We Left for Venezuela
My brother José was working at a bank in Brussels in a rather poor position. At that time, our cousin Frans (father of Irene, Andrés, and León) and his brother León were on an irrigation project commissioned by the Venezuelan Ministry of Public Works in Carora, Lara State. Frans wrote to us, suggesting José could easily find work in Venezuela if he knew surveying.
My brother José was working at a bank in Brussels in a rather poor position. At that time, our cousin Frans (father of Irene, Andrés, and León) and his brother León were on an irrigation project commissioned by the Venezuelan Ministry of Public Works in Carora, Lara State. Frans wrote to us, suggesting José could easily find work in Venezuela if he knew surveying.
The Belgium–Venezuela Connection
This connection to Venezuela began with my two first cousins, Frans and León Amelinckx, the only children of Cyrille Amelinckx, my father's brother.
León Amelinckx
León, the younger brother, was the first to leave Belgium. After studying mining engineering, he married—mildly displeasing his family—then separated from his wife. Following the separation, his parents decided it was best for him to go to America.
While León was in Nicaragua (I believe), his son Frans was born in Belgium, and the grandparents took care of him. Later, Frans studied in Lille, France. During this time, the grandparents also handled León's divorce, which was finalized several years afterward. At the same period, León received a scholarship from Anastasio Somoza, dictator of Nicaragua, to pursue postgraduate studies in Geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines in Denver. After completing his studies, he sailed to Venezuela to meet his Dutch friend Tervoren. However, the ship's engine failed, leaving them adrift in the middle of the ocean. They were eventually located and towed to port, but by then León had lost his friend in Venezuela. As a mining engineer, León found work at a small gold mine in Tumeremo, in the Venezuelan Guayana. His adventurous life in the virgin jungle led to several illnesses—malaria, dysentery, and even an early stage of beriberi. During one such illness, he became so severely ill that he needed a blood transfusion, which was donated by a young Venezuelan woman, Isabel Michelena. León later married Isabel, who had a son from a previous marriage; I met him later in Caracas.
León experienced many adventures, including an incident where, in self-defense, he fatally shot a thief who had fired at him first.
Many adventures were told about him. I came to know him well, as I worked with him in Caracas for some time. He was my height, with blond hair—though going somewhat bald—and blue eyes, and had a very Latin, charming personality. His wife, Isabel, was not quite as charming but had a good heart. She would take in and educate at her home whatever children of needy relatives from the interior came her way. She passed away, I believe, in the 1960s.
During the Second World War, León was mobilized by the Belgian consul in Venezuela to join the Allied army in England. León disliked this and refused. As a result, the consul declared him a deserter and tried in every way to cause him difficulties. At the same time, León worked for an American company, building several unpaved airstrips in the Venezuelan Guayana so Allied aircraft could attack German submarines. León knew the region well and completed the work successfully. Later, while passing through Caracas, he learned that the Belgian consul had, months earlier, sent a letter to his company's bosses. The letter claimed León was a deserter, a Nazi element, and possibly a spy. He asked his boss for his thoughts, and his boss replied, "Very amusing."
León, meanwhile, obtained Venezuelan citizenship and, acting in that role, requested a visa from the Belgian consul—not with any real intention of traveling, but solely to irritate the consul. He was successful.
After his second wife, Isabel, died, he returned to the Guayana. There, he became a professor of Geophysics at the National School of Mines in Ciudad Bolívar. In the years that followed, he married a widow for the third time and had a daughter, whom I know only from a photograph. Around that same period, his son Frans, who had been raised in France, passed through Venezuela on his way to the United States. I was told Frans later married an American woman.
When José and I arrived in Venezuela in 1948, León had a house in San Bernardino. Later, he sold that house and built several houses in Maripérez, Caracas, keeping one for himself.
That house was always full of Isabel's close and distant relatives. After her death, León tried to get them to leave, as none paid rent. When he remarried, they refused to go and stayed until León fell ill and died. His widow then tried to recover the house for their little daughter, with Frans's children's help. León's third wife was reportedly a very good woman who cared for him until his death in the 1970s.
I met several of León's friends, who were quite colorful characters. One of them was an Austrian-American, something of a pirate and smuggler. He had made money collecting canned food and other goods washed up along the beaches of Margarita Island. He also had a magnetite mine that yielded nothing of value except scrap iron—used rails. The canned goods and other items came from Allied merchant ships sunk by German submarines during the Second World War, on their route between Brazil and the United States.
Another friend of León's was a Frenchman of Corsican origin. During his military service in France, this man shot and killed his sergeant, who had insulted him repeatedly. In a fit of rage, he fired in front of the entire troop. As a result, he was sentenced to life of hard labor on Devil's Island in Cayenne, French Guiana. He escaped with the help of compatriots, then made his way to Dutch Guiana (later British Guiana) and finally to Venezuelan Guiana. There, he found work as a blacksmith, sharpening drill bits at the company where León worked. Years later, in Caracas, León helped him buy a car so he could work as a taxi driver. I met him at that time and found him to be decent company.
Frans Amelinckx
He was León's brother, son of my uncle Cyrille, and father of León, Andrés, and Irene Amelinckx.
He studied in Belgium and, after graduating, also traveled to America to join his brother León. As Frans told me, he worked in Panama for a multinational banana company, studying the conversion of swampland into agricultural land for banana cultivation through proper drainage. There was a great deal of malaria in that area, which was treated with massive doses of quinine — something that affected his hearing slightly. He later moved to Nicaragua, where he also met Anastasio Somoza and served as director of road and highway maintenance. He had a fine house in Managua, but one day a powerful earthquake struck, killing thousands and destroying much of the city — including his house. Fortunately, he was unharmed, as he was in a mechanic's yard having his car serviced. Shortly afterward, he was forced to leave Nicaragua, as the country was in ruins and bankrupt. He moved to Colombia, where he worked as a professor at the National School of Mines, I believe.
Later, he left America for Angola, Africa. He was contracted by a British diamond company and worked at the mine for about three years. From there, he returned to Belgium to fulfill his military reserve obligations: fourteen days of exercises per year as a reserve officer. Since he had been out of the country for 10 years, he owed 140 days' worth of pay. During this period, Belgium was invaded by German troops. Frans quickly found himself on the front lines. He was wounded in the leg by a machine gun bullet, with both an entry and exit wound, but fortunately without complications. He spent the remainder of the campaign in the hospital. He recovered and later met and married Raquel Cristianes. He became a partner in the business of Raquel's parents, who owned a knitwear factory in the Netherlands, near the border. When Belgium was liberated from German occupation, Frans ran into difficulties because he had been a member of a Flemish-German cultural organization. As a result, he was denied a travel permit to cross into the Netherlands daily to reach the factory, forcing him to withdraw from the business.
Frans was my height, with dark eyes and black hair, and a quiet, well-mannered character. He actually bore quite a resemblance to my father and my brother Frans. Physically, he looked like his father, while León resembled their mother, though in personality, León took after his father, who was quite a joker.
I came to know Frans very well, as I stayed at his house for several months while working for a French company in Caracas after my work in Carora ended. At that time, León had turned to building houses on his own account in Caracas, Frans continued working at the ministry based in Caracas, and every evening we would talk — him drinking beer, me gin and ginger. Frans was highly regarded at work, and he was the first to propose the idea of the Guaricó dam, which was later built — though, for political reasons, he was not given credit as its "father." Later, however, the Cumaripe reservoir in Yaracuy State was named after him. When I visited Venezuela in 1986, I learned that someone had removed the name Francisco Amelinckx and replaced it with another. Why, I do not know.
Frans died during an operation from heart failure, which was a great sorrow.
The Voyage to Venezuela
Obtaining a transit visa in Antwerp was no problem, as they did not require the dreaded civism certificate.
Getting a ticket by plane or ship was another matter. All air tickets had been sold out up to a year in advance, since only aircraft crossed the ocean — the dirigibles were long gone. By ship, the prospects were also slim, as it was 1948 and the shortage of merchant vessels was due to the devastation wrought by German submarines during the war. However, a travel agency in Antwerp cleverly secured us places on a small Portuguese ship sailing under a Panamanian flag, departing from Bordeaux via the Azores to La Guaira, where León would be waiting for us at the dock.
From Aalst, José and I took the train to Brussels, where we boarded the international express to Paris. We visited Paris along the way and naturally went up the Eiffel Tower. That night we took the Paris–Bordeaux express, and the following day we were already on the ship.
The first days at sea were hellish — there was a storm, and in autumn, the ocean in that region is always very rough, even without one. Of the 150 first-class passengers, only about 15 were able to resist seasickness; all the others were unwell. José and I held up fine and never missed a meal in the dining room, which was deserted those days. The ship pitched like a wild horse, and at times the propeller would lift clear out of the water, only to plunge back into the foaming sea seconds later — forcing the engine to be throttled back or even stopped to avoid dangerous shocks to the propeller shaft. Even so, we made progress, and on the eighth day, quite suddenly, the sea became as calm as a mirror. We entered Ponta Delgada in the Azores, and from there to Venezuela took another eight days across a sea as serene and still as a lagoon. As we entered the Caribbean, they pointed out to us the lights of the "Maracaibo lightning." In fact, they were the "Catatumbo fires"—an area where I would later live for about 5 years.
Landing at the port of La Guaira was impossible, as the La Guaira garrison had risen against the government, and no ship was being allowed in. Our ship, therefore, continued about 150 kilometers further along the coast and docked without incident at Puerto Cabello. We disembarked, cleared immigration and customs, and found ourselves in Puerto Cabello — without the promised assistance, as León had tried to make his way to La Guaira but had been unable to, with bullets already flying and no one able to tell him anything about the ship we were on.
Since it was already 1 p.m., we considered finding a hotel and traveling to Caracas the following morning, since the overland journey would take about eight hours. The only hotel in Puerto Cabello did have rooms available, but no beds — guests were expected to bring their own hammocks. At that very moment, a bus heading to Caracas passed by, and we boarded it on the spot. The bus arrived in Caracas at 10 p.m. Once there, we tried to find León's house without success — the address was somewhat complicated, and searching for it at night along a several-block-long avenue proved fruitless. We slept at a hotel with proper beds, and the following day we found León's address: "Quinta Flamenca" on Avenida San Bernardino. There, we finally met León, whom we had never seen in Belgium, as well as Isabel and her extended family. The house was large, but very full.
As it turned out, José and I had left Europe to escape the aftermath of war — and here in South America, we arrived to find a revolution already underway.
In the first days of our stay in Venezuela, we made a habit of exploring Caracas on foot each day. One afternoon, passing by the presidential palace in Miraflores, we saw about 20 tanks and armored vehicles lined up in front of the building. When we returned home, we learned from the radio that at the very moment we had walked past, the armored division had arrested all the ministers inside and placed the entire country under military command.
José and I practiced our Spanish as much as possible. With León, we naturally spoke Flemish, while his wife insisted we speak Spanish with him — but León preferred Flemish.
The First Years in Venezuela — José
We stayed at León's house for about three months. By the end of that time, we felt we could manage on our own. During those months, we had practiced with the theodolites and surveying levels that León owned, as he had worked as a road-laying contractor. We would set out with those instruments and stake out the wall axes of the houses he was building. By then, we had gained some experience, and José went out to look for work, visiting construction and oil companies in Caracas. Before long, he found a position with the United Geophysical Corp. and headed into the interior.
I also wanted to go and look for work, but León asked me to stay with him a while longer. Meanwhile, the company where José worked discontinued its exploration operations, and he had to look for work again. He found it with a road construction company, where he worked for several months before moving on to another firm run by an American, which carried out exploratory drilling of the subsoil to determine its suitability for bridge abutment foundations, dams, and similar structures. There, José was a surveyor, draftsman, accountant, and driver all at once. After working there for a couple of years, the company dissolved, and José joined the Ministry of Public Works. He worked in various locations and eventually settled in the El Vigía area — the same zone where I was building roads and airports. During that period, I would sometimes visit him at his camp at night, and more often at his house in Mesa Bolívar, a pleasant town at 1,600 meters above sea level with a cool climate where his family lived. Years later, they moved to Ejido in Mérida, where they still reside.
Years before, I had lost contact with José because I was working in the interior with no fixed address. We reestablished contact when he was living in Valera, Trujillo State. There I met Rolando and Ignacio, who had just learned to walk. He was very affectionate, and Ignacio moved me deeply — with his big blue eyes, he looked so much like my mother. After I left for Peru, Marlene was born. During the Pérez Jiménez era, José was forced to send his family to Belgium due to widespread unrest and intense political tension. He stayed on in Venezuela and, when Pérez Jiménez was finally overthrown, the family returned from Belgium.
My First Years in Venezuela
In March 1949, José went off to work, while I remained at León's house, helping him with his construction projects and assisting a little with geophysical exploration — using an instrument that measured soil resistivity to determine the depth of the groundwater table. I also drew up a design for a brick factory. I met the engineer Gerry Hamelynck, a Dutchman and friend of León, who had built large bridges over the Apure River in the llanos. His bridges had turned out very well, but the river had since changed course, so that a couple of years after completion, the bridges were left more or less without purpose.
When I no longer needed to help León — as the house construction had come to an end — I moved in with Frans. I found work with a French company, where I spent three months in Caracas calculating earthwork volumes and two weeks in Sabana Mendoza, Trujillo State, measuring quantities on contract works. I then returned to Caracas and, after a couple of weeks searching for work among construction companies, I found employment with a firm called Ruta, where I remained for four years in the Santa Bárbara de Zulia area, between El Vigía and the Catatumbo River in Zulia State. During that time, I built a total of 150 kilometers of roads, two airports, numerous bridges, and various other works. The roads crossed vast swamps, and to build them we used mechanical shovels fitted with draglines, which moved along enormous wooden sleepers laid to distribute the machine's weight across the boggy ground. The draglines made two parallel cuts in the form of channels, placing the excavated material as an embankment between them. That embankment eventually became the road itself, while the channels drained the swamp.
My main base was Santa Bárbara, which had nothing saintly about it but plenty that was barbarous. The climate was humid and hot — a minimum of 30 degrees and a maximum of 36, with annual rainfall of 5,000 millimeters. The town itself had about 5,000 inhabitants, with another 20,000 depending on the surrounding area. There was a great deal of crime — at least one murder per month. One of my friends was killed by one of his own workers because he had dismissed him. It was not safe to enter any café at night for fear of being stabbed by a drunk. The people could be very dangerous. I myself witnessed the death of a man shot twice in the chest with a shotgun at less than five meters' distance. The weapons in common use were mostly .45 caliber revolvers carried by landowners; ordinary people used knives; and the Guajiro people, known locally as "chinitos," used machetes.
Feuds invariably ended with the death or disappearance of one of the parties. One particularly striking case involved a landowner who had a commercial enemy living in town. He sent his six-year-old son to buy something at the man's shop, and as the merchant was handing back the change, the landowner shot and killed him, claiming the man had been reaching for a revolver to shoot his child. Unbelievable. The same landowner wanted to buy a small 40-hectare farm from his neighbor, a "chinito," but the man refused to sell. The result: the "chinito" disappeared without a trace, the landowner gave money to the man's wife, and kept both the woman and the farm.
The high crime rate in the Santa Bárbara area at that time was explained by its geography. Any criminal fleeing the police in Maracaibo could easily buy a ticket to the Santa Bárbara zone, from which vessels carrying hundreds of tons of plantains departed daily for Maracaibo. Instead of disembarking at Santa Bárbara itself, they would land at some other spot with no police presence, disappear into the jungle, start a family, and live on a small subsistence plot. Sadly, criminal instincts did not disappear with the change of scenery. The moral standards of the population were, to put it mildly, fairly relaxed.
My salary at the company was quite good — more than an engineer would earn in the United States, and double what one would earn in Belgium. In addition, housing, food, and transport were all provided free of charge. The work, on the other hand, was quite hard: infernally humid heat from the surrounding swamps, considerable danger from snakes, tarantulas, skin fungus, cerebral malaria, yellow fever, and so on.
I worked those four years with the Ruta company, whose owner was Isaac Pérez Alfonso, brother of Pablo Pérez Alfonso, known as the father of OPEC. The company was later sold to Carlos Peña Uslar. At the end of those four years, the company's activity slowed considerably, and I was let go. I was immediately hired as an inspector for the Ministry of Public Works, tasked with overseeing the work of other companies in the area between El Vigía and La Azulita, Mérida State.
The Ministry paid my salary punctually, but the official responsible for disbursing it did not pass it on — he, along with the other engineers' salaries, was investing the money in his own farm. I eventually resigned when three months' pay was owed to me — a considerable sum. I left someone in charge of collecting it and decided to travel to Peru. I later learned that when the person tried to collect, he was threatened, and we gave up on recovering the money.
Since 1952, I had been thinking about making an exploratory trip to Peru, as I had received very favorable reports about its mining industry and the culture and warmth of its people.
I had remained single throughout the six years I spent in Venezuela, for various reasons: the nature of the work, the remoteness from civilized areas, and frankly, because at that time there was a certain hostility toward foreigners.
Frans was not pleased with the idea of my trip to Peru, because "at least in Venezuela there is money," and that was true. But he was already married and had no curiosity about other countries, still less about ones with lower incomes.