by Max Besora
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114. i.e. conquistador
Chapter VII
In which Joan Orpí heads out toward La Guaira and, along the way, is captured by a tribe of very fierce warrior women
Orpí, Araypuro, and Martulina left the city of Caracas one morning headed to La Guaira and they went through the mountains, where the dense, sweltering forest began, with no clearings or pause, and then they went down amid the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon Rivers. Tribes and regions with strange names appeared and disappeared amid the perpetual shadows of a tangled landscape covered in trees that devoured each other and vines twisted into impossible spirals, with nasty swamps that swallowed up knights whole who dared to traverse them, where secret bogs drowned anyone who sought to pass, and which abounded with outlandish reptiles and felines who could rip your head clean off.
While Martulina the Divina brought up the rear, Orpí and Araypuro took the lead, advancing through the jungle. The Indian chewed hayo115, an herb placed against the gums that slowly, slowly numbed the mouth.
“That is a vice, Araypuro. Thou must just say nay to drugs.”
“Hayo is good for the buba.116 Seems like since you honkeys showed up we never have any fun anymore. This herb helps me work, master,” he said. “I’m ne’er tired and squirrelly squirrelly all around.”
“You are my employee, Injun. I pay thee to interpret, not get high,” said Orpí, businesslike, extracting a handkerchief to wipe his dripping forehead in the torrid heat.
“Hot damn! So what ye smoke is not a drug?”
“Touché,” answered Orpí, rolling up a dry leaf and lighting it, so that his face was clouded with smoke. “This Barinas tobacco hath been a great discovery.”
The Venezuelan climate was muggy as all get out. While Orpí cooled off by the Cuchivero River, in the Tamanaco jungle, after sweating like a butcher for hours, two-hundred warrior women appeared amid the vegetation, aiming long arrows at him and his friends. Most of the warriors were nude, covered only by long hair down to their knees, and they had each cut off one of their breasts so they could handle their bows more skillfully. They stood still as statues.
“Dale, bro, let’s bolt, it’s the aikeam-benanó, the badass tida117!” cried out Araypuro, running up into the mountains, howling all the names of his jungle spirits like a lunatic.
“Are they the maniriguas of which Juan de Castellanos spoke in his Elegies? Or what Pierre D’Ailly described in his book Imago Mundi? Or mayhaps they are the Amazons Christopher Columbus told of?” said Orpí, pulling a book from his satchel and opening it up. “On 6th of January, 1493, he wrote that: ‘The Indians speak of the Island of Martirio along this route, said to be populated by women without men, of whom the Admiral of the Ocean Seas very much wish’d to deliver five or six of them to the Monarchs.’ If tis written, it must be truth; and if it is truth it must be this island.”
“This is no island, Orpí, come on,” said Martulina. “We’re on terra firma.”
“Zounds, you’ve a point there.”
Quickly deprived of their window for reflection, Orpí and Martulina were captured by the armed women, who bested them in number, arrows, and estrogen. Araypuro was also captured a few minutes later, despite crouching stock still and hoping to be taken for a bush. The were all three brought to the village, made of palafittes built on platforms supported by wooden beams, in the delta of the Unare River.
“Now I understand why Vespuccio diddst call this country Venezuela,” said Orpí. “Tis indeed the very picture of rural Venice!”
“More like the very picture of a military matriarchy, master!” exclaimed Araypuro. “These beatches are women warriors, bro! They allow dealings with bembas once a twelvemonth, for fertilization purposes, but they kill the boy babies and just keep the little girls.”
Martulina the Divina was brought before the tribe’s queen, while our hero and Araypuro were stripped naked and tied to stakes by the warrior women as they prepared a bonfire beneath their feet.
“Shit luck, master, they’re gonna fry us up alive!”
“That one they refer to as the queen could well be Queen Calafia, a character in The Adventures of Esplandián, and her Californian warrior women,” said Orpí, thinking out loud and not even listening to Araypuro. “Or perhaps not, as California is further north. Perhaps she’s Queen Coñori, of whom Father Carvajal spoke in Orellana’s Chronicles. Or perhaps …”
“Spirits of the jungle, I beseech ye, come to my aid and get me outta this getty!” pleaded Araypuro. “I don’t want to be grilled up in this here barbeque!”
“There is no call for melancholy, Injun,” mused Orpí, as the Amazons lit the fire beneath him. “Whyfore dost thou weep?”
“I’m weeping because I’ll ne’er again fornicate if these bulldykes cut off my joaika.”
“Of the whole anarchic pile of mestizo bastards in this paynim paradise we call the New World, thou art the worst, injun. A New World picaroon, that’s what thou beest. If you abandoned sex and drugs you would see that, on the road of our existence, we are constantly exposed to death in all its horrible forms, and only in the next worlde will we be sav’d with the help of our Lord.”
As Orpí continued giving Araypuro that sermon, Martulina showed up, half-naked and wearing a crown of laurel.
“Y’all, I spoke with the queen of the tribe and she deigned to free you both, once I had convinced her that, despite being of the male persuasion, ye art good folk.”
When they’d been released, they hugged Martulina and thanked her for saving their lives.
“Perfect! And now we’re gonna get the heck outta Dodge,” ordered Orpí.
“Wait a sec,” interjected Martulina. “I’m done playing little soldier boy.”
“What doth thou mean by that?” asked Orpí.
“I’m going to stay with the Lionzas tribe and their queen, María Lionza118, who is a sort of goddess of the forests and the waters.”
Meanwhile, the goddess herself appeared, and Orpí’s face fell so out of joint that he almost suffered a jaw fracture right then and there. Princess María Lionza, a tall woman with incredibly long hair, her delicate zones covered only by a belt of leaves and flowers was none other than … Doña María Fernanda Esmeralda Brunilda Isegarda Sigismunda Regenta Magdalena Grande de los Cerros Medianos de la Onza. In shortened form: María de la Onza!
“Good heavens!” exclaimed the Queen when she saw our hero. “I imagined you well dead, little soldier man!”
“And I thee, Your Majesty … !” Orpí said, getting down on bended knee. “For God’s sake, how is it possible that I find thee here, alive, in the middle of the jungle?”
“Well, alloweth me to give you a quick rundown,” declared Queen María, “once taken prisoner on the English corsairs’ boat, all we women were repeatedly violated by all the men on that vessel, night and day, incessantly. Those swine took turns twixt our legs, one after the other, interminably, until I lost all sense of tyme and swore uponst my life that, should I survive such ignomy, no man would ever again put his filthy hands on me, or anything else inside of me. One day, the corsair boat was beset by two Portuguese ships that opened up an enormous, gaping hole in the vessel with their cannonballs, and we were all sent headfirst into the drink. Believing mineself to be dead, I imagin’d my fate was fish food yet, somehow, I awoke on a deserted beach the following day. As I say, I was alone & naked, so I covered my immodesty with palm leaves and headed into the jungle. There I met a tapir, and befriended him and tamed him and rode him like a horse. Upon that animal, I crisscrossed the jungles, eating berries and other fruits I didst gather, until I reached a cave where there lived a group of indigenous women, whom the Spaniards had violated, burning their villages, and killing their men and children. When the women saw me, they took me for their goddess (because of my lighter skin) and, since we hated all men, we resolved to form a matriarchy of women warriors, and later we were joined by nuns who’d escaped convents and jails, and other r
unaway women who’d fled detestable marriages.”
“What a tale! But, Doña María, if you won’t marry, you’ll live in sin for not respecting the sacrament of matrimony and be condemned, on Judgment Day, to erelasting hellfyre with all t’other sinners!” Orpí informed her.
“Spurious,” clarified María Lionza. “How couldst I marry these noblemen when they be as bad if not worse than the rovers, since they have their wives and also take up with barmaids or slaves who practice prostitution, adultery, and concubinage. De facto unions between Indian women and Spanish men art an everyday occurrence around here. In short: out-and-out patriarchy.”
“Thine logick be not unsound,” confessed Orpí. “But … I’m still in love with thee, Doña María!”
“Do not tell me that thou dost love me, little soldier man,” insists the Queen. “In our village we merely wish to remain chaste, far remov’d from phallocentric powers. I beseech thee respect our decision, prithee.”
“Thou hath my word,” accepts Orpí. “And what shall become of our friend Martulina?”
“I shall remain here, Orpinet,” Martulina replied. “I hath finally found my place, far from that farce that the society of men hath constructed to deprive us of all but lives as submissive wives or consecrated vyrgins, thus depriving our bodies of their natural desire. Fare thee well, friends.”
“Very well, as thou wisheth, then,” said our hero. “I’m sure thou shalt be very contented in this tribal gynocracy. I wish thee much luck in your new life as a warrior.”
“And just gimme a call if these Sapphic mamacitas need a real pinga to liven up the long full moon nights! Adioh!” said Araypuro.
“Depart anon, ere the Lionzas change their minds and impale you both on the spot,” said Martulina. “And you, Indian, watch that tongue or one day they’ll tear it out and choppe it into bits!”
Thus, while Martulina the Divina, happy as a clam, remained behind with Queen María Lionza experiencing a true matriarchy, our hero and Araypuro trotted off to the port in La Guaira, and nothing worthy of note happened to them along the way. So, on to the next Chapter.
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115. i.e. coca leaf
116. i.e. syphillis
117. i.e. Women, in his language.
118. i.e. Venezuelan goddess
Chapter VIII
In which Joan Orpí makes a very belabored request for a public grant to become a conquistador
While our hero drafted his proposal for the grant aboard a hulk, Araypuro drank some chicha and watched him in puzzlement.
“What dost thou writ in that karata,119 master?”
“A planne for obtaining a capitulación120 from the Council of the Indies.”
“Come again?”
“A public competition for the right to conquest, injun. That is why we are going to La Española.”
Araypuro looked at the papers and screwed up his face.
“If thou listened to me instead of fornicating like a rabbit all daye long with all the índias de cama121 thou mightest learn a thing or two. Here it says that I am requesting official permission to conquer and populate Cumaná, and that I, Doctor Juan de Orpín (in other words, me) shall be conceded the title of Governor in Perpetuity of whatsoever I discover. What that means is that I’m requesting a grant of encomienda—legal tribute and labor rights in exchange for indoctrinating and protecting the natives—over everything I find, in order to have complete autonomy over the government I establish, without having to answer to the royale taxman.”
“Damn, bro! You gringos just love to discover stuff, wage yer little battles, claim rights to everything, and everyone,” complained Araypuro, adjusting his straw hat. “Two centuries and counting we’ve been made to worship yer diris122 and swallow yer prevarications. Pero like yer nothing more than petty thieves, lying and cheating and embustering pell-mell and helter-skelter.”
“Don’t bring me down with thy sermons, injun. Furthermore, I canst grasp nigh half of whatfore thy speak (whenever will thee finally learn Catalan!). I am only attempting to follow in the footsteps of other discoverers, who were following the first discoverer, in order to earn riches and honours. And now, silence! I must concentrate.”
The two men continued on their way to La Guaira, where they boarded a caravelle setting sail for Santo Domingo and La Española. Once they reached the Council of Indies to request the grant, Orpí found that three criollo noblemen, descendants of conquistadors and founders, were also there making their applications. One of those noblemen was none other than Vázquez de Soja, his old archenemy. All three of the gentlemen had more riches, titles, and crests than Orpí, and that was a hiccup for our hero, who was not even close to being noble. But he only had to play his cards right and he would be on the path to fame and fortune, for wasn’t Pizarro a pig herder before he was a marquis in the Indies?
So Orpí, always thinking ahead, had already drafted an extremely long list of white lies to make him sound like he was of higher lineage: claims that he was pure of blood, that he was descended from old Christians, etc., designed to give his bureaucratic paperwork the necessary patina of pedigree to make him stand out among his competitors. He had reviewed the works of ancient orators, and prepared an extremely eloquent defense of his grant. So eloquent in fact, so extensive and concrete, so well fashioned that, thanks to his literary arts (shamelessly plagiarizing the prose of Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s True History of the Conquest of New Spain, which circulated in a manuscript edition in that era), the Council, seeing that the lawyer/conquistador had expressed his project so articulately, awarded him the grant.
Thus, on that very 20th of December, 1631, on the cusp of forty years old, Orpí was named “Governor and Captain General of the conquest, pacification, and population of the Province of the Cumanagotos” before the entire Council of the Indies and the stupified indignation of the three criollo noblemen. The Council invited Oprí up to the dais where he carried out a display of thanksgiving to God and the Crown, kneeling and bowing and curtseying. Then they bestowed the Capitulations upon him, saying things such as this:
As ye, Doctor Juan Urpín Adelantado, related unto us, of thine worthy and loyal services furnished in defense of the Araya Salt Pans and as Lieutenant in the City of Cumanagoto and its corresponding province, populating it with Christians and pacifying the entire region with the Yndians in peace, and willingly serving the Christians, and that now, ye desire to serve the good and growth of our Royal Crown, as ye have always done, ye may now go forth and populate new lands to bring us much service and benefit, and for such ye need be provided with sufficient armament and well supplied with all necessities, and ye shall enter these lands with four hundred Christian men, on foot and horseback. And as ye hath deemed from thine experience that expenses shall exceed forty thousand castellanos, and in order to fulfill and complete ye incurred expenses, ye requested by grant license to conquer said lands, and bestowing and allowing the grants and conditions of usage contained therein, regarding which I order ye to take the following capitulation and seat: [ … ]
Orpí’s success enraged the three noblemen who, led by Vázquez de Soja, plotted a scheme to eradicate that escutcheon-less Catalan. As is widely known, envy is a virus that extends rapidly, and Captain De Soja was infected from head to toe. The noblemen of Santo Domingo turned out to have dangerous, far-reaching tentacles, and our hero was arrested for no apparent reason and tossed in the clink. But the following day he was released for lack of charges. Unable to stop our hero by force or by law, his archenemy Domingo Vázquez de Soja decided to place a scribe in Orpí’s expedition so he could keep tabs on his movements and cause him harm with authentic evidence. Meanwhile, our hero visited an affluent man, Juan Sedeño de Albornoz, and drew up a contract of “fraternity and repartition” in order to finance his expeditions inland and named him General Alferes. Orpí also gathered up his former cohorts, the soldiers Octopus, The Scourge, and Jeremies, who had served with him at the Araya Salt Pans, and he named
them Captains of the guard, of the steeds, and of the infantry, respectively; he convinced Father Claver to accompany him, as well as a few colonist families who would be tasked with populating the conquered lands; he hired foot soldiers and bought provisions, beasts of burden and of saddle, foodstuffs, and arms. And when he had it all prepared, his conquest expedition waited for the rainy season to end, and when it had, they set out along their way in the manner detailed posthaste.
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119. i.e. Book, in his language.
120. i.e. A public legal document awarded by the Crown to designate conquest expeditions.