by David Yeadon
The famous explorer/navigator Alexander von Humboldt wandered this wild region in 1800 and wrote in his Travels in the Equinox Regions of the New Continent:
The first view of the Llanos fills the soul with a feeling of infinity and through this feeling destroys any sensibilities of space, moving the intellect into higher realms. In the same instance there is the impression of clear surface—dead and rigid—like a desolate planet. Equal in size to the central portion of the Sahara it appears at times like the sea of sand in Libya and another time like the green pastures of the Central Asian steppes…. One becomes weary below the endless open sky…the contemplation of the horizon that continually appears to retreat from us; one loses hope of ever reaching anywhere.
Little has been done to tame and cultivate the Llanos. Cattle ranches—some the size of the Florida Everglades—offer the only real source of livelihood for the llaneros. But these cattle are not the docile, udderbound creatures of home; they are wild and ferocious, making the life of the llanero cowboy an arduous and adventure-filled existence. Real Wild West stuff (before the West was Hollywood-hyped and Roy Rogered into a Saturday afternoon popcorn pastime).
So Gallegos met this true grit-and-guile llanero somewhere on the edge of the strange wilderness. And he listened to his tales—tales of midnight roundups (the cattle are too clever to be caught during the day); legends of the “black gods,” “Evil Eye” indians, and the brujos (sorcerers); epics of family blood feuds among the regal ranch owners. Murder, mayhem, magic, mosquitoes, mystery, and misery. All the great themes of a great novel. Life on an outback that most people never knew existed. A place where property was the pillar of power and law was whatever the llanero barons said it was.
But there was something missing. And Gallegos kept listening.
Then came the story of Doña Barbara.
Now, here was the key ingredient to a truly enduring novel of Venezuelan history. A woman—a woman landowner in a time of total patriarchal domination. A woman who could corral cattle and break in horses better than any man. A woman without scruples who could eradicate anyone who stood in the way of her aggressive ambitions to own all of the Llanos and everything in it—the great rivers teeming with anacondas, alligators, stingrays, electric eels, and deadly piranhas; the endless grasslands and jungle matas, where the birds nested and the cattle hid; the vast marshes and quicksand bogs, where antagonists could easily be dispatched to early graves.
Doña Barbara. A nineteenth-century queen of the Llanos. A maven of magic and the black arts. A woman. A witch.
Gallegos worked like a madman. Discarding previous manuscripts, he threw himself into research and romantic speculations. He gleaned every nuance, cajoled ranchers into revealing their fears and fantasies (Doña Barbara was a striking woman and not averse to using beauty and bed to accomplish her schemes), and struggled to separate myth from mundanity.
Writing day and night, he had his manuscript ready in twenty-eight days. Publishers tumbled over themselves to meet his price. It was printed in 1929 in Spain, gained immediate fame and awards, and was eventually translated into twenty languages. Gallegos rode the crest of international celebrity for the rest of his life. Doña Barbara was raised to the level of legend and the Llanos with her. The llaneros—previously dismissed as uneducated, untamed wild men—became the stuff of South American machismo and manliness. A nation found its new heroes of the free life—an anarchistic celebration of the unchecked human spirit, male and female.
After reading Gallegos’s Doña Barbara, I had to come to the Llanos. Still a “lost world” even today, the place drew me in like a mosquito to hot flesh. My other journeys in Venezuela—my search for the hermit of the Andean Tisure Valley, my struggles in the tepuis of the Gran Sabana—were all wonderful adventures, but I knew that one day I’d enter the Llanos and lose myself in its hazy horizons. And if luck stuck with me, I’d return with something special, something unique. Like Gallegos, I was lured by its legends and—like others before me—I was fascinated by the cruel, sensual, enduring spirit of Doña Barbara.
The truck pitched and bucked like a wild stallion on the rutted earth track. I was in the back with my bags, smothered in dust and screening my eyes from a blazing—and still hot—sunset. It was February, the heart of the dry season. There had been no rains since November. The truck left a trail of spuming dust for a mile back down the track. The driver—an old centaur cowboy—was crazy. At least that’s how it seemed. He thought he was back on his horse. He tried to avoid every pothole by riding his vehicle like a bronco. Most times he failed and the poor vehicle cracked and snapped—metal on metal—as the shocks surrendered to the beating and rocks spewed out from under the tires like machine-gun bullets.
There were birds everywhere. Thousands of them. Spoonbills, jaribu storks, white and scarlet ibis, egrets, herons, vultures, and hawks. But asking him to stop so I could photograph them was like trying to slow an avalanche with a bucket. I thumped on the truck roof, but he just leered at me through the grimy rear window and let out some llanero howl like a rodeo holler. I gave up. The birds would have to wait. I padded myself in with my bags to keep the blood flowing in my legs and backside. I’d asked to sit in the open back so I could enjoy the sun and the scenery. Only I wasn’t enjoying them much at all.
Somewhere way out there in the burnt-green wilderness was a ranch, Hato la Trinidad de Arauca, of almost one hundred thousand acres. Modest by Llanos standards, but still pretty big. I’d made arrangements to stay here for a while with the Estrada family who had recently opened a lodge as a place of refuge for weary explorers. The Estradas have been llaneros for five generations and are hoping to raise capital to keep their cattle land in a natural state, uncultivated and undeveloped. Other ranchers are constantly planning elaborate schemes for farming the rich earth and domesticating their herds of wild cattle, but Hugo Estrada and his family believe the Llanos is far too important as a breeding ground and safe haven for endangered wildlife to be changed.
But there is more to Hugo Estrada’s ambitions than environmental philanthropy. There is the memory—the presence—of Francisca Vazquez de Carrillo, the notorious Doña Barbara. Her ranch, Mata de Totumo, adjoined the Estrada ranch, and her reputation as a sorcerer kept most llaneros well away from its dark jungly hummocks and deadly quicksands. They called it El Miedo, The Fear. Legends abounded about the place: ghosts of Doña Barbara’s outcast lovers who haunted the creeks and sloughs, seeking to fill “the eternal holes in their souls” a wizardly “partner” she called “Socio,” who helped her maintain her mastery of the black arts; fierce cutthroat compatriots whose duty it was to seize land, cattle, and property without regard to such incidentals as deeds and laws; strange rituals and sacrifices undertaken in her “conjuring room” to preserve her powers—and always the growing size and wealth of her ranch as she amassed land and cattle using every device in her devious, and deadly, arsenal.
So this is where I was heading, to the campamento of Doña Barbara, to meet the modern-day Estradas. And I hoped it was going to be worth all this banging about and dust chewing in the back of a beaten-up truck.
On the way down I had paused in the sweltering little cow town of Mantecal on the edge of the southern Llanos. It happened to be carnival time, a pre-Lent bacchanal of parades and costumed children. (Dressing up like a Llanos jaguar seemed to be very popular.) Everyone was out in the streets, dancing, cheering, and whooping it up near the iron-railed enclosure where the llaneros held their regular toros coleados rodeos. These were supposedly crazy affairs—cowboys competed to throw angry bulls by their tails. I would have loved to photograph one of these unique events but instead had my cameras and recording equipment almost ruined by a sudden dousing from buckets of cold water thrown by laughing revelers. No one had warned me that one of the highlights of carnivale was to go around soaking unsuspecting victims. I was obviously an ideal candidate and left the merry little town dripping and cursing and trying to dry out all the sensitive electro
nics of my equipment.
The sun had gone now. We were far from the madness of Mantecal. The air had a chill to it, like a desert after dusk. The horizons were muted and vague in the purpling sky. Mystery crept in. I remembered a passage from the Gallegos book:
The Llanos is at once lovely and fearful. It holds, side by side, beautiful life and hideous death. The Plain frightens, but the fear which the plain inspires is not the terror which chills the heart; it is hot, like the wind sweeping over the immeasurable solitude, like the fever lying in the marshes. The plain crazes; and the madness of a man living in the wide lawless land leads him to remain a Plainsman forever. There is madness in the languid desolation—the unbroken horizon enclosing nothing but emptiness—a sprawling wilderness land of struggle and peril, with as many horizons as hopes.
But one man had apparently been unmoved by all the maudlin tales of mystery. Don José Natalio Utreva, head of the Estrada family in the late 1800s, admired the courage and fortitude of Doña Barbara. He knew the power of legend and myth over the lawless llaneros. He understood that the only way that Doña Barbara could hope to survive in that harsh wilderness was by determination. She was proud, and clever—but not the evil witch others claimed her to be.
They were close—how close is not recorded. They called each other pariente (relative) and they became compatriots in the endless plots and ploys of the ranchers. When Doña Barbara disappeared in 1922—or died (after Gallegos’s book it was hard to separate fact from fiction)—the Estradas purchased much of her land, and her memory—her presence—has been protected down through the generations. Today, on the Estrada ranch, there is a memorial to her, shaded by a great divi-divi tree; her adobe and thatch house has been rebuilt by members of the family and furnished simply in traditional nineteenth-century llaneros fashion.
We arrived well after dark after more hours of bumping and banging in the back of the truck. There were stars everywhere, new unfamiliar patterns. As the driver switched off the engine the silence hummed, broken only by the ear-itching saw of the cicadas. Fifty yards away was the Doña Barbara Lodge, built originally by the Estradas for their Llanos ranch hands. Lights shone outside the small rooms. After hours of crashing through the wilderness, seeing nothing but brown-green horizons, the place looked like a palace. I rose up from the truck bed like a dust-coated apparition, then promptly fell down again. My legs were numb. They had forgotten how to stand.
Someone was coming toward me. A tall thin man silhouetted by the lights. I managed to haul myself out and leaned against the rear fender, clinging on to the truck for support.
“A good drive, yes?”
I tried to say something witty, but my mouth was dry and caked with grit. What came out was somewhere between a croak and a grunt.
“I am Francisco. Welcome to the hato. Hugo Estrada is my father and he will meet with you later.”
I smiled and nodded.
“Have a wash. Then dinner. Leave your bags. Someone will bring them.”
Sounded fine with me.
There were twenty rooms at the lodge, all previously used to house ranch hands. Mine overlooked a tree whose upper trunk was encased in a bulbous five-foot-high termite nest meticulously shaped out of mud and straw. The lights from the lodge also illuminated the wings of a small plane in an adjacent field, a very convenient form of transportation in this wilderness. The moon was out now, large and low on the horizon, bathing nearby trees and the endless plain beyond in silver light.
In the shower the layered dust on my head and body coagulated into rivulets of mud. A reflection in the cracked mirror made me look like a swamp thing newly emerged from the bog. Not a pretty sight.
Dinner was a splendid affair. The Estradas—the father, Hugo, and his wife, Beatrice, his son, Francisco, two daughters, Carmen and Ixora, and their children—greeted me like a lost relative, offered me a choice of cold beer or fresh fruit juices, and led me to the buffet table set under the stars in the outdoor dining area. Due to bad planning on my part I hadn’t eaten since the morning and was ravenous. And here I was, faced by a feast of soups and entrées of fried fish, steak, chicken in hot sauce, pastas, rice, fruit, and salad, all served with home-baked breads and little arepa loaves. Hugo, the stocky don in his early seventies, with a broad white mustache, twinkling eyes, and a ready smile, followed me along the buffet table. “Take more,” “Try the bread,” “Don’t miss this,” “That’s not enough,” “This is fresh papaya juice—is very good after long journeys.”
I tried to eat slowly, responding to questions and asking a few of my own, but the delicious dishes occupied most of my attention. Then came dessert—some decadent concoction of grated coconut, pureed mangoes, and caramelized sugar. I attempted to limit my intake, but Beatrice would have none of my gustatory modesty. As soon as I’d finished she gently removed my plate with a smile and returned with an even larger second helping, plus a glass of sweet chichi blended from rice and milk, and a slab of cheese made every day at the Estradas’ small dairy from “tame-cow” milk.
“You like?” asked Hugo, eyes twinkling again.
“I like very much. I’m glad I came.”
The family nodded approval.
“Tomorrow, if you wish, you can take a horse early in the morning. The birds are beautiful then,” said Hugo.
“Sounds like a great idea.”
“Good. Five-thirty is a good time. One of the men will bring your horse.”
We talked about the wildlife and Hugo Estrada’s plans to keep most of his ranch in a natural state.
“The other ranchers—we are not always agreeing on matters. Some want to begin cultivation and keep all the cattle tame for cheese and meat. They use chemicals for spraying. They burn their land. They say it makes better grass for the cattle. But when they burn they destroy the places for the birds. Many animals die. It is not good for the Llanos. This is a special place in Venezuela. In the world.”
Beatrice brought me a book the family keeps in which guests at the lodge had described their feelings about Hato La Trinidad.
I read:
I love this land—the land of the Llanero who needs only a knife, a horse, a hammock and a fishing line….
Strong yet gentle—the land and the people.
I toast to the Estradas—a family working hard to keep a balance between man, his enterprises, and nature! The preservation of God’s creation.
One comment referred to Doña Barbara:
Do you represent the dark side of the Llanos—the jaguar, the piranha, the stingray, the electric eel?…perhaps you practiced both good and evil witchcraft for you have surely left us a strange and enchanted land.
Much later I thankfully tumbled into bed to rest before an early start to my “enchanted land” explorations.
By six I was out on the plains—just me and my sleepy horse. The sun rose slowly over the gallery forests by the river, flecking the araguaney trees, jasmines, and acacias with silver-gold light. From the lower trunk of one of the araguaneys grew two exotic rosa de la montana flowers—fiery balls of bright red—glowing like miniature suns. Over in the ranch house palms I heard the resident colony of buff-necked ibis beginning their morning litany of shrieks and scratchy caws. Nearby at the stables the llaneros—the “midnight cowboys” of the ranch—were unsaddling their horses after a long night of rounding up the cattle. Way off in the distance I heard the eerie calls of howler monkeys.
At the edge of the mata I disturbed a cluster of parrots. They scattered like litter in a hurricane, a hyped-up half-flight of flailing green wings and frantic screeches. Whatever hope I had of quietly photographing the storks and herons by the watering holes was gone. Two five-foot-high jaribu storks rose up in slow laborious flaps from their sentry positions overlooking the half-dry ponds, followed by dainty lines of snowy egrets, white ibis, three whistling herons, and a single scarlet ibis like a flash of red flame. Only the spoonbills remained, trailing the shallows with their strange scooping beaks. Oh, and a macaw too.
He sat with his enormous bill, way up in a palm, knowing he was safe and wondering what all the fuss was about anyway.
Something brown and big moved through the sawgrass on the far side of the water hole—maybe a capybara, over three feet high, the largest rodent in the world. A shadowy undulating mass of black closer in turned out to be a bunch of vultures feasting on the remains of fish left behind by the storks and herons. Obviously food was more important to them than fear of an unexpected intruder.
I moved on as slowly and silently as I could across the lightening plain. My horse seemed pleased not to be called upon to gallop. Galloping is not a forte of mine. A lazy saunter suits me much better and it seemed an appropriate pace for such a lovely early morning.
The plain stretched out to misty horizons in all directions. I tried to imagine what it must look like in the rainy season—a vast, seemingly endless lake, sparkling under a hot sun or black as pitch as storms lash its surface. So big. So splendidly remote and untamed.