of the crowds that had invaded the streets, left the country in a hurry with his family, from the city airport of La Carlota, in the East of Caracas, all on their way to exile in the Dominican Republic, governed then by his friend, the also dictator Leonidas, “Chapita” Trujillo, and later, to the USA.
For many days, the newspapers in Caracas were full of stories reporting the excesses of the Seguridad Nacional, the political police of the regimen and of its boss, the henchman and torturer Pedro Estrada, who tortured and took the life of many Venezuelans.
There were also talks about the millions of dollars stolen by the dictator, who in his hurry to leave the country had a suitcase forgotten at the airport, supposedly full of dollars and property tittles of his many possessions in Venezuela.
One of the stories that called my attention, said that the dictator and his friends chased young and curvy models wearing bikinis, while riding motor-scooters (?), throughout the beaches of the beautiful island of La Orchila, located at the North, in the Venezuelan Caribbean.
I recall having seen allusive caricatures in the printed Venezuelan media.
Perez Jimenez lived in Madrid, Spain, with his family, in a mansion with all possible security measures.
In reality, he lived in the USA until 1963, when that country extradited him to Venezuela on corruption charges (it was said that he had embezzled some $ 200 million dollars).
Perez Jimenez was then judged, condemned without a Court hearing, and went to jail in Venezuela. He spent 5 years in the Carcel Modelo, until in 1968 when he went to Court, was found guilty and condemned to 4½ years in jail, a sentence he had already fulfilled, so he was immediately released.
A very small punishment, for someone who supposedly ordered tortured or killed many Venezuelans, and who stole public funds! (He was very rich, and just 54 years old!).
Upon his release, he moved to Madrid, Spain. He was again a Presidential candidate in Venezuela in 1973, and although he didn’t win the election, his political party, the Cruzada Cívica Nacionalista, obtained a lot of votes and Representatives to the Venezuelan Congress.
As time went by, General Marcos Perez Jimenez and his opportunistic party were consigned to oblivion, and disappeared completely from the Venezuelan political scenario. until his death for natural causes, in Alcobendas, Madrid, Spain, in 2001, at the age of 87.
BACK TO SPAIN
At the end of 1959, my parents took the decision to take my brother Joaquin and I to Spain, to leave us living there with my aunt Celsa, because we were really a hindrance to the plans of my parents of working both very hard and save some money.
With us in that trip to Spain were my mother and my aunt Mari, the last one would also stay with us in Spain (As the need to take care of her, was also an impediment to the plans of my grandmother Amparo).
I have been searching my mind but in reality, I don’t keep any memories of that trip. Perhaps my mind, still that of a very young boy, didn’t get impressed by a trip by sea I had already made.
The truth is, that I only remember that soon after leaving the port of the island of Trinidad, that was one of the stopovers of the ship, the vessel passed between two very green islets, green boulders really, that impressed me for their proximity to the ship.
When we arrived to Asturias, we all went to the house of my aunt Celsa in the town of Lada (In reality my aunt and her family lived in an apartment, located in one of several blocks of Protected Housing of low rent, built by the Spanish Government of General Franco for the miners of the zone).
My aunt Celsa lived with her husband Boni (Diminutive suffix for Bonifacio), who was missing his left hand, lost in an accident in the mine and with her daughter, my cousin Tinina (Diminutive for Agustina,) just a few years younger than my aunt Mary, who, as you already know, was also staying there.
There we initiated our new life. I was registered to go to school in “El Frailín” or the Mercantile Academy of La Felguera, school which was directed by an ex-priest, and which enjoyed a very good reputation (The school, not the ex-priest, who was rather known to like the bottle a lot).
The school was located in a neighboring town to Lada, La Felguera, distant a half hour walking from Lada. So, walking I went day after day to that school. In the cold mornings of winter I was well wrapped up and my aunt gave me for breakfast a “punch” for the cold : in half a glass of wine, she diluted an egg with a spoon, added sugar, shook well the mixture and that was it.
After drinking it, there was no cold that could affect me!
I went to the school almost always alone, but always came back with somebody from the school that lived in the same direction. Sometimes we came back by the train’s rails to collect pieces of iron (Or loose big iron screws from the train’s sleepers or rails), which we later exchanged for sweet treats in a kiosk located near the road’s short tunnel (It was a small tunnel to the road ahead, and a little bridge to the train above).
My uncle Boni bought me an air pellet gun, a rifle that I very much wanted, as some students at the school said they had one and I dreamed of having one as well.
After a while and tired of shooting at paper targets or breaking empty bottles with my shots, I decided to go “hunting”.
Accompanied by a friend we were going to the forest to hunt, rifle ready.
But we weren’t even out of the town yet when, at the edge of the roof of a house, I saw a group of six or seven birds of the many which at that time were all over the area.
In total silence, I stood beneath the edge of the roof and prepared to shoot.
Tired as they were, probably of looking for food during the whole day, the birds were not perturbed at all by our presence.
I aimed carefully, placing the rifle on my shoulder and slowly pressed the trigger and shot. Instantly and with no noise of any kind, a little bunch of down fell to my feet from the edge of the roof.
Trembling, I took into my hands that little thing I had taken the life away from, and felt no pleasure, on the contrary, I felt pretty bad.
Alleging I- don’t- know- what, I cancelled the hunt, went home and in a wardrobe, I put away the rifle and never touched it again.
Years later, I’d do the same in Caracas with a loaded revolver that I always carried with me. Two robbers in motorcycles, in La Candelaria, in Caracas, ambushed me while I walked on the streets looking for a restaurant to have lunch.
One of the robbers was waiting for me (Or for anyone filling the desired profile they waited for, I believe) in a steep exit of a garage to my left, when he suddenly crossed the curb in front of me and made a movement towards my body with his motorcycle, as I stumbled back to avoid it, he reached to my neck and violently pulled out a gold chain and a medal that I was wearing probably too visible.
The other robber was just watching from the street, and I suppose he would have participated to help his mate if something went wrong with the ambush.
Both robbers apparently, had no weapons of any kind.
Armed with the revolver as I was, I shot twice… into the air!
Rapidly, the robbers went away in their motorbikes.
I wasn’t to wound (And who knows if even killing!) anyone for a darned gold chain!
That evening I put away the revolver at home and didn’t carry it with me ever again.
But please, excuse my digression and allow me to continue with the account of that part of my childhood in Spain; …In the new school in Asturias they placed me in Pre-Ingreso, which in the Spanish school system then being in use, was equivalent to the Venezuelan 5th grade of Primary schooling, but only for the remaining of the year (I’d started late the academic year, by the middle of the course).
It took some effort on my part to adapt to the new school system, for the teachers hit the students and seemed to believe completely on the school’s moto: “the letter with blood enter”, for the teachers did hit the students… a lot!
I remember a day when being already formed in line with my class mates (On each of our departures from the school, mornings and afternoons, we had to form lines by grade and we had to stay in formation and couldn’t break the lines, until the ex-priest or his son, Don Ricardo, clapped their hands).
With Don Ricardo watching us from his window of the second floor of the classrooms’ building, a loose milk tooth I had ended up falling
With blood in my mouth and to rinse it off, I left the line going to the location of a horizontal metal tube with many holes on it, of which water flew (It was the “water drinking fountain” of the school yard).
Almost instantly, I heard the coarse voice of Don Ricardo: “Peque”, (little one, in Spanish), he said. “At 2½ in my office”, he continued.
My explaining arguments against the measure were useless, for I wasn’t even permitted to talk and the few words which came out of my mouth were completely ignored.
At 2½ P.M. (we had classes mornings and afternoons), I entered Don Ricardo’s classroom (his office, as Don Ricardo used to call it and we all knew it), only to find myself at the end of a queue of about five students all waiting for Don Ricardo. While we waited another five students enlarged the queue.
All the students were there for different reasons; but in general, the use of violence towards the students was very common at the majority of schools in Spain at that time.
Various generations of Spaniards are marked by such violent behavior (the dictatorship of Franco, like many other authoritarian Governments, used violence and fear — starting at school and continuing for the rest of one’s life — to dominate the Spanish population).
Even at University, the students, as I witnessed at first-hand years later, at that time were subjected not only to despotic treatment by some professors, but also were frequently exposed to the malignant activities of informers, and to unexpected campus raids by the police (the grises, the grey ones as Franco’s policemen were called, in allusion to the color of their uniforms).
On arrival and without a word, Don Ricardo pulled a thick wooden stick out of a drawer in his desk, and compelled the students to get closer to him, beginning with the first one in the queue, who instantly stood in front of Don Ricardo with an extended arm and his hand’s palm up.
Don Ricardo hit him hard twice, one hit on each hand, with the stick and applied a similar punishment to the second student on the queue and so on, until it was my turn. Standing in front of him, I extended my right arm, exposed my right hand’s palm, then my left hand, and withstood the two customary hits without complaints.
I had decided that it wasn’t worth complaining, as he wouldn’t listen anyway.
We had classes from 8 to 12 A.M. during the morning, and from 2½ to 5 P.M. in the afternoon. The afternoons almost always were dedicated to studying, which for many of us meant nothing but memorizing, by singing them aloud, the pages that they ordered us to read; something that always generated some laughs and a bit of fuss among us.
More than one student teared up because of the teacher’s wooden stick on his palms during those afternoons of study!
I don’t remember much more about that Pre-ingreso course.
At the end of it, I was “passed” to the following Ingreso course, equivalent to the Venezuelan 6° Grade of Primary School.
By now, both my parents had come back from Venezuela — with the intention of staying in Spain for good — and had rented the park’s bar in Sama.
The bar had three bedrooms separated from the area of business, in which my aunt Mari, my parents and my brother and I slept. As neither the bar, nor the sleeping quarters had any heating and in winter it got very, very cold, my mother used to heat our beds before we went to them with refractory bricks, previously heated by placing them on the stove or, with bottles full of hot water.
The bar had an Asturian bowling alley (bolera), in which I learned to play (nothing to do with the bowling alleys of, say, America) and sometimes (especially on weekends in summer) some patrons also organized cockfights.
At that time (early nineteen sixties) there was a lot less preoccupation — and much less zeal by the authorities — than today regarding the well-being, health, and integrity of the animals.
Speaking of cockfighting, a cousin of my father, Carin (RIP), was a reputed breeder of those animals and he frequently participated with his roosters in cock fights all over Asturias and even all over Spain.
I used to move around town riding a small bicycle (I don’t remember how I got that, possibly as a Christmas present).
I remember in one of my bicycle’s explorations, I discovered the cattle’s market.
It was a place where sellers and buyers of live cattle met once a week, on Wednesday’s mornings.
Mainly cows, bulls, and oxen were transacted there, although occasionally, I saw that horses were also negotiated in that place.
It was a large open space surrounded on one side by roofed cubicles in which to park the animals, and with a big construction in the middle of the open space, a sort of elevated pool, approximately 18 feet long and 6 feet wide, with some 40–50 inches deep full of water, to hydrate the animals.
I remember that in the company of a friend, we were playing one afternoon in the then empty cattle market.
Although the Mayoralty responsible for that place kept the cattle market closed, we had found a way to enter it.
We were playing inside, when we noticed a stray dog that also had found its way in.
Wanting to clean the dog, we threw it into the pool but the dog kept coming out of the water, again and again, in spite of our attempts.
To prevent the dog for coming out of the pool, we had the unhappy idea of after throwing the dog into the water, immediately cover the pool with some large pieces of carton which we found around on the floor.
A while later, we retired the cartons only to find that the poor dog had almost drowned, was vomiting water out of his mouth, and it laboriously came out of the pool and laid on the floor.
Scared, we just abandoned the place in a hurry, leaving the poor animal to its own luck.
I only fervently hope that the poor dog didn’t die as a result of our ignorance.
Worth mentioning is the accident involving my mother that happened in the kitchen of the bar
As it was the case, my mother, as she was trying to replace a damaged bulb in a roof’s lamp, got imprudently on top of the stove, which was, as in most of the kitchens of that time in Asturias, a coal stove set into smoothed clinker later embellished with white tiles, with the misfortune that she pushed with one of her feet, a pan with hot water they were heating to prepare some boiled mussels they were cooking to serve at the bar.
Instantly, the boiling water was all over her, sprinkling her and spilled on her legs, which were badly burned, particularly her lower legs and feet. My mother howled in pain and suffered deep burns in her legs, especially from her knees down.
At the school, hours and days were passing by, slowly and monotonously.
I remember that one of the subjects that we studied was Drawing.
Our draws, bound together in a bloc, had to be presented during our final exams.
In the school, the teacher had warned us to avoid tracing the prints, for the examiners would easily realize it and that could result in us failing the subject
Notwithstanding, as the exam’s date got closer, I still had many prints to draw, so I decided to trace one of the prints: the most difficult. My decision was going to have some implications, as we shall see later.
My parents had told us that they were seriously considering going back to Venezuela, for things weren’t going too well for them at the bar, and also, because my father was struggling to adapt again to the cold weather (my father’s hands got swollen at wintertime as a result of the cold).
At the school, Confession all the first Thursdays of each month, and Communion every first Friday were mandatory (freedom of religion? In Franco’s Spain such thing didn’t exist).
Every classroom had a big crucifix hung in the wall, prominently in front of us, and at its side a photograph of a young Franco in military uniform, and a sign that read : “Spain’s leader by God’s grace”.
In order to confess our sins, we went in line of two to a nearby church, distant only about 100 meters from the school. There an enraged priest dressed all in black, perched on the pulpit, put fear in our young minds, stigmatizing us as sinners, we “who wouldn’t reach Redemption unless we confessed all of our sins”, he said.
Naturally enough, the first Thursday of every month when we had Confession, the students that didn’t have any sins to confess just made them up; anything and everything so long as to confess, therefore being able to have Communion the following day, and thus reach eternal life.
Arriving early in the afternoons at the school, there were always fellow students willing to play “Load the donkey”, a savage game — our favorite -, with which we used to “kill” those minutes.
The game started by the formation of the teams, which must had at least 3 members each.
To do that the group selected two captains, usually two who had distinguished at the game before.
The captains then chose from the students that wanted to play, the members of their respective teams, taking turns to do it, beginning with the one favored by the flipping of a coin.
Once the teams were formed, another coin’s flipping decided which team would form the mound first.
In order to form the mound, each of the members of the team not favored by the second coin’s flipping, placed his head between the legs of the preceding member of his team, who was leaning forward and whose back he was facing, with the team’s member that occupied the first position of the mound leaning over a wall with his arms and elbows.
The captain decided the position of each member of his team in the mound.
For its part the other team, positioned itself about 25–30 feet from the formed mound, and each member — taking turns -, ran towards the mound, jumped, and fell sitting on one of the exposed backs of the opposite team’s members.
The maneuver was repeated up to three times by each member and if in none of the jumps, the team was able to sink the opponent’s mound, it was its turn to form it and thus successively. If the jumping team was able to sink the opponent’s mound, then it was declared the winner and — if there was enough time — another game was started.
The team whose mound was sunk was declared a loser.
Thus, time and time again, until somebody got tired or injured, or until it was time to go to classes.
Naturally, those strong or very fat (The fatter, the better) were in high demand and were very popular in this game.
The end of the course arrived at last. We had to go to the city of Gijon, then distant about 1½ hours by train from Sama for our exams. Very nervous and accompanied by my mother and by my aunt Mary, I went to Gijon.
To get to Gijón, the train had to go through to two high mountains, which were then known then as planos.
In order for the train to be able to ascend the planos, several wagons loaded with black debris, surely coming from the coal mines, descended on a parallel rail, being used as a counterweight, to help the train overcome those heights, as there were not any tunnels in that train-route, back at those times.
Gijon looked like a big city to me, and the official educational authorities in front of which our exams would take place, lived there.
I performed well in those exams, as I got Honor distinctions “As”, in Spain’s Geography, in Mathematics, and in Social Sciences; a “B” in two other subjects, and a “C ” (Approved, but by a hair’s breadth!) in Drawing.
The examiner of Drawing, immediately observing the identical that one of my draws was to the original print of the book, asked me if I had traced that particular print, to which I answered — looking him into the eyes directly — that yes, I had traced that print because the date of the final Exams was getting too close and I still hadn’t completed the presentation bloc.
This answer and principally the good marks obtained in the other subjects got me the Approved in Drawing, I think.
Special mention deserves the Matrícula de Honor I obtained in Social Sciences, as our previous studies qq in the subject were limited to read, in a book of directed readings, things like “The story of Guillermo Tell”, “The Cid Campeador”, and similar readings, while the questions of the exam were about themes like “The policeman and his role in society”, “The school teacher and the families” and similar themes.
Displaying a great capacity for improvising (already present on me then), and an ample writing “verbosity”, I answered the questions obtaining a valuable distinction on the subject.
And I wrote “valuable” because all the Franquista trash in my answers, served for the school to defend itself in front of the fathers and other student’s representatives who complained to the school’s Direction, informed by his (Failed) children that the school hadn’t prepared us well for the final exam on that subject (Which was true anyway!).
Having finished the exams and already mentally prepared to go again to Venezuela, the well-off father of my cousin Ramonin, who had become my playmate, talked to my parents asking them to leave me in Spain with them, for according to him, I had been a good influence to his son and they didn’t want to lose me. That he would take care of my studies and of all my expenses.
Soon we went back to Venezuela.
